Best Sessions from Day 2 of Advertising Week Europe 2018

We need to talk about neurodiversity

Diversity has been a hot topic in the ad industry over the past few years, but while we’re all familiar with the issues of gender and racial diversity, neurodiversity (the umbrella term for neurological differences such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism and ADHD) is still somewhat in the shadows. While the likes of Pixel, Marvel and MI5 are recognising and celebrating the unique skillsets of neurodiverse individuals, the ad industry is lagging behind. And that means they’re missing out on valuable untapped potential, according to today’s We Need To Talk About Neurodiversity panel, which included Huge London's new ECD Wayne Deakin, The Dots founder Pip Jamieson and Mark Evans, marketing director at Direct Line.

Disclosing a condition like ADHD or autism is a scary step, points out Deakin, an award-winning creative director who describes himself as ‘on the spectrum’; it’s a bit like ‘coming out as a gay person back in the day’. That’s why it’s important that creative companies treat neurodiversity with ‘kindness and empathy’ and for managers to take a strengths-based approach when assessing their talent; don’t expect them to be a jack-of-all-trades, as they bring very specific, individual skills to the table.

The panel flagged up some of the barriers to a more neurodiverse organisation, such as traditional recruitment processes which typically screen out dyslexic applicants, due to things like typos on the application form. Similarly, the traditional interview tends to favour ‘outward-looking’ and charismatic people, when actually the best person for the job is an introvert, who could come across as disengaged. Auticon was cited as a forward-looking company that has tailored its recruitment process by setting applicants problem-solving tasks rather than interviews as these give a better indication of ability.

Ultimately, the panel concluded, there’s more than just a social imperative for embracing neurodiversity - with the rise of AI, innovation is going to come from ‘the edges’, so it makes business sense, too. SS

Feel the fear and fuck up anyway 

Grey London’s co-CCOs, Vicki Maguire and Caroline Pay, brought their glorious brand of foul-mouthed forthrightness to the AdWeek stage with a talk entitled Why F***-Ups are Fundamental for Creative Futures, arguing that not only should creatives be celebrated for failing, it’s crucial to progression. After sharing some of their own epic fuck-ups (Maguire’s included sketching a shirt without any buttons in her former career as a fashion designer, and only realising when 50,000 of the finished articles were delivered from China), the pair shared the below nuggets of wisdom on how to make failure glorious. You’re welcome.

• Remember no-one will die (hopefully). It’s only advertising.

• Don’t have a Plan B. Because when you have nothing to lose, you can lose nothing.

• Thank the people who failed you. According to Maguire, she’s learned more from the arseholes she’s worked with than those she held in high esteem – i.e. how not to do things.

• ‘One-downmanship’ is better than one-upmanship.

• Have a ‘fuck-off’ fund.

• Hire failures.

• Exercise your failure muscles. Learn to bounce back: the more you learn to fail, the better you’ll be at dealing with it.

• Fuck ‘Imposter Syndrome’. It’s fear of failure in another form.

• Fail out loud. Admit you’re wrong. Change your mind. Be open to debate.

• Fail together. SS

 In Conversation with Sir Martin Sorrell

It was never going to be easy to get in and see Sir Martin Sorrell speak at his annual Advertising Week Europe session, CNN Global Conversation. Although the room was packed, many were left outside, unable to get in as even Sorrell had to phone in from New York unexpectedly as he couldn’t make the session in person. But the session more than lived up to expectation as Sorrell shared his industry predictions for the year ahead. The increasing power of tech companies was a hot topic of conversation, with Sorrell stating that he believed companies like Amazon and Facebook were starting to understand the responsibility they had towards their consumers, which has since led to their in-house process of self-regulation – as a way of quelling concerns and responding to demands. Sorrell agrees with this: “I would be in favour of self-regulation rather than forced regulation,” he quipped. He understood that these companies have to “invest in innovation… to maintain or grow their position” in the market, which is why they’ve branched out and diversified with the industries they’ve invested in. Even Sorrell admitted that WPP has been priced out from this conversation with his $20bn company up against their half a trillion profits, however he insisted that the role of the advertising agency has become even more important in today’s world. It’s just about making sure “that online media is measured and treated in the same way as offline media” so the same rules and regulations around it apply. Catch the full session video above. OA