Clarity, simplicity and a touch of (un)common sense.
W+K Amsterdam Head of Planning Martin Weigel on the need for less fluff and the importance of a life outside advertising.
“GIVE ME A COUPLE OF YEARS AND I WILL TURN ANYBODY INTO AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS”. I though of that quote while researching W+K Amsterdam Head of Planning, Martin Weigel.
While it seems like his impactful “Sharp posts” came out of nowhere, they are the product of years of paid dues in research and planning.
Martin took the time to talk to us about what it takes to prosper in the creative industry.
“The skills it required to make sense of a person’s life and career are not that different from the skills of a planner.”
Martin Weigel
Q: Martin, going from market research to account planning is a step, most people understand.
But how did an International History student end up in market research and then sticking around for a couple of years?
Martin Weigel: My Master’s degree involved submitting a lengthy dissertation. This had to represent original research, not the rehashing of other other people’s work. I chose to write about a much-vilified figure by the name of Sir Neville Henderson; the British Ambassador in Germany from 1937 to 1939.
So I spent my final summer at the LSE in the Public Record Office in Kew and in the British Library (when it was still housed in the original, magnificent domed reading room), sifting through dusty boxes of original diplomatic correspondence, private letters and diaries both English and German searching for clues.
It’s a strange feeling to open a box of letters and see Hitler’s signature at the bottom of a piece of correspondence.
The skills it required to make sense of a person’s life and career are not that different from the skills of a planner.
Make sense of conflicting accounts. Synthesise a vast range of data. Seek insight into people’s actions and motivations. Understand the cause of things. Use the art of storytelling to share that knowledge with others.
By the time I had completed my degree I had discovered that there was a ‘finding things out role’ in agencies called account planning. (I had always been fascinated by advertising). It was difficult to get a job without some kind of relevant experience, so I took a job in market research.
I stuck around in market research for five years. I shudder to think how many focus groups I have conducted. Hundreds. I’ve done them everywhere from LA to Lagos. The joy of it was being paid to talk to people, finding stuff out.
Five years was a long apprenticeship, but in the end an agency I undertook a project for offered me a job and I have never looked back. All those groups taught me an invaluable lesson:
living in Adland is very good at insulating us from reality. I am very grateful to have been taught very early on that the lives of the people we seek to influence can often be very different from our own.
Q: On your blog your wear your influences on your sleeves , most notably: Stephen King and Byron Sharp.
How has the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and Stephen King influenced you?
Martin Weigel: Stephen King was (along with Stanley Pollitt) the father of account planning.
If as a planner you’re not influenced by him you need to have a long hard talk with yourself.
Byron and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute are continuing the pioneering work began by the late, great Professor Ehrenberg.
I have long been a fan of Professor Ehrenberg. He was interested in how people behave, how they choose, how the buy. That after all, is what we are seeking to understand.
And his starting point was empirical evidence. Something that too many planners seem to have no interest in, or have some bizarre allergy towards.
A statistician by trade, Professor Ehrenberg made no claim to be a creative person. And yet his work is enormously liberating for the creative product. Find a copy of ‘Brand advertising as creativity publicity’ which he wrote with Neil Barnard, Rachel Kennedy and Helene Bloom.
If creatives were to read it, he’d be their hero. Imagine that — creatives holding up a statistician and marketing scientist as their icon!
Q: Mike Arauz of Undercurrent wrote, with regards of what a strategist should be/know: “The typical ‘T-shaped’ team member is no longer adaptable enough to keep and maintain their value in a market that evolves as quickly as today’s market does. The ideal evolving skill set for today’s (digital) strategy world is shaped more like an expanding square than a ‘T’.” What is your take on this?
Martin Weigel:
My take on this is that I have no idea what a “T-shaped” person is. Or what an “expanding square”-shaped one is.
With respect to Mike, my take is that there’s too much vagueness, obfuscation, unhelpful metaphor, and fluff in our business. The business strategist Richard Rumelt has defined ‘fluff’ as:
“superficial restatement of the obvious combined with a generous sprinkling of buzzwords. Fluff masquerades as expertise, thought, and analysis.”
He’s got a point. I wish our industry could get its head around the simple truth that fluff doesn’t make us sound smarter. It makes us sound dubious.
In contrast, when you read the writing of Stephen King, you’re hard-pressed to find a single metaphor. Just plenty of economy, simplicity, and clarity of language.
Metaphor is meant to make meaning more vivid. If we cannot intuitively make sense of it, it’s bad metaphor — I had to Google what a “T-shaped person” was.
It turns out that they’re a good old fashioned generalist. Hardly a radical notion. But that’s Adland for you — use six confusing words when one simple word will do.
My take on generalists is that we need them as much as we need specialists.
Stephen King put it well (note the absence of fluff and metaphor) in 1989:
“Marketing companies today… recognise that rapid response in the marketplace needs to be matched with a clear strategic vision.
The need for well-planned brand-building is very pressing. At the same time they see changes in ways of communicating with their more diverse audiences.
They’re increasingly experimenting with non-advertising methods. Some are uneasily aware that these different methods are being managed by different people in the organization to different principles; they may well be presenting conflicting impressions of the company and its brands.
It all needs to be pulled together. I think that an increasing number of them would like some outside help in tackling these problems, and some have already demonstrated that they’re prepared to pay respectable sums for it.
The job seems ideally suited to the strategic end of the best account planning skills… What agencies, and the account planners in them, would have to do is, above all, demonstrate that they have the breadth of vision and objectivity to do the job; apply ‘how marketing communications work’ thinking and R&D to a much wider area; probably bring in more outside talent, from marketing companies or other fields of communication; make more efforts to ‘go to the top’ in client contact (the one great advantage of the various specialists).”
The world has become an infinitely more complex place. Networks within networks. Systems within systems. That demands specialists. It demands thinking ‘small’ (I make no value judgement).
But, as King recognised, we still need generalists.
Q: In your essay on how to build brands in a digital age you say: “There is as much to unlearn as there is to relearn”. What are you unlearning and relearning? Why?
Martin Weigel
I work at Wieden+Kennedy, which means I probably unlearn something every single day. My years here have taught me:
that strategy and execution cannot be separated
that the creative brief really doesn’t matter
that if strategy doesn’t iterate in the light of execution you’re doing something wrong
that from-brief is better than on-brief
that making is better than talking
that being useful is better than being smart
that conversation is more powerful than Powerpoint
that chaos is good
that creatives must be let into the strategic process
that you’re better off being in a creatively-led agency than a planning-led agency
that process is the enemy of great
that clients cannot be held at arms’ length from the creative process
that maintaing a health disdain for our business is your best chance of making something amazing.
That life is too short not to work with people you respect and like.
Q: What should students and graduates, looking to up their chances of breaking into the creative/comms industry, focus on?
Martin Weigel: Learn all you can about the industry — there is no excuse not to have at least a vague sense of the landscape, the issues, and the output.
Be interesting — cultivate a hinterland of interests and passions (though please don’t kid yourself that being a DJ is at all original or hip).
As a member of the human race, you’re hopefully doing this already. And be persistent.
Q: With the way that tech, design, comms and product development are merging, what would you advise a 26 year old Martin, who, perhaps a bit fed up with market research, asked you where to work next and in what location: advertising agency, client side, tech startup, something different? Why?
Martin Weigel: I packed my bags and left the UK for New York at the age of 27. Years (and years) later, I find myself at Wieden+Kennedy. In Amsterdam. Neither of which were my goal.
So I would probably tell that young man to do exactly the same thing again. Just start somewhere.
There is truth and wisdom in the words often attributed to Goethe but in fact written by the Scottish mountaineer W.H. Murray:
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”
Life is unpredictable (and occasionally very hard). You are unlikely to have just one job, or just one career. You will not end up where you began. There is no master plan.
And so the only thing that can sustain you in your professional life is to pursue what you love.
It is the only compass. The only solace.
The only continuity. The only certainty.
Thank you Mr Weigel.
“Where the puck is going” is an interview series by GapJumpers. We ask people we like and find super interesting to share some thoughts. Whenever we find someone willing to answer our questions, we’ll feature them. If you’d like to stay updated on more stories, please follow the collection.
