Seeing Google differently: We have the opportunity to change the world, says new head of design Patrick Collister

Digital technology has put advertising in its strongest ever position to change the world, according to Patrick Collister, the new head of design at Google.

“Howard Luck Gossage wrote in the late 1950s that the only fit occupation for a man was to change the world,” says Collister. “I think in our business now we actually do have the opportunity to change the world, and that’s through digital media.”

Collister is well qualified to have an opinion; he’s worked above-the-line, below-the-line, been sacked, misunderstood and emerged successful. He has been in the business for 25 years and enjoyed stints at Ogilvy & Mather and EHS Brann (now Havas EHS), as well as setting up his own business, Creative Matters, and editing and publishing Directory magazine. He’s worked through huge changes in the industry brought about by digital and he’s remained determined to stay in on the act.

“Let’s not beat around the bush; the reason I moved from above-the-line to below-the-line is because I got fired,” Collister explains. “I partly got fired because I was misunderstood; at Ogilvy in the 90s I set up the first ever digital creative unit of any agency in London with Alun Howell, an incredibly clever copywriter who’s still at Ogilvy.”

Collister says their primary aim in the earlier digital days was functionality, design and using digital to build brand profile. But not everybody got it.

“At the time Martin Sorrell was really interested in what I was doing. When we did Guinness’s first ever website he rang me up to tell me he thought I’d made a mistake, it was all wrong.

“For him, the internet was all about transaction, so he wanted to know why the website wasn’t selling Guinness sweatshirts, glasses, etc. I had to explain to him how incredibly complicated and expensive it is to set up systems for receiving currency online.”

Rather than opt to take British and European currency only, the digital creative team instead went for the brand experience in an attempt to avoid “pissing off a global audience”. For Collister, digital has changed the structure of marketing, but he doesn’t believe that every agency is taking the message on board, needlessly throwing money and resources away in the process.

While direct marketing viewed digital as an opportunity to extend the goal of transactions, Collister says marketers needed to understand the importance and benefits of digital brand building in the long-term instead of just old-fashioned direct selling.

“I developed vertical line theory – the line still exists but it’s no longer horizontal, it’s no longer above and below-the-line. It’s vertical,” he continues. “You move it left and right, and the axes are from transaction on the left all the way through to emotional response on the right.

“My theory is that any piece of communication now needs to do three jobs: first of all it needs to be supportive of and build the brand; secondly, if it’s picked up by any of your existing customers, then it needs to be a retention device; but thirdly, it also needs to be acquisitive. Direct marketing saw all of those three things as completely separate silos.

“There would be wonderful brand advertising happening from Abbott Mead Vickers but the direct marketing would be handled by a completely different agency with different messages, typefaces, type styles, tones, all the rest of it. So I spent a couple of years saying ‘look guys, you are wasting a huge amount of money’. In fact, most brands in the UK are still doing that, wasting huge sums of money.”

Chief executive at WPP Martin Sorrell recently accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of being “media owners masquerading as tech companies”, adding that he predicted WPP would spend more on advertising with Google than with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire by 2014. With the hiring of Collister, Google is investing more energy into its creative thinking and he seems to agree with Sorrell.

He began his new role at Google last month, where he was understood to be the replacement for Google’s head of design Irene Au, who handed in her notice to the company in June last year. But Collister’s not so sure.

“I think there’s been a bit of a misunderstanding about this,” he says, “in America I was reported as being the head of design for Google, and Google did have a head of design but that’s somebody who’s completely responsble for the way Google pages look online, responsible for the way the software programmes open up – that’s definitely not me, that’s a very big job and I couldn’t design my way out of a paper bag. Jingles and slogans is my background.

“My role here is really to bring ad thinking to what is essentially a media agency. Google is filled with some incredibly clever people, but they look at platforms and they look at the way different media opportunities knit together.

“They’re aware that you still need to have ideas to fill these spaces, whatever they may be, and they’ve got people inside the building who are quite capable of filling it. My role is to come here and actually fill it with stuff that is inspiring and is best in class. Now that’s not to say that Google is turning into an ad agency, because it’s not.”

For someone so fired up about digital, he is surprisingly upfront about his technical shortcomings, admitting that using O2 YouTube videos on how to outsmart your smartphone became a great lesson in how brands could use technology to offer services and develop relationships with customers that weren’t just about selling something in the moment.

He also offers up some strong moral fibre, bordering on vigilante, when it comes to advertisers’ responsibility to the public and how technology has enabled creatives to bring accountability to the public domain. An iPhone app from Oslo agency Try – which allowed users to scan and upload the chemicals in Norwegian beauty products suspected to be harmful to users to a warning website – was one of Collister’s favourite pieces of work submitted to the Directory.

“As an advertising guy I believe I have a moral responsibility to my clients to tell them not to do evil,” he explains. “And here are big companies like L’Oreal and Revlon doing evil because they’ve been motivated by profits rather than actually by building brands through better products that consumers really want.

“[The app] forced the cosmetics companies to change their behaviour. They’re now modifying the nature of their products, taking out the damaging chemicals – which they should have done in the first place. What I really love about it is that now clever people inside advertising agencies are coming up with platforms that are making brands behave themselves.”

Collister counts a Goldman Sachs incident as one of his favourite examples of moral creativity – an individual with a simple idea inspired by the Hollywood stars map refused to accept big bonus plans at the bank while the rest of the world struggled to cope with the financial crisis.

“This guy came up with a map: where the bankers live,” he says. “The great thing about being a banker was that you were invisible, you were behind gated walls. What he did was he exposed these people, and so bricks started going through people’s windows.

“They didn’t like this at all and, of course, the site got taken down and injunctions were taken out. But actually what had happened was really, really important, which is that a group of people who thought they were inviolate discovered that they weren’t; they were accountable.

“As a result of that, in the UK Goldman Sachs agreed that it would reduce the size of its bonus pool and in the UK it has created – or they said it was going to create, I’ve yet to see evidence of it – a billion dollar scholarship fund for education programmes. One creative guy had one idea and it brought this bank down onto its knees asking for forgiveness.”

Getting back to current business, Collister’s next big idea concerns data. While he believes, as most now do, that data will be a central part of future marketing strategies, he’ll happily admit he doesn’t yet know what any of it means. He does have a concept though, and his plan now is to define and refine it.

“I’ve got this concept of branded data; big data itself is a meaningless phrase, what it just means is that there’s so much information we don’t know where to start looking for it,” he explains.

“I haven’t actually wrapped my brain around how analytics work but I can tell you that sitting on my desk there are three people with PHDs and I know that between us what we’re going to be able to do is come up with a tool that allows us to be able to look at data in such a way that it allows us to extrapolate from it information that is relevant to a brand and its personality,” he adds.

“I don’t mean relevant to customer behaviours but actually to the brand personality, and from that we’re going to be able to develop insights that will be incredibly motivating. At the moment it’s just kind of a hazy vision. In the fog of my rather feeble brain I can see a shape, but that shape is going to be informed by data, I know it.”

Google requires big ideas and innovation to stay ahead of the big data game. With 90 per cent of all the data stored in the world being created in just the last two years, only time will tell how many of the big opportunities Collister can transform into big results.

Update

Subsequent to publication, Patrick Collister asked The Drum to publish the following statement.

"I have no evidence that either L'Oreal or Revlon, named in the article, have ever mistakenly or knowingly sold products with ingredients that could be deemed 'harmful'. It was not my intention to suggest that either of these brands have at any time ever been associated with practices that in any way might be considered to the detriment of their customers.

"What I did want to convey was that the 'Hormone Check' app from TRY Oslo did have the effect of forcing some manufacturers in the cosmetics industry in Norway to modify their products, which had to be of benefit to the long-term health of their brands as well as to that of their consumers. I would like to apologise to L'Oreal and Revlon for any inference that they have been less than responsible in any way.

"I would also like it known that I am making this apology of my own accord."