Unilever marketing boss calls on WPP to improve creative offering
WPP needs to reinvent its creative leading edge, the company’s most important client has told an audience of marketers.
Weed: ‘Creative leading edge’ of WPP needs to be reinvented
The comments came from Keith Weed, Unilever’s global chief marketing and communications officer, in one of his final on-stage appearances before retiring after 35 years with the organisation.
Unilever is the world’s second biggest spending advertiser after Procter & Gamble, and probably WPP’s largest client. Its dozens of brands include Dove, Magnum, Rexona, Lipton and Omo.
Along with P&G’s chief brand officer Marc Pritchard, Weed is seen as one of the world’s most influential marketers.
During the interview, comments from new WPP boss Mark Read about the need to restate the case for creativity were put to Weed.
Weed argued that while he has been impressed by the progress made by WPP with its media agencies, it had further to go with its creative agencies.
He said: “I’m a huge supporter of WPP. They are our biggest agency network , and I’d say the job they’ve done at least with Mindshare as part of Group M on the media side has been brilliant.”
However, he went on: “They’ve become fantastic around media but, there’s been a huge focus there. But Mark’s 110% right, it now needs to reinvent the creative leading edge of WPP.”
Sine the departure of WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell 11 months ago, WPP has undergone a series of radical changes to its creative agency structures. These have included merging JWT and Wunderman to create Wunderman Thompson, and merging Young & Rubicam with VML to create VMLY&R.
Although Weed’s statement that WPP needs to reinvent its creative offering was couched in mild terms, it will cause concern within the company which has been undergoing its worst year since Sorrell founded it nearly 40 years ago.
In October, WPP lost three global accounts in just one week as United Airlines, Ford and American Express moved their accounts out of the holding group.
Last week, WPP revealed a drop of 8.8% in global profits and a 1.3% drop in revenue.
It is also not the first time that Weed has signalled his concerns about the agencies on his roster. Last year he told a conference: “The world has moved very fast and in my experience, the agencies haven’t moved fast enough.”
Later in the interview, Weed added: “As an industry we’ve taken our eye off the ball of creating great, engaging advertising. If we lose the desire to create fabulous, engaging content, I think we’ve lost the sparkle.”
“We need to wake up and say let’s get back to the bit that really makes this business buzz.”
This week saw Weed on the speaking trail. He also spoke at the ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers) conference in the UK on Tuesday, where he called out the “seven deadly sins” of adland. The “sins” are: the reduced quality of ads; the murky world of influencer marketing; concerns over data; brands funding bad activity including online fraud; fake news; personalisation; and bombardment of consumers with too many messages.
However, Weed predicted during the Marketing Week Live interview: “This time next year, the influencer market will have been cleared up.” He said that Twitter and Instagram have finally begun to get serious about deleting fake profiles.
When the creative business is run by people with no understanding or appreciation of what creativity is and resorts to hiring people who are scammers , real clients feel shortchanged.
Maybe this will finally get WPPs nose out of staring at spreadsheets and take a good hard look at what the business needs.
Hiring a breed of creative talent who understand that creativity is an applied art of helping clients sell. And are proud to do it. Instead of chasing awards with fake work.
Good luck finding these people among anyone under 35.
ReplyToday, clients are the smartest people in the room, where once it was the ad agency team. Agencies went from ‘thinking’ to merely ‘executing’. And more recently, buying and placing.
ReplyBring back Writers, Art Directors and strategic thinkers who can create long lasting advertising campaigns. Campaigns that are based on a product truth, not just a single execution based on a joke, a song or a dancing senior citizen.
Real ‘influencers’ have ideas, not Instagram.
clients have a long long way to go to be the smartest people in the room. Particularly in Singapore. By and large there is an ever increasing client demand to create miracles out of diminishing budgets, and do more work for less. Actually it is a borderline tragedy that smart, capably, creative thinkers have to work with agency side marketers… it would be amazing to get clearer direct access to businesses and brands without marketing department’s being involved. They’re honestly the worst.
ReplyThey took the right step by weeding out a couple of hi profile [Edited under Mumbrella’s community guidelines] at the very top. Now what’s needed is a more general purge. All those with [Edited under Mumbrella’s community guidelines] in the 2000s should be audited.
ReplyKeith Weed supposedly interviewed for the wpp ceo job so interesting to see these comments. He would have been better placed to instigate a Creative renaissance at wpp. Mark read believes the answer to everything is wunderman which hasn’t [Edited under Mumbrella’s community guidelines] ever.
ReplyClients have forced Agencies to be reduced to this. Get clients to compare the fees they are paying today vs. what they paid 3 yers ago!
ReplyWhen agencies are passing off hires with less than 3 years experience as a ‘senior’ talent’ and CD titles are given to creatives who think resizing ad banners is creative origination, one wonders whether the low agency fees is the cause?
ReplyOr is it ‘fair pricing’ as clients are getting what they pay for?
Theres also the dangerous practice of homogenising the agency offering….take for example a network that has three agencies in the same space, where people walk freely from one end to the other. They pluck people from one agency to work on another piece of business in another. This kind of cross fertilisation has resulted in very bland output.
ReplyClients have not forced agencies to do anything. Agencies greed and lack of principles is what has created this situation.
There are still independents that charge a premium for their staff and output.
As well as constant preaching and no practicing.
ReplyThere are indie shops who do charge a premium and choose clients who value their creative offering.
ReplyIronically, they are often owned and staffed by the same talent the big networks have rejected because they are deemed not cool, too expensive, too senior and not scamming enough to win awards.
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