SCHOOL OF CREATIVITY

When we asked the heads of agencies in this year’s School Reports to name the shop they most admire, the result was clear – Adam & EVE/DDB. Nicola Kemp reveals the secrets of its success

Adam & EVE/DDB was named adland’s most admired shop by agency chiefs. So what is the secret of its success?

Only hours after Adam & EVE/DDB was named

Campaign’s Advertising Agency of the Year 2015, the agency was discussing how it could secure the accolade in 2016. A slightly masochistic approach? Perhaps, but it certainly paid off – 12 months later, A&E/DDB picked up the award for the third year in a row.

Now it can claim another accolade: A&E/DDB has been revealed as the most admired agency among the chief executives of the UK’S leading creative shops – those that appear in this year’s

Campaign School Reports.

Granted, some agencies expressed their admiration through gritted teeth. The prefix “I hate to say it but…” accompanied some submissions. So while envy may be the enemy of ambition, there is no question that some agency leaders possess the former in spades.

In fact, instead of celebrating the myriad creative organisations operating in the UK today, an alarming number of creative leaders harked back not just to a bygone age but a completely fictional one by naming Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce their most admired agency.

Hometown was determined not to admit to admiring a competing agency. Instead, it quoted the 17th-century English churchman and historian Thomas Fuller to declare that “admiration is the daughter of ignorance”.

In contrast, Paul Lawson, chief executive of Leo Burnett, cast the only vote for Gasp of Wokingham on the basis that it was “the only UK agency to retweet my IPA podcast with Paul Bainsfair earlier in the year”.

Significant cultural impact

However, many respondents chose not to simply tip their hat to their sister agencies or holding companies but to celebrate the creative output of A&E/DDB.

It would be all too easy to underestimate the impact of the agency on the UK’S creative ecosystem. While most consumers may never have heard of A&E/DDB, no doubt many of them will be admirers of its advertising. If Christmas is the UK ad industry’s equivalent of the Super Bowl, then A&E/DDB has successfully defined the festive ad with its brilliant work for John Lewis.

Writing in Campaign last month, the agency’s group chief strategy officer David Golding declared that the industry will split into two types of company. The first will create culture through campaigns that generate fame, talkability and memetic power. The second will create collateral, driven by data and the ongoing ability to target precisely and reach audiences in new ways. He places A&E/DDB firmly in the former category.

Many competing agencies will also aspire to be culture creators. Yet any organisation that seeks to create culture must also put its own corporate culture under the microscope. It will need to consider how it achieves the right blend of collaboration, ambition and openness.

To better understand the culture of creativity at A&E/DDB, Campaign spoke to six employees, working in a range of disciplines and at different levels of seniority, about their experience of being part of the UK’S most admired agency.

“It would be all to easy to underestimate the impact Adam & EVE/DDB has made on the UK’S creative ecosystem”