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Winning campaigns through open culture

In today’s world of advertising, culture is key. A quick look around us and it becomes clear how advertising has become ornately interlinked with mass media, social trends and our day-to-day lives.

This presents us with a critical question that needs to be answered: how do we make sure that our work as advertisers is always relevant and leaves an impact on our audience?

We believe that one of the ways we can stay on top of our craft is by being constantly aware of pop culture, creative culture, and the open culture.

When it comes to shaping our daily decisions and behaviors, it is quite evident that we are constantly being influenced by pop culture, therefore using the right cultural cues to deliver messages within advertising is the road to creating powerful and impactful work.

However, in order for an advertising message to be effective and elicit the desired response in the audience a strong creative culture must be in place across the entire agency. The client servicing department, strategists and managing partners all need to be involved in this creative culture, as in the end we are all working towards a common goal. This is why it is crucial to foster the idea of collective creative responsibility across the entire agency.

Nevertheless, finding the right people that have that spark that can ignite this creative culture in the agency is not an easy feat, but once you find those key characters that challenge everyday norms and expose you to a different way of thinking, then you know you are heading in the right direction. It is then essential to continue investing in your people and to constantly challenge them with new ideas, to give their talents the opportunity to grow and develop, leading to continuous progress and innovation across the agency.

Interestingly, using ‘pop culture’ cues in your advertising and fostering collective creative responsibility in the agency will naturally make room for the last piece of the puzzle to fall into place; the open culture.

Adopting an open culture in the office allows all the barriers to come down and enables everyone at the agency to clearly see the common goal you are working for together. This in turn allows for a more honest and passionate dialogue that opens the door to inspiration and motivation within the agency.

An open culture allows you to truly see everyone around you, to know who they are and the culture they bring with them, and in this melting pot of diversity lies the perfect opportunity to inspire one another to do great work together.

My personal experience has seen that once the walls are broken down, the quality of work suddenly improves, the thinking changes and the goals become more aligned across the agency. It brings everyone from different departments and walks of life together to work on briefs with a common goal, to just do effective and winning campaigns, and in the end to just have a lot of fun while doing it.