GOOD CEOs: Issue 2

Why did we reposition?

When you run an exec search business for 6.5 years, you pick up signals fast. Perhaps faster than any other part of the industry. If a business is making redundancies, we get the call. If talent is unhappy, we get the call. If a company is growing, diversifying, expanding territories, we get the call.

In recent years, we noticed that the meaning of those calls had evolved. When UNKNOWN started out, conversations were about two things – (i) businesses making hires, or (ii) people making moves. But more lately, another theme crept in, and rapidly dominated the dialogue.

 
“Where can growth happen?”
 

And more questions like,

• What if we bought that agency to grow our US presence?

• What if we acqui-hired those people to expand our experiential offering?

• What if appointed a chairman that had deep roots in the PE world?

• What if we took our permanent headcount down and built a global talent bench of fractional practitioners?

UNKNOWN was going deeper and more contextual than a traditional exec search firm. This caused a problem: we were no longer representing what we were actually doing externally.

On our website. In our products. On our socials.

So, we went to school. We interviewed our best clients. And then we designed the products and positioning around what we've already been doing for the last 24 months or so.

And then we asked our friends at 10 Days – one of the youngest, sharpest agencies in London – to make this evolution not sound consultanty.

So, they did what 10 Days do very well.

Articulated a vision for a reimagined UNKNOWN that was perfectly weird.

Check out the video above and you’ll see what I mean.

 
We couldn't be happier.
  

Now that's done. I'm so ready to do what I do best. Meet a lot of people. Share stuff that I think helps people get ahead. And have some fun.

Before we get into this issue’s predictions, here’s a quick recap on the questions you sent in to yesterday’s GOOD CEOs podcast. And an abridged version of the answers I gave.

Popular Demands

Questions from our network – posed by you, answered by us.

 
Question one:
“More private equity money is pouring into mid-sized agencies via independent holding companies. How can these independents not fall into the same traps as the bigger beasts? Can you really get big and not be really shit? Or is that a law of physics in the creative industries?”

Answer one:
Can you get big not be shit? Yes, bigger and better are not mutually exclusive. A great example of this in the creative industries is Wieden+Kennedy. It has managed a colossal global expansion in the last decade or so, and kept its game in check by adhering to a set of values – the most important to consider in this argument is its guiding phrase: “Don’t act big”.

This is about picking what you stand for, and finding a way to very clearly explain that to the market. This means having the discipline to not be greedy in some areas, and saying ‘no’ to specific things. That includes certain people who come to you vying for a job, certain types of clients that want to work with you, and certain products or services that aren’t core, or authentic. Alex Smith, author of No Bullsh*t Strategy puts it well, explaining that creative companies shouldn’t try to be bigger or better as much as ‘different’.

Setting out on this tack means future-proofing yourself.

Question two:
“I am leaving a holding company CEO role after 10 years to join our biggest competitor. I want to get this right. How should I approach my first 100 days?”

Answer two:
There are millions of frameworks for 100 days and how to approach that crucial opening period. But the first way is – I think – by understanding who you are and what kind of environment that you want to create.

There's a brilliant person in our GOOD CEOs group who has a smart approach. That is, ask every single person in the organisation to finish this statement: “If I was CEO, I would…”. Asking the question in exactly this open-ended way encourages imagination, freedom and exploration.

 
Then there are
the three ‘A’s’:
Ambition, Autonomy,
and Alignment.
 

Every agency has an ambition. But not every agency, brand or leadership team has an aligned ambition. Nearly no agency or brand has an aligned ambition where they're willing to give you the right level of autonomy to solve whatever opportunity or problem that you have.

Future Tense

Three predictions gleaned from 1000 monthly conversations with the best creative leaders in the game.
 

The way we use AI in the creative industries is dividing into two categories. The first is about efficiency – doing the same things faster, cheaper and with more repeatable results. And the second is about elevation – doing new things, that are more memorable, meaningful and valuable than what was happening before.

More simply, it’s…

a) Use a new tool to do an old task
b) Use a new tool to do a new task

Both approaches will be vital for creative organisations to survive in the coming years. But the proportions matter. Companies that over-index on the first one and ignore the second will see their relevance wane and the value they create decrease over time. The smartest agencies are looking for ways that AI can boost their creative impact, and produce work that moves audiences more profoundly than before. To date, the industry has been so preoccupied with how AI can make things happen more efficiently, that it has barely begun to imagine how it might transform the craft altogether.

Jenny Nicholson, founder of Queen of Swords puts it well:

 
“I don’t use AI to do what I do, but faster. ‘Push a button, get a whole campaign’ – that’s not what I’m interested in. I work with AI to do what I couldn’t have done before.”
  

This philosophy is partly what inspired our film with 10 Days. The rapid transitions – me morphing rapidly from a famous artist, into a fashion editor, into a sphinx, and then a helium balloon (and more) – wasn’t imaginable in a pre-AI age. The story was designed to be disorientating, absurd, and fast-moving – representing a current business landscape that feels like its shifting beneath entrepreneurs’ feet the whole time.

But AI only results in worthwhile work when it converges with the stuff that makes art or storytelling great in the first place. Like pain, love, connection, suspense, pace, humour, characters: And truth. So how do we get better at using AI to invent the next?

A group of Swedish advertising entrepreneurs might have the answer. They’ve invented Engine Y, which claims to be the first human-led AI reasoning tool for strategy and ideation. After signing up to a subscription plan, marketers, agencies or freelancers can plumb in a branding problem, or the bare bones of a campaign idea, and the platform responds with a fleshed out strategic framework, and a series of options for how a campaign or activation might look.

The company offers the below as the sort of ideas that users can expect for $25 per month.

 
Volvo 🚙
A campaign where seniors are rewarded with car upgrades for staying active.

Netflix 📺
Audiences are invited to watch Stranger Things, with an actual stranger.

Michelob Ultra 🍺
A mundane Olympics where sock-folding is an actual sport.

Kleenex 🤧
The ‘Cry Club Emotional Network’. A place for (presumably) man-sized tears.

New Balance 👟
A gold medal awarded to the slowest runners.
 

Engine Y is going to be an invaluable tool for creatives who understand the limits of the platform. That is, where the simulated smarts of an AI end, and where human inspiration picks up with nuance, emotion and commercial sense. If the above is anything to go by, this tool is going to be an excellent means of coming up with an initial idea that can be expanded and enhanced by a group of humans.

Could this make the 24 hour pitch possible?

Whether you love award shows, or think they’re cringe, the demographics at Cannes Lions offers a POV on the state of the creative industries. In the last ten years big tech brands have moved in on the areas that used to be reserved for the huge agency networks. Then there were the major consultancies – Accenture, PwC and Deloitte et. al. – moving in too. But the most noticeable shift is the sheer number of creators attending. It signals a reality that nobody in the creative industries should ignore or underplay – brand consultancies and creator agencies are merging. Why? Because businesses need two things – (i) deeply rooted values that compound over time, and (ii) a flexible, meaningful, attention-commanding social presence.

A deal that signifies this shift was announced at the end of January when US private equity-backed group Residence acquired OK COOL, a strategic and social creative agency founded in London. Any holding company bosses or investors either buying up creative talent, or deploying capital in this space should feel confident. In Europe alone, the sector was worth $32.8 billion last year, according to Coherent Market Insights. The study, taken for Paris Creator Week, reckons it will reach nearly $157.3bn by 2032.

Watch what happens now – independent groups and bigger agencies will be sharking for the next GOAT in the social/ creator space.

This division of marketing isn’t new. But in recent months, it’s started to get the recognition it warrants. But beyond this, we’re seeing a turn away from the one-and-done style of activations to a more strategic, deliberate and enduring method of IRL brand building. How important is it? A report by eMarketer found that over 84% of Gen Z and Millennials value brands that have a marketing mix that includes technological and physical experiences.

This has a lot to do with the rise of fandom in marketing. The brand value of tapping into audiences’ love for people, pastimes and places – has never been more obvious. A recent report by Havas Red underlines how vital this is to the experience category. It’s instrumental in bringing experiences to audiences that deliver happiness – the study cited that 80% of consumers say that fandom brings them joy. It also creates enduring attention – 56% have supported or followed a brand, product or fandom for at least a decade. A cadence of brand interactions, too – 50% of those with a fandom think about or engage with the brand/ product at least once per day. And 23% report a ‘complete obsession’ with the thing they hold a fandom towards.

Agency leaders know that experience is more pivotal than ever. But there is a great number of them out there that do everything except experience. The upshot of this is that most mid-to-large sized agencies are looking to acquire a boutique experiential agency that has the contacts, talent and craft to pull together live events that ladder up to a brand’s wider strategy. There’s a clear reason for this. The agencies are getting tired of referring out a valuable chunk of client billings to a specialist experience partner.

Meanwhile, there’s a surge of social shops that are starting to understand that the most meaningful interactions that creators have with their audiences don’t happen online, but IRL. There’s major money to be made too. Consider how only the top-tier sporting events or musical acts could imagine selling out Wembley stadium with its capacity of 90,000. When YouTube collective the Sidemen hosted a charity football match there, last March, tickets sold out in three hours.