Creative leadership in advertising ‘in peril’ as tech giants lure talent, says agency founder

Creative leadership in advertising is “in peril” because technology companies are paying “a fortune” to poach talent, according to acclaimed ad agency founder Nils Leonard.

Speaking after a sold-out event in Dublin on Thursday, the award-winning British creative said “amazing young talent” was coming into the industry still, but “not enough” people were in a position to establish their voices because they were leaving agencies for tech platforms instead.

“They’re hiring the best people, paying them a fortune and then rendering them useless. That’s a punchy thing to say, but I look at the creative leadership that would have been in London and almost all of them now work at some of the platforms,” he said.

“That’s great, but they’re never going to strike out from there and start their own company. I just think that’s a bit of a problem for our industry.”

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Mr Leonard became an influential figure in advertising after a much-garlanded spell as chief creative officer of the WPP-owned agency Grey London, also becoming its chairman at the age of 32.

He then caused an industry stir by breaking away in 2016 with two colleagues — Lucy Jameson and Natalie Graeme — to form the creative studio Uncommon, which has won plaudits for its work with clients such as ITV and British Airways.

He was speaking to The Irish Times after his lively, motivational address to an “in conversation with” event jointly organised by the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) and the Marketing Society of Ireland.

Trying to convert “passenger clients” can be a waste of time, Mr Leonard told the agency creatives and executives present.

“We have this thing, ‘later means never’, it’s my Zoom backdrop. It’s just true. When a client goes ‘we love that idea, we love it, we’re going to do it next year’, no, you’re not ... it’s cool that you’re not, but you’re not.”

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The reputation of Uncommon — which sold a majority stake to Paris-headquartered Havas in July and has since opened a New York office — means it is in a position to turn down clients who are hesitant about saying yes to strong creative work.

“Some clients have no desire to be famous at all, they kind of want to glide through, and that’s fine, it’s just not necessarily for us,” said Mr Leonard.

“I think we have to be more protective of our time as an industry,” he later added.

“There’s not many of us. It takes a lot of energy to do what everyone does. If you focus it in the wrong place, basically it’s like you’re invisible.”

Equally, there is no point agencies blaming clients for rejecting their “highly creative idea” if they haven’t made clear that it is their creativity that is for sale, he said.

“The word ‘client services’ has crept it, where did that come from? Client services, that’s a really, really different thing to creativity. And actually there’s a lot of bulls**t.”

Advertising itself, meanwhile, can be prone to sniping from “a lot of haters”, Mr Leonard said.

“I’d love to believe that the creative industry is lovely, but we’re not really. I think we struggle with other people rising and falling. I think we’re not great with other people trying stuff, though we say we are.”