Andrew Robertson – Understanding the balance between what’s important and what’s interesting
11/29/23 • 35 min
This week on The MCA Prodcast Pat Murphy talks to Andrew Robertson, President & CEO of BBDO Worldwide where he’s worked with some of the world’s biggest brands including Meta, AT&T, FedEx, GE, Mars Inc., PepsiCo, SAP and Wells Fargo. He has been inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame and currently serves on the Board of Hope Funds for Cancer Research.
Andrew reflects on his first experience in sales – selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door in his local town. What lessons about sales and marketing did he take from that experience and can they be applied to selling on a global stage (rather than in the customer’s front room)?!
Andrew reveals what makes a successful advertising company; the mantra at BBDO is ‘it’s all about the work’ – that if you have the best talent then the work will speak for itself. Andrew is unquestionably a people person and he also explains the importance of maintaining great relationships with those you work with; “You have to love your clients. If you choose to love your clients, generally, what you'll find is they'll love you back.”
Andrew talks about the seismic shifts he’s witnessed in our industry – the invention of the internet, the advent of smartphones and now the arrival of generative AI. Andrew foresees a future where the ‘craft’ will be in knowing what to ask for in order to execute an idea in the best possible way. However, he doesn’t believe machines will ever be able to fully replace creativity as AI can only model on what already exists. “At some point, you have to have a leap, you have to have an idea”, he says. Andrew also considers the ‘landmines’ we’ll need to watch out for along the way, such as IP issues and bias.
Pat and Andrew also discuss the role that humour can play in advertising and how certain subjects have, rightly, become no-go zones. That said, humour can still be incredibly effective in advertising – even at communicating a serious message. Andrew highlights how stand-up comedians were employed to great effect in BBDO’s powerful Sandy Hook campaign, where they delivered shocking lines from past mass shooting perpetrators.
See Andrew’s favourite ad: The Economist – On the Edge of a Conversation
Hosted by Pat Murphy
Connect with Murphy Cobb and The Prodcast:
Murphy Cobb & Associates | The MCA Prodcast | LinkedIn | Instagram | Email
This week on The MCA Prodcast Pat Murphy talks to Andrew Robertson, President & CEO of BBDO Worldwide where he’s worked with some of the world’s biggest brands including Meta, AT&T, FedEx, GE, Mars Inc., PepsiCo, SAP and Wells Fargo. He has been inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame and currently serves on the Board of Hope Funds for Cancer Research.
Andrew reflects on his first experience in sales – selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door in his local town. What lessons about sales and marketing did he take from that experience and can they be applied to selling on a global stage (rather than in the customer’s front room)?!
Andrew reveals what makes a successful advertising company; the mantra at BBDO is ‘it’s all about the work’ – that if you have the best talent then the work will speak for itself. Andrew is unquestionably a people person and he also explains the importance of maintaining great relationships with those you work with; “You have to love your clients. If you choose to love your clients, generally, what you'll find is they'll love you back.”
Andrew talks about the seismic shifts he’s witnessed in our industry – the invention of the internet, the advent of smartphones and now the arrival of generative AI. Andrew foresees a future where the ‘craft’ will be in knowing what to ask for in order to execute an idea in the best possible way. However, he doesn’t believe machines will ever be able to fully replace creativity as AI can only model on what already exists. “At some point, you have to have a leap, you have to have an idea”, he says. Andrew also considers the ‘landmines’ we’ll need to watch out for along the way, such as IP issues and bias.
Pat and Andrew also discuss the role that humour can play in advertising and how certain subjects have, rightly, become no-go zones. That said, humour can still be incredibly effective in advertising – even at communicating a serious message. Andrew highlights how stand-up comedians were employed to great effect in BBDO’s powerful Sandy Hook campaign, where they delivered shocking lines from past mass shooting perpetrators.
See Andrew’s favourite ad: The Economist – On the Edge of a Conversation
Hosted by Pat Murphy
Connect with Murphy Cobb and The Prodcast:
Murphy Cobb & Associates | The MCA Prodcast | LinkedIn | Instagram | Email
Previous Episode
Anastasia Leng – The Measurability behind the Magic of Creativity
This week on The MCA Prodcast Pat Murphy talks to Anastasia Leng, Founder & CEO of CreativeX, a technology company that powers creative-decision making for the world’s best brands by helping them to measure creative efficiency, consistency, representation, and impact across all creatives worldwide.
In this episode Anastasia talks us through the birth of CreativeX and how it works to measure creativity against a number of benchmarks – providing data in both pre and post-production. “I don't think you can do one without the other”, Anastasia says. Post production data can evaluate the success of a campaign and inform content decisions going forward, whilst pre-production data ensures your content teams are all ‘marching to the beat of the same drum’.
Anastasia talks us through how CreativeX’s tech works; tagging content with micro-data, then grouping tagged content together under themes such as format, content, accessibility, suitability for certain platforms etc. This can then be correlated with performance data to see which tags led to greatest success. You could discover how many of your ads contained dogs, for example, or how diverse your cast has been, or how consistent your brand identity is across campaigns and so much more. This data can then be assessed to see how the campaigns performed in terms of building brand awareness and ultimately, increasing sales.
One element that is hard to measure is creative excellence, as the barometer or measure of success will be different for each brand. However, Anastasia says there are macro themes that tend recur across the board: “ads that have a combination of representing the brand well, cutting through with consumers and ultimately achieving business impact.”
Anastasia also shares her perspective on how the jobs market might change with the advent of AI, and what life lessons she plans on passing on to her children. An aspiring fiction writer too, she reveals how she regularly exercises her writing muscle.
Watch Anastasia’s favourite ad: Snowbird – 1 Star
Hosted by Pat Murphy
Connect with Murphy Cobb and The Prodcast:
Murphy Cobb & Associates | The MCA Prodcast | LinkedIn | Instagram | Email
Next Episode
The Best of Season 2
To mark the end of a really successful season 2, we bring you a very special episode of The MCA Prodcast as we look back on some of our favourite bits of advice that guests have given us over the last few months.
Pat Murphy has been lucky enough to sit down with some of the real shining lights in our industry and we’ve covered so many different topics; from diversity and inclusion, to AI, virtual production, and the seismic shifts that have happened in advertising production in recent years.
How important is storytelling in advertising and how heavily should brands rely on data to inform their content decisions? Where in the process of devising your next campaign should you begin to think about DE&I? Can AI generated content be copyrighted?
Answering these questions and many more are:
· Rishad Tobaccowala - Author, Speaker, and Podcaster
· Efrain Ayala - Global Creativity and D&I Director at Reckitt.
· Andrew Robertson - President & CEO of BBDO Worldwide
· Nick Johnson - Global Head of Tech, Media & Comms at Osborne Clarke
· Melania Kulczycka - Client Director at VuFinder Studios
Season 3 of The MCA Prodcast will be landing in early 2024!
Hosted by Pat Murphy
Connect with Murphy Cobb and The Prodcast:
Murphy Cobb & Associates | The MCA Prodcast | LinkedIn | Instagram | Email
The MCA Prodcast - Andrew Robertson – Understanding the balance between what’s important and what’s interesting
Transcript
Pat Murphy
Hi and welcome to the MCA Prodcast, your fix for everything innovative in advertising production. I'm Pat Murphy and I've been working in this industry for more than 35 years now. I've seen a lot of changes, but know there's plenty more around the corner. Each week on the podcast, you'll get to hear from one of the movers and shakers who are shaping the world of advertising for the future and we'll dive into some of the key challenges facing our sector today and
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