I see many parallels between leadership and advertising. The simple mechanics involved in both are essentially the same. Do or say something to earn the ears of your audience and then deliver your message. It is as brutally simple as that, if you break down the mechanics to their pure essence. The hard part is to find the unique delivery that makes your message stand out. That's what separates great campaigns from bad and what sets great leaders apart from the others.
Brilliant leaders are those who use all the tools at their disposal to "earn the ears" of the audience. They use who they are and what they are good at. In effect, using their personal USP (unique selling point) to help get their message through in the very same way we would advertise a product.
I heard a fabulous story from the time of Queen Elizabeth I and the introduction of the potato to British shores. This small, dirty, ugly-looking fruit of the brown earth came from America onboard Navy ships and was seen as a solution to feed the population cheaply and easily. So the message here is easy to work out: We know old Lizzy wanted people to eat the potato. The problem was that people didn't think it was healthy or safe to eat. So she had to do something to make the people listen, make them want it. The answer was to make it exclusive -- only the royal court could eat it. This message was circulated and before long the demand for the potato was so massive that the general population wanted to eat this royal food. Elizabeth used who she was -- a royal -- to encourage people to do what she wanted. I'm sure many food manufacturers (in Britain and other lands with monarchies) have used this method to great effect since through their royal approval marks.
Sir Winston Churchill was another leader who was brilliant at making his people listen. He was totally genuine, a properly eccentric British gentleman with a talent for public speaking. He used his brilliant oratory to gain attention in the same way we would in an advertising campaign. He was the master at it. His choice of words drew the audience into a real-life drama, sucking them into the story he wanted them to believe in.
I remember a great campaign for the British bank Barclays that used this method. In these films, the actor Samuel L Jackson delivered fluent, flowing poems, which were metaphors for moments one might find in financial dealings. They made you listen all the way to the end line -- "Fluent in Finance."
Another and more simple way to open people's ears is simply to be so supremely good at something and have the track record to prove it. That is in effect advertising by your own performance. Sport is a good place to look for examples of this. How often have we heard ex-professionals as commentators on sports such as football, golf, baseball or cricket? There are probably many journalists and fans out there with better ideas or more intelligence. But we are not going to listen to them as they have not been there and done it. Why should we listen to their opinion?
There are, though, absolutely exceptions to that rule. Sir Alex Ferguson is one obvious example. He wasn't the greatest football player ever and he turned out to be one of the greatest football managers. Anita Elberse of Harvard Business School carried out a series of interviews with him to find out how he led teams. What made him such a great leader? How did he get the players to listen to what he had to say? His answers reveal a multitude of talents. But there was one particular that stood out for me.
He made his lack of football talent a talent in itself. He had to work harder than everyone else to get where he is. This made players listen. His Scottish steel shines through in this quote: "When I work with the biggest talents, I tell them that hard work is a talent, too. They need to work harder than anyone else." Such a statement is believable when it comes from him. The nearest ad campaign I can think of is that from car rental firm, Avis, which used this very method in their world famous ad campaign -- "We try harder."
So there is some truth in the phrase, "The best sportsman aren't always the best managers." If you are in a creative company you probably think, "The best creative people aren't always the best creative directors." You are absolutely right they aren't always the best, but they should be. After all, all they have to do is use the skills they usually use at work. Only now it's not a product they are selling, it's their own message. So they should remember what makes him or her unique and use it. Such creatives were, after all, the best at telling a products story. It should follow that they can tell their own and have people buy it, right?
This is, however, where I think many go wrong. Far too often, leaders allow leadership to change them. How often have you seen a guy or girl (there are too few girls, but that's another post altogether!) become the creative director or CEO and they begin to change as people? They change what they wear to look "smarter," change how they interact with people, change who they really are. It all becomes rather non-genuine and phony. They seem to slip into this idea of what a leader should be and begin talking another language, full of buzz words, rather than by concentrating on what they are good at -- getting people to do things they want them to do.
I met Dave Trott once at the Berlin School of creative leadership and found him to be an inspirational guy. He is supremely good at what he does, he has fantastic oratorical abilities and he is absolutely original to the person he has always been -- a real proud East Londoner. I wanted to listen to him. He had "earned my ears" by being the genuine person he was and having done the amazing work he had done. I didn't care if he hadn't been to Oxford and that he had 15 sugars in his tea like an east end builder. Quite the contrary.
David Droga was another guy I had the pleasure to listen to at the Art Director's Club in New York. He, again, was just a normal guy, an Australian bloke from the outback who happened to be supremely good at what he was doing. He was no Churchill (who is?) but he came across in such a genuine way, telling us stories of his childhood, how the name Droga5 came to be and how his passion for humanity came from his Danish mother. He doesn't appear to have changed at all and used all the skills he would usually use at work to sell a product ... to sell us his agency.
Both of these guys have taken what they became known for in the first place and carried it into leadership. They are still selling, but selling what they think, selling their own messages. They know what makes them unique and are using it. It's no surprise that their agencies are both super successful places doing great work. Their staffers have a good understanding of what the agencies stand for and what the drive is behind the leaders.
So when you get a new job as a creative CEO or creative director stay true to who you are and the things you did that landed you the leadership job in the first place.