Nils Leonard, founder of Uncommon - Transcript

Rory Sutherland

So welcome back everybody.
And it's my total joy to welcome onto the show Nils Leonard.

Nils Leonard

Hello.

Rory Sutherland

Many of you will have heard of Nils, or be aware of him.
I think he perpetrated a brilliant piece of genius in
not only founding Uncommon Creative Studio.
But rather brilliantly calling it a creative studio.
With a clear implication that we're an organisation that makes things.
I think that was utterly genius in terms of differentiation.
But there'll be a load of fanboys watching
who'll want to know your journey. And where you came from.
And how you got to where you are now.
And particularly the kind of insights you had along the way.
So I don't always do this on the show, but I would love a nice
sort of four minute intro to your background in the industry.

Nils Leonard

Four minutes. Let's go.
Okay, so I didn't go to university.
I moved out of home when I was very young.
And I literally had this crush on advertising and what I thought it was.
And in my mind, I think I'd have been an artist
if I'd have had parents that thought we could make money from art.
We didn't understand. They were very, very working class, all the above.
And I thought, well, advertising.
I'd been to the cinema, saw Calvin Klein ads at the time.
I was like, someone.
Someone, somewhere is going on those shoots and doing that.
So I went to the Job Centre Rory. And I was like, advertising, please.
And she was like, dusting off the ‘A’.
And she was like, I've got one, I've got one. And it was at Lintas.
And so I turned up.
Got a job as a junior in the production design department in 1990.
Like, I don't know, something. And started there. That was it.
I got lucky enough, turned up 2.5 hours early for the interview and got that job.

Rory Sutherland

That’s probably the fantastic result
that Lintas was possibly so old fashioned.
They still use the Job Centre.

Nils Leonard

Correct.
So mad luck.
Work my way into design.
The head of design there, a guy called Simon Fairweather,
was an amazing man.
He didn't just teach me sort of design and all that stuff.
He taught me really how to live.
Had to go to restaurants, what a meeting was.
Because you don't know these things?
And so he taught me all that sort of stuff.
But really he taught me, I think. A kind of thirst for a kind of life.
Where you pursued creativity.
Where craft was everything.
Where it was important enough
that you could yell and throw things around.
That was back in the day. You know what I mean?
And it was like, oh my God.
I sort of got educated by this borderline artist
who was living like that.
Anyway. Then spent many years in the ad industry.
And it worked out that designers,
whether I liked it or not, and however good I might be. Were sort of below stairs.

Rory Sutherland

It was completely bizarre, by the way.
But there was this arbitrary hierarchy. Correct.
Which for some reason.
You know, you would actually reject an advertisement
by simply saying, well, it's just design.

Nils Leonard

Yeah. Well, just get them to color it in.
And I was like, well, if it's just colouring. You know, anyway.
So realised that until I made my way out of there.
I wouldn't really be able to to fulfill the sort of career I wanted.
So I started making my own ads.
Wound everybody up at Abbott Mead Vickers by just making my own work,
then PR-ing my own work.

Rory Sutherland

So you're working at Abbott Mead.

Nils Leonard

So I chased Paul Belford.
So Paul Belford, the king of print.
Who made print ads that didn't look like print ads. There’s a theme here.
You know, he was making work
that looked like an egg carton.
Or a piece of graphic design from the ‘60s.
That things didn't look like that.
And everything else in the industry had a logo bottom right.
And there was these sort of visual conundrums.
It was kind of annoying.
And Paul was making what I considered to be incredibly modern work.
And I chased him wanting to work with him, you know, wanted to learn.
And I had this sort of phrase
which is sort of have a hero and then kind of kill them.
And what I mean by that is. Because you go and work with people,
you have a crush on them, and you're like,
I need to work with that person.
And you get the good bits, and then you're like, oh, no.

Rory Sutherland

Funnily enough. This is exactly my advice to people, which is in the in the workplace,
find out what your boss is shit at and be good at that.

Nils Leonard

Basically that. Yeah.
And it becomes a magnet to ambitious people.
I think that because they're kind of like, hang on a minute.
There's a lot of stuff here. They don't do good.
And I'm like, right, I can chase that.
And what I realised is, in the nicest possible way.
There was like a whole form of leadership.
There was a whole form of working with people.
There was this whole thing called digital starting to happen.
And the evolution of film.
And I thought, I need to get into this.
And also, by the way, PR like there was a hierarchy. At Abbott Mead,
everyone was on the seventh floor like killers.
You would come out the seventh floor lift and be like,
you'd feel like a deer about to get ruined by these slightly drunk,
you know. And it was like that sort of attitude.
And I thought, Christ, I've got to ask these people, permission.
You know, and that's how I felt.
And I struggle with this, like dependency is one of my worst things.

Rory Sutherland

No, this is absolutely right.
It's very strange because it's
not only the problem of hierarchy.
It's also a problem in problem solving.
Because the people at the top of the hierarchy
always define the problem in their own terms. Correct.

Nils Leonard

Or the lack of problem because they like it, like it is.
And so I was like right okay.
And so I started making my own ads, shot my own ads.
PR’d, my own ads. Which was, I think that was a seminal moment for me.
So Creative Review was the bible of the time.
If you made it into Creative Review, you were somebody.
And I kept opening it and seeing Abbott Mead Vickers 
working there and being like, I want my work in there.
So I just made a load of ads myself for a type foundry called Atomic.
And then rang Creative Review. Right.
There was a number in the front. Back in the day.
Guy called Gavin Lucas picks up the phone.
And I realised journalists are just
people like us, sat around waiting for news.
That's what they do.
And so Gavin goes, oh hey Nils, good to meet you.
And I was like, dude, can I send you this stuff?
He’s like, yeah. Next thing I know, massive DPS in Creative Review.
A couple of the guys from the seventh floor storm downstairs.
What's this?
I was like, well, I made them.
They were like, you know, you have to tell us.
I'm like, well, I don't actually, they're kind of mine. So.
And that was when I realised there's a bunch of people that despite
saying they everyone wants to win. And despite
this whole talk of creative tabulation, really don't want you to change.
And they want to keep you where you are.

Rory Sutherland

These people were angry with your.

Nils Leonard

With me just getting myself into Creative Review.
They didn't understand it.
They felt like I'd done things without their permission.
You know, they were just used to dictating, I think.

Rory Sutherland

And controlling their own narrative entirely from the top. Correct.

Nils Leonard

And I was like, I don't care about your narrative.
I realised I could write my own.
And that was a massive learning and really empowering moment.
I left there, went to old HHCL.
Which is then called United.
Very inspiring place. And then went to Grey.
And I think Grey was really. I arrived there I suppose as a Creative Director.
And left eight years later as Creative Chairman.
And when I went to Grey, people said. “This is where you go to die”.
That was the actual phrase.
And myriad of creative leaders had gone there on vast amounts of money.
Just to sort of while away their time like the elves.
And sort of wither away.
And I turned up there with a guy called David Patton,
who was the ex Sony CEO.

Rory Sutherland

I know him, yeah.

Nils Leonard

And a few others.
And David really had a chip on his shoulder about the industry.
You know obviously, as did I.
And so I arrived there with a bunch of other people.
Neil Hughston, Chris Hirst, a few others.
And we were like, right. Let's just try and do this.
And I learned a couple of things, Rory.
One is. If you're trying to turn anywhere around.
You really have to change your client list.
And it was at the time. It was 70% P&G or something. Maybe even more.
And I realised I could spend a year of my life,
working incredibly hard to make a P&G client
a five out of ten to a six out of ten.
Or I could just win a nine out of ten client. And just make that work.
And that was our strategy.
So I just pitched one, executed for five or six years.
And in that period made some work that really did sort of transform
the way I thought about the world. And the way I thought about ideas.
And so I thought to myself.
Well, name an agency or studio that people wish existed.
And I had long enough to think. So I quit Grey. And I’m like, right I’m going to do this thing.
But I had a year. Yeah.
Now I think if I'd have had three weeks,
four weeks, I'd have started Grey part two. And I had a year.
So I spent like months thinking about that question. Which is.
Well, what do people really wish existed?
Well, I'd argue probably not an agency.
They kind of silently advise clients on, you know,
fisting the world with average marketing.
I don't want to be one of those.
And I was like, I want to be a studio.
All the people I respected were studios. Virgil Abloh’s a studio.
Thomas Heatherwick ran a studio.
Es Devlin runs a studio. They don't run agencies.
And I was like, right. So that's first thing I have to make,
And I have to make with or without these people's permission.
The Apple story I love dude. Which I really want to be true.
Which I imagine you will know better than me.
Apparently Steve's going,
Right, the whole world's making computers for business.
We're going to make it for creativity.
And he's in a boardroom or something like that.
And someone goes, you know. Well, look Steve.
Just before we get going, this all sounds very inspiring.
But you know, how many people in the world are really creative?
Can we just chill out a little bit?
And he goes, no, you're absolutely right.
And he's got this square.
And he goes, amount of people in the world that are actually creative
is like 3% of people.
He said, but 90% of people think they are a wannabe.
And he's like, so you market there and everyone's going to follow.
Who doesn't want to be a crazy one?
And it was like, okay, at that point, the board is just like.
Of course. So yeah, he's off.
But I'm kind of obsessed with that.

Rory Sutherland

And it's very, very interesting because I think what tends to happen is that.
It's very difficult to get your head around the fact.
That sometimes it's better to be different than it is to be better.
I mean, I think the same thing applies, by the way.
I think both interesting in terms that it applies to advertising.
It also applies to innovation.
It also applies to pricing.
It also applies to obviously new product development and invention.
And most people effectively have grown up in school.
Where you're trying to be better than somebody else at the same thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And actually, the real secret to life is finding something.

Nils Leonard

I also think somewhat cheaply.
I'd love to put it down to massive strategic leaps.
Or, I also think sometimes the ‘how’ is super important.
You know. Style, taste, body language.
And by body language I mean how you do something, not what you say.
I think is massive. There have been people who've had the same idea.
I think particularly in our industry.
You know, I've written scripts that I know to be good Rory.
And then I've executed them with familiarity.
And I've sat scratching my head going, why didn't that hit?
And I knew why, because I didn't push it.
I didn't understand. Es Devlin says this brilliant thing.
What is it? Something like.
The amount of success you're going to enjoy in originality you’re going to create.
Are about how close you're willing to get to the line.
And the line is, this point at which it's very hard to do.
Hasn't been done, is risky. All the above.
And the closer you are willing to get to that.
The more likely you are to make an original piece of work.
And I think that, to me is often
more tantalising than all this other stuff
we talk about in the marketing industry.
And that doesn't mean it's at odds.
You know, cynics love to go
well, Nils, are you're choosing risk over effectiveness.
I'm saying they're the same thing.
And by the way, I'm not even talking about risk.
I'm talking about the risk of not doing it.
You know, I'm talking about it being the only way
because most of it's done.

Rory Sutherland

So I've always had this very mischievous idea.
That if you founded a new agency.
I‘m just going to call it ‘Unfashionable’.
And the reason for that is that, because the ad industry
generally, you know, is obsessed with shiny objects.
And barks at every passing car. Sometimes rightly.
I can remember people who
spoke of the internet as teletext for the 1990s.
Because of that.
It turns its back on things from jingles to direct mail.
To one of the strangest things.
Which was patently an extraordinarily effective
advertising form in the ‘50s and ’60s. Was the comic strip ad.
Yeah. Okay. Now.
If you suggested that now. Just as if you suggested long copy press advertising.

Nils Leonard

Which we loved, by the way.

Rory Sutherland

You love it as well.

Nils Leonard

You see it in our work. Of course. Yeah.

Rory Sutherland

And one of the weird things
is that it genuinely, for reasons of fashion ability.
Turns its back on things which never stop working.

Nils Leonard

I agree, but I think we're terrible historians. Full stop.
So, I love this phrase and I don't know who said it, but you know.
“An old thing is a new thing if you haven't seen it before.”

Rory Sutherland

Well, to my children, direct mail is a new thing. 100%.
I couldn't understand my kids buying vinyl records.
And then I realised that this thing going round and round that made a tune.
Was actually really exciting, you know. Really exciting technology.
A typewriter is weirdly exciting to young people.

Nils Leonard

And thrilling and will force you to write a different way.
The mad thing here is that just go with me, this is tangential.
It's like you look at the decks
being made in most agencies now. And the decks, not the work, okay.
The decks to make the work. And they're starting to converge.
And the reason they're doing that,
is because I think it's all about inputs.
So I think to your point.
I don't think we're not just uninterested in advertising's past.
I think we're uninterested in the past.
We are being fed, you know.
Via, say, four platforms, candidly.
Maybe five or six if you include
some of the entertainment ones. The same stuff.
And despite this amazing world that we've never encountered.
We've never had so much our fingertips.
And we are all converging like this.
And all our decks are looking more and more similar.
And so literally the other day
there was a load of creators and they were like.
They put a Caravaggio in the deck.
And I was like, hang on, now we're talking.
And they were like, this is the grade we're looking for.
You know, I think.
If you look at the things we have a relationship with in the world now.
You know, they are labels or products or experiences.

Rory Sutherland

So one of the things I agree with you.
Which is calling yourself a studio.
Actually gives you permission to create physical objects.
And I was making this very sarky point when I was down in Cannes this June.
Which is that, notionally it's an advertising festival.
But if you look at the people who are actually present.
It's actually a festival of branded merch.
Literally. Exactly.
Yeah. Okay.
Everybody is talking about advertising, but they're giving away a tote bag or a bear.

Nils Leonard

Don’t you knock our totes. Our totes every Cannes are pretty good.

Rory Sutherland

Yeah, okay. Fair enough. No, no. It's true.
In an AI world.
My argument is that things you can touch, things you can keep.

Nils Leonard

Well, more than that.
There's a few things here, which is.
We were in a race, I think, as the internet boomed.
To make low cost, high speed content.
And the whole industry became that.
And if you were trying to fight for the industry.
You lauded audacity and large ideas. But your voice got buried.
Because it's hard to be heard through piles of cash.
And what happened was eventually the real world got sick of it.
And they invented a button called the ‘skip ad button’.
And that told everybody they hated what we made.
Go with me for a second here.
There's a button that exists to skip our industry.
With the only industry in the world, you pay money to avoid.
That button, I think.
And all of that told us that ads
now have to fight even harder to be heard.
And we were like, what if we just don't make ads?
Then you look at everything else in the world that's getting traction.
The Patagonia label, ‘Vote the assholes out’. Tiny change on their jeans.
Probably the single best bit of DM I've ever seen in my life.
Call it what you like.
So you know, we're sat there looking at brands like Hiscox, kind of going.
Okay, you know.
There is a temptation to do a B2B ad campaign.
And B2B more than most, by the way.
I think has obeyed certain rules of advertising.
You know, a little bit more than most is.
Temptation in B2B you have to be highly effective.
But it dawned on us as we were chatting about it, we were like, right well.
If Hiscox is all about insurance and the category of insurance.
Continually advertises, you know, the bit you don't remember.
And that always dawned on me as mad.
You remember insurance when you need it.
You remember insurance when, Oh my God.
Three feet in water or someone's hacked my entire business.
Or there’s a car in my living room?

Rory Sutherland

By the way, that was the same insight behind
Direct Line’s campaign with Mr Wolf.
Which is that, the category benefit of insurance had become completely lost.
Because everybody was talking about comparative price. Correct. Yeah.
And so the ultimate benefit of the product had become completely.
And they said, it was basically sitting in plain sight waiting to be owned.

Nils Leonard

Same thing. So well, so imagine.
And so imagine you go right, okay.
If actually the moment is this moment.
So we, I'm opening up a little bit.
The original idea we had for Hiscox when we pitched it.
Was the story of your business.
You know, and we were like, oh, you know.
Every business is a story and every whatever.
But we realised the juicy bit of every story is the disaster.
The attack, the moment, the whatever.

Rory Sutherland

If you're as old as me.
You'd remember a campaign called,
‘We won't turn a drama into a crisis’.
That's right. Yeah. That's right.
Which was generally regarded as sensational.
It was sensational. Then, as you said, everybody forgets it.

Nils Leonard

Then our leap was. Or I think our leap was.
Well, okay, that's cool.
We could talk about that and we could make adverts about that.
Or we could make the adverts a disaster.
And I've always hated this assumption that this industry has.
Which is, we are not the audience.
So an adjacent. I launched a coffee when we launched
Uncommon, called Halo Coffee.
And I launched it very purposefully on all my channels as the studio.
And people were like, you're just marketing to the marketing people.
I'm like, yeah, there's millions of us.
If they all buy my coffee, I'll be pretty rich.
So Hiscox is the same.
Which is the majority of people reading
this are potential Hiscox customers.
And so we were like.
What if every ad was some sort of disaster physically?
And that again, like the idea with a hole in it.
You would see it remark on it. The one shot you needed,
like old political advertising.
You need to make one of them.
But one of them has to be absolutely aced.
That was great.
And so we sort of started with this whole sort
of what we call the most disastrous campaign ever.
To try and make every bit of work basically a disaster.

Rory Sutherland

And it was glorious.
I mean, there was one in Sevenoaks station.
And I remember walking onto the platform and going, this is a B2B ad.
Someone has actually put some thought, love and attention into this.
Which is distinctly, even on its own. That's something. That's good.
But also you said the fact that you know that.
The people you're advertising to, aren't in the target market.
It's worth remembering B2B.
That the target market aren't in the target market 95% of the time.

Nils Leonard

I think when you see Hiscox working you go,
that's aimed at small business owners who do whatever. I’m like it is.
But it's also aimed at anybody who walks past it and goes, “Oh, that's smart”.
And that's the power we have. Why would we limit?
Why would we do ourselves a disservice of limiting our potential?
You know what I mean? I just don't buy that.
Go with me here.
If you then decide you want to be a studio
that real people wish existed. Why would you ever do that?
That's the point Rory for us.
Is, we would never wake up and try and limit
the potential of a project for that reason.
Because the only way we're going to be a studio, people wish existed.
Is if we make things people covet and they talk about
not just at launch, but in five years, ten years.
I mean, someone, you know.
You can talk about sort of direct marketing in terms of physicality.
But I think making physical objects.
Or what we call narrative objects is basically the future.
Which is, it's just more likely to travel.
And I think with a physical real object. There is something inside it, in an age of AI.
Where you can feel the human endeavor.
And a commitment to bother doing it.
And I think we're starting to award
that with our attention without knowing it.
And I think that when people see things like that.
They're like, yeah, they marvel at it.
But how few things these days are in their hands?
We made a thing for Hiscox.
I don't know if you saw. Which was a direct mail thing.
Basically where we covered it in what looked like spilt wine.

Rory Sutherland

Oh, fantastic.

Nils Leonard

So it came through.

Rory Sutherland

But the gag was. In fact, about three people, previous guests on the show.
Have referenced that as one of their favorite direct mail campaigns.

Nils Leonard

That's brilliant.
I mean, our view of it, though.
It was part of a deck that we didn't write as direct mail.
We just started to extend the campaign.
And we were like, wouldn't it be brilliant
if one of them was a wine covered object? Wouldn’t it be billiant if
one of them was a car, that had smashed into the front of a business.
Wouldn't it be brilliant if one of them was, you know.
And we call these narrative objects or experiences.
But we were like.
What if we just started making these physical things that helped us
tell our story?
You know, and I think as a studio. Just go with me to the end point again.
If you're trying to be not just grab attention.
But be remembered for it.
Wouldn't it be amazing if people found that.
We made a hairdryer like Piers Morgan's head.
I don't know if you remember that.
But we made these for ITV. And we made.
It was our first foray into it.
And we made this hairdryer that looked like Piers Morgan
Because someone had said. You know, he gives everybody the hairdryer.
He just yells at them and goes on.
And so we made one for him.
Of course, we didn't realise this was going to happen.
We'd fantasised about it, but we didn't realise. He took it on the show.
He's blowing people with it.
He's blasting it. One gets stolen from the set.
It sold on eBay for like £1,500. Yeah.
I'm like, the higher
the chance you have of mattering, the more of that stuff you make.
That has a different relationship in the world, that type of work. I think.
And so, I just think the more of us that don't even view it as DM,
but just view this as a way to go out and interact with people.
I think is hugely powerful.

Rory Sutherland

And actually, you know.
One of the issues you have, I think.
And I hope by calling yourself a studio
and by not having any particular media hierarchy.
You start with an idea and then you just look for its best expression.
Yeah.
Where you do run up against the problem.
Is we're dealing with a lot of people
whose metrics are quite short term. Yes.
And also, bizarrely, I think. Where the metrics are probably weighted
towards efficiency, not effectiveness.

Nils Leonard

Yeah, that's probably true. The short term thing isn't. Go with me.
I think it's our day jobs these days to grab attention.
I think by the way, I think anybody not interested in the word fame
should probably not come see us.
But, you know.
I think it's our day jobs to grab attention on launch weekend.
Somebody once described this, though.
Their workers wanting to have classical implications, which I loved.
And it was a movie maker who said that.
And they were like. I want it to have classic implications.
in that it doesn't just smash opening weekend. It's this thing people return to
and reference and use. And it finds its way into other rooms.
And I think that.
Even if you are interested in short term metrics.
The act of going for long term
classical implications makes the work deeper.
I know that to be true.
Because it's already positioning itself as permanent.

Rory Sutherland

There's a problem though.
You made the point about fame.
And by the way, you can use direct mail very powerfully to get fame.
Of course, it's used incredibly heavily
in terms of mailing things to influence. Yes.
Yeah. For them to talk about.
It's an issue in a sense, in that it's incredibly valuable.
But very hard to quantify.
And I always argue. That's because fame is effectively.
It reverses the polarity of your business.
In that, if you're not famous.
You have to find all the opportunities for yourself.
If you are famous.
Opportunities you never even envisaged, come and find you.

Nils Leonard

That's true.

Rory Sutherland

And consequently.
Because of course, you never envisage those opportunities beforehand.
You probably haven't put in place metrics to actually quantify them
or make them valuable.
So the Hiscox direct mail actually emerged from, okay.
Where else can this idea find the expression.

Nils Leonard

Well, I think it's such a beautiful thing.
Where else could disaster occur. In the home.
Pick all of the places disaster could occur, you know.
And like high end wine collection, jewellery, fashion.
There's a lot of stuff we were trying to get away with.
I shouldn't probably talk about it, but I'm open mouth.
You know. What if you've got an amazing dress.
You know, from a collection in the past.
And it was suddenly stained. What if something was stolen.
Like, I just love it.
You know, the campaign is incredibly fertile in that way.

Rory Sutherland

And the B2B campaign actually took it on beautifully, didn't it?
By talking about, effectively, posters that went wrong.

Nils Leonard

My favourite work, was the work that was like
almost arrogant in its sacrifice.
So one of my favorite ones.
Is there's a whole 48 sheet poster.
But the poster has been printed at the wrong size.
And so it's tiny. It's just like the, you know, clapperboard behind it.
And I just think things like that are very funny.
The latest works.
You know, ten different TV ads.
But each one of them has gone wrong in its own way.
Same ad, but one of them's, you know, translated into Italian for no reason.
One of them has a glitch in the middle.
One of them has the clock rolling. You know, and it's like.
So what you would argue is a direct mail approach, I think is.
Is really an approach around building fame
into an object or experience.
I think that's the modern way of looking at that. And I’m obsessed with it.

Rory Sutherland

And the thing that enthuses me about direct mail.
Which I think is really important.
And has often been overlooked.
Is you create your own choice architecture.
In other words, you can actually effectively disrupt the choice architecture.
With a message that effectively, you know.
Do you want, rather than looking at lots of credit cards.
You change the choice.
Do you want an American Express Platinum card or don't you?
Yeah,. There's an interesting question.
If you look at contagion and also simple lifespan of an idea.
And the extent to which it endures.
Of course, they're highly connected.
It's rather like in the business of infection. Yeah.
Obviously, you know, things that hang around where you're infectious for longer.
Are fundamentally more infectious.
And yet what we're doing, I think is optimising for short
term transactions. Yeah.
And the weird thing is that direct mail,
still suffers from this, even though actually it scores.
I mean, Andrew Tindall argues that it's one of the media
which actually ticks the box for both the long,
and the short of it. Yeah, I love it.

Nils Leonard

I mean, and also though, you know.
I just want to liberate everybody from the media a little bit.
Because I think you have a chance when you make work.
Whether you like it or not.
To see yourself in that client for a brief
second outside of your category. And by that I mean in the world.

Rory Sutherland

Fantastic. Thanks.
Nils, It's been an absolute joy.

Nils Leonard

Thanks Rory.

Rory Sutherland

So, do click subscribe and like and things like that.
If you've enjoyed what you've seen today,
It generally helps the algorithm
in some unspecified and mysterious way.
And if you'd like to unleash the power of direct mail.
Or physicality in general in your business.
Then make it along to
marketreach.co.uk
Thank you very much indeed for watching. And see you next time.