How Disruption Brought Order: The Story of a Winning Strategy in the World of Advertising by Jean-Marie Dru

Author:Jean-Marie Dru [Dru, Jean-Marie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2007-09-03T14:00:00+00:00

A COMMON PHILOSOPHY

A culture only becomes legitimized over time. But as we have seen, the very first years are crucial. They set the tone, light the way forward. It happens that our three agencies, TBWA, Chiat/Day, and BDDP had, from the outset, a very close vision of the business.

Firstly, all three had decided to belong to that most exclusive of clubs, the world's most creative agencies. I know of no agencies that started off less creative than they became. You cannot climb up the value chain in this way. I do know, unfortunately, of a number of creative agencies that have given up, since staying creative is a constant struggle. Anything but a God-given gift. Chiat/Day, TBWA, and BDDP were creative from the very first day. And they remained so, ten, twenty years after, never losing their souls despite the turmoil of financial summersaults and successive mergers they lived through.

Above all, the three agencies possessed an embryonic common philosophy. For them, creative talent, whereas absolutely essential, alone is not enough. The strategies, the briefs given to the creative teams, also needed to be creative in themselves. The three agencies shared the desire to imagine unique strategies that sought to be intelligent (and the word "intelligent" does not overstate the case). TBWA surprised people with its campaigns for Evian in France, Lego in England, and Absolut in the United States. Chiat/Day invigorated the American advertising industry with its campaigns for Apple, ABC, Nike, Energizer. . . . And BBDP distinguished itself by bringing new perspectives to Danone, McDonald's, and the French Railways. None of these agencies were satisfied by creating advertising that would be seen as merely "creative." Each was also determined to be creative at the strategic level, which is the foundation of the concept of Disruption.

In fact, although each of our three agencies had a distinct and strong personality, they also shared the same sort of culture. They had so much in common that they were made to be together. It was almost as if they were promised to each other. Predestined.

Indeed, we had considered joining our forces as early as 1986, when my partners and I, at the time the managers of BDDP, first contacted TBWA. We had a deep respect for what Bill Tragos, the spirited leader of the agency, had accomplished along with his three partners. During the previous decade, TBWA had achieved a brilliant expansion across most of Europe. The negotiations almost succeeded. But only almost.

In the years that followed, Omnicom bought successively TBWA, Chiat/Day, and finally BDDP. What is interesting in all this was that before being acquired, BDDP had only ever approached two companies in view of a possible merger. The first was TBWA, and the second, as you will have understood, was Chiat/Day.

Sharing the same idea, to join the best in the market to rapidly build a worldwide network, we met Jay Chiat and Lee Clow in 1987. We wanted to buy their agency, and they wanted to get their hands on ours.

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