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British Airways Pitching

Why collaboration is the new leadership skill – by BBH London CEO Ben Fennell

By Ben Fennell | CEO

January 29, 2015 | 4 min read

Every client I speak to at the moment is interrogating their 'agency model'. How many agencies? Which creative specialisms? What operating structure?

Ben Fennell

Oystercatchers tells us that the average UK client has 12 agencies. It's no wonder that many are looking to consolidate.

Much of a client's working week can be spent briefing different agencies, and then trying to coordinate and align their creative efforts. The process can often be slow, frustrating and expensive.

It's no surprise really: creative agencies always prefer to originate rather than import and adapt. As a consequence, good cross-agency collaboration is the exception rather than the rule.

British Airways’ head of marketing Abi Comber’s sound bite in the BA pitch briefing last year was 'better, faster, cheaper'. It was a pithy and economic expression of what all clients really want. Great work, delivered at speed, at the best price point possible. Those three simple words have burnt their way into my memory systems. They are words that I keep coming back to.

With the proliferation of media channels, things have become more and more disconnected. There are now more agencies, offering more specialisms, than at any time in the 20 years that I've been at BBH. The great irony is that as consumers have become more connected, marketers and marketing agencies have become more fragmented.

Sales and marketing diverged within client organisations, and media and creative did the same in agencies. With the arrival of specialist digital shops, clients went from having media and creative under one roof to having at least three lead agencies.

​In pursuit of ever greater specialism, things have fragmented more and more. It's time to re-connect.

Agencies need to offer their clients a pluralist and expert offering, but it has to be connected. We are increasingly talking about the concept of ‘connected specialism’.

This was the core principle at the heart of our BA pitch, and it's the organising idea behind all of the new businesses that we are launching, and all of the new talent we are hiring.

High performance teams have specialists. They work together but they respect each other’s expertise. One thing I know to be true is that if you’re trying to do someone else’s job, you almost certainly won’t be doing your own ​properly.

Our executive creative director in LA, Pelle Sjoenell, speaks very powerfully about collaboration being the new leadership skill for creative directors​ today. He explains that productive collaboration requires specialists not generalists, and that it demands very high levels of respect and trust.

​The most interesting creative businesses that I observe ​are pulling together different types of creative people with complementary skills, ​and pointing them at business problems. ​​I​t is at the convergent point between complementary creative skills that the magic is taking place most often.

In Ed Catmull's brilliant book Creativity Inc, he tells the Pixar story, and talks relentlessly about marrying two oft opposing forces: collaboration and expertise.

Balancing these two forces is the key challenge for all agency leaders in my view. If you're going to win you need to pack your business with new and enduring creative specialisms, whilst fostering an environment of collaboration and generosity.

How hard can that be?

Ben Fennell is the chief executive officer of BBH London

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