Six top tips for a new way of working

The pandemic has forced the hand of businesses across the world, perhaps most significantly because working away from the office has become normal.

For advertising, this has had a significant impact. Clearly, adland’s raison d’etre is creativity, a process historically hinged on the physical proximity, interaction and idea generation of its people. When that ability to work in close-knit teams disappears, what happens to creative output? And can Pinterest help?

Jules Chalkley, executive creative director of Ogilvy UK, Nadja Lossgott, executive creative director at Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO and Laura Jordan Bambach, chief creative officer at Grey London, share how they have found opportunity in the face of adversity.

1. Keep it personal

Fostering an environment of togetherness while being physically distant has been the biggest challenge for creative bosses. For Ogilvy’s Chalkley this has meant having "big creative department meetings [remotely] so that we feel we’re all still together".

Cross-team communications are vital to creative departments. But so too are personal relationships. As Chalkey explains, "making sure we’re talking to everyone, picking up the phone when people are stressed" is key.

"What’s really interesting is that one-to-ones via video calls are fine, but it’s much more personal on a phone bizarrely, voice-to-voice thing. If you want to understand how someone’s feeling, give them a call."

2. Use the right tools for the job

Enforced remote working may be far from the ideal, but thankfully in today’s digitally-enabled world there are a plethora of tools available for creatives to adopt.

Jordan Bambach has embraced numerous platforms. "At Grey, we tend to use a load of different video messaging packages depending on client needs," she says. "It’s amazing how quickly almost everything has moved to these digital meeting forums, even messaging. Email has gone down and I only check it a few times a day now – if it's urgent it will be on a call."

AMV’s Lossgott, and her creative partner Nick Hulley and their teams use an array of comms channels.

"The teams do everything they can: share their screen, hold up pieces of paper to camera, email and share docs and presentations," she says, "And how we review and they present changes from team to team too and that fluidity is important. Whatever’s comfortable. A couple of lines to articulate the idea to decks full of stimulation, in whatever way, however."

Chalkley is an advocate for Pinterest, which he describes as great for sharing "creative noodling" and for finding creative inspiration. 

"People such as Mark Denton have unbelievable Pinterest content and lots of creatives have great Pinterest boards," he says. "They’re great sources of inspiration. We were sharing some stuff creatively on Pinterest last week, design influences for some work."

Lossgott also "loves some visual reference".

"We want to see the full vision a team has for the idea," she says. "And we love the references to be as fresh and interesting as possible. That means sourcing them from interesting places.”

"The internet is a rabbit hole. Something new, something intriguing is often the next click away. Like all teams we have our go to sites like Pinterest. We like having a visual encyclopaedia of wide inspiration to then streamline thinking the closer you get to the production stage."

Pinterest's Group Boards enable users to collaborate with their teams and clients on projects with reactions to show feedback, the ability to sort Pins to prioritize favourite ideas, and a new way to communicate with members right on the board. And, it’s not just businesses — everyone from parents’ meal-planning, roommates choosing new art for their living room, and friends planning a holiday who can use Group Boards to save, plan and get inspired.

3. Find visual inspiration

Jordan Bambach uses Pinterest for work and pleasure. "I’m always dipping into my boards of illustrators, photographers, stylists, animators, directors – all creatives that I admire and would love to work with one day," she says.

"And of course, I follow a load of other creative directors too for inspiration. I have a load of personal boards – haircuts and crazy colours, tattoos, things I’d wear if I were a guy and could get into men’s clothes; anything that inspires me, it’s quite eclectic!"

"My favourite board is with my old partner in crime, Flo Heiss. We use it to collect the weirdest things we find on the internet. There’s some great art in there, and a lot of hand knitted ski masks… Some very peculiar music videos. Nothing is off limits. We set it up when we worked together about eight years ago, and still add to it every now and then. When I need some time out, I’ll go and browse it again, it always makes me smile."

4. Break free from your bubbleChalkey has found that remote working has enabled him to realize how important it is to seek inspiration from what’s going on in the broader world.

"You’ve really got to plug into what’s happening in the real world," he says. "One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m much more aware of what’s going on around me.

"Everyone’s antennas went up at the beginning of lockdown, you’re more alert of what’s going on and that’s fed across into everything. For some reason I’m seeing more stuff creatively and culturally, and, strangely, less about what the industry is doing and more about what’s happening in the real world.

"You have to come out of that bubble and be aware of what is going on in the real world. Consequently, a lot of our work has become more culturally astute."

Creatives need ideas today. Tap into Pinterest's Today tab for a source of daily inspiration with curated topics and trending Pins that makes it easy to explore popular and timely ideas. Follow creators who frequently share content from their niche specialism in relation to the cultural zeitgeist and get inspired.

5. Ditch old mindsets

One of the more overriding realisations for Chalkley is that "creativity can happen anywhere". It’s an insight that will inform the way the agency works in the future. 

"You’ve got to let people work where they’re most creative," he says. "Whether that’s creating an incredible office space or a bedroom, it doesn’t matter." Drop the old mindset, he insists.

"It’s a generalist thing to say, but we’ve seen a lot of our creatives become happier. We’ve been in offices and we’ve been in open plans and had this not happened, how long would this have taken to change? I think now it has changed, we’ve got to do what’s right for the creative mind."

6. Find your capacity to adapt

Jordan Bambach has found that remote working during lockdown has taught her that creativity can be "challenged to its limits, and in doing so work of innovative and exceptional standards can be made".

"At Grey we have won pitches during lockdown, made interesting and original work and strengthened client relationships. In fact meeting clients for the first time in their kitchens has been really enjoyable. And we’ve really taken to borderless working, because none of us are together anyway."

"So we’re sharing work across the globe and still turning out successful campaigns. It’s really driven home to everyone the power that diverse creativity has too, because we’re tapping into great ideas from all over the world and the results are super positive." 

For Lossgott too, remote working has necessitated a new mindset. "Perhaps it’s less of a surprise and more of a confirmation, but people’s capacity to adapt is awesome," she says. "Armed with resilience and curiosity, we can face most challenges.

"We should harness that jolt to complacency and stay that way forever. That and finding ways to stay away from a rush hour commute would be good to keep."

THE Drum My favourite audio: Jules Chalkley from Ogilvy UK on the visceral powers of sound

If you get it right radio is the ultimate medium. It’s a simple platform but the power it has to immerse and influence the audience is greater than any of its media counterparts, and even rivals gaming.‘The Berlin Wall of Sound’ is a great example of this transformative power that still inspires me to look differently at sound and how we can use it to great effect.

It doesn’t fit any of the time lengths you’d be used to writing to, and you’re not going to hear it in the car whilst stuck in the Hanger Lane gyratory.This piece was created in 2014 to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall for, and by, SoundCloud. For the brand the story is personal, its building sits near the ‘Death Zone’ in Berlin. And the ad makes things deeply personal for the listener.

It’s something more than a traditional radio ad. Because it was created at a time when the medium was pushing the boundaries and exploring digital platforms such as Spotify. If anything, I’d call it an audio monument to a brutal time in modern history when Germany’s capital was slashed in half. The piece is a literal wall of sound that illustrates life on both sides of the concrete barrier that physically and ideologically divided the city.Sound has the power to transport you, and here it takes you straight in to the lives of the men, women and children trapped behind the wall. You are submerged in to their suffocating and desperate existence, as they’re restricted in movement and separated from their loved ones.

The crafting is clever. Every second is jarring and uncomfortable, there is no sonic harmony. A deep base tone holds the whole piece together. I say hold, it’s never a stable sound, it never lets you get a solid footing and leaves you on edge the whole way through.

Layered onto this unsettling foundation are official recordings from the time played through distorted speakers, creating a nightmarish feeling. Those who don’t respect the border, we are told, “will feel the bullet”. The atmosphere is heavy and somehow damp, dogs bark and bullets rip through the space between your ears. German tanks rumble and squeak in the soundscape, coming towards you, making you want to hide.The details are profound and sad. In the middle of the marching troops and rumbling war machines you hear what sounds like small feet running across wet gravel, making a dash for freedom, until a shot rings out.

This precise level of detail is continued with elements such as the sound wave forming the shape of the concrete wall, punctuated with guards towers created by the sound of sporadic machine gunfire. It’s 7 minutes and 32 seconds long, the time it would take sound to travel the full length of the wall. And the whole piece is underlined with the tragic stories of those who lost their lives.

But what most impresses me is the visceral power of what I hear. It is discordant and uncomfortable, you feel like you are being observed and listened upon, the Stasi scratching away in the cavity in the wall next to you. For a moment I sat half expecting them to burst through the door.

Kraftwerk: Lessons from a band that inspired generations of creative talent

The death of rock and roll pioneer Little Richard may have generated more headlines, but for many in the creative industries there was an equal sense of loss at the passing of enigmatic Kraftwerk co-founder Florian Schneider last week. 

Famously shy of promotion or interviews, Schneider (pictured, left) and his principal band partner Ralf Hütter created a body of work most obviously rooted in electronic music but also spanning innovative approaches to presentation, the embracing of new technologies and a uniquely distinctive design ethos. Kraftwerk’s influence can be seen and heard in virtually every musical and cultural movement that came after them.

Campaign rounds up some keen Kraftwerk fans to share their personal views on Schneider, the band and their contribution to contemporary creativity. 

Dylan Williams, chief strategy officer, Droga5 London

In 1936, John Maynard Keynes said: "Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." Nearly a century on and we can replace "economist" with "electronic music pioneer". The recent passing of two such groundbreakers, first Andrew Weatherall and now Florian Schneider, serve to remind all of us in the creative industries that "influence" can work in different ways.

Schneider’s Kraftwerk helped shape genres from prog rock and synth pop to electro-funk and industrial techno, influencing artists from David Bowie and Ian Curtis to Afrika Bambaataa and Dr Dre. Landmark record labels such as Street Sounds and Sleeping Bag Records might never have happened without him. No OMD, Pet Shop Boys or Depeche Mode. No Kurtis Mantronik, Underworld or The Chemical Brothers. Yet, to Keynes’ point, such profound cross-cultural and intergenerational influence has been so deep lying as to remain, to the vast majority, invisible. More people have heard of KSI and Logan Paul. 

Schneider and his co-founder Ralf Hütter deployed none of the techniques familiar to anyone in modern influence marketing – no continuous tracking of consumer sentiment, no paid endorsement, no harnessing of the social graph. No reading of the room in a conscious bid to stay relevant. Quite the opposite. Kraftwerk’s enduring importance has everything to do with remaining steadfastly, belligerently true to themselves. Utterly dedicated to the perfection of their craft, irrespective of the transitory tastes of the day.

So, the passing of genius reminds us once more "to thine own self be true". Authenticity and brilliant product might not bring short-term appeal – "For god’s sake, keep the robots out of music," read an early Melody Maker review – but they are the sure-footed path to long-term significance. 

Beyond this, and more resonantly during a moment of international lockdown, Kraftwerk also remind us of the importance of motion. Tracks like Autobahn, Tour de France and Trans-Europe Express were inspired by our movement in cars and on bikes and trains. They became part of a soundtrack for generations "heading out", to early New Romantic clubs like Blitz, following breakdance crews to neighbourhood battles, Interrailing across Europe all summer, chasing hazard lights looking for the rave or dancing around Circoloco at the end of an Ibizan airfield. 

Ironically, given his early detractors, Schneider’s music inspires us to not become predictable, controllable robots. To not hunch over laptops all day in identikit offices. Instead, it calls on us to keep moving, to see more, feel more, learn more and create more. To feed the soul that keeps us colourfully and brilliantly human.

Jules Chalkley, chief executive creative director, Ogilvy London

Kraftwerk were artists in the broadest sense. Everything they did was created in reaction to their time – the music, the wardrobe, the album art and even their offstage behaviour. They had brave creative ideals coupled with strict image and belief systems that created breakthrough sounds and images like no other.

A combination of this, art school and much pretentious twattery fuelled my interest in art movements and manifestos. When I came to look for a job, I searched out the creative shops that saw the world differently, agencies with a distinctive cultural vision, a philosophy. Think HHCL or St Luke’s. They did certain types of work, attracted certain clients. Love them or loathe them, you knew what they stood for. 

But look around now. Who’s defining themselves through their ethos? Who’s setting themselves brave cultural and creative agendas? The industry needs a Kraftwerk. It needs a Bauhaus or a Swiss Style. Because otherwise the danger is it can all feel a bit Phil Collins.

Sue Higgs, group creative director, Grey London

Fun fact to start: "Kraftwerk" means power plant.

This is procrastination because imposter syndrome is kicking in big style as I try to talk about the band who were the chief architects and pioneers of electronic music. Their fingerprints indelibly imbue the sound of popular music to this day. Modern music would not sound the same without them. They influenced the influencers.

Kraftwerk believed they were a concept, not a band.

In a rare interview, Florian said: "We make compositions from everything… All is permitted, there is no working principle, there is no system."

Mass appeal, it turned out, was a by-product.

Creative talent can learn everything it needs to know from that sentence.

Andy Bird, chief creative officer, Publicis New York

It’s 1980 and I’m sharing a bedroom with my cousin in Newcastle. He’s five years older than me, had been a punk and was now into new wave. It was his music and his rules.

A red picture disk vinyl record played continuously that winter – a record that, for once, I didn’t mind listening to, or at least didn’t scare the shit out of me.

It was sung in German. We went to sleep most nights to the soothing sounds of one particularly harmonious track – Neonlicht, the last song on the B-side of The Man-Machine – drifting in and out of our ears. Ten-year-old me had never heard anything like it.

When all the kids were breakdancing to Afrika Bambaataa’s Planet Rock outside the chippy a few years later, I recognised that driving backbeat as the work of my favourite band.

I’d fallen in love with Kraftwerk.

Ripple dissolve to 2006. I’m in a run-down district of Düsseldorf on a photo shoot with the "sonic sculpture" photographer Martin Klimas.

After the second day, when I’d got to know him, I mentioned my love of Kraftwerk and the mythical whereabouts of their secret studio Kling Klang. Nobody knew where it really was or if it really existed; they’d kept it secret for 25 years.

Without even looking up from the eye viewer on his camera, Martin says, matter of factly: "Ja, but of course, it is next door."

After I’d picked my jaw off the floor, I wandered outside and saw the shuttered-up windows and the "Elecktro Muller" sign above the door.

This is probably the closest I’ve got to a biblical experience.

That’s because everything about them was always fascinating and always inspiring to me. The fact that they kept working hours like normal jobs, went clubbing every weekend (sober), made their own instruments, had robot versions of themselves, had their own cycling team.

Kraftwerk literally created a genre of music and not many bands can say that.

So you could argue they were much like my cousin… it was always their music and their rules.

Gareth Kay, founder, Chapter

Kraftwerk helped show the world that seemingly cold machines could make warm things, full of beauty and emotion. They showed that the tools we use can change the very shape and nature of the things we make (try writing Autobahn on a guitar). They embraced the realities of day-to-day life as inspiration for the art, the "industrielle Volksmusik", they made. They showed the importance of having a creative home (if only the walls of Kling Klang could talk). And they continually reimagined the experience of what a live concert was and could be (forget the recent 3D shows and check out their shows in New York at the start of the 1980s). 

We can continue to learn from all these important things. And while it's only right we remember Florian Schneider, we should not forget perhaps their biggest lesson: Kraftwerk's legacy exists because the band were a far bigger idea than any one of their four members.

Richard Denney, executive ceative director, St Luke’s

Electronic music played a huge role when I was younger. I used to collect rave flyers, stickers and posters, which I loved for their wonderful graphic vibrancy. Beautifully bold and simple, they were full of imagination and excitement that talked to me like nothing else at that time could. They offered a simple design aesthetic I totally understood, all inspired by early electronic music album cover artwork from Kraftwerk, such as Home Computer.

Florian and Kraftwerk also inspired a whole new generation of designers, typographers, illustrators, visual artists and no doubt ad folk too with their creativity.

I have always sought simplicity in my thinking and execution and, where possible, have tried to make it as bold as possible. 

On reflection, perhaps watching Turbo dance to Tour de France played a small part in the creation of my Volkswagen "Last tango in Compton" ad and National Aids Trust "Rock the ribbon" film. And perhaps the bright blue graphic motif of the iconic Autobahn album cover inspired my Financial Times economy ad or perhaps the "SHN" poster too? 

Wayne Deakin, executive creative director, Huge

I only discovered the depth and breadth of Kraftwerk’s work quite late while working for the German agency Jung von Matt. Colleagues at the time were constantly trying to convince me that this high-art electronic pop band were as influential as The Beatles. 

Arts and music have always been interconnected, but very few artists really know how to make the two work together. Kraftwerk were way ahead of their time in terms of their mastery of both images and sounds. From their roots within experimental rock to their wider global success, they brought together different art forms to fulfil a very German vision of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Their cleverly packaged retro-futurism theatre and signature synthesiser lines have inspired so many different artists and styles, making them the unlikely godfathers of American hip-hop and electronic dance music. Too many artists to name here have also created tracks using Kraftwerk’s sounds as source material. Hey, Kanye?

Their other great legacy was their early adoption of multimedia. Neville Brody, Paul Smith and many others have referenced their impact on 1970s design.

The combination of new technology layered with a rich understanding of design and cultural insight was a powerful force to leverage. And Schneider wasn’t trying to be a mainstream populist, but was driven instead by a genuine need to find new ways of expression. We can all learn a lot from his approach.

David Billing, chief creative officer, Above & Beyond 

Beyond music, they will remain relevant for all creative people as long as we continue to tread this difficult and fascinating line between the organic and the electronic. Because despite all their talk of machines, ultimately Florian and his band’s art was intensely human – funny, whimsical, fragile. It had soul. In our industry, the siren song of data, automation and production technology will always be strong. Like Kraftwerk, if we can make sure the machines magnify and amplify our humanity – rather than the other way round – we’ll be fine.

The Burning Still

One of the arguments I’ve heard a lot is that the future belongs to the moving image.

Nothing can beat a well told brand story beautifully made and 60 seconds long. The art of the moving image is practised and perfected and hoisted up high. It’s what we’ve always done. And always will do. From the hallowed 90-second director’s version to the humble digital out of home, for a lot of creative shops, moving image looks like it’s the answer. No matter the media platform, no matter the problem.

When you look at the statistics of the impact of moving image that may well be true; it still has the largest spend, it still has the most influence and it certainly has the most reach. Film then, in some form, is here to stay. But film has a weakness. It takes time. Time to tell the story. Time to get the idea to the viewer.

Time to engage.

And with attention spans falling and hovering around the nine seconds mark and the social media giants pushing for ever shorter time lengths (Facebook is currently optimised for three seconds) that’s a problem.

Enter the burning still.

In the fast-moving world where the individual is bombarded with hundreds of messages a day, the answer is to create imagery that distracts, focuses and engages. I’m not talking out of home or press ads: Clever headlines with pictures, no, I’m talking about imagery that burns itself on to the back of people’s brains like the back of a camera. A lightning bolt of disruption that sows the seed of a big meaningful idea that triggers an emotion from deep down, that summons up something in us that moves us to investigate further.

We live in a visual world. 80% of all impressions on our emotions are made by means of sight. And when the image is right, we react. Because an incredible 40% of the nerve endings are in the eye. We feel what we see. And quickly.

We’re naturally hardwired to translate images and ideas not in sixty, thirty or three seconds. But nanoseconds. Studies have found that up to 90% of information transmitted to our brains is visual and that visual information is deciphered 60,000 times faster than text is.

We don’t need moving images. We need images that move.

And proof of our need and appetite for meaningful imagery is born out through the success of brands like Instagram where 80 million images are shared each day. We all have the power to punch through. To drop the seed of an idea in the blink of an eye.

And for our industry I think there’s an emerging narrative approach – look at the power of Project 84, the big idea of 2018, the highly effective Inglorious Vegetables or Jeremy Deller’s humbling We Are Here project - get it right and you have a single defining image that can rip its way effortlessly through the big social media engines, that can be pasted onto a tabloid page and shared and screened behind a red sofa on breakfast news. A single snap shot that is bigger than the frame. A visual seed that sows a bigger story in the individual. That evokes and summons something powerful from deep within us in the blink of an eye, something that disarms and genuinely engages. Not just with the capability of entertainment or titillation, but for change.

We can look to and learn from the photojournalists of the world, the women and men who have the power to tell powerful stories through a single moment in time.

But there is a catch - these answers rely on an appetite for bravery and risk. Things that are increasingly being managed out of the creative process. And let’s not forget trust - critical in getting the end result. Because by and large you’re dependent on leveraging or capturing a moment in time. Something that can’t be re-shot or improved by a grade or edited another way. It also means the creative process is harder, boiling something down to its most effective and simplest form is a true art form.

Looking on the plus side though, the cost of execution is often lower than a production budget, and if it’s the right sort of image, the media cost will take care of itself.

It’s why I’d argue that a creative PR capability will become increasingly important to the creative process in 2019. It’s where the investment should be. And as we search for a resonant connection with our audiences, let’s not simply take the easy option and schmooze them with moving image, let’s leave an idea burning inside them.

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