Creative review

As the belief goes, we are in a knowledge economy. Gone are the mills and factories of the Industrial Revolution, with office blocks of varying degrees of character in their place. Although the definition of "product" may have indeed changed, what has not changed is the perception of quality. The globalisation of industrial production may have shifted, even polarised, our views of what quality is. from cheap T-shirts to artisan baking. This has translated into a change of what creativity is and stands for, in the sense that while there are still "good ideas" and "bad ideas", interconnected networks make access to intellect much more accessible to all.

The impact on advertising should be for the quality to go up. After all, global get-togethers such as Cannes mean that countries have a benchmark to measure their own work against, and for commentators to compare the shift in capital production or consumption, with any perceived shift in where the most acclaimed ideas are coming from. Some have suggested that, rather like Eurovision, the shift in transnational focus away from the west means that the UK's command of awards – even the UK's potential of getting anywhere commanding anything – are over.

But Cannes is just one platform, and the real story is less to do with the UK being not as great as it used to be, but more to do with new players catching up. That's the view of Saatchi's ECD Kate Stanners, facing the challenges of the agency and of the sector head-on: what the talent pool looks like, how it creates great work, and how that work is useful to consumers. She feels that Cannes this year was rather more evenly-distributed in its prizegiving: emerging economies producing some interesting work alongside the stalwarts, and what we are seeing is a rebalancing of what creativity looks like across globalised markets, as well as trying to address how to keep executions locally relevant in way that consumers find culturally authentic. In fact, Stanners' views of the 2011 New Directors' Showcase, a Saatchi initiative which pulls visual talent from across a wide spectrum of disciplines, is that northern Europe remains very much the dominant force.

Movable feasts

As the daughter of Leo Burnett copywriter Bob Stanners, who with Norman Icke created some of the most memorable campaigns for McDonalds, Bradford & Bingley and Cadbury's Flake, Kate has advertising in her genes. Success at GGT led her to become one of the first hires at St. Lukes, an agency whose relentless focus on creative talent retained Stanners for a decade. She was then led once again to a start-up, Boymeetsgirl, before joining Saatchi & Saatchi at a well-documented, turbulent time, but offering considerable opportunities in within a global network, itself a young subsidiary within Publicis.

Although the term "advertising" has remained a constant as far as a career path is concerned, its meaning is, of course, undergoing constant change.

"You are constantly alive, constantly learning, and constantly meeting new people. It changes, and I change. I can't think of anything better to be doing. There's [now] a real confidence in Saatchis as being an intelligent, grown-up, forward-thinking, creative business. It's quite exciting that it can be at the forefront of change, as opposed to maybe one of the old monoliths of advertising. That's what it feels like."

The role of media has also changed, as has the role of agencies that circumnavigate the core ideas that have traditionally come from the ad agency. "When I started at GGT, media was right at the heart of the creative process. In the last few years, media has tried to create itself as the source of the idea. Digital agencies are getting deeper into brand strategy; ad agencies want to be seen to be able to understand new technologies; production companies want to be part of this; media companies are desperate to go beyond... they can play a little bit more in the technology stakes, but have struggled to find a way to own the creativity. The success happens when media agencies co-create with strong creative agencies, but people have been trying and, so far, not really succeeding."

The admission is made that there are rather new and important players in all of this: the media platforms of Google and Facebook. Their scale and reach have the potential to create an almighty tussle between the digital agencies that aim to be idea-generators rather than just "makers of product") and ad agencies, believing that as the longstanding originators of the core ideas, they should have a seat at the table. Ultimately, and of course, there's room for everyone, but Stanners sees this regrouping as the start of a resurgence of what an ad agency should be about: "It is its relationship and understanding of brands; its relationship with clients that seems to be its real strengths... and an understanding that creativity is the undefinable, the immeasurable."

But what should an ad agency be about? Gone is the small amount of fixed broadcast media, replaced by fluidity, and an audience that will choose to engage on its own terms. "Now, when we look at how we start something, or work with a force that feels like it's out there, we get a better understanding of what people are interested in... to really understand that it's all very well having a brand pushing out messages, but people aren't always interested. We [as agencies] understand that, a lot more than we ever used to. It used to be 'This is what the brand wants to say and we'll say it, whether people wanted to hear it or not'. Now, it's layered. I see our job as working with what's out there, adding to it. If you are starting something, then you have to carry it on - to feed it, to fuel it, to manage it."

It's this strong case for agencies that comes from the understanding that a significant threat comes from media owners that want to own the client-agency relationship. Stanners sees the ad agency as ending up "being more agnostic than anyone: in terms of media channels, and in its creative talent", something that she confesses was certainly not there five years ago, when the belief was that digital agencies were going to reign supreme. Now, it's the ad agency that talks to the digital shops in order to bring in the right mix, rather than the other way around... if digital ever had a dialogue with advertising in that way.

And, it's the talent that makes ad agencies so vital, and so agnostic in how it works within these new structures. Although it's true that advertising requires a mix of a huge and diverse range of talents and therefore commands such an important place in building relationships between brands and consumers, it's this diversity of talent that is difficult to manage and to plan for. This range of talents needs to change as the market changes.

Saatchi's recruitment strategy is currently focused firstly on planning, a discipline that needs to work with creatives more closely than ever. There is no room for compromise; the resulting work has to be more exciting, more relevant, and less wasteful in terms of ideas, than ever before. Its secondary focus is on creative technologists, enabling the agency to have a closer and deeper knowledge of what is digitally possible, making work generation less wasteful as a result. It's about making Saatchi's work based on what people actually want and are interested in, and how to help consumers to navigate through the clutter, the detritus that comes with brands, whether the brand is the originating voice or not. Inevitably, this changes the whole modus operandi of how work is produced, taking more of a test-and-learn approach espoused by people like Seth Godin: "[Now,] I think that it's better to just do something, to put it out there, and then help it grow and evolve. It may be very different to how you conceived it, but that's how things become a little bit more relevant."

This may be more efficient, but is a headache for communications and media planners. What if you don't know how a campaign will end up this time next year? Stanners accepts that agencies need to understand "...how to use different technologies which feed almost-real-time messages that can respond really quickly. It really changes the model of how we make money. Now, monitoring, creating constantly on behalf of your clients - being aware of stuff, having stuff fed to you every day about how things are working, if you need to change course. If you're doing interesting things, recording them, creating content, having it somewhere... and so there is an evolving conversation, all of which takes man-hours and quality control. It does mean evolving working practices." This needs to be handled without any loss of quality or fidelity, of the message and of the campaign. "Expensive" simply isn't an option any more. The Hugh Hudson 60-second epics are going to be fewer and further between, and what we end up with is something of a dilemma: to produce work that is manifestly better than a home-made YouTube clip, without it being much more expensive. To make work as a craft, with production values and a message in mind will still require skill and experience, and more of these values will have to translate into what people see on the screen. For viewers, perhaps this is no bad thing. An appreciation of craft is having something of a resurgence, with viewers looking for quality productions as they are starting to understand that they have access to everything. "The skills honed in writing, being funny; filming, looking beautiful... are what we increasingly value, because there's so much that isn't beautiful."

If these values are constant, then it's ideas that need to move forward. It was Professor Alf Rehn that argued that ideas are no longer dangerous, and that creativity isn't that special ingredient any more; Stanners agrees to a point, noting that there is a world out there that has moved on from the principle of experimentation for the sake of it. "I think that our ideas have to be attractive. You're a little bit more aware of being liked and making ideas that are liked, because you can see that people will be more attracted to you. Ideas may be less aggressive, maybe not less dangerous. Without success or failure, ideas are probably as equally dangerous as they used to be. How you get [attention] is based on whether you believe in creating something that emotionally connects, will create more response."

Brand action

So, what we have is a need for the right people to be placed in the right business in the right commercial model to formulate great ideas. However, it's the model that still profoundly interests Stanners: the challenge of achieving cut-through when both globalised campaigns and local regulation come into play. "The UK has a lot more rules. A lot more regulation. Australasia used to do very well at awards, because they were left on their own. You would see something from New Zealand or Australia and think - bloody hell, how did that happen? They have 'rogue agencies', more freedom; they have smaller budgets, aren't centralised, and they do stuff that's local and fresh. I think it's more difficult to do cut-through creative work for mass markets across cultures. The Economist work, or Mother's Orange work with fabulous dialogue... it's very rare you get the opportunities to do that." So, when cultural nuances do come into play, one might argue that their creative success – such as with the agency's royal wedding video for T-Mobile - cannot be translated to Cannes, which may not be so appreciative of local humour on a global platform.

Work such as this – playing with the brand, having fun with the audience – doesn't necessarily travel well. Stanners mentions the leadership at a global FMCG business, who asked her about the contingency plan if the T-Mobile work didn't achieve the desired effect. The irony is that, in many global businesses, the leaders that talk about risk awareness over risk adversity are those that cannot put their money where their mouth is when it comes to playing with the brand, even if that work is more likely to be locally responsive. Saatchis is, of course, a global business itself; she sees the challenge of local relevance in global markets as one that can be handled by worldwide agencies, as long as they themselves are continually optimised. It's the way of seeing how colleagues in Shanghai or Buenos Aires work on new campaigns that clearly stimulates her, and how those new ways of working and new insights can add any additional weight to a campaign back in London. It's building a network, but knowing where sharing starts, and centralisation stops.

The new economies give global agencies a chance to understand more about the cutting edge of socio-economic systems: what consumers are doing in while their own commercial worlds are being built from the ground up. It's also about building new ways of working within these new environments, alongside having a strong voice to converse with the newer media owners – and those countries and media owners to follow in the future. "It isn't predictable... and that's the fun."

Kate Stanners is Executive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi.