Patrick Rowe is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, a powerhouse agency brand considered one of the most successful in the world. Founded in 1970 in London, it became known as the place where nothing is impossible. It also became the largest advertising agency in the world, with offices worldwide.
The advertising industry is often accused of being obsessed with the new and bedazzled by change. But what about longevity? What about the challenges of sustaining long-term business success?
Pat talks about maintaining relevance, focus and success while constantly adapting to the changing needs of clients and their markets. Deciding what changes and stays the same is essential to maintaining long-term success.
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My father used to say that an expert is someone who gets it right 51% of the time. So, if you’re getting it right more than half the time, you’re an expert.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I am Darren Woolley, founder, and CEO of Trinity P3 Marketing Management consultancy. And welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
The advertising industry is often accused of being obsessed with the new – bedazzled by change. But what about longevity? What about the challenges of sustaining long-term business success?
There is an agency brand that is often considered one of the most successful in the world. Founded in 1970 in London, it became known as the place where nothing is impossible. It also became the largest advertising agency in the world with offices around the world.
But how do you maintain relevance, focus, and success? Today, I’m sitting down with someone who’s recently taken on that very challenge. Please welcome to Managing Marketing, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, Patrick Rowe. Welcome, Pat.
Patrick:
Hello, Darren. Pleasure to be here.
Darren:
You have taken on a big job here. Saatchi & Saatchi is the type of agency that, for me, my friends and family (that don’t work in advertising), seem to know as ‘the advertising agency’.
Patrick:
Yeah, I think that’s right. Look, it’s an absolute privilege to be leading Saatchi & Saatchi, and it is one of those agencies. I’ve worked in this business for a long time, and a lot of the agencies I’ve worked at, if I tell friends, and even my family, who I work for, they’ve never heard of them.
But Saatchi & Saatchi is not like that. Everybody’s heard of Saatchi & Saatchi. Uber drivers, and everybody you talk to has heard of Saatchi & Saatchi. So, it’s a famous agency brand, and a famous brand in general. It has high recognition everywhere, which is great.
Darren:
People talk about Saatchi & Saatchi, not just about the heyday in the late 20th century, but also today. It’s still relevant today as a brand and hasn’t suffered from what’s happened to a lot of great brands, particularly WPP being mashed together to somehow try and maintain relevance.
Patrick:
Yeah. I think that comes down to consistency of work. I think it also comes down to the ability of the agency to evolve and keep up with the times, and particularly the needs of clients in how we both think of ideas that are relevant for them and their customers. But importantly, how we bring them to life, and that has changed since the 70s.
Darren:
And the other thing that’s changed, of course, is the media landscape that you’re thinking and generating creative ideas and strategies into.
Patrick:
Oh, it’s changed so much. I mean, once upon a time there were three or four channels, every campaign would have a TV ad, outdoor radio, and print. And that was pretty much it.
But that’s not the case now. You look at this long list of assets that you’re making, as part of any campaign rollout, and it is hundreds.
Darren:
Yeah. Literally hundreds and growing all the time.
Patrick:
Yeah, absolutely.
Darren:
Can you distill what you think the essence of the Saatchi brand is? Or what’s the value that you’ve inherited here or chosen to take on?
Patrick:
I think one of the things I’ve noticed from the minute I walked in the door is the focus on creativity and ideas. And I think it’s an agency that’s very proud of its heritage in that space. And we wear it like a badge.
Everybody in the agency feels like we’ve inherited something important. We’re part of something important, and we want to really make sure that our current work today is as relevant and successful and as impactful as Saatchi was all those years ago.
Darren:
And there is a core methodology isn’t there, to creating ideas and creating strategies that doesn’t change. But I imagine things do change. There are things that would have to change just to maintain relevance.
Patrick:
Oh, absolutely. I often say to people that when we are thinking of ideas, ideas have always been the lifeblood of creative agencies, but we have to look at our client’s business. We have to look at what’s helping their business grow, how they’re engaging with their clients, what budgets they have, what channels are really working for them to build strong bonds with customers and drive business growth.
And we need to make sure our ideas are relevant in doing that across those different touch points. And that might have looked completely different 20 years ago than how it does now. Where all of a sudden, we need to be conscious of TikTok. We need to be conscious of CRM and Salesforce.
But creativity has a role to play in all those things, of course. And we just need to make sure that our thinking and ideas are as relevant to clients today, irrespective of the changes in channel, as they were 20 years ago.
Darren:
It’s interesting about being relevant to clients, but it also has to be relevant to the consumer as well.
Patrick:
Totally. We represent the consumer in many ways. It’s our role with clients to say, ‘I know that’s what you want to say to your customer, but they don’t necessarily want to listen’. So, how do we find a way for those two things to come together?
How do we take a commercial objective and strategy and wrap it up in a piece of entertainment that engages people and has them responding and participating in that exchange. There’s an exchange with agencies where in return for being entertained, a consumer will lend us some of their memory and some of their attention. And we can never forget that exchange.
Darren:
It’s an interesting concept because marketers will spend a lot of time, their working life, immersed in their business, their brand, and in the function of marketing.
But the idea of appointing an agency to be the voice of the consumer is an interesting one, because I can’t think of many marketers that have said, ‘I want to find the agency that best represents the voice of the consumer’.
They’re usually asking about functional things like good strategy. They don’t actually define that as the role.
Patrick:
No.
Darren:
And yet it is, isn’t it?
Patrick:
I think it is, yeah. And that’s why I think data today is particularly important. Now, you wouldn’t typically think that data is relevant to a creative agency, but data to me is the new research, the new focus groups.
It gives a creative agency an understanding of behaviour; what a consumer is consuming from a media standpoint, where they’re going, what their behaviour is, how they react, how they respond, and what they’re thinking and talking about with their peers, particularly when it comes to social media research and data.
And that helps the creative agency, because it gives us an insight and understanding of a customer and their behavior. And that’s really important to what we do.
I’d argue for many years, creative agencies lost that when media was separated from creative agencies. Creative agencies were trying to create a picture of a customer without many resources at their disposal.
You probably remember years ago, the number of vox pops you’d see in a new business presentation where an agency had gone to a train station to shoot people expressing opinions. And that’s because they struggled to have that understanding of a customer.
Data gives that to us today. I’ve noticed a real shift in the last few years where we are presenting to clients with insights and behavioural characteristics of their customer that they didn’t know. And that’s really powerful and fresh and very much helps you with idea generation and campaign thinking.
Darren:
It’s interesting you raise that because a lot of people think of data as purely informing media, but in actual fact, the appropriate use of that data can actually paint incredibly detailed pictures of customers, can’t it?
Patrick:
Yeah, absolutely.
Darren:
Their behaviors, their preferences, their choices.
Patrick:
Absolutely, and that’s what we find. It gives you a real sort of insight and understanding of that customer’s behavior, what they’ve purchased before, what they’re purchasing now, what they purchase after, and what they do in between.
And we’ve often said this in the industry that what people say is different to what they do. And that’s why research has always been difficult because everybody will sit in a research group and say, ‘Oh no, I don’t listen to advertising. I’m not influenced by advertising’. And we know that’s not true.
Of course, they are, but no one will admit to it. What data does is give you the real behaviour. And it’s really powerful for that reason.
Darren:
Without them knowing.
Patrick:
Correct, without them knowing.
Darren:
Because I have a science background, when I got into advertising, I was shocked at how data was used, particularly the statistical analysis of data.
I remember the first-time concept testing was done. The researcher came back to present their findings of this concept testing, which they did with a couple of focus groups. And it was giving things like 72% of respondents presenting qual as if it was quant, you know?
Patrick:
Yeah, right. Exactly.
Darren:
And they’re going, ‘Sorry, how statistically significant is this? What’s the population size compared to the same?’ And everyone’s like, ‘What is he talking about?’
Patrick:
Yeah, exactly right.
Darren:
The interesting thing from my perspective though, is that the landscape of agencies has also changed. I mean, Saatchi & Saatchi is part of Publicis Groupe, and that Groupe has a lot of specialist agencies inside that.
Does that also change the way that the agency defines itself? We see a lot of creative agencies trying to be everything to everyone by bolting things on.
Or do you have to rethink that and sit much more comfortably inside the group where you’ve got colleagues that are adding those services if you need it?
Patrick:
Yeah. It’s a little bit of both. I mean it’s wonderful to be part of a group where you’ve got really deep expertise and you’re not pretending to be good at something, like a lot of agencies are. If I hire three people in e-commerce, that doesn’t make me an e-commerce specialist, right?
Darren:
Oh, I don’t know. I’ve seen many stand there and they haven’t got one e-commerce person, but they’re an expert.
Patrick:
Yeah. So, knowing that we’ve got experts in Digitas that are-
Darren:
A whole division.
Patrick:
A whole division that is really good at that gives you confidence in talking to a client about what a solution might look like.
Having said that, you need to be really clear about who does what and who’s good at what. And it’s very clear from a creative standpoint that creative agencies within our group, and particularly Saatchi & Saatchi, understand that it’s our role. That we represent the customer. We’re driving strategic brand thinking, and we are creating the idea.
And that idea can cut across media, PR, activation, shopper marketing, or digital channels. And that’s the way we think. And we might need help occasionally in executing a big digital strategy, from a tech standpoint or from a data standpoint, but the idea is our role and that’s where we play.
But to your point before, what clients need from creative agencies is changing and evolving. If we think about brand campaigns, they were once upon a time dominated by television, and television is still an important medium for us.
But at the same time, the core idea has to be relevant for social media and it has to be relevant as content. And that’s our challenge. So yes, we play in digital, we play in social, but it doesn’t mean to say that if we need to build a big e-commerce site or data platform for CRM, that we don’t lean into the experts within our Groupe who can help with that.
Darren:
I’m just thinking that it’s perhaps that shift. When an agency did the big brand campaign and everyone lined up, it was going to be this Sunday night, and there was a roadblock across all the networks and it was like this launch, which you don’t see as much these days. Because there’s less emphasis on the big TV launch.
But there’s still the need for the big idea to hold all of those channels together.
Patrick:
Correct.
Darren:
I mean, there’d be no point having the best media planning and buying in the world if there wasn’t something to actually run with that’s going to resonate with consumers.
Patrick:
No, and I think the way you use TV has changed. Once upon a time that’s exactly how it used to be used, where it’s the dominant medium. It drives all your reach and with few channels available, you know it’s going to be seen.
It’s a little different now, because we’ve got such media fragmentation that there’s no guarantee that people will actually see it. And so, perhaps TV, for a lot of clients and brands, is used tactically and strategically to start a conversation, and that conversation might then snake off into social media and content.
But you use your TV as a compass point and a North Star for what we stand for. But there’s no expectation that you are going to get 90% reach at five plus frequency like you would have many years ago. That’s just impossible. Unless you’re a Harvey Norman, there’s a handful of clients who still have that strategy.
Darren:
With big deep pockets.
Patrick:
Yes. Big, deep pockets.
Darren:
Well, their audience is virtually everyone that’s got a buck to spend. They’ve got very broad audiences and the resources to go after them.
But it’s also interesting thinking about all the channels and how dominant video, film or what used to be television was, and creative agencies were known for making the film.
And yet you think of TikTok, most of the social media platforms seem to prefer video. YouTube is one of the biggest sources for watching entertainment. And there’s ads all through that.
It’s interesting to think about all of the traditional formats that agencies would produce for, and everyone goes, ‘Oh, they only ever think about television’. Well, it’s still video, the moving picture, because you’ve got pictures and sound and words. It’s still a dominant communication format, isn’t it?
Patrick:
Yeah, it is. But how it’s consumed changes. So, you think of the expense, time and effort that goes into making a big brand 60-second commercial for a car company, for example, or a big electronics firm or phone company, it might be millions of dollars. And you need the media investment to justify that.
If you go off into a lot of social media and content, it’s disposable. It doesn’t last that long. So, you’re not going to invest the same amount of money for something that might exist in market and be relevant for four weeks before it needs to be replaced with something else, and so on and so forth.
So, while it’s moving and has pictures and sound, the way it’s consumed is different and the role it plays for a client in their media may change. The idea is to get those two things working together.
So, how can we have a permanent message from a brand standpoint that justifies that investment? And how we refresh that and keep it relevant through content on a regular basis?
Darren:
So, Pat, does it also mean that how it’s created needs to adapt as well?
Patrick:
Yeah, it does. It does. If I look at a lot of the shoots we can conduct for clients, once upon a time, it was all about making the 30 second commercial or the 60 second commercial.
Now, the request for most shoots is that while we’re doing that, can we capture more content? Can we capture the talent doing something? Can we capture these other moments that give life to a campaign in other channels and keep it fresh and relevant?
And it’s a challenge because the industry is not geared around doing that.
Darren:
What used to be called shoot the shit out of it while you were there.
Patrick:
Exactly, right.
Darren:
Literally. And then we’ll do something with the content afterwards.
Patrick:
And remember going to a director and saying, ‘We’ve got a stills photographer on this shoot’.
Darren:
Oh, no.
Patrick:
Oh, my god. No.
Darren:
Disaster.
Patrick:
Exactly.
Darren:
But it’s true.
Patrick:
That’s commonplace now.
Darren:
We’ve always worked on output or a deliverable model when we are looking at work scope for agencies. In 2005, the average brand was producing around 250 pieces of work a year. In 2019, just before the pandemic, that was over 3,000 pieces because of social media.
Now, when you get an exponential increase from 200 to 3,000 plus, it means that something has to adapt. Because of that approach, like when we were talking about the big brand campaign, it meant a lot of time and effort went into producing that 30, 45, 60, 10 second cutdowns and the like.
But now I need multiple versions of that. It doesn’t scale, does it?
Patrick:
No.
Darren:
Particularly when a client’s budget has not exponentially increased for production.
Patrick:
Yeah. The scale changes completely because you’re doing lots of little things more often rather than one big thing. And that’s probably the biggest impact that channel evolution has had over the last couple of years. It is a focus on the production that we are seeing a big shift.
There’s a lot of smaller production companies and some of the bigger holding companies creating production specific divisions. Because the requirement is to be better at fast-turnaround content that doesn’t have a cast of 25 people at a shoot. It doesn’t make commercial sense.
So, how can you be faster? How can you be more relevant and how can you meet the needs of a social media content schedule for a client.
Darren:
The thing that doesn’t negate though, is the need for the big idea.
Patrick:
Correct.
Darren:
That sort of universal unifying strategy and platform that allows every piece of communication to build on the previous one. I worry sometimes because people talk about influencer created content. You can give them a brief, but if everyone’s running off and doing their own thing. Are you actually building a brand or are you just creating a lot of branded content?
Patrick:
Yeah, branded noise. My sense on that is that clients have a need to do both. And I understand that there’s activity you might put into social media that piggybacks off a bigger campaign, that starts to build a brand, starts to talk about a business strategy and talks about where a client might be going with their brand or something that’s particularly important.
That’s different to a Father’s or Mother’s Day post, where they might want to celebrate something with their customer.
Right now, a brief to an advertising agency for a Mother’s Day social media post might not make sense. Because it’s so quick, it’s disposable. It’s got a 24-hour shelf life. It’s more about relationship building with the customer, not brand positioning.
And I think that’s why you see a lot of social media brought in house by clients because it gives them the flexibility to respond really quickly with that kind of content.
My argument has always been that I’m not fussed by who puts the post up, but certainly when it comes to communicating a brand in social media, that’s our role as the brand agency.
So, it creates this world where we are much more comfortable working with other partners, be they production partners, in-house social media, or even in-house production that clients are starting to build, so that they can respond on a daily basis on social media and for their content needs. But we really have a role to play in that.
It might not be for every single post, but certainly what I would call those tent pole moments that really drive brand engagement and meaning with customers. In my view, that’s our role.
Darren:
We’re also dealing with media savvy customers and consumers these days. So, it’s no longer just getting the colors and cuffs lined up, is it? That consistency of brand expression is more sophisticated than just making sure that the logo’s always in the same spot or that the colour is right, isn’t it?
Patrick:
Yeah. I think that’s the challenge. There’s marketing and advertising theory, and then there’s the real world, and it’s always been…
Darren:
It’s not matching luggage anymore.
Patrick:
No, exactly. I have three daughters and I sit and watch television with them, and an ad comes on and they’re staring down at their phone the entire time. They don’t even look up.
This is real life behaviour. What they’re consuming on their phone is also content. So, how do these worlds come together? How do you recognise the behavior of different people and the media consumption behaviours and how do we adapt.
That is our job. It’s our job to make sure that an idea can be brought to life in a way that reaches these people and invites them to engage.
Like the Ocean Spray content piece from last year, do you remember that guy skateboarding down the highway drinking his thing of-
Darren:
Holding onto the truck.
Patrick:
Cranberry juice.
Darren:
Yeah, yeah.
Patrick:
It sent sales through the roof for that particular brand. And that’s an example of the power of that kind of content if you get it right. But it’s probably not replicable, I don’t think.
Darren:
Yeah, it’s a one-off peak.
Patrick:
It’s a one-off peak. Yeah. So, how do you repeat that? And if you try to repeat that, is there a strategy? How do you unlock what worked? How do you wrap that around an idea? And how do you activate that in different channels? And we can help with that.
Darren:
I’m glad to see there was a period, probably in the last decade, where everyone was talking about creating viral content, and I just wonder sometimes how many billions of dollars was wasted trying to crack the viral content. Because it seems to me that it happens because you get this juxtaposition of culture and opportunity that just seems to resonate with people.
Patrick:
Yeah, it can happen. And you need to be brave to do it because the rules don’t apply. The challenge for a lot of clients in making content is that you always need bravery and creativity to create ideas, groundbreaking ideas, and even more so in social.
Darren:
So, you’ve inherited Saatchi’s, ‘Nothing is impossible’. Isn’t that a great platform for exactly what you’re talking about there?
Patrick:
Yeah, it is. Because it challenges you to break the rules, to redefine a challenge and to push the boat out in how you might approach it and how you might solve it. It’s a mantra that exists to this day within the agency. It’s written up on our wall and people tell you that every day. That nothing’s impossible. We use it in all of our presentations.
Darren:
It’ll be interesting. I mean, there’s the cynics, but we have to tolerate the cynics that go, ‘Oh yeah, well what about this?’ And of course, we’ll say something that’s impossible.
But it’s also a great cultural platform as well. I imagine one of the big issues that many agencies have, and I think many businesses have, is creating a culture that actually excites their staff and makes them want to work and go to work.
And ‘Nothing is Impossible’ must be an opportunity for attracting the sort of people that want to make the impossible happen.
Patrick:
Well, it’s an invitation to do things differently. And to work in a company that embraces that and wants that. I think that’s exactly right.
And attracting talent is a huge challenge for a lot of creative agencies these days. Advertising has always had a reputation of being a fantastic place to work. And it still is. Increasingly the focus is on the work and the output, and less so the parties, as it was 20 years ago.
But most definitely there’s a real emphasis out there on creative thinking. And we challenge people to do that daily. We don’t always get it right, but gee, we do a lot of great work.
Darren:
If you were sitting at the table here with a potential client, what could you use as an example of the way (on a day-to-day basis) that positioning that promise actually comes to life?
Patrick:
‘Nothing is Impossible’. The way we frame that is to look at their business and try to identify the single biggest challenge holding them back. What would catapult their brand or their business to unprecedented levels of growth?
And one of the examples we use might be Toyota. How do they become an icon of Australian culture, as an imported brand. How do they do that?
And so, that’s where we start. What from a client’s perspective is their business challenge? What is their big opportunity?
And once we identify that, then it’s a matter of looking at creative ways to solve that.
Darren:
How can you then make that happen?
Patrick:
Yeah, that’s right. We look at how we make that happen. And there’s multiple answers to that. It’s a combination of media, there might be a product issue, there might be a need to really push things out creatively, but that’s where we start.
Darren:
You mentioned Toyota, because that’s a long-term relationship, isn’t it? Toyota in Australia and Saatchi & Saatchi go back a long way.
Patrick:
Decades.
Darren:
Yeah. And so, in a world where I think the last figures I saw were around three to four years as the average client tenure with their agency, I imagine the same sort of thinking of building a long-term agency brand is part of a long-term client agency relationship, is it?
Patrick:
I think it talks to consistency. It talks to consistency of output over a long period of time that works and delivers a result for any client. And that helps you build trust and relationships. I think that’s what underpins the best agency client relationship — trust in that relationship.
And as I said before, we don’t always get it right in the pursuit of trying something that’s new and different and never been done. You’ll bugger it up at times.
Darren:
My father used to say that an expert is someone that gets it right 51% of the time. So yeah. If you’re getting it right more than half the time, you’re an expert according to my father.
Patrick:
And that’s the great thing is that you need that solid relationship and foundation where agencies are empowered to think creatively without fear of being fired. Otherwise, that’s when you see this constriction of thinking and output.
Darren:
Yeah. When you’ve got the trust that creates a safe environment for people to push boundaries.
Patrick:
Yeah, absolutely.
Darren:
Because I would say the other thing that those relationships need to nurture is curiosity and restlessness. We often talk about relationships being frictionless, but I actually think that it’s the friction that causes the innovation.
Patrick:
I agree with you completely. I often say to our team and to clients that what we do is a business of conflict. Because clients will sometimes be a little concerned that we’re arguing over an idea, but that’s the magic.
It’s that discussion about why it will work and why not, and how might we change it and people getting passionate about it. That’s what happens inside the walls of an agency before a client even sees it. And it should happen with that client, but it shouldn’t be destructive.
It’s a powerful positive thing, I think. And again, best done when at the end of the day, like siblings, you can agree to disagree and come to a solution and it’s forgotten about the next day. But I think that discussion is really powerful. It’s the secret sauce to what we do.
Darren:
My favorite metaphor for that is the oyster – without the grit that irritates the hell out of the oyster, you would never get pearls.
Patrick:
Exactly, right. I like it. I’ll use that.
Darren:
And yet, people would say, ‘Well, it’s irritating’. Yeah, but you get pearls. The end justifies the means. And having a client, to your point, that has that level of trust means the process might be uncomfortable, but the end result is worth it.
Patrick:
And knowing when to change as well; knowing when to take risks. And we were talking before about advertising and marketing theory. I see a lot of people in our business who follow set rules of what they think a piece of communication should do or be.
Darren:
Oh, a good formula. There’s nothing like a good formula.
Patrick:
The best work has always broken that, right?
Darren:
Yeah. That’s right.
Patrick:
The best work just takes you to a completely new place.
Darren:
Except you need to know the formula –
Patrick:
Before you can break it.
Darren:
Or the recipe before you can break it. You don’t just randomly go around breaking things.
Patrick:
No, exactly. But sometimes what I’ve found after many years working in this business, there’s a lot of people on the client side and even internally within agencies that are empowered to say no but aren’t empowered to say yes. Does that make sense? It’s easy for you to give feedback to an idea.
Darren:
It’s much easier saying no because there’s no responsibility.
Patrick:
There’s no responsibility. That’s right.
Darren:
As soon as you say yes, you’ve taken on the responsibility.
Patrick:
You’ve taken on the responsibility. And that’s a rare commodity. And it does make people uncomfortable. They get anxious, fearful of what if this doesn’t work, what does it mean for me? And I’m always proud of clients, particularly young clients, who can grasp that and still go ahead and make a decision.
Darren:
So, sounds to me that the very things that made Saatchi & Saatchi in the early days as powerful as it was, is that culture of self-belief and pushing the boundaries and breaking the patterns and that this is still alive and well.
Patrick:
Yeah, absolutely. But how we –
Darren:
Interpret that as changing.
Patrick:
Exactly, right. So, if you look at, I think, one of the first ads that Saatchi & Saatchi was most famous for was the pregnant man ad in the UK. Today, that’s probably a piece of content shared on social media that creates a real discussion.
So, the idea is the same. But how it activates across what channel and how we involve other people in that discussion switches from a poster on a doctor’s office to social media. But the idea’s the same.
Darren:
Patrick Rowe, we’ve run out of time, but it’s been a fascinating conversation. Thank you.
Patrick:
Thanks, Darren. Pleasure.
