Paul Kemp-Robertson: we had a trend forecaster from a big agency who actually said, look, I've been doing this job for 25 years and this is the first time when I cannot predict with any accuracy or confidence what is going to happen in the next five years. She said, I can't advise my teenage children what careers to go into. That is how much of an inflection point we're at and how much uncertainty and volatility there is. I got seduced into the business And I kind of had this love hate relationship I love being part of it. I knew that the very best advertising. can change the world, can transform businesses, it becomes, as I say, part of the cultural conversation. But a vast percentage of it is absolute shit. is noise,
Gully Flowers: for at least a quarter century, Cannes Lions has been one of the most important surfaces for reputation in our industry. There were years when if you want a line, the phone would ring. For a lot of agencies and production companies, that was basically the new business strategy. Go to Cannes, win, get business. It's not quite that clear cut anymore. But Cannes and the wider LIONS organization, which includes the Effies, still has an enormous amount of influence on our industry. What gets celebrated, who gets put on stage, So who actually decides that? Who are the people behind the organization with that much influence of our industry? Paul Kemp-Robertson is one of those people.
Kerrie Finch: Paul is chief content officer at Lions. the group of businesses that includes WARC, effie, Contagious and Cannes Lions. Paul, welcome to Second Wind.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Thank you very much, it's really good to be here.
Kerrie Finch: you went from intern to editor at Shots, which I'm fascinated by.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Gosh, mean, yes, mean, starting as intern at Shots was one of those just sort of serendipitous moments. I kind of got the job knowing nothing about working in advertising. I got the job because I'd been to Thailand for two months traveling and my boss,
Gully Flowers: Nice.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: future boss, was half Thai. And we spent literally 80 % of the interview talking about Thailand. And then he discovered I knew nothing about advertising, at which point it was a question of, we're not going to give you the full-time job of a researcher, which you're applying for because you don't know anything. but we like your attitude. If you want to work for free, then join us and we'll pay for your bus fare. So yeah, we'll pay for your bus fare.
Kerrie Finch: And we love you. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah, so my sort of knowledge of advertising was incredibly kind of limited, but I just love the idea of shots and being able to sort of, you know, write research, discover all this sort
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of best creativity that's happening in the world of advertising and production and so on. So that's how I sort of fell in love with the industry.
Gully Flowers: Were the 90s the glory days? Because I feel like I'm slightly younger to have experienced the 90s as a professional. But even when I started my career in early 2000s at DDB, I always felt it was like the good days were in the 80s Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think the good days were probably the 70s. even yeah, I mean, the 90s was pre internet, pre mobile really.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you know, when I first joined my first tasks was to send a thousand call for entries via fax machine. that sort of,
Kerrie Finch: Ohhhh
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and shots was actually released on, yeah, shots
Gully Flowers: Faxes, I remember faxes. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: was a little tiny kind of magazine, but with a VHS cassette,
Kerrie Finch: I used to love shots.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: it was a TV show on, and it was the only way you could see other than going to Cannes. It was the only way you could see the world's best creativity was with shots essentially. yeah, I mean, it was much simpler in that sense. Advertising was literally television, print and radio. Yeah, you know, very, clear. So yeah, and also by print, yeah, print press and poster, radio, TV
Gully Flowers: Maybe some outdoor occasionally. Yeah, that's true.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and film. And I think, you know, it probably had a much larger footprint in the cultural conversation because, you know, it just It was much more prevalent because people didn't have the choice, there was no social media, was no Netflix, all that kind of stuff. So your actual entertainment and media choices were relatively limited and being funded by advertising. So there was this sense that it had to kind cut through and become equal to the things you were watching on TV and join the cultural conversation by being interesting and relevant and creative.
Gully Flowers: I remember receiving faxes sometimes. So just for the folks who aren't familiar, you would have a piece of paper with the
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Mm-hmm.
Gully Flowers: call to entry and you would have to, yeah. Well, you would,
Kerrie Finch: Paper, do you remember that? Do we need to explain paper?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: paper. Yeah.
Gully Flowers: with the fax, you had to to dial all the numbers and put it in. would print out on the other end.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I'd have to dial the number around the world and then you'd stick it in, you'd dial the number, you'd get a signal and you'd hit send and it would literally crank its way through. And then, then part of my job as well was to wait until you got the receipt, which is this kind of thermal paper, it's very hard to, where it would say
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, Wafferfan.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that it arrived, what time or what number and I had to clip that on to prove that they'd got it. I, yeah,
Gully Flowers: That's ROI, baby.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: no, I know. And I also, once we made the first issue, I had to shove. thousand VHS cassettes in jiffy bags and put the stamps on and go down to the post office with them. you know, that's life as an intern. And then
Kerrie Finch: Wow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: eventually, as I said, to become to become editor a few years later.
Kerrie Finch: So What did you learn as an editor of a creative magazine and also a production-focused magazine as well, such as Shots?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, well for me was I learned that some good ideas and things that cut through are global. There's like a universality to a really,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: really good idea. The good ideas often sort of combine something very familiar with a new twist and that kind of connects with you. That the best ideas always have some sort of emotional hook. And I think the joy of being at Shots was that it was focused very much on the craft as well as the... the idea so we could really obsess about how something was shot, how it was made, the casting, the lighting, the art direction
Kerrie Finch: Mmm. Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and so on. I think when we got towards doing Contagious we sort of tried to blend because my partner on Contagious was my boss at Shots and he'd sold the business by the time I created Contagious. I had six years at Leo Burnett in between but it was taking like the best of Shots which was finding that inspirational creativity that really cuts through and connects
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and has got a kind of multiplier effect from a business point of view. But then by being at Leo Burnett for six years, a lot of my role was looking at effectiveness and trying to tie
Gully Flowers: you
Paul Kemp-Robertson: award-winning creativity to proof point that it worked in the marketplace. And obviously you get much more close to clients and briefs and strategy by being an agency. So the difference between, you know, being in shots, which was mainly looking at the beauty and the craft and the sort of best work from a creative point of view worldwide with Contagious, we wanted to make that. connection between creativity and effectiveness and make something that was just as relevant to a brand marketer as it would be to a creative or producer within an agency. But I suppose your question about as an editor, it's that sense of having a ruthless filter, you know, because what we discovered was that, know,
Gully Flowers: you you
Kerrie Finch: Right.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: agency life, even back in the 90s before TikTok and, you know, all the rest of it, it was still frenetic. It was still very highly pressured, you know, so. people didn't have the time necessarily to look at absolutely everything. So the value of the proposition behind shots back in the 90s was that we will save you time by looking at hundreds of things, videos and ads, and we will select the very, best, which will help educate you, inform you, inspire you, but we'll cut out all that wasted time. So we'll just zero on the top 10 % or whatever. So it's that, yeah.
Gully Flowers: You're the original social feed. You are the original human algo which would provide content to people.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, but that again, it's that thing of you have to trust us, you have to trust our opinion. So I guess again, as an editor, it's like you've got to build up that reputation, back up, you know, your choices. So we always had a reason for why we selected something. And obviously, it contagious when we started with the DVD. We used to break everything into challenge solution results. So it's like, okay, what's the business challenge? You know, why is a brand investing in this? And then the solution is obviously the strategy and the creative execution, the media plan. But the difference between, I suppose, Shots and Contagious was that Contagious was obsessed with the effectiveness and the results just as much as the creativity. So from an editor's point of view, it's like we are showing you stuff that we think is breakthrough and innovative and stimulating and setting a new standard for the industry. But we can also prove that it works on some level,
Kerrie Finch: you've founded Contagious before creative intelligence was really a thing. was it filling a need?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I guess when we started it, was that sense of, you know, originally my plan back as a university student was I wanted to work in television or be a journalist. Like the idea of working in advertising was just not even on my radar. But obviously I got seduced into the business and committed all that time and shots and then six years at Leo Burnett And I kind of had this love hate relationship with the business in the sense that, you know, I love being part of it. I knew that the very best advertising. can change the world, can transform businesses, it becomes, as I say, part of the cultural conversation. But a vast percentage of it is absolute shit. It is noise, is predictable, is wallpaper, it is whatever. So I think that we had a mission at Contagious was a combination of A, we want to focus on that top 5%, the stuff that is literally putting the industry up on a pedestal. But I think the timing of Contagious was 2004. And we felt at the time that the sort trade press and the industry to a certain extent hadn't caught up with technology and audience behaviors. It was almost like the audience had run ahead of the advertiser. They were creating their own content. They were being very vocal online about brand behaviors and expectations and so on. So we just felt that the industry lacked a kind of navigation guide for the immediate future. So right from the start, we wanted to look at stuff that was outside the advertising bubble. So all these new little companies and technologies that were going to influence brands and consumer behavior and sort of look at how the industry could have this, yeah, sort of like instruction manual for making work as good as possible, but also just being kind of future fit, I guess.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, you said that, you know, was the audience that was almost leading the charge there. Do you think that the industry did catch up and what was that turning point if it did?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah, I the industry did catch up. think that we now, you know, things come in waves and we're now at a stage where we're at a massive inflection point again. I don't think the industry is necessarily caught up with the potential of AI and what that means for consumer habits, consumption habits and so on. think... I ran a training day a couple of months ago for all of the content teams at Lions, across like walk and contagious IQ, the work and so on. And we had a trend forecaster from a big agency who actually said, look, I've been doing this job for 25 years and this is the first time when I cannot predict with any accuracy or confidence what is going to happen in the next five years. She said, I can't advise my teenage children what careers to go into. That is how much of an inflection point we're at and how much uncertainty and volatility there is. So I think that the marketing industry kind of, it's difficult because it has to keep up with consumer behavior. It has to keep up with technology, but things are moving so fast and are so disintermediated and so disrupted that it's really hard. And if you look at the role of a marketer, their job has just become so much more complex, particularly if you go back to the 90s. mean, literally, media plan across four different media formats and so on. But now it's just like... do not envy being a CMO, just the complexity of it and what they're expected to learn to understand and the amount of data they've now got access to and are supposed to be able to have a handle on it.
Gully Flowers: it feels like in the last decade, the big agencies used to be fairly influential have just been demolished by big tech. I mean, over half of media budget now goes directly to Meta. or Google or these direct channels. we hear things like AI is going to take everybody's jobs. I'm curious how you're thinking about leadership in what was traditionally a creative field. I don't hear a about creativity from the big four holding companies.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think what's interesting is that you look at the companies that are dominating you know the headlines companies are going to be literally you know kind of killing it from a financial point of view in the future are all the AI companies but the Super Bowl proves that those companies like, know, ChatGPT, Claude and so on,
Gully Flowers: Claude yeah
Paul Kemp-Robertson: they are advertising in a traditional sense and they are advertising by hiring advertising agencies to create ads with real people in them. So I think my argument is that the networks, the holding companies are still using creativity as a currency. And
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think what's interesting is that a lot of big brands have recognized that creativity is that differentiator, it's the force multiplier, that there's a definite distinction or relation between creative ideas that move people, that also move the needle on a business. think we had a CEO forum at Cannes Lions last year that we introduced and we worked with Interbrand. Yeah, was when we just felt that,
Gully Flowers: We loved hearing about that. Yeah, that was amazing. 80 % hadn't been before.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah. Absolutely. And I think the idea behind that was that we, know, as a business, because we obviously represent, you know, the industry has to the flag
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: bearers of creativity for the industry is that, you know, we've so many brands and CMOs are committed to, to, you know, to committed to creativity in general, but it's that sense of we need to get the voice of the CEO and the CFO in the room, just to prove that correlation and the value. So, you know, it was fascinating that we got some really big brands in the room, like obviously with an appetite to, to, learn and be part of the conversation. We worked with Interbrand before the festival
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: on a study where they had access to five years of sort canline awards data and then they focused primarily on public brands so that they could actually get access to market data and basically we're not saying that if you win an award you're guaranteed to have know, but what they found was that of those brands that were winning awards it's part of a wider culture. a culture where creativity is valued, where creativity is invested in, there's a culture of inclusivity, there's a culture of innovation. And the actual link between those companies and their EBITDA and market cap was quite pronounced. It was something like, you know, an increase of 2 % in EBIT, 4 % market cap, and you're talking huge numbers.
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: You know, so I think that for me, it's interesting that it's the brands that are fighting for creativity because they know It's actually going to, it's their one competitive advantage in the world that's becoming incredibly difficult, diffuse, know, we keep talking about AI slop and differentiation, that sometimes having that really strong point of view with a core purpose and wonderful creativity wrapped around a strategic insight that people really kind of latch onto is a way to drive business results.
Gully Flowers: AI comes in, right? It's a democratizer. Everybody has access to the tools ChatGPT Anthropic, Claude, you know, they're going to need to differentiate. And the way you differentiate
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Totally.
Gully Flowers: from your competitors is traditionally through advertising, right? Planners thinking about how do we fit? Yes. Yes.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Ownable insights, it's ownable insights.
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Gully Flowers: America's sort of stolen the show a bit in the industry, I London has always been the, the sort of canonical place where advertising was, was done at, at an elite level. and to see Mother London, which has been an iconic. a creative shop for a long time, dropped those anthropic ads for Claude, attacking, so beautifully timed to attack a move by ChatGPT. they
Paul Kemp-Robertson: to introduce the hats.
Gully Flowers: pulled it off so well and just exposed, know, I'm big fan of OpenAI, big fan of ChatGPT. I know a lot of that team and I love the work they did with Isle of Any last year. But to see Claude come out and and do such a brilliant job of attacking their competitor
Kerrie Finch: Suh!
Gully Flowers: at some soft tissue that was exposed, I was like, yes, that is great advertising, you know, and it was for the big AI companies.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, exactly. Yes. when you talk about like London or the UK being, you know, obviously the an epicenter of amazing creativity. I remember years and years ago, John Hegarty, said something quite interesting. said like in America, there's no such thing as a tradesman's entrance. Like literally the whole culture of America is based on being able to sell and the dream, the American dream and all that kind of stuff. So like you can knock on a door and sell anything people will listen to you. Whereas in the UK, the idea of having a tradesman's entrance, I anything that needs to be sold has to go around the back and it's not a conversation that you want to be having. So he was sort
Kerrie Finch: it's something dirty yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of saying that, yeah, it's dirty, it's embarrassing, it's something that the householders shouldn't get involved with sort of thing. And it basically is an analogy to say that advertising has to be invited in, it's therefore it's got to be something that will actually give something value and so on. So I thought that was quite interesting. I think that your point about... Claude and so on was that A, they've chosen an agency, they've gone a very human route. But what also is important about that is it's the craft. So I think that's to me is where we're going to get into this big tricky situation where I think people will get so overwhelmed and bored and frustrated with AI slop advertising. Because you talk about democratization, anybody can advertise and anyone can generate AI content now. But the difference between something like Claude is the respect it shows the audience. because they've
Gully Flowers: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: worked really hard to find an original idea, an insight that cuts through an ownable kind of strategy and then craft it with precision. so you've got the tool of AI, but it's all about taste and it's that human and the deviancy as well. That's what I think why you go back to your question about agency networks and so on, is that I think it's that human creativity that has still got that capacity for thinking slightly more deviantly and actually empathizing.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: really understanding what the audience wants and needs and delivering something that, know, and we had, well, yeah,
Gully Flowers: how they're feeling, right, about that moment.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: absolutely. It's respect, I suppose, you so they're actually saying that we're trying to sell you something, we're trying to have a point of view, we want you to believe in us and choose us and so on, but we respect you enough to give you something that's precious, that feels like it's had time and energy and focus and craft put into it. We did a most contagious conference in December in London, and one of the comments was really interesting. on LinkedIn for one of the delegates was saying that it was the first time where he'd spent like all day in a single room at a conference. And he was just interested. He said, what I hadn't realized was how I instinctively rejected or turned away from the images that in PowerPoint, so clearly done by AI. He said, emotionally,
Gully Flowers: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I disengage. And he said, didn't think that as a creator because I use AI myself and I've generated AI ads. But suddenly being on the other side, I preferred
Kerrie Finch: As a punter, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: the images where people had drawn something, had a photograph of a real thing, or just words, like, because they, the power of a word kind of thing. So I thought that was quite interesting. And I think there's this supposition that, yeah, but I think there's that thing of,
Gully Flowers: Yeah, human craft becomes a luxury, right? The human touch.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: will you get to a point where ads will have, or anything will have, like, it could be an ad, it could be an illustration, it could be a piece of music where it's like got this stamp, like 100 % human made,
Gully Flowers: Yeah, right.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: or, you know, 50 % human made or whatever it is, but it will be a premium. put on human creativity.
Gully Flowers: it's all the imperfections, right? Suddenly we're thinking about what
Kerrie Finch: Mm-hmm.
Gully Flowers: is it about this piece of media that makes it human? And usually it's the imperfections. It's the mistakes, right?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes. Yeah. But when it comes to things like songs, it's the experiences, it's the life you've lived, it's like the reason, the motive for your work. Because I had an advisor to a charity called Create in the UK, which brings art into people, into disadvantaged situations to kind of give them respite and inspiration and so on. And I did a project with this musician and he was saying how he had to delve into the world of AI in
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: order to understand what the hell was going on or what he's competing against. And he basically created like a singer based on K-pop and programmed her to create all this music. he said, what terrified him the most was the AI was capable of writing a three minute song in 30 seconds. And what that did to the time space continuum.
Kerrie Finch: And also what that means will happen in a year's time, you know, as AI continues
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, yeah.
Kerrie Finch: to learn.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: But his point was, he said it created songs that were acceptable. He said, like, if you them on the radio, you wouldn't want to turn it off necessarily. But it just lacked soul. For him, it just lacked soul and emotion and that sort of, yeah, the human kind of grit, I guess, or experience. just felt wasn't there at all.
Gully Flowers: sand it off.
Kerrie Finch: Do awards still shape the direction of the industry, do you think?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: think for me the value of awards is that every industry needs a benchmark.
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: It needs that moment of reflection and congregation and a sense of like we have to set standards, we have to have a consensus, but also awards offer inspiration and validation. So I think there's a massive role for awards to play, but I think within sort Cannes Lions it's not necessarily just about the awards,
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: it's also about the conversations that happen on stage and all the meetings. around that. And I think, know, just to echo what we've talked about already, there is a connection, a correlation, a relationship between breakthrough creativity, creativity that people really kind of respond to, and marketplace effectiveness, know, impact, you know, so that could be growing a business, but also changing behaviors, and so on. And I think that, you know, awards are something that People just kind of like want to gravitate towards because it's about being best in class. It's about
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: understanding, you know, where the industry is heading. So yes, you know, you might be rewarding something that's kind of already happened, but collectively, the signals that an award show can actually, know, same in movies, the same in any, any industry,
Kerrie Finch: Mm-mm-mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you get a real sense of where that industry is heading. And, you know, one of the things that people often say about, you know, being at Cannes or going to an event like Most Contagious is it reminds me why I committed to this business, why I'm here. It gives me that motivation to keep going because I know we can make a difference and I want to do that thing. think jealousy is one of the most kind of fruitful driving forces in the business. All creatives, they see ideas and they wish I'd done that.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, and one of my favorite, I guess, awards is the, you know, creative effectiveness, exactly as you say, it's about, you know, benchmarking. But there's another new award this year, which is much more, which is specific for brands, is that right?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, because I think we wanted to acknowledge that and create a Lion for brands that have committed to a culture of creativity. You know, because I think that's something that's that when I was at Leo Burnett, you know, that's we sort of I was involved in the the seven plus scale, the ladder, you know, is one of the sort of first way of systemizing and trying to create a language and a code for how you judge the world's best creativity. and have a universal language around that. And a lot of other brands have now adopted that as a sort of formula. And I think that what this, the New Lion is there to celebrate is brands that have committed systemically, systematically to investing in creativity, building a culture that fosters creativity and... kind of consistently deliver work that cuts through, that connects with people, that drives a business forward and as I say helps us all change behaviors in those ways that the world needs right now.
Kerrie Finch: Do you think that brands are becoming more accountable, that they are becoming more risk averse? Where do you think brands stand when it comes to driving creativity forward? Because they're certainly more involved in creativity
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think that
Kerrie Finch: these days, aren't they, with all the in-housing of creativity in production?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Which is why I think a lot of brands that use, have their own version of a creative ladder will actually understand that, you know, sometimes the risk taking is associated with, you know, kind of innovation, breakthrough ideas, original thinking,
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and it actually, as I say, can make a real difference to the brand. I think, you know, we talked about, you know, the book that that we did at Contagious, the Contagious Commandments, the subtitle was about brand bravery. So was basically 10 steps of brand bravery. And I think a lot of people say, you can't have bravery in advertising. Bravery is for nurses and firefighters and soldiers. And my attitude is like, yes, of course. And thank God for nurses, soldiers, firefighters. But everything is contextual. And the bravery in our business, we used to say often, you take a picture of an award-winning team. stage at Cannes Lion with their gold, you know, lion or titanium or whatever. And we'd say that off that group of people, the bravest person is not the creative team that came up with the idea, it's the client who signed it off because their job depends on the success of that idea. But that client signed it off because they believe that, you know, innovative creativity is going to make a difference and it's going to give them that kind of leap that you won't get by doing boring conventional stuff. I think my worry is that as we get into like, you know, sort of We're awash with data, we're programmatic and it's dominant that people can create stuff almost literally from a dashboard and a desktop and pump it out, that we will start to lose that sense of risk taking and bravery, which is why awards exist, because it's there to prove that all of this stuff that's generic and predictable gets ignored, doesn't deliver.
Kerrie Finch: So, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and things like the FEs and so on, the fact that you've got that data to prove the effectiveness of cut through ideas. know, risk is relative. Some people say it's actually riskier to do wallpaper advertising than it is to try and do something that cuts through. study that Eat Big Fish and System One did about just the amount of money that is wasted,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: have to spend, I don't know what the correlation, what the exact format was, but you have to spend a lot more money with boring, predictable, generic wallpaper-style advertising to get the same effect as something that is cut through, original, emotionally engaging, because people... more receptive to it, they're prepared to watch it longer, they're prepared to share, whereas you, as I say, know, it's much more cost efficient to do something that stands out, you know, so that I think they did, John Evans was saying, the CM, who does the Uncensored CMO podcast from System One, was saying that they showed 30 seconds of a cow in a field to, you know, their focus groups, and it scored higher than the majority of English advertising at that time.
Kerrie Finch: Wow, I love that. Yeah that is a problem, that poor cow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And that's a problem. But that shows you to
Gully Flowers: Everybody.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: go back to the point of, the Mother ads for, you know, that that attention to detail, the craft, the respect, the really original fresh thinking cuts through.
Kerrie Finch: Who surprised you in their bravery recently?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that's one of the things I love about awards is a sense that like the categories and what constitutes advertising is completely redefined every year. Because I thought one of the most kind of brave and standout ideas from last year at Cannes was AXA, know, the three words, you know, which is basically where through publicist where the, you know, France's biggest insurance company. added three words to its policies, which was and domestic violence, which meant that women, yeah.
Kerrie Finch: yes, that was amazing. That was amazing.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And I think that, you know, as a commitment was phenomenal. But that idea came from that relationship between an agency and the brand, the agency really understanding, you know, the marketplace consumers empathy. We go back to that word that we used earlier. That's where, you know,
Kerrie Finch: Hmmmm
Paul Kemp-Robertson: agencies stand out because they're the ones that understand consumers better than anybody else, better than an algorithm can, better than a data dashboard can tell you. And it's just by doing that, that was a massive financial commitment
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: because they didn't have to do that. No other insurance policy company had done that. So therefore, that was an innovation. That was a risk. That
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: was a commitment. But they're prepared to do it and back it up. And now the rest of the industry is almost forced to follow them.
Kerrie Finch: forced to do it to follow suit, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: You know, so I think that brands that are prepared to, you know, kind of really, you know, I hate the phrase, but like think outside the box to really kind of disrupt, to be deviant, to sort of do things that people haven't done before. And I thought that was a phenomenal idea. And you could see it won across various categories because it really, really stood out.
Kerrie Finch: It did so well and it was moving. It was really moving to see the
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah,
Kerrie Finch: work.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah. we had the team behind it, including the client speaker, most contagious in December. what was they talked about? Because we said, can you just like everyone's seen the case study. That's a swan on the lake. We want to see the legs. We want to like what went wrong,
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: where were the arguments? How did you get to what was the process like? And they talked about the really, really tough boardroom conversation where some of the people in the room were rejecting it. You know, they gave all these reasons to why they shouldn't do that idea. But it came comes down sometimes to the passion of a marketer. who really believes and really understands the audience and has this sort of like purpose flag in the ground to go, no, we have to believe in this idea and push it forward.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, that sounds like one of those ideas that could so easily not have happened. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, was no reason for them to do it. That's what I loved about it. And it was, well, why not? You
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: know, because we have to, you know, we have to believe in the people that we insure. And this is something that is such a really kind of dark, you know, kind of scary area. But yeah, we believe in it and we want to be the flag bearers and take a stand.
Gully Flowers: And just for me, because I didn't see this one, they added three words to the end of the policy document.
Kerrie Finch: It wasn't even, it
Paul Kemp-Robertson: policy
Kerrie Finch: was in the middle of the policy. it.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah it was in the clause yeah it was basically yes it was but it was it was they just the words and domestic violence so if you were victim
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of a fire a theft or and domestic violence so by doing that it meant that women who were being you know abused particularly you know they were you know including those with young children that acts yes shelter
Kerrie Finch: could basically be insured for, they'd be insured for shelter effectively.
Gully Flowers: Wow. So it would cover them too.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, to basically
Gully Flowers: Wow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: get out of the environment that they were in to be taken to a safe house, a credited
Gully Flowers: So clever.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: shelter. So there's a brand where this is what I love about things like this is that, as I say, it's kind of redefining what advertising is,
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: what marketing is, because there you're suddenly, to me it's like, I've always said this, that it's projects versus campaigns. And
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: this is a brand almost behaving as an NGO, it's doing things. It's
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: like, this is where brands are at their best, where they start to fill. in some of the gaps and the friction points that governments and institutions don't have the wherewithal or the creativity or the financial clout to do. And this was just something that they believed in. But it means that they suddenly got to work with, you know, kind of women's organizations, with charities, with governmental institutions to actually make this physically happen. The easiest thing to do would have
Gully Flowers: And this feels.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: been to do a 12-week media plan and a commercial. Job done.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, and a commercial, yeah.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Whereas this, this is a commitment, it's time, it's energy, it's like fighting, it's lawyers, it's commitment, that's
Kerrie Finch: It's lawyers. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: what I'm saying. But they believed in the idea so much because they knew that it would benefit people that really needed help. And also it would drag the rest of the industry to have to do this. And that's what started to happen now. Competitors feel obliged to match them. So this is an actual kind of step change. This is making a social difference and a political difference
Gully Flowers: Change in the world.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: as well. And this is where people like, as I said about one of the motives of creating Contagious is that Brands, agencies, that combination can create ideas that change the world and this is one of them and that's why again it needs to be celebrated.
Gully Flowers: when you talk about creativity as infrastructure, this is where we start to play, right? This isn't like, Hey, here are the, here's the media plan or here's the channels. need to make some ads for those channels. This is bringing a creative closer to the business, we talked a lot to John Schoolcraft about this at Oatly who talked about killing the marketing. I mean, it's a bit of a spicy take killing the marketing department, but I think
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Killing the marketing department, yeah.
Gully Flowers: ultimately it's just removing silos and allowing creative people to do their work closer
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Gully Flowers: to the business, closer to the product, which I think is a really exciting space.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, and again, think we've interviewed John, he's been on our stages and so on. I thought it funny that the creative department doesn't exist, but they call it the Department of Mind Control, which is quite funny. I love the humor of that, like the irony of it. But he's
Gully Flowers: Mind control, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: right, because that's what they do. They're literally free to roam. They can go and sit in on accountancy meetings, they can sit in procurement meetings, they can go and on the factory floor. that is where, and that goes back to your conversation about when was advertising at its best is that... Often it was that anthropological nature of creatives that really delivered fantastic ideas because they did spend time on factory floors. They spent time talking to people. know, one of the most long running brand kind of strap LIONS and strategies in the UK is Audi, a four sprung dirt technique.
Kerrie Finch: Hmm. Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And that came from, you know, in BBH being in the factory in Germany and noticing it and asking what it meant, you know, progress through technology. And that basically influenced a campaign that's probably 20, 30 years old now.
Kerrie Finch: Also that they committed to doing it in German as well, which back in the day, you know, is perhaps not as radical as people, it's more radical than people realize. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Gully Flowers: I used to work on Volkswagen and they changed it to Das Auto and I was just like, that's a bit soft, isn't it? I think we all know what that means.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah
Gully Flowers: No one's going to be like, wow, the auto. Anyway.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Exactly.
Kerrie Finch: Let's talk if you had it all again, if you were starting again today, what would you avoid? What would you
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Mm-hmm.
Kerrie Finch: double down on? Where would you place your bets? What would you advise the next
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Hmm. Right.
Kerrie Finch: generation to dig in and do?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, okay. think if I was starting again on a very selfish practical level, I would have created an index fund for Contagious based around the brands that we featured.
Kerrie Finch: Right, got it.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I wish I had, I literally wish I had because we, A, we had a sort of thing about looking at startups and we picked up on things like Twitter and Tinder and, you know, all these sort of brands coming out of the US, things like Notco, Liquid Death, whatever, before they became mainstream. So I would have done that. We wrote an article about when Bitcoin was in its infancy about the idea of like there could be such a thing as branded currency. It was like if you take the concept of Bitcoin, we were saying ultimately why couldn't there be a Patagonia Florin where you your choices as a consumer are quite complicated. So therefore if Patagonia for argument's sake launched its own currency that you could buy from them. you could use that currency to buy products that they endorsed through their own credentials. So
Kerrie Finch: my god, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that if you wanted to buy clothes outside of their own category. So just that, it would just spark this idea that basically if people trust brands, there's no reason why you couldn't have, you know, kind of branded currencies. So I actually did an article that became a Ted talk on Bitcoin and the idea of, I think Nike at the time were using sweaters as a currency. If you could prove you've done X amount of exercise on your, your Nike device. it would unlock a vending machine that would give you a free product. So sweat was currency. So it was all these ideas
Kerrie Finch: my god, right. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: we playing around with that became a TED Talk. And one of the comments underneath was, I'll bet this guy's a multimillionaire now. And at the time I was writing and talking about Bitcoin, didn't quite understand how to buy one, had three kids and a mortgage and we were just in middle of renovating a house and didn't buy any. And if I'd bought even like a thousand pounds worth of Bitcoin, I'd be talking to you from a beach on an island that I own somewhere. So I think...
Kerrie Finch: You wouldn't be talking to us, Paul.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: But I think for me, like the thing that sort of cuts through is curiosity.
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think that's one of the wonderful things about advertising and being involved in brands and marketing and so on. So anyone that's like young and coming in would be keep, you know, have curiosity. You know, don't get obsessed with the advertising bubble. Like bring in experiences from elsewhere. And try and I think empathy again, thought it something that's like a thread that's come through this is that, you people watch understand people, spend time listening, talking to people. That's why I sort of worry about getting, you know, very people getting into bubbles, people getting very kind of like into their camps,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you know, and what you believe in and so on. And I think that's very dangerous. looking at young people coming to the industry, is like, don't be shy. You have a voice. You have every right to be part of a conversation. You've got just as much to say. And your opinion is just as valuable as the chief exec or someone that's been doing this job for 20 years. I think at Most Contagious, we've got this platform called New Voices. where we give people that haven't got senior in their job title, have never spoken on stage at a conference, we give them, of, you know, it's literally like it's just three-minute talk to come and just talk about something that interests them. And we were absolutely blown away. They present differently, they think differently, there's a passion and an energy. And like in terms of the feedback from the event was that was one of the highlights, was because it's just fresh perspectives and a sense of, like the future generations coming through have got really interesting things to say.
Kerrie Finch: We always ask everybody, so you've died, right, Paul, you've died. Sorry to break it to you. Sorry. It
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Okay.
Kerrie Finch: comes to all of us. What do you want written?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, exactly, along with taxes.
Kerrie Finch: Exactly, death and taxes. What do you want written on your LinkedIn tombstone?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: It's only advertising. I think ultimately that it's only advertising. It's one of those things where there are much more important things going on in the world. Yes, it's an important business, but I think I've got family members that work in education
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and health care and so on. have to remind myself that what we do is brilliant, but ultimately, there's more to it. Enjoy life, get out there and realise that advertising is not going to cure cancer.
Kerrie Finch: My thing is always it's PR not ER. So yeah, same thing.
Gully Flowers: Kerrie, I've never heard you say that. You've been holding on to that one. man.
Kerrie Finch: I used to say it all the time. thank you so much for joining us on Second Wind. You've been an absolute delight.
Gully Flowers: Thanks for staying up late, Paul.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Well, thank you for having me. And I appreciate it. I really enjoyed the conversation.
Gully Flowers: for at least a quarter century, Cannes Lions has been one of the most important surfaces for reputation in our industry. There were years when if you want a line, the phone would ring. For a lot of agencies and production companies, that was basically the new business strategy. Go to Cannes, win, get business. It's not quite that clear cut anymore. But Cannes and the wider LIONS organization, which includes the Effies, still has an enormous amount of influence on our industry. What gets celebrated, who gets put on stage, So who actually decides that? Who are the people behind the organization with that much influence of our industry? Paul Kemp-Robertson is one of those people.
Kerrie Finch: Paul is chief content officer at Lions. the group of businesses that includes WARC, effie, Contagious and Cannes Lions. Paul, welcome to Second Wind.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Thank you very much, it's really good to be here.
Kerrie Finch: you went from intern to editor at Shots, which I'm fascinated by.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Gosh, mean, yes, mean, starting as intern at Shots was one of those just sort of serendipitous moments. I kind of got the job knowing nothing about working in advertising. I got the job because I'd been to Thailand for two months traveling and my boss,
Gully Flowers: Nice.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: future boss, was half Thai. And we spent literally 80 % of the interview talking about Thailand. And then he discovered I knew nothing about advertising, at which point it was a question of, we're not going to give you the full-time job of a researcher, which you're applying for because you don't know anything. but we like your attitude. If you want to work for free, then join us and we'll pay for your bus fare. So yeah, we'll pay for your bus fare.
Kerrie Finch: And we love you. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah, so my sort of knowledge of advertising was incredibly kind of limited, but I just love the idea of shots and being able to sort of, you know, write research, discover all this sort
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of best creativity that's happening in the world of advertising and production and so on. So that's how I sort of fell in love with the industry.
Gully Flowers: Were the 90s the glory days? Because I feel like I'm slightly younger to have experienced the 90s as a professional. But even when I started my career in early 2000s at DDB, I always felt it was like the good days were in the 80s Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think the good days were probably the 70s. even yeah, I mean, the 90s was pre internet, pre mobile really.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you know, when I first joined my first tasks was to send a thousand call for entries via fax machine. that sort of,
Kerrie Finch: Ohhhh
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and shots was actually released on, yeah, shots
Gully Flowers: Faxes, I remember faxes. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: was a little tiny kind of magazine, but with a VHS cassette,
Kerrie Finch: I used to love shots.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: it was a TV show on, and it was the only way you could see other than going to Cannes. It was the only way you could see the world's best creativity was with shots essentially. yeah, I mean, it was much simpler in that sense. Advertising was literally television, print and radio. Yeah, you know, very, clear. So yeah, and also by print, yeah, print press and poster, radio, TV
Gully Flowers: Maybe some outdoor occasionally. Yeah, that's true.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and film. And I think, you know, it probably had a much larger footprint in the cultural conversation because, you know, it just It was much more prevalent because people didn't have the choice, there was no social media, was no Netflix, all that kind of stuff. So your actual entertainment and media choices were relatively limited and being funded by advertising. So there was this sense that it had to kind cut through and become equal to the things you were watching on TV and join the cultural conversation by being interesting and relevant and creative.
Gully Flowers: I remember receiving faxes sometimes. So just for the folks who aren't familiar, you would have a piece of paper with the
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Mm-hmm.
Gully Flowers: call to entry and you would have to, yeah. Well, you would,
Kerrie Finch: Paper, do you remember that? Do we need to explain paper?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: paper. Yeah.
Gully Flowers: with the fax, you had to to dial all the numbers and put it in. would print out on the other end.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I'd have to dial the number around the world and then you'd stick it in, you'd dial the number, you'd get a signal and you'd hit send and it would literally crank its way through. And then, then part of my job as well was to wait until you got the receipt, which is this kind of thermal paper, it's very hard to, where it would say
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, Wafferfan.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that it arrived, what time or what number and I had to clip that on to prove that they'd got it. I, yeah,
Gully Flowers: That's ROI, baby.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: no, I know. And I also, once we made the first issue, I had to shove. thousand VHS cassettes in jiffy bags and put the stamps on and go down to the post office with them. you know, that's life as an intern. And then
Kerrie Finch: Wow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: eventually, as I said, to become to become editor a few years later.
Kerrie Finch: So What did you learn as an editor of a creative magazine and also a production-focused magazine as well, such as Shots?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, well for me was I learned that some good ideas and things that cut through are global. There's like a universality to a really,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: really good idea. The good ideas often sort of combine something very familiar with a new twist and that kind of connects with you. That the best ideas always have some sort of emotional hook. And I think the joy of being at Shots was that it was focused very much on the craft as well as the... the idea so we could really obsess about how something was shot, how it was made, the casting, the lighting, the art direction
Kerrie Finch: Mmm. Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and so on. I think when we got towards doing Contagious we sort of tried to blend because my partner on Contagious was my boss at Shots and he'd sold the business by the time I created Contagious. I had six years at Leo Burnett in between but it was taking like the best of Shots which was finding that inspirational creativity that really cuts through and connects
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and has got a kind of multiplier effect from a business point of view. But then by being at Leo Burnett for six years, a lot of my role was looking at effectiveness and trying to tie
Gully Flowers: you
Paul Kemp-Robertson: award-winning creativity to proof point that it worked in the marketplace. And obviously you get much more close to clients and briefs and strategy by being an agency. So the difference between, you know, being in shots, which was mainly looking at the beauty and the craft and the sort of best work from a creative point of view worldwide with Contagious, we wanted to make that. connection between creativity and effectiveness and make something that was just as relevant to a brand marketer as it would be to a creative or producer within an agency. But I suppose your question about as an editor, it's that sense of having a ruthless filter, you know, because what we discovered was that, know,
Gully Flowers: you you
Kerrie Finch: Right.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: agency life, even back in the 90s before TikTok and, you know, all the rest of it, it was still frenetic. It was still very highly pressured, you know, so. people didn't have the time necessarily to look at absolutely everything. So the value of the proposition behind shots back in the 90s was that we will save you time by looking at hundreds of things, videos and ads, and we will select the very, best, which will help educate you, inform you, inspire you, but we'll cut out all that wasted time. So we'll just zero on the top 10 % or whatever. So it's that, yeah.
Gully Flowers: You're the original social feed. You are the original human algo which would provide content to people.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, but that again, it's that thing of you have to trust us, you have to trust our opinion. So I guess again, as an editor, it's like you've got to build up that reputation, back up, you know, your choices. So we always had a reason for why we selected something. And obviously, it contagious when we started with the DVD. We used to break everything into challenge solution results. So it's like, okay, what's the business challenge? You know, why is a brand investing in this? And then the solution is obviously the strategy and the creative execution, the media plan. But the difference between, I suppose, Shots and Contagious was that Contagious was obsessed with the effectiveness and the results just as much as the creativity. So from an editor's point of view, it's like we are showing you stuff that we think is breakthrough and innovative and stimulating and setting a new standard for the industry. But we can also prove that it works on some level,
Kerrie Finch: you've founded Contagious before creative intelligence was really a thing. was it filling a need?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I guess when we started it, was that sense of, you know, originally my plan back as a university student was I wanted to work in television or be a journalist. Like the idea of working in advertising was just not even on my radar. But obviously I got seduced into the business and committed all that time and shots and then six years at Leo Burnett And I kind of had this love hate relationship with the business in the sense that, you know, I love being part of it. I knew that the very best advertising. can change the world, can transform businesses, it becomes, as I say, part of the cultural conversation. But a vast percentage of it is absolute shit. It is noise, is predictable, is wallpaper, it is whatever. So I think that we had a mission at Contagious was a combination of A, we want to focus on that top 5%, the stuff that is literally putting the industry up on a pedestal. But I think the timing of Contagious was 2004. And we felt at the time that the sort trade press and the industry to a certain extent hadn't caught up with technology and audience behaviors. It was almost like the audience had run ahead of the advertiser. They were creating their own content. They were being very vocal online about brand behaviors and expectations and so on. So we just felt that the industry lacked a kind of navigation guide for the immediate future. So right from the start, we wanted to look at stuff that was outside the advertising bubble. So all these new little companies and technologies that were going to influence brands and consumer behavior and sort of look at how the industry could have this, yeah, sort of like instruction manual for making work as good as possible, but also just being kind of future fit, I guess.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, you said that, you know, was the audience that was almost leading the charge there. Do you think that the industry did catch up and what was that turning point if it did?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah, I the industry did catch up. think that we now, you know, things come in waves and we're now at a stage where we're at a massive inflection point again. I don't think the industry is necessarily caught up with the potential of AI and what that means for consumer habits, consumption habits and so on. think... I ran a training day a couple of months ago for all of the content teams at Lions, across like walk and contagious IQ, the work and so on. And we had a trend forecaster from a big agency who actually said, look, I've been doing this job for 25 years and this is the first time when I cannot predict with any accuracy or confidence what is going to happen in the next five years. She said, I can't advise my teenage children what careers to go into. That is how much of an inflection point we're at and how much uncertainty and volatility there is. So I think that the marketing industry kind of, it's difficult because it has to keep up with consumer behavior. It has to keep up with technology, but things are moving so fast and are so disintermediated and so disrupted that it's really hard. And if you look at the role of a marketer, their job has just become so much more complex, particularly if you go back to the 90s. mean, literally, media plan across four different media formats and so on. But now it's just like... do not envy being a CMO, just the complexity of it and what they're expected to learn to understand and the amount of data they've now got access to and are supposed to be able to have a handle on it.
Gully Flowers: it feels like in the last decade, the big agencies used to be fairly influential have just been demolished by big tech. I mean, over half of media budget now goes directly to Meta. or Google or these direct channels. we hear things like AI is going to take everybody's jobs. I'm curious how you're thinking about leadership in what was traditionally a creative field. I don't hear a about creativity from the big four holding companies.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think what's interesting is that you look at the companies that are dominating you know the headlines companies are going to be literally you know kind of killing it from a financial point of view in the future are all the AI companies but the Super Bowl proves that those companies like, know, ChatGPT, Claude and so on,
Gully Flowers: Claude yeah
Paul Kemp-Robertson: they are advertising in a traditional sense and they are advertising by hiring advertising agencies to create ads with real people in them. So I think my argument is that the networks, the holding companies are still using creativity as a currency. And
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think what's interesting is that a lot of big brands have recognized that creativity is that differentiator, it's the force multiplier, that there's a definite distinction or relation between creative ideas that move people, that also move the needle on a business. think we had a CEO forum at Cannes Lions last year that we introduced and we worked with Interbrand. Yeah, was when we just felt that,
Gully Flowers: We loved hearing about that. Yeah, that was amazing. 80 % hadn't been before.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah. Absolutely. And I think the idea behind that was that we, know, as a business, because we obviously represent, you know, the industry has to the flag
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: bearers of creativity for the industry is that, you know, we've so many brands and CMOs are committed to, to, you know, to committed to creativity in general, but it's that sense of we need to get the voice of the CEO and the CFO in the room, just to prove that correlation and the value. So, you know, it was fascinating that we got some really big brands in the room, like obviously with an appetite to, to, learn and be part of the conversation. We worked with Interbrand before the festival
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: on a study where they had access to five years of sort canline awards data and then they focused primarily on public brands so that they could actually get access to market data and basically we're not saying that if you win an award you're guaranteed to have know, but what they found was that of those brands that were winning awards it's part of a wider culture. a culture where creativity is valued, where creativity is invested in, there's a culture of inclusivity, there's a culture of innovation. And the actual link between those companies and their EBITDA and market cap was quite pronounced. It was something like, you know, an increase of 2 % in EBIT, 4 % market cap, and you're talking huge numbers.
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: You know, so I think that for me, it's interesting that it's the brands that are fighting for creativity because they know It's actually going to, it's their one competitive advantage in the world that's becoming incredibly difficult, diffuse, know, we keep talking about AI slop and differentiation, that sometimes having that really strong point of view with a core purpose and wonderful creativity wrapped around a strategic insight that people really kind of latch onto is a way to drive business results.
Gully Flowers: AI comes in, right? It's a democratizer. Everybody has access to the tools ChatGPT Anthropic, Claude, you know, they're going to need to differentiate. And the way you differentiate
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Totally.
Gully Flowers: from your competitors is traditionally through advertising, right? Planners thinking about how do we fit? Yes. Yes.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Ownable insights, it's ownable insights.
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Gully Flowers: America's sort of stolen the show a bit in the industry, I London has always been the, the sort of canonical place where advertising was, was done at, at an elite level. and to see Mother London, which has been an iconic. a creative shop for a long time, dropped those anthropic ads for Claude, attacking, so beautifully timed to attack a move by ChatGPT. they
Paul Kemp-Robertson: to introduce the hats.
Gully Flowers: pulled it off so well and just exposed, know, I'm big fan of OpenAI, big fan of ChatGPT. I know a lot of that team and I love the work they did with Isle of Any last year. But to see Claude come out and and do such a brilliant job of attacking their competitor
Kerrie Finch: Suh!
Gully Flowers: at some soft tissue that was exposed, I was like, yes, that is great advertising, you know, and it was for the big AI companies.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, exactly. Yes. when you talk about like London or the UK being, you know, obviously the an epicenter of amazing creativity. I remember years and years ago, John Hegarty, said something quite interesting. said like in America, there's no such thing as a tradesman's entrance. Like literally the whole culture of America is based on being able to sell and the dream, the American dream and all that kind of stuff. So like you can knock on a door and sell anything people will listen to you. Whereas in the UK, the idea of having a tradesman's entrance, I anything that needs to be sold has to go around the back and it's not a conversation that you want to be having. So he was sort
Kerrie Finch: it's something dirty yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of saying that, yeah, it's dirty, it's embarrassing, it's something that the householders shouldn't get involved with sort of thing. And it basically is an analogy to say that advertising has to be invited in, it's therefore it's got to be something that will actually give something value and so on. So I thought that was quite interesting. I think that your point about... Claude and so on was that A, they've chosen an agency, they've gone a very human route. But what also is important about that is it's the craft. So I think that's to me is where we're going to get into this big tricky situation where I think people will get so overwhelmed and bored and frustrated with AI slop advertising. Because you talk about democratization, anybody can advertise and anyone can generate AI content now. But the difference between something like Claude is the respect it shows the audience. because they've
Gully Flowers: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: worked really hard to find an original idea, an insight that cuts through an ownable kind of strategy and then craft it with precision. so you've got the tool of AI, but it's all about taste and it's that human and the deviancy as well. That's what I think why you go back to your question about agency networks and so on, is that I think it's that human creativity that has still got that capacity for thinking slightly more deviantly and actually empathizing.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: really understanding what the audience wants and needs and delivering something that, know, and we had, well, yeah,
Gully Flowers: how they're feeling, right, about that moment.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: absolutely. It's respect, I suppose, you so they're actually saying that we're trying to sell you something, we're trying to have a point of view, we want you to believe in us and choose us and so on, but we respect you enough to give you something that's precious, that feels like it's had time and energy and focus and craft put into it. We did a most contagious conference in December in London, and one of the comments was really interesting. on LinkedIn for one of the delegates was saying that it was the first time where he'd spent like all day in a single room at a conference. And he was just interested. He said, what I hadn't realized was how I instinctively rejected or turned away from the images that in PowerPoint, so clearly done by AI. He said, emotionally,
Gully Flowers: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I disengage. And he said, didn't think that as a creator because I use AI myself and I've generated AI ads. But suddenly being on the other side, I preferred
Kerrie Finch: As a punter, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: the images where people had drawn something, had a photograph of a real thing, or just words, like, because they, the power of a word kind of thing. So I thought that was quite interesting. And I think there's this supposition that, yeah, but I think there's that thing of,
Gully Flowers: Yeah, human craft becomes a luxury, right? The human touch.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: will you get to a point where ads will have, or anything will have, like, it could be an ad, it could be an illustration, it could be a piece of music where it's like got this stamp, like 100 % human made,
Gully Flowers: Yeah, right.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: or, you know, 50 % human made or whatever it is, but it will be a premium. put on human creativity.
Gully Flowers: it's all the imperfections, right? Suddenly we're thinking about what
Kerrie Finch: Mm-hmm.
Gully Flowers: is it about this piece of media that makes it human? And usually it's the imperfections. It's the mistakes, right?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes. Yeah. But when it comes to things like songs, it's the experiences, it's the life you've lived, it's like the reason, the motive for your work. Because I had an advisor to a charity called Create in the UK, which brings art into people, into disadvantaged situations to kind of give them respite and inspiration and so on. And I did a project with this musician and he was saying how he had to delve into the world of AI in
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: order to understand what the hell was going on or what he's competing against. And he basically created like a singer based on K-pop and programmed her to create all this music. he said, what terrified him the most was the AI was capable of writing a three minute song in 30 seconds. And what that did to the time space continuum.
Kerrie Finch: And also what that means will happen in a year's time, you know, as AI continues
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, yeah.
Kerrie Finch: to learn.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: But his point was, he said it created songs that were acceptable. He said, like, if you them on the radio, you wouldn't want to turn it off necessarily. But it just lacked soul. For him, it just lacked soul and emotion and that sort of, yeah, the human kind of grit, I guess, or experience. just felt wasn't there at all.
Gully Flowers: sand it off.
Kerrie Finch: Do awards still shape the direction of the industry, do you think?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: think for me the value of awards is that every industry needs a benchmark.
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: It needs that moment of reflection and congregation and a sense of like we have to set standards, we have to have a consensus, but also awards offer inspiration and validation. So I think there's a massive role for awards to play, but I think within sort Cannes Lions it's not necessarily just about the awards,
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: it's also about the conversations that happen on stage and all the meetings. around that. And I think, know, just to echo what we've talked about already, there is a connection, a correlation, a relationship between breakthrough creativity, creativity that people really kind of respond to, and marketplace effectiveness, know, impact, you know, so that could be growing a business, but also changing behaviors, and so on. And I think that, you know, awards are something that People just kind of like want to gravitate towards because it's about being best in class. It's about
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: understanding, you know, where the industry is heading. So yes, you know, you might be rewarding something that's kind of already happened, but collectively, the signals that an award show can actually, know, same in movies, the same in any, any industry,
Kerrie Finch: Mm-mm-mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you get a real sense of where that industry is heading. And, you know, one of the things that people often say about, you know, being at Cannes or going to an event like Most Contagious is it reminds me why I committed to this business, why I'm here. It gives me that motivation to keep going because I know we can make a difference and I want to do that thing. think jealousy is one of the most kind of fruitful driving forces in the business. All creatives, they see ideas and they wish I'd done that.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, and one of my favorite, I guess, awards is the, you know, creative effectiveness, exactly as you say, it's about, you know, benchmarking. But there's another new award this year, which is much more, which is specific for brands, is that right?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, because I think we wanted to acknowledge that and create a Lion for brands that have committed to a culture of creativity. You know, because I think that's something that's that when I was at Leo Burnett, you know, that's we sort of I was involved in the the seven plus scale, the ladder, you know, is one of the sort of first way of systemizing and trying to create a language and a code for how you judge the world's best creativity. and have a universal language around that. And a lot of other brands have now adopted that as a sort of formula. And I think that what this, the New Lion is there to celebrate is brands that have committed systemically, systematically to investing in creativity, building a culture that fosters creativity and... kind of consistently deliver work that cuts through, that connects with people, that drives a business forward and as I say helps us all change behaviors in those ways that the world needs right now.
Kerrie Finch: Do you think that brands are becoming more accountable, that they are becoming more risk averse? Where do you think brands stand when it comes to driving creativity forward? Because they're certainly more involved in creativity
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think that
Kerrie Finch: these days, aren't they, with all the in-housing of creativity in production?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Which is why I think a lot of brands that use, have their own version of a creative ladder will actually understand that, you know, sometimes the risk taking is associated with, you know, kind of innovation, breakthrough ideas, original thinking,
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and it actually, as I say, can make a real difference to the brand. I think, you know, we talked about, you know, the book that that we did at Contagious, the Contagious Commandments, the subtitle was about brand bravery. So was basically 10 steps of brand bravery. And I think a lot of people say, you can't have bravery in advertising. Bravery is for nurses and firefighters and soldiers. And my attitude is like, yes, of course. And thank God for nurses, soldiers, firefighters. But everything is contextual. And the bravery in our business, we used to say often, you take a picture of an award-winning team. stage at Cannes Lion with their gold, you know, lion or titanium or whatever. And we'd say that off that group of people, the bravest person is not the creative team that came up with the idea, it's the client who signed it off because their job depends on the success of that idea. But that client signed it off because they believe that, you know, innovative creativity is going to make a difference and it's going to give them that kind of leap that you won't get by doing boring conventional stuff. I think my worry is that as we get into like, you know, sort of We're awash with data, we're programmatic and it's dominant that people can create stuff almost literally from a dashboard and a desktop and pump it out, that we will start to lose that sense of risk taking and bravery, which is why awards exist, because it's there to prove that all of this stuff that's generic and predictable gets ignored, doesn't deliver.
Kerrie Finch: So, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and things like the FEs and so on, the fact that you've got that data to prove the effectiveness of cut through ideas. know, risk is relative. Some people say it's actually riskier to do wallpaper advertising than it is to try and do something that cuts through. study that Eat Big Fish and System One did about just the amount of money that is wasted,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: have to spend, I don't know what the correlation, what the exact format was, but you have to spend a lot more money with boring, predictable, generic wallpaper-style advertising to get the same effect as something that is cut through, original, emotionally engaging, because people... more receptive to it, they're prepared to watch it longer, they're prepared to share, whereas you, as I say, know, it's much more cost efficient to do something that stands out, you know, so that I think they did, John Evans was saying, the CM, who does the Uncensored CMO podcast from System One, was saying that they showed 30 seconds of a cow in a field to, you know, their focus groups, and it scored higher than the majority of English advertising at that time.
Kerrie Finch: Wow, I love that. Yeah that is a problem, that poor cow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And that's a problem. But that shows you to
Gully Flowers: Everybody.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: go back to the point of, the Mother ads for, you know, that that attention to detail, the craft, the respect, the really original fresh thinking cuts through.
Kerrie Finch: Who surprised you in their bravery recently?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that's one of the things I love about awards is a sense that like the categories and what constitutes advertising is completely redefined every year. Because I thought one of the most kind of brave and standout ideas from last year at Cannes was AXA, know, the three words, you know, which is basically where through publicist where the, you know, France's biggest insurance company. added three words to its policies, which was and domestic violence, which meant that women, yeah.
Kerrie Finch: yes, that was amazing. That was amazing.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And I think that, you know, as a commitment was phenomenal. But that idea came from that relationship between an agency and the brand, the agency really understanding, you know, the marketplace consumers empathy. We go back to that word that we used earlier. That's where, you know,
Kerrie Finch: Hmmmm
Paul Kemp-Robertson: agencies stand out because they're the ones that understand consumers better than anybody else, better than an algorithm can, better than a data dashboard can tell you. And it's just by doing that, that was a massive financial commitment
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: because they didn't have to do that. No other insurance policy company had done that. So therefore, that was an innovation. That was a risk. That
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: was a commitment. But they're prepared to do it and back it up. And now the rest of the industry is almost forced to follow them.
Kerrie Finch: forced to do it to follow suit, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: You know, so I think that brands that are prepared to, you know, kind of really, you know, I hate the phrase, but like think outside the box to really kind of disrupt, to be deviant, to sort of do things that people haven't done before. And I thought that was a phenomenal idea. And you could see it won across various categories because it really, really stood out.
Kerrie Finch: It did so well and it was moving. It was really moving to see the
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah,
Kerrie Finch: work.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah. we had the team behind it, including the client speaker, most contagious in December. what was they talked about? Because we said, can you just like everyone's seen the case study. That's a swan on the lake. We want to see the legs. We want to like what went wrong,
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: where were the arguments? How did you get to what was the process like? And they talked about the really, really tough boardroom conversation where some of the people in the room were rejecting it. You know, they gave all these reasons to why they shouldn't do that idea. But it came comes down sometimes to the passion of a marketer. who really believes and really understands the audience and has this sort of like purpose flag in the ground to go, no, we have to believe in this idea and push it forward.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, that sounds like one of those ideas that could so easily not have happened. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, was no reason for them to do it. That's what I loved about it. And it was, well, why not? You
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: know, because we have to, you know, we have to believe in the people that we insure. And this is something that is such a really kind of dark, you know, kind of scary area. But yeah, we believe in it and we want to be the flag bearers and take a stand.
Gully Flowers: And just for me, because I didn't see this one, they added three words to the end of the policy document.
Kerrie Finch: It wasn't even, it
Paul Kemp-Robertson: policy
Kerrie Finch: was in the middle of the policy. it.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: yeah it was in the clause yeah it was basically yes it was but it was it was they just the words and domestic violence so if you were victim
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: of a fire a theft or and domestic violence so by doing that it meant that women who were being you know abused particularly you know they were you know including those with young children that acts yes shelter
Kerrie Finch: could basically be insured for, they'd be insured for shelter effectively.
Gully Flowers: Wow. So it would cover them too.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, to basically
Gully Flowers: Wow.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: get out of the environment that they were in to be taken to a safe house, a credited
Gully Flowers: So clever.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: shelter. So there's a brand where this is what I love about things like this is that, as I say, it's kind of redefining what advertising is,
Kerrie Finch: Mmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: what marketing is, because there you're suddenly, to me it's like, I've always said this, that it's projects versus campaigns. And
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: this is a brand almost behaving as an NGO, it's doing things. It's
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: like, this is where brands are at their best, where they start to fill. in some of the gaps and the friction points that governments and institutions don't have the wherewithal or the creativity or the financial clout to do. And this was just something that they believed in. But it means that they suddenly got to work with, you know, kind of women's organizations, with charities, with governmental institutions to actually make this physically happen. The easiest thing to do would have
Gully Flowers: And this feels.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: been to do a 12-week media plan and a commercial. Job done.
Kerrie Finch: Yeah, and a commercial, yeah.
Gully Flowers: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Whereas this, this is a commitment, it's time, it's energy, it's like fighting, it's lawyers, it's commitment, that's
Kerrie Finch: It's lawyers. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: what I'm saying. But they believed in the idea so much because they knew that it would benefit people that really needed help. And also it would drag the rest of the industry to have to do this. And that's what started to happen now. Competitors feel obliged to match them. So this is an actual kind of step change. This is making a social difference and a political difference
Gully Flowers: Change in the world.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: as well. And this is where people like, as I said about one of the motives of creating Contagious is that Brands, agencies, that combination can create ideas that change the world and this is one of them and that's why again it needs to be celebrated.
Gully Flowers: when you talk about creativity as infrastructure, this is where we start to play, right? This isn't like, Hey, here are the, here's the media plan or here's the channels. need to make some ads for those channels. This is bringing a creative closer to the business, we talked a lot to John Schoolcraft about this at Oatly who talked about killing the marketing. I mean, it's a bit of a spicy take killing the marketing department, but I think
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Killing the marketing department, yeah.
Gully Flowers: ultimately it's just removing silos and allowing creative people to do their work closer
Kerrie Finch: Hmm.
Gully Flowers: to the business, closer to the product, which I think is a really exciting space.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, and again, think we've interviewed John, he's been on our stages and so on. I thought it funny that the creative department doesn't exist, but they call it the Department of Mind Control, which is quite funny. I love the humor of that, like the irony of it. But he's
Gully Flowers: Mind control, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: right, because that's what they do. They're literally free to roam. They can go and sit in on accountancy meetings, they can sit in procurement meetings, they can go and on the factory floor. that is where, and that goes back to your conversation about when was advertising at its best is that... Often it was that anthropological nature of creatives that really delivered fantastic ideas because they did spend time on factory floors. They spent time talking to people. know, one of the most long running brand kind of strap LIONS and strategies in the UK is Audi, a four sprung dirt technique.
Kerrie Finch: Hmm. Hmm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: And that came from, you know, in BBH being in the factory in Germany and noticing it and asking what it meant, you know, progress through technology. And that basically influenced a campaign that's probably 20, 30 years old now.
Kerrie Finch: Also that they committed to doing it in German as well, which back in the day, you know, is perhaps not as radical as people, it's more radical than people realize. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, yeah, exactly.
Gully Flowers: I used to work on Volkswagen and they changed it to Das Auto and I was just like, that's a bit soft, isn't it? I think we all know what that means.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah
Gully Flowers: No one's going to be like, wow, the auto. Anyway.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Exactly.
Kerrie Finch: Let's talk if you had it all again, if you were starting again today, what would you avoid? What would you
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Mm-hmm.
Kerrie Finch: double down on? Where would you place your bets? What would you advise the next
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Hmm. Right.
Kerrie Finch: generation to dig in and do?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yeah, okay. think if I was starting again on a very selfish practical level, I would have created an index fund for Contagious based around the brands that we featured.
Kerrie Finch: Right, got it.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I wish I had, I literally wish I had because we, A, we had a sort of thing about looking at startups and we picked up on things like Twitter and Tinder and, you know, all these sort of brands coming out of the US, things like Notco, Liquid Death, whatever, before they became mainstream. So I would have done that. We wrote an article about when Bitcoin was in its infancy about the idea of like there could be such a thing as branded currency. It was like if you take the concept of Bitcoin, we were saying ultimately why couldn't there be a Patagonia Florin where you your choices as a consumer are quite complicated. So therefore if Patagonia for argument's sake launched its own currency that you could buy from them. you could use that currency to buy products that they endorsed through their own credentials. So
Kerrie Finch: my god, yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: that if you wanted to buy clothes outside of their own category. So just that, it would just spark this idea that basically if people trust brands, there's no reason why you couldn't have, you know, kind of branded currencies. So I actually did an article that became a Ted talk on Bitcoin and the idea of, I think Nike at the time were using sweaters as a currency. If you could prove you've done X amount of exercise on your, your Nike device. it would unlock a vending machine that would give you a free product. So sweat was currency. So it was all these ideas
Kerrie Finch: my god, right. Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: we playing around with that became a TED Talk. And one of the comments underneath was, I'll bet this guy's a multimillionaire now. And at the time I was writing and talking about Bitcoin, didn't quite understand how to buy one, had three kids and a mortgage and we were just in middle of renovating a house and didn't buy any. And if I'd bought even like a thousand pounds worth of Bitcoin, I'd be talking to you from a beach on an island that I own somewhere. So I think...
Kerrie Finch: You wouldn't be talking to us, Paul.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: But I think for me, like the thing that sort of cuts through is curiosity.
Kerrie Finch: Mm.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: I think that's one of the wonderful things about advertising and being involved in brands and marketing and so on. So anyone that's like young and coming in would be keep, you know, have curiosity. You know, don't get obsessed with the advertising bubble. Like bring in experiences from elsewhere. And try and I think empathy again, thought it something that's like a thread that's come through this is that, you people watch understand people, spend time listening, talking to people. That's why I sort of worry about getting, you know, very people getting into bubbles, people getting very kind of like into their camps,
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: you know, and what you believe in and so on. And I think that's very dangerous. looking at young people coming to the industry, is like, don't be shy. You have a voice. You have every right to be part of a conversation. You've got just as much to say. And your opinion is just as valuable as the chief exec or someone that's been doing this job for 20 years. I think at Most Contagious, we've got this platform called New Voices. where we give people that haven't got senior in their job title, have never spoken on stage at a conference, we give them, of, you know, it's literally like it's just three-minute talk to come and just talk about something that interests them. And we were absolutely blown away. They present differently, they think differently, there's a passion and an energy. And like in terms of the feedback from the event was that was one of the highlights, was because it's just fresh perspectives and a sense of, like the future generations coming through have got really interesting things to say.
Kerrie Finch: We always ask everybody, so you've died, right, Paul, you've died. Sorry to break it to you. Sorry. It
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Okay.
Kerrie Finch: comes to all of us. What do you want written?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Yes, exactly, along with taxes.
Kerrie Finch: Exactly, death and taxes. What do you want written on your LinkedIn tombstone?
Paul Kemp-Robertson: It's only advertising. I think ultimately that it's only advertising. It's one of those things where there are much more important things going on in the world. Yes, it's an important business, but I think I've got family members that work in education
Kerrie Finch: Yeah.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: and health care and so on. have to remind myself that what we do is brilliant, but ultimately, there's more to it. Enjoy life, get out there and realise that advertising is not going to cure cancer.
Kerrie Finch: My thing is always it's PR not ER. So yeah, same thing.
Gully Flowers: Kerrie, I've never heard you say that. You've been holding on to that one. man.
Kerrie Finch: I used to say it all the time. thank you so much for joining us on Second Wind. You've been an absolute delight.
Gully Flowers: Thanks for staying up late, Paul.
Paul Kemp-Robertson: Well, thank you for having me. And I appreciate it. I really enjoyed the conversation.
