Paying people who think differently to think the same is a waste of money.

I’ve been thinking about the future of our business a lot lately. (When you own an agency, are saddled with a mortgage, and have a family of four, there’s little choice but to live in a permanent state of existential crisis right now.)

And I often come back to the Banksy quote I opened this blog with 2 and a half years ago now.

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people … Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”

It’s a beautifully back-handed compliment rippling with ugly truths, but equally if not moreso, bubbling with possibility.

I’ve worked in a variety of different environments, in different countries, and I will die on the hill that creative agencies are one of the most unfathomably rich resources of untapped talent on the face of the Earth. I can’t remember who said it, but some years ago an experienced creative freelancing at the agency I was at said that the only thing comparable to a creative department is a kitchen. I kind of got it at the time, but it wasn’t until I read Bourdain’s books that I really got it.

“The professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit.” - Anthony Bourdain

Throughout my schooling life, and an early corporate career, I was always pigeonholed as such, and told I would never reach my potential unless I ‘fell in line’. It wasn’t until I did AWARD School, and ended up in front of agency creatives, that all of my perceived faults were suddenly held up as valuable attributes to be encouraged and treasured. And I’ve had this exact same conversation with an infinite number of agency creatives.

Much like how everything humankind creates holds within it the key to its destruction, everyone’s superpower tends to also be their Achille’s heel. My refusal to accept the status quo, to always look for a new way to do things, to pull things apart, to oppose convention, to think ‘what if’ instead of ‘yes, sir’, was the very thing that held me back in conforming environments - but it’s what set me apart in agency land.

Creatives see the world differently. We feel things differently. I’m not sure how else to explain it, but when we look at things we don’t just see them for what they are on a physical plane. We see cracks. Openings. Possibilities. And we feel them. We feel the potential of something in our heads and our hearts. I can literally feel an idea reverberate in my chest.

“The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment.” - Rick Rubin

Now you can roll your eyes at all of this as much as you want given we work in the field of advertising, but in a capitalist society, it’s where artists, musicians, writers, storytellers, people who see and ultimately think differently end up, and can be weaponised to make a difference.

Proper disruption. Instead of just making web banners and EDMs.

Because paying people who think differently to think the same is a waste of money.

The advertising business is careering head-first into a brick wall. I think we all know that deep down. But I don’t think it’s simply going to hit the wall. It’s going to break through to the other side. And there will be pain, and there will be heartache, and not everyone will make it through. But I think we could come out of it with a renewed vigour and purpose.

For a long time now, agencies have focused on outputs instead of outcomes. And made some very good money out of it, especially in the digital era. It never sat well with me because it wasn’t a long-term strategy. If you simply become a volume sausage factory for clients, you’re essentially lining your own coffin for when no one wants sausages anymore. (That was a weird analogy but I’m writing this on the fly.) And you’re not making yourself indispensable, you’re rendering yourself open to redundancy. Because outputs can be easily in-housed or replicated. But outcomes, can’t.

Everyone can cook, but there’s a reason why you go to a restaurant for a proper meal. Because they care more than you ever will about what they make. They care about the outcome, not the output.

Our value is not in the assets we produce, but the thinking and the care behind them. We’re wasting our talent and ambition slopping around in the basement and need to move further up the chain. Over the last couple of years, our focus at SICKDOG has not been to increase the volume of outputs but to build trust in our strategic, creative, and design thinking so as to become a problem-solving resource. Someone who can be there to care more about something. One day, we might be defining the next 5 years of a multi-billion dollar brand, the next more of a SWAT team swinging in and defusing a bomb. In one of the toughest environments I’ve ever experienced, where agencies are shrinking and influence waning, we’ve grown considerably and expanded our remit across our client base.

And for the clients out there reading this, I think there needs to be a similar shift in thinking. Paying your agency to just do what you say, think like you think, and toe the line is a waste of money. And those budgets aren’t getting any bigger. You have people in your building who are already paid to do that. You’ve got a second building full of hungry, motivated, and earth-shatteringly talented thinkers and doers who can solve far bigger problems for you than a six-second bumper. (We want the people we work with to get promoted. To get a pay rise. To move to a bigger job at a bigger brand. Throw the problem at us and see if we can help.)

Hard times can make you focus on what’s really important, the relationships, the thinking, the human truths, and maybe that will be the positive that comes out of all of this.

To get paid to think differently again. Which is what brought us all here in the first place.