David Angelo on Bravery, Tough Times and Hope
Chief Creative Officer of David & Goliath talks about how the recession is affecting the industry, and what his shop is doing about it.
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SourceEcreative: It’s feeling like a pretty crazy time in the ad industry right now, isn’t it? David Angelo: Yes, these are crazy times. All I can say is, brace yourself. But the way we look at it here at David & Goliath is, you can either panic and curl up into the fetal position or you can use this time to look for opportunities. That’s what challenger brands do—they look for opportunity during adverse situations. Hasn’t your agency always been something of a challenger brand itself, as its name suggests? That’s true, and it’s why we’re more or less prepared for times like these, because it’s how we work on a daily basis, in good times and bad. For us, it doesn’t feel crazy. Changing media environments and changing economic conditions are forcing everyone in advertising to adapt. How would you describe what David & Goliath is evolving to? We’re turning into a full-time softball team. We’re focusing on winning the state championship in the Ad League first, then we’re going to take it global. No, kidding aside, within the last year we’ve re-branded the agency and re-launched our positioning. For the first seven or eight years of our existence, we were focused on staying alive and growing. We’ve been through numerous management changes at our showcase account, Kia Motors, and we’ve persevered and continued to do great work for the brand. We even successfully defended the account in a review back in 2005, which is sort of unprecedented.
In the process, we’ve made the idea of bravery the filter for everything we do—for whom we hire, for the type of clients we go after, the types of resources and partners and vendors we work with, etc. We rely on this to help us determine what we’re going to be about. And it’s amazing—when you finally put it in words and say, ‘This is who we are, and this is what we're going to be,’ then there’s no turning back. You’ve launched quite a few Kia models over the years, and you’re working on a new one for next year, the Soul. There was a recent story in Ad Age about how automotive launches are being scaled down and are migrating to the web. Given this, do you think the recession will drive more advertisers, in just about all product categories, to the digital space? The current economic environment is going to compel advertisers to re-evaluate every strategy out there and every tactic they’re currently using, even those they don’t employ. Along those lines, we’re going to continue to see a portion of ad dollars being shifted to digital, as our clients try to wrap their arms around the true capabilities and the value of the media. At the end of the day, we’re going to discover that any large scale campaign will require a fully integrated effort, a mixture of traditional and digital tactics.
Your agency has done great TV for years. Yet the genre always seems to take second place to newer, more addressable forms of media, when you read about the future of advertising. If you’re talking about connecting emotionally, isn’t that still the greatest strength you’ve got in broadcast and print? Absolutely. Again, let me clarify, no matter what the media vehicle is or the style of the message, there’s always going to be the need for a big idea. I really believe this is true. No matter what it is you’re talking about, people still need to be moved by ideas. Now, TV is still the medium that attracts the most eyeballs. The way TV advertising is combined with other disciplines may change, the shape of it may change, the length of it, too, and how products and brands are integrated into it—but as long as the majority of the world sits down to watch broadcast, I don’t see anything taking its place, just like I can’t see people watching the Super Bowl on their cell phones, either. As far as I’m concerned, I still think broadcast is king. What would you tell people in the production community these days? What advice do you have about weathering these tough times? I’m sensing quite a bit of fear in the production community. For example, I’m getting more calls than ever now from production company executive producers and principals, asking what they can do to help us out. As clients continue to cut back on production budgets—and budgets overall—the production companies need to be just as inventive as their agency clients are. There’s one production company out there that’s years ahead of the curve when they started coming up with new ways to expand their resources beyond just being a stable of commercials directors, and that’s @radical.media. Frank Scherma and Jon Kamen have done an amazing job of diversifying radical’s services. They’re dealing directly with some clients in certain respects, like with Bacardi—they’re doing all the advertising for Grey Goose, and in fact I think they’re the brand’s agency of record. They’re amazing. The work that captivated the industry at Cannes last year—campaigns like Voyeur for HBO and Halo 3 for Xbox—do you feel work like that would be difficult to get sold and produced in today’s environment? Those were game-changing campaigns, for sure. I’m seeing a lot of work that feels different—long format work, for example, which appears to be in style right now. But the problem is that, to me, a lot of it feels as if it was created to win awards, not like it was designed to convince people to spend money on things that might not be viewed as necessities. And in that respect, I don’t feel like its advertising. I watch this stuff and I say, ‘What does this have to do with the product?’ I know we’re trying to engage the consumer and have a longer conversation with them, but some of this work feels like it’s going nothing to do with what’s going on right now. Prove me wrong. Show me how it’s working. But that’s what I’m seeing right now. All I can say is, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens on the Super Bowl next year, and in Cannes next June. You worked on Bill Clinton’s first campaign. What did you take away from the Obama campaign? What lessons were there for the ad industry? And if you’d been working on Obama’s campaign, would you have done anything different? Well, of course he would have won by a little more had I been working on his campaign. First of all, the Clinton campaign feels so long ago. But back then, what we were doing was considered groundbreaking. The tactics we used were conventional—broadcast TV and radio—but the message for the times was different, and well-received. As for the Obama campaign, it was a paradigm shift, and not just for political advertising but for how to position and sell brands in general. This past election was undoubtedly one of the most important we’ll see in our lifetimes, and I was just blown away by the amount of support, by the sheer force of humanity that was involved. Given the state of the U.S. and the world economies, we didn’t need another candidate with overused promises—we needed someone who could transcend politics, we needed a symbol of hope and change that could inspire a nation and get noticed around the world. We needed a brand that stood for something, one that connected with people on a human level but that also employed the latest technology, one that was able to borrow from some of the greatest brand positionings ever conceived, from Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ to Apple’s ‘Think Different.’ Barack Obama is not just another lemon-scented politician, he’s a whole new brand. He embraced a belief system and created a movement using fresh iconography—symbols that you would be proud to wear on a tee-shirt. But the most important aspect of his brand was his presence, both visual and emotional. He’s the physical embodiment of hope and change and a positive sign of a new era. Because he’s the first African American president, he sends a powerful message to everyone in American that if you do the right thing and have something to say, than anything is possible. To me, that’s a new chapter in branding—and as you can tell, I bought it. Would I have done anything different? No. I was in awe from the first time I heard him speak to his unbelievable victory speech at Grant Park. They nailed that campaign, and as far as I’m concerned it should win Best of Show in every awards competition out there, because to me, it was the true test of branding. He only had one chance to get it right—you don’t get a second campaign here—and they did it. I’m hoping it will change political advertising for years to come, because it is probably the best brand case study I have seen in my 20 years in the business. |
David & Goliath’s David Angelo on Bravery, Tough Times and Hope
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