Carlo Cavallone on The Death of The Big Reveal

The good old, big old “Ta-dah!” moment does not work anymore. It’s soon to be a relic of the past. So forget the drum-rolls, forget the proverbial white rabbits coming out of the proverbial hats. Times are changing and if they haven’t already, they certainly will soon.

It’s almost 2015 and we all have to understand that we live in a new, professional and cultural context where – thank God, I’d say – the walls between clients and agencies are falling and some of the old school techniques that have been used for so many years are destined not to work anymore.

Surprises, which often end up being surprising for the wrong reasons, will soon belong to the past. Finally, the interaction between the different parts involved in an advertising project are becoming more and more a “person-to-person-kind-of-thing” guided by straightforward and impromptu conversations. And more and more, in the future of advertising, we will witness the spectacle of humans talking to humans, using human terms, trying to do what’s humanly possible to solve problems and, eventually, ending up doing something good together.

It will be a gradual process: Broadway-style showmanship and big reveals will still be employed in advertising presentations but, just a gut feeling, they will be more and more met by silence and scepticism because, in this day and age, we don’t like to be “sold” anything. We don’t like histrionics; we don’t want to be a captive audience – we just want to be told things as they are, we want the truth and we want to be an active part of the process, whatever the process might be.

And it was about time. Actually, we are just where we should be. It’s where we normally are when it comes to other aspects of our life.

I’ll use an analogy – maybe not completely fitting and maybe a bit trivial, but I think still quite appropriate – would we like it if our plumber, one month after we briefed him, showed up, gave us a little talk and then proceeded to open a curtain and “ta-dah”, surprised us with our new bathroom? No, what happens with a plumber is that we actually sit with him, quite often, to discuss every detail, every tile and fitting and faucet, and only after he’s provided us with a rough sketch of what he plans to do and we have contributed with our comments, do we let him get on with his work (and sometimes still visit the construction site to check in on him, have a cup of coffee and change our mind about the tiles).

In other words, in our life we generally prefer to collaborate. It comes naturally to us. We want to be collaborative, and want others to be collaborative with us, to achieve a better result.

And collaboration is a beautiful thing. I’d say it is the best of all the possible ways of working. Why? Because collaboration is a very powerful tool to set any relationship on the right course. It’s a great starting point when we, the agencies, let go of the idea of being the ultimate experts and are humble enough to acknowledge, from the get go, that clients bring a hell of a lot of knowledge to the table. They know and will always know, a lot more about their brand, and about what works and doesn’t work for it. When we get this and are open to it, we create the premises for a successful process.

On top of that, collaboration is fun, definitely more fun than double-guessing what someone might like or approve, more fun than banging our head against the wall because we don’t have all the info we need, and, at the other end, more fun than waiting for someone else to come up with a miraculous solution to the problems of your brand.

Collaboration also makes for a more exciting internal and external process – more interesting reviews, presentations, day by day exchange and it creates a system in which everyone feels equally invested in the work: agencies and brands alike.

Does collaboration work? In my experience, it does, really well.

Recently, we worked with Smirnoff on a project for the African market (titled The Double Side). From day one their global marketing team, the local client in Africa, 72andSunny Amsterdam and RPM in London worked together as a collective team – we were together on a full-immersion research trip, together during each phase of the development of the strategy and together throughout the development of the creative. All parties were constantly adding to the work with insights, suggestions, ideas and local knowledge. No information was withheld and there was no sit-back-and-see-what-happens attitude. At every step, the work was growing and becoming better.

Needless to say, that the work resulting from the collaboration is what we all consider one of the best pieces of work the brand, and we, have done recently. It has been received successfully internally and externally and, most importantly, it has been particularly effective for the brand.

There were no surprises along the way, good or bad, no strokes of genius, no dramatic reveals, but there was always a lot of momentum around the project. Good, positive energy. The sense that everybody was going in the same direction and each member of the team was doing something to make the project successful, without ego involved.

And please note, collaboration, of course when interpreted well and when the people collaborating are talented, doesn’t mean that only the expected solutions make it to the table or that everybody will end up agreeing on the lowest common denominator solutions. It doesn’t inhibit free thinking and big ideas; it just makes them grow in an environment that is actually way better prepared to nurture them.

Finally, collaboration and a shared-responsibility approach put an end to one of the most common games you can be part of in advertising: the “blame game”. If we are working together and you are honest with each other we’ll waste very little time pointing fingers at someone else, trying to pass on blame because something didn’t work. We will use most of our very precious time working and, eventually, celebrating, together, a good result.