Why a good mantra can work so well

SOME call it a mantra, some call it a company philosophy, some a mission statement, a belief system or DNA. Some hang it up on a foyer wall, some have it printed in exquisite coffee-table books, some make it the opening slides in their PowerPoint presentations and some let it live and breathe in the thing that matters most — the work.

The best advertising agencies I know are the ones whose philosophy is visible not just in the culture and design of the place but also in the people, and the advertising made by those people. A good agency philosophy is deeply embedded, like personality and character. It imbues a place and persists long after generations of staff have come and gone. It has to last, it has to be authentic and it has to work.

If a philosophy is complicated and longwinded, it is easily forgotten. If it is too trite and trendy, it is trash.

David Ogilvy had many philosophies about many things regarding advertising life, but they stuck and hold true today because they are meaningful and, most importantly, have purpose.

For instance, he had a remarkable philosophy about recruitment. At a board meeting one day, the directors arrived to find Russian matryoshka dolls on their seats. When they opened the dolls, they found a note inside the smallest doll that read: “If you hire people who are smaller than you are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. If you hire people who are bigger than you are, we shall become a company of giants.”

As advertisers, we shape the identity of brands every day, brands that live in the world and become part of people’s lives, so it makes sense that we also shape our own identities in powerful ways. A company philosophy should mean something to everyone, not just leadership. And like any good brand purpose, the message should be driven home with gusto.

It cannot live and die in the beautiful, glossy ink it was printed in.

Leonie Roderick of Marketing Week writes: “A study in 2015 by Harvard Business Review and EY showed that companies with a strong sense of purpose are able to transform and innovate better, as well as improving employee satisfaction.” If your brand purpose is strong, everything else will follow — the success, the fame and the fortune because you have something to stand for and you have a way of measuring what success should look like.

Wieden & Kennedy has a famous agency philosophy. It lives in their foyer as a massive art installation and was created by Wieden & Kennedy’s in-house advertising school as a way of introducing themselves to the agency.

The words “Fail Harder” were created with 119,000 thumb tacks and it took about 351 hours to build. Some of the employees have even tattooed the slogan on themselves. The philosophy is about choosing the harder way, hitting a miss but hitting with great conviction, and understanding that you can only know spectacular success by experiencing spectacular failures.

Today, it is one of the most sought-after agencies in the world.

TBWA’s philosophy is “Disruption”. Mother’s is “Do great work. Have fun. Make a living.” McCann’s is “Truth Well Told”, Huge’s is “Make something you love”. And BBDO’s philosophy is “The work. The work. The work”.

My own agency network has just launched its new philosophy and I’m so relieved that I love it because you can’t hate the philosophy of the place in which you spend 90% of your life.

It feels so inherently simple, so deeply personal, yet communal and that’s what I love about it. It represents the core of a creative mind-set — the endless, feverish pursuit of something truly meaningful. It also feels like a belief we should carry into our lives beyond work, and perhaps something presidents of countries should adopt. It is “Never finished”.

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Gordhan is a creative director in advertising.