Loose-tight

For a period of around 20 years, from the early 70s to mid 90s, the UK was the undisputed world power in advertising. One of the great figureheads of that dominance was Steve Henry, whose London-based agency HHCL produced some of the most iconic campaigns of the time. If you lived in the UK then, you’ll remember the work they did for Britvic (You know when you’ve been Tango’d), the AA (The fourth emergency service) and Ronseal (Does exactly what it says on the tin).

One of the things that made HHCL so successful was the way they worked. As Henry explained in one of his excellent blogs: ‘You need a structure. At HHCL, we had very tight processes, because we believed in the concept of ‘loose-tight’. Tight processes meant we could explore loose – i.e. unstructured – thinking.’

The crucial point was that HHCL’s processes were designed to help produce outstanding work, rather than improve their margins by operating more efficiently.  They were all about creativity, not money.

This is in stark contrast to the model of large advertising groups, such as WPP, Omnicom and Publicis, which have grown rapidly by acquiring agencies and introducing efficiency measures – making them more profitable but, in Henry’s view, less creative and, hence, less valuable in the long term: ‘We’ve seen the ad industry become a lot more efficient – but at what cost? Nowadays, it can turn out bland, invisible work faster than at any time in history.’

It’s a familiar refrain. As advertising becomes safer, it becomes easier to ignore – and, consequently, less valuable to the brand owners who want to stand out and get people’s attention.

The underlying motivator is a fear of failure: if you have to do work twice, your profits will be damaged and your shareholders will be unhappy. Which is why nearly all advertisers and agencies now rely on focus groups to pre-test their ideas.

There are two big problems with this. The first problem is that your competitors are also testing their ideas through focus groups and getting exactly the same kind of feedback. Which means there’s a pretty good chance they’ll come up with the same ideas and solutions you do.

The second problem is that focus groups tend to be unfavourable to original thinking. It’s a truism that people feel more comfortable with things they know and understand than they do with things that are new and unfamiliar.

That same instinct for safety – the desire to avoid risk and only back dead certainties – is why most businesses are not very creative places. When looking at a problem, their first instinct is to apply a solution that worked somewhere else. Once they’ve got a solution they think won’t fail, they stop thinking and turn it into a process.

Whereas, if they carried on thinking, they might come up with a better solution.