Cara Delevingne Is Not A Good Face For Your Brand

I’ll keep this short and simple.

Cara Delevingne is a very successful model. She’s got a distinctive look, and wears the camera well. She’s good at what she does.

But I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone is using her for their campaigns right now.

Think about it. She’s everywhere. She may look good, but she’s looking good everywhere, for everyone she works for. And she has multiple brands that she works for.

So there’s the problem. What’s the value in working with someone who is inherently disassociated and disengaged from your brand? Someone like Cara Delevingne may be the face of a brand for a moment, but all it gives you is five minutes of memory in the mind of the consumer, before they see her in some other ad, perhaps even a competitor.

I know she’s working for Top Shop right now. A few months ago it was Burberry. Next week maybe it’ll be Gap. Who knows.

Face it. When you get someone like Cara Delevingne to front your campaign, you’re not building your brand. You’re building hers.

Every Ad is Someone’s Baby

A colleague said that to me the other day. It’s important to remember sometimes, when you take a break from the trench warfare that is agency-client relations, that your co-workers aren’t just people doing a job. Whatever your role in an agency, your work is your baby. Still more so as a designer or copywriter. Every line and placed graphic is part of your personal validation, evidence of your ability. And for it to be questioned and picked apart by those around you is no easy thing. You really do have to work to have a thick skin, because your work is both inherently personal and inherently vulnerable.

And that’s a good thing. It would be easy to dismiss what I’m saying as just the prissiness of artistes, self-obsession, unnecessary touchiness. But that’s what makes for great work. Great work, at any level, at any level of ‘importance’, demands personal commitment. If you can’t care, you can’t work – as I’ve said before, if you can’t bring yourself to care, why would your audience?

So care, and fight, and rage against those who want to change what you’re doing. And bend, and compromise, and conciliate. Because those twin impulses are what advertising is about – creativity plus corporate. Practical art.

And as an account handler, with a foot in both the client and the creative worlds, respect your client, certainly. But also respect your creative partners. Because they are the key to making the work that you really want to be a part of. And the ads that you are making are their babies.

A little care and attention goes a long way.

Don't Be Defensive

This is another anti-ego post.

It’s easy when you’re throwing ideas around to become fixated on your own positions and thoughts at the expense of everyone else’s. This is true whether it’s for a pitch or a campaign execution, or whether you get Nandos or KFC for lunch.

(For the record, the correct answer is of course Nandos.)

The point is, if you argue your point, and you’re still out-voted, you have to be able to accept it. Even if you’re the boss – one of the best skills in leadership is knowing how and when to give way, even to subordinates.

And sometimes it isn’t even about outright rejection of your ideas. It can simply be becoming defensive when your ideas are questioned or challenged or tweaked. You can’t defend your original vision to the death.

The most important thing in all this is to remember that your colleagues are competent. Sounds obvious, but in the heat of the moment it’s easy to unconsciously behave as though you’re the only person capable of good ideas. Which isn’t generally a popular or safe opinion to express.

And with that established, you have to then understand that if your ideas aren’t the ones that win out in a discussion, there are two options: First, that you need to step back and work out how to express your ideas in a better, more engaging way, or second, that maybe, just maybe, your ideas weren’t all that effective in the first place. And that perhaps it’s just possible that you only believe that they are great ideas because they are your ideas.

Food for thought.

Although for the record all my ideas are the best ideas.

Intermarché and Ugliness as a Virtue

This is a slightly older campaign to talk about, but if you haven’t already heard about the Intermarché “Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables” campaign by Marcel in France, you should really check it out.

It’s a very simple idea at its heart: promote the sale of ugly vegetables, in order to save money and resources for Intermarché, and for its customers. The less appealing produce was sold alongside the standard fare – except clearly marked at 30% off the normal price. Obviously this was quite an easy sell in a way, as everyone wants to be thriftier in the current climate, and it appeals to our environmental side as well.

More to the point, it was a witty, fun campaign, and captured the imagination. The campaign ran with jokey slogans about the produce which underlined the fact that, ugly or not, this was still good food that doesn’t have to be wasted: “An ugly potato makes beautiful mash”.

Intermarché is an up-and-coming brand, a plucky outsider, and this helped establish it as a brand that cares for its customers. 13 million people saw the ads for free on social media, and it wasn’t just a viral phenomenon; sales have gone up 24% since the campaign began.

And think about it from an image point of view. Ugly may be ugly. But it also conveys honesty, straight talking, and trustworthiness. Think Oliver Cromwell and his portrait, warts and all.

Who wouldn’t trust the brand that places value and quality over skin deep, superficial prettiness?

It’s a genius bit of insight.

Taking Things to Heart

This too shall pass.

You’ll find throughout your career that you have good moments and bad moments.

(I know! I was surprised too.)

Consistency is of course a good thing to strive for but it is never going to be a reality. You are human after all (I hope). So there will be highs and lows, great successes and the odd abject failure. And of course everyone around you is human too, so even if it’s only a minor failure in real terms you can find that it is treated by others as piss in their coffee.

Here’s my point:

Don’t take it to heart.

Neither the good nor the bad. Enjoy the praise and the accolades when you get them. Learn from the mistakes and the blame. But don’t dwell, don’t be complacent, don’t think of your character as being comprised of these moments.

You’re not defined by the past but by the present. Jumping for joy over last week’s performance review can lead you to fall right into a pit. And obsessing over an error-strewn Excel sheet can blind you to a new opportunity waiting for you. So look forward, not back.

Don’t misunderstand me – it’s natural and normal to feel down when things go badly, and to feel invincible when things go well. But be mindful, because scientists have found that the leading cause of 78% of screw ups is the belief that you finally know what you’re doing.

A career is a winding road of ups and downs. Just have the patience to see that nothing is permanent, good or bad. The sooner you can adjust to that, the faster you can react and respond, and avoid the traps of complacency or dejection.

Defeat and victory are both impostors. The true goal is just to keep learning.

Strongbow is Selling Itself on the Basis of Quality and I am Confused

You may well have seen the spot by now. It’s no longer particularly new. A TV ad highlighting the seasonal nature of cider apple growing, and the care and attention that goes into making Strongbow cider.

And I’m confused. Because Strongbow isn’t known for quality. It’s known for being cheap, plentiful, and not particularly nice. There’s a reason people mix it with squash. And that it’s one of the main ingredients of snakebite. I have no beef with Strongbow. But it isn’t known for quality.

(Although interestingly in Australia Strongbow is branded as an English heritage product. Cutesy images of trees and apples and everything.)

The point is, there are other ciders, even mass market ones like Magners, which place their quality and care as a key selling point – and it’s believable because they are actually quite nice.

So why is Strongbow going down this route for its advertising? We can only assume that they feel a need to aim for a more mature audience.

After all, Strongbow ads have traditionally been very strong, playing on humour and funny scenarios – exactly the kind of thing to appeal to a younger class of drinker, who wants something cheap but also wants a brand that seems to understand and care about their sense of humour. But perhaps that market is under threat by own brand supermarket offerings, which are much cheaper and taste about the same. Advertising can only trump cost to a point.

That there is one of the most interesting market developments of the last few years. Many value range branded goods are suffering from the competition of cheaper supermarket-made alternatives.

(It’s probably worth an article of its own. I’ll have a think.)

But here’s the main point: if you see an advert that looks odd, seems unusual or out of tone for a brand, start thinking. Why is it there?

Quite often, the answers are more easy to reason out than you think.

#TheDress and Jumping on a Trend

We’ve all heard of the #thedress phenomenon by now. A dress the changes colour depending on how you perceive it. Psychologically it’s very interesting. But what’s just as interesting from our perspective is the reaction of various brands and agencies to it – and what that says about the state of advertising.

First off, the creator of the dress (Roman Originals) has now released a white and gold version to mirror the original blue and black – capitalising on the moment and making use of the viral nature of the meme to create a (perhaps brief) trend. Since the meme began their sales have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile across the web various brands have referenced it, if nothing else to continue to be part of the conversation and engage their followers. (Again, social media is as much about keeping afloat as about getting ahead.)

Another interesting example is the Salvation Army spot by South African agency Ireland/Davenport that played on the meme to make a serious point about domestic abuse. It shows a model wearing the white and gold dress while covered in bruises, with the copy “Why is it so hard to see black and blue?” This ad actually was generated within the agency before searching for a charity to associate with – which if nothing else is a rebuke to those who say that advertising has no soul to it.

There’s a broader point to all of this. In a world of memes and trends and viral events, it can seem that advertisers are a bit passé, a bit out of step. The reality couldn’t be more different.

What advertising does is to ride the waves of trends and new events, to defend brands from risks and pitfalls. It also gives the opportunity, as with the S.A., to capture a moment and produce something that cuts through by speaking to people in a way that makes them listen at that moment – that is contextually relevant. After all, advertising is all about communicating with people in a way that engages with them.

Certainly the media world is changing beneath our feet. But while the medium and the method may change, advertising will always exist. Because advertising is not reliant on bricks and mortar. Advertising is about communication, and about communicating ideas. That is the core, and as long as you communicate it, you’re in advertising.

Social Media is Different

This is more of a memo to those on the client side.

I get it. We get it. Social media is scary. It’s fast-paced, risky and unpredictable. You just want to have nice organised initiatives with clear goals, and obvious start and end points.

But social media doesn’t fit those rules. And we all have to learn that. Because effective social media is never going to fit into neat calendars with pointed dates and transitional movements from campaign to campaign. Because it’s social. And it doesn’t need your content. You have to prove to people why they should like, comment, share and subscribe.

There’s a well-known joke that using social media for free means that the people using it are the product for sale. There’s a lot of truth to that. But we’re a living product and we do determine our behaviour.

And social media is, well, social. Brands which post at particular times and respond in particular ways don’t tend to be that popular. Because good social media doesn’t just mean knowing your audience, it means understanding them and empathising with them. Having a genuine conversation with them.

So enough with the Turing test, brand approved, signed-off, squared-off model. Social media is about the genuine – so let it be a real conversation.

You might find that people like you more as people than as a company.

The Interesting Product Trilogy Part 3

It seems I can’t leave this topic alone.

This is more just a clarification of the underlying point of the previous two posts on motivation and the justification for advertising.

Why do you need to work to advertise boring products?

Why waste money advertising the mundane?

Both of those questions are themselves begging the question. What makes a product boring?

Boring is subjective. That is the issue that too many people don’t understand. What makes great advertising is not the ability to make something boring into something interesting. It’s the ability to make anything interesting. Because boring is not a meaningful term for a product. Boring is a limitation that we work around.

After all, what makes flowery smells exciting? Why do ads about fermented grain fill us with glee?

Beer is not a fun product just because it makes you drunk. That’s a leading factor, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Products are interesting because we decide they are interesting. Sure, we are human. We have biases and tendencies. But ultimately our defining trait is our sociability. That is to say, our ability to change opinions and behaviours based on what others around us believe – or even simply what we think that they believe.

The point is, when dealing with dullness it’s important to remember that dull is not a scientific concept. It’s a human one. And you only have to be limited by it as far as you want to. Or as far as your abilities allow you to stretch it.

Why Advertising?

What’s so great about advertising? What interests you about it? It’s an industry that comes in for a great deal of flak. Advertising is to a lot of people a shorthand for dishonesty. For superficiality. For the soulless materialism which, it is alleged, is consuming our world. Obviously I disagree with that assessment. I hope you do as well. But why choose advertising?

I’ll tell you my first impulse towards it. I enjoy self-expression. Be it writing, or talking, or any other form of creativity. Communication interests me.

But it’s always been drilled into me that you have to be practical. It’s not enough to be artistic because the world is full of artists big and small. So use it in a way that can also sustain you, in a sustainable way.

Hence, advertising. Creativity, but corporate.

That’s a bit unsatisfying as an answer though. I think there’s more to it than that. Because I don’t see advertising as just caged artistry. Advertising is practical art.

What I like about advertising is that it’s all about expressing ideas in the most engaging way possible – and it’s like any kind of art form in that regard. Maybe it’s a bit idealistic to say that adverts are a form of art. But both are essentially about communicating ideas.

In advertising the idea is often pre-determined. Perhaps “sell more toilet cleaner” is not enough of an artistic impulse. Perhaps that disqualifies it from being “real” art. But Renaissance painters weren’t obsessed with the purity of their work. Trust me, they really weren’t. Art wasn’t respected in the same way back them. So they did most of their work to order. It wasn’t art for art’s sake, just a way to make a living. Art was an industry – with clear standards, competition, and a vicious love of gold. It still resulted in some of the greatest works in human history.

(There’s at least one post to be written about Renaissance art and advertising. It will come.)

In any case, the execution of the ideas is where so much of the interesting work lies anyway. An idea is important. But ideas change as you express them.

Moreover, with advertising, unlike other art forms, there’s a clear way of finding out how well you’re expressing those ideas – in the commercial success of your advertising. You learn quickly how best to communicate to your audience. It’s art with energy, art with focus, art with fight.

So there it is. I like advertising because I like art, and I’m interested in communicating ideas. And advertising is like art after a couple of Jaegerbombs.

Being Bright is Not Enough

A lot of my compatriots (read: competitors) trying to come up the rungs – or just get on the ladder – in advertising have a flaw. I know because I also have it. A belief that you are smarter than everyone else. That you don’t have to work as hard. That it can all be effortless for you.

That thought is your single biggest enemy.

It makes you lazy, it makes you superficial. And it makes you lose.

Contrary to popular opinion – and as I’ve said before – good ideas are not that rare in the world of advertising. And smart people are not some rare commodity.

Being smart is not enough.

Even if you truly are an exceptional brain, you have to work to get ahead. No one wants to pay for how gifted you are inside your head if you can’t translate that into results in the real world.

So what’s the real answer?

Being thorough. Being really thorough. Being so thorough it’s boring.

Being thorough is not sexy. But it’s the only way to do well consistently. I had a great teacher at a past agency who drilled into me the difference between good work and great work – not raw cleverness and sneaky ideas, but being thorough.

It might be the single most important quality to learn for any junior member of an agency.

Why? Because it’s the ability to anticipate and fix problems before they become problems. It’s recognition of the need to be humble, to go the extra mile, to support the team. It means always being prepared; to be an expert in any subject on demand, not just willing to do extra research but actively pursuing that knowledge.

From my own experience, I can say how important this is. I used to be nervous about speaking in front of people.

(I mean I still am, but I used to be too.)

I found a way to get past that fear though, and actually present with very little nervousness. How? The 11 Ways of Being a More Effective Speaker Through Yoga? No. Being prepared. Why would you be afraid of speaking, of questions, of making mistakes, when you know the answers? When you’re completely prepared it really limits your ability to mess up.

You might think you’re a good speaker – and that you can freewheel enough to get away with any lapses. You can’t. You will get found out. And there are far fewer second chances in business.

Here’s a strange – but fitting – analogy. Thoroughness is like the difference between flowers in a vase and a flowerpot. Both look good, but only one has lasting power. You need a strong base of hard work and dependability in order to do the exceptional.

It’s nice to be brilliant. If you can combine that with consistency you’ll be on to a winner.

Urgent Appeal for Two BMWs

I’m writing this on the train. Right in front of me are two advertising posters. Both of them are by cancer charities. Both are trying to raise money.

The headline on the first reads: “Urgent Appeal for Macmillan Nurses”.

The headline on the second reads: “Win £40,000 or two BMWs”.

The picture on the first is of a nurse in uniform.

The picture on the second is of the aforementioned cars, some cash, and a photo of a beach holiday.

It’s genuinely difficult to know what to think about these two posters.

It’s certainly rare that you come across an advert that is so crass and poorly done as the second of the two. I’d be interested to find out which was more successful at raising money. I mean supporting nurses is nice but two BMWs are hard to resist.

It’s just such a strange study in contrasts. One is a thoughtful, targeted appeal to help a charity support patients. The other, as far as you can tell from the ad, is essentially a raffle which happens to be going to a cancer charity. Except the ad is clearly from the charity itself.

The cynics might suggest this is pure advertising – that this is what you get when you trust advertisers with a sensitive subject like cancer. Crass, self-interested, superficial.

I disagree.

The first poster is the one which is a product of good advertising. An agency probably had a hand in it. There is a thought process involved. The second is the product of people who have no idea about what advertising is about.

If you couldn’t tell that from their respective production values (and you can), you can certainly tell it from their differing outlooks.

The second poster treats its audience as though it thinks they are selfish – that you can only be persuaded to help the sick through the chance for personal gain. That the passengers on this train are all vain robots, with nary a shred of interest to be had unless you dangle a picture of the Bahamas in front of them.

Sure, in my case that’s true, but I’d like to think that I’m the exception.

Joking aside, that second poster does seem like an aberration, a strange outlier of advertising. And it is the point I made before that I think is significant. Both of these ads are for a noble cause: raising money for people suffering from cancer. And yet that isn’t enough by itself to make their case. One side clearly determined that they needed to make a call to people’s emotions. The other, that it was all about money. I think most of us would agree which is the more appropriate, and the most effective.

But it is the work of advertising to make these things happen. If you think you can market your ideas on your own, you are welcome to do so. But the odds are that you aren’t a natural advertiser. Get help from the experts.

Because even the best of causes needs to be communicated properly.

Be Enthusiastic About Vitamin Supplements, Improved Wifi, and Enamel Flooring

This is another post about good qualities for an ad person. In this case though this is a quality that is not just for juniors but applies throughout your career (as far as I can tell).

Be enthusiastic about everything you work on. Even if its objectively boring. As with a lot of these articles the point sounds strange but is also very obvious. You need to be able to find enthusiasm in everything, be it a pan with a new innovative handle, or a slightly improved formula for cake mix.

Now this might sound like I’m just advocating for a glassy smile to make the client happy – I’m not. Being respectful and saying the right things to the client is something you should already know. I mean, come on reader. Get your head in the game.

What I’m saying is you have to find some genuine enthusiasm. Not for the client’s benefit directly. But for the benefit of you, and your work. We all know that we do our best work when we’re enthusiastic about the work we’re doing. But why limit your enthusiasm to the times when you get to work on a beer account or an exciting jewellery brand? Sure, those are a little more obviously interesting. But someone who can only summon up their best work when they get what they want is never going to be more than a mediocre account handler. And you don’t get the great accounts by showing yourself to be unequal to the task when it comes to the more mundane ones.

Let me give an example. This is actually from the creative side. I had a creative director at one of my past agencies who could be enthused by anything. He got excited describing the qualities of a new corporate wifi outlet that one of our clients was releasing. In most other industries having his level of enthusiasm for marginally better wifi would be considered a mild form of delirium. But this is one of the most respected creative directors in the UK. You don’t get to the top through disinterest.

So what does this translate to in the day to day? Simply, it means having a genuine curiosity about life, and about what is going on around you. I hope you do have that (you probably shouldn’t have chosen advertising as a career if that isn’t the case). You have to be able to find a reason to work harder, care more, and take an interest in everything that goes on around your account.

David Ogilvy talked about this, that if your client is a petrol supplier you should spend your weekends at petrol stations talking to drivers. You can’t advance without having the will to learn more.

"Most of the young [people] in agencies are too lazy to do this kind of homework. They remain permanently superficial."

Frankly, it’s a lot easier to do that kind of research and active listening now than it was in his day. Even just searching Google for news once in a while is enough to make a big difference. But you have to be willing to make that effort. And curious enough to keep making the effort even when it eats into your ‘free’ time.

Advertising is the art of driving people to care about goods which often have very little natural emotion pull. How can you possibly succeed in that if you can’t even drive yourself to care about them?

Social Media and the Absence of Negatives

Social media, by the headlines in the trade press and the regular press, carries some hefty negatives for brands which engage in it.

Just yesterday Dunkin’ Donuts was caught out by a tweeted image of the Liverpool Football Club’s emblem which had been edited to be a bit of a silly Dunkin’ style graphic.

To do so they edited out the Eternal Flames on the emblem which commemorate those killed in the Hillsborough disaster.

Not the wisest of decisions.

With the internet being what it is, any mistake made by a brand can be captured and repeated and paraded across the world in moments – instant tsunamis of disapproval sweeping away months of built-up good faith.

This pattern has played out across multiple channels, many brands, and is simply a part of the fabric of social advertising at the point.

But why do brands take on the risk of such a fast-paced media? It’s not as though they gain much out of it. It’s rare to see many brands using social media for the purpose of direct sales. Most of the time it’s simply for branding purposes.

The answer is, to a large degree, to remove a negative.

Social media isn’t generally much of a positive. But the absence of social media is a real negative for brands which ignore it. It’s as much to show face as to show an attractive face.

As with the Burberry case earlier, being in control and being consistent in your brand voice are key. Social media is about defending your brand and not ceding the territory – either to other brands in the market or to negative perceptions of a poorly done and underfunded social presence.

Now, of course there is the viral quality of social media. This can cut both ways and can be a huge benefit in terms of awareness, certainly if you’re a large brand. But it’s hard to build a campaign around a hypothetical viral success, especially now that every brand and its mother (parent company?) are trying to do the same. These things have a limited predictability.

So how do you consistent succeed at social media? Again, it’s all about removing negatives. Successful social media is in large part simply about consistency, and thoroughness. Slipping up is both more likely and more dangerous. You just have to be careful, constantly.

Which is why brand social media is generally either dull or wildly controversial.

Which is why brand social media is so often just a game of damage limitation.

What is Wrong With Andrex?

Andrex wants to have a national discussion about shitting.

I shit you not.

It’s possibly the single-most bizarre marketing decision that any brand has made in years. Why would they choose to change their entire brand proposition from cute puppies and oblique references to talking about shit and how your ass feels after?

There was a great article about the move by Andrex shortly after the initial campaign began last year (the already infamous “Scrunch or Fold?”), written on Marketing Magazine. In it Helen Edwards argued that the whole point of toilet paper advertising is that we only accept it and allow it into our national discourse and advertising world because it is subtle and cutesy and doesn’t really talk about the subject matter (other than cushiony softness and the like). Andrex seems to be betting that they can change that.

But the real question about this is why Andrex? Andrex is dominant in the market, at least in its branding. If you ask anyone if they know a brand of loo roll I guarantee you, the first name that will come from their lips will be Andrex. They really didn’t need the shake-up – you’d expect this from some newcomer with a new proposition (though what that new offering could be in the world of pieces of paper with which to clean yourself is, I confess, beyond me).

So we’re left with this question. What will this do to Andrex? Ultimately the answer may simply be nothing, at least for the time being. Andrex has that brand dominance, and it won’t give it up anytime soon. But it’s still a strange, strange decision.

There’s a further point to all this. Andrex took a radical new campaign on, a huge turnaround from its traditional marketing. Why? Was there some evidence that the brand needed to change? That there could be a huge market gap in targeting people who like to talk about bowel movements?

It’s hard to imagine. But perhaps they simply fell victim to the allure of novelty. Perhaps they simply wanted to make something different, to shake things up for the sake of shaking things up. That’s bad marketing though, and it’s worth remembering this fact. Never drop a campaign that works just because you’re bored with it.

(If nothing else, remember that you probably get bored with it a lot faster than the public will.)

If You’re a Junior You Should Buckle Down and Shut Up

Let go of the ego.

I mean it seriously. We’re all ambitious. We all want to kick arse and be successful and advance. I wrote a post explicitly saying you should be selfish and work for yourself. That remains true.

But when it comes to the work you do within your agency, you have to be humble. Be a churchmouse. Let your ego go.

Because you cannot advance without showing a capacity for humility. Put simply, you have to be willing to work, regardless of the work.

Fetch coffee. Set up lunch. Collect a stuffed rooster from the other side of town for a photoshoot. You know why you need to be willing to do that?

Because someone has to do it.

And if you don’t, someone else will. And it needs to be you that does it, because if you can’t do that, what good are you?

Obviously you want to do well for yourself. Obviously you don’t want to do menial tasks. But someone will always have to do that. And until you prove yourself, it has to be you. And that is entirely right.

It’s one of the best lessons I learned at my first internships. Let go of the ego. Be humble above all else. Because you don’t know anything. And because even if you do know better than the people giving the orders (and you probably don’t), you still have more to learn. And you might as well learn it.

The top priority when you start out has to be this: How can I make my boss more successful?

If you have a shit boss, move on. But otherwise, that has to be a priority. You can’t be successful by being selfish. That’s just not how advertising works. It really is a team game.

And you need to earn your place on the team.

And you won’t get anywhere without earning it.

Someday, maybe, you can call the shots.

But you have to earn that right first.

Why is Amsterdam the Centre of World Advertising Right Now?

Of course that’s begging the question to an extent. But if you ask around you’ll find that most people see Amsterdam as the place to be for great advertising, and the place to go if you’re an ambitious AE or creative. More to the point, the number of international accounts with global brands being snagged by agencies based in Amsterdam is huge.

So why Amsterdam? There are a lot of reasons really. Even more so than London, the city is diverse, culturally and linguistically, and has a reputation, rightly or wrongly, for toleration and cultural liberalism, the heart of the ad industry. Everyone speaks English.

It’s also a beautiful city, and one with a lot more to offer than meets the eye (the food is great too). But all of these traits can be attributed to other great cities, from London to New York. So why is Amsterdam on top right now?

The answer lies in a comment made to me by an agency CEO who has been working there for a number of years. “Agencies around here are friendly, they’re neighbours, they get along, they don’t worry about accounts being lost amongst them, or partners moving from place to place. They know that an account here or there is not the end of the world." The goal is the work, not the politics behind it.

Perhaps this attitude is only maintained because of the growth in the AMS ad world. Perhaps only optimism prevents infighting. But that’s not what I see there.

Creativity often comes from adversity, but it rarely springs out of politicking and rivalry. The great UK ad agencies are not the ones fighting aggressively over accounts, but the ones confident, pitching for what they want rather than for the table scraps.

Amsterdam has learned the lesson from the London ad world, the lesson that London itself has not. Advertising is not improved by politics. Advertising is best when formed in a culture of multiculturalism and curiosity.

Let’s be serious. M&C Saatchi is a dying firm. So is Leo Burnett. Why? Because they have become bureaucracies, more fixated on infighting and bitter turf wars inside and outside of the agency.

The best agencies are those that have realised that success means not caring about wins or losses. That, despite the pretentiousness of this statement, the journey is more important than the end result. Because the journey is what makes the end result a result.

Amsterdam agencies have realised this. They’ve realised that advertising is not the same as business. It has to be engaging inside and out. And that fighting just isn’t as good as cooperation in growing ideas.