SS: Kevin Roberts, welcome to HARDtalk. Do you think it is a disadvantage working for a company that is part of the advertising world’s old establishment?
KR: I’ve been at Saatchi since 1987 and the thing I like most about it is that I work for Saatchi & Saatchi. The name recognition is the highest of any brand name in advertising. It’s like playing soccer for Brazil, it’s a timeless advantage.
SS: But when Saatchi was in its heyday it was controlled by the people who actually worked in it, now you’re part of Publicis. Do you think you’re nimble enough?
KR: I think Saatchi is fast, agile, nimble and proactive. This is a people business, so we’re as good as the people who work for us. Saatchi is fortunate that we are able to attract talent because of its reputation, clients and legacy.
SS: I look at your client list and see the big old giants there. Is there a danger you’re perceived to be old guard?
KR: These companies are the ones that are going to survive when many of the upstarts are long gone and have disappeared. If you’re in the car business I can’t think of anybody you’d rather be with than Toyota. These guys are very fast and very innovative. The Toyota iQ is probably one of the funkiest cars around and if you look at the Prius, they’re way ahead. In my view they’re leading the world in technology and sustainability and we’re part of that.
SS: You’ve used the word catastrophe to describe the present economic environment.
KR: Absolutely right, I think it is a catastrophe. We’re facing, obviously, a financial crisis that’s leading to a confidence crisis in every nation in the world both politically and economically. And there’s a social disaster just around the corner because 50 million people are unemployed in the world. In that kind of environment it’s about winning ugly, winning like Federer against Roddick. It is about focussing on what’s core, making tough calls, being nimble, as you said, and executing like hell.
SS: You’ve also said that it is an environment in which consumers are going to increasingly make their choices based on emotion.
KR: Yes.
SS: Surely when times are tough and people are struggling they have to cut out the emotion and go with what they really need?
KR: All the work that we’ve seen and all the research that we’ve done says decision making is 80% emotional and 20% rational. Most people may talk rationally, but once the basic table stakes are covered - quality, price, distribution - everyone is looking now for something more, something extra. All dandruff shampoos get rid of dandruff, all moisturisers work nowadays, so performance and actuary are not the discriminators. The discriminator is on top of reliability, on top of quality - I feel this brand is going to bring some joy to me; it’s going to bring me something more than functional benefit. That’s what great brands have to do now; they have to go into not only price, but priceless value.
SS: Some might say that sounds like typical adland psychobabble. It led you to this concept of the lovemark - you say ‘it’s the end of the brand and the beginning of the era of the lovemark’. I’m struggling to understand what that means.
KR: That’s because you’re a hard bitten cynic. But in your real life you are a Leeds United supporter. You support them because you are loyal beyond reason and have an emotional connection to them driven by watching them in your youth. It’s what great brands have to deliver today. It’s not psychobabble; I think it’s a basic human truth that when we have less we want more.
SS: You’re saying that it’s not the product that matters anymore; it comes down to the skill of the ad campaigner and that’s self-serving.
KR: All great lovemarks are built first on trust, so you must have a product that absolutely delivers what it says it’s going to deliver. Without that you’re not in the game. Once you’re in the game it comes down to, how do you win it? What you have to deliver is emotional value which is really at a premium today.
SS: It seems to me that your approach is junking many assumptions about the importance of market research and data analysis to what advertising is?
KR: You would be spot on! I think most of the research we do now is measuring the wrong thing. It’s how people feel about a government that will get them elected. It’s how they feel about Obama. Did they really rely on information? No. They were driven by the emotional connectivity of hope, dreams and change.
SS: Do you see consumers as profoundly irrational?
KR: I see consumers as being in charge of today’s world. I find manufacturers tend to be black and white and logical, whereas great consumers tend to be able to manage paradox, they can handle ‘and’, not just ‘either/or’.
SS: You have said that you believe that ‘it is businesses role to make the world a better place’. I’ve heard a lot of business people say that but haven’t seen so many business people walking that particular walk. Do you?
KR: I have the same impression. Jack Welch, probably the world’s preeminent seer on business, said the role of business is to create shareholder value. Peter Drucker, the guru of gurus, said its role is to create a customer. I disagree with both of those. In the last two years we have seen people who ignore that whole-heartedly and practise a capitalism of exclusion and greed. I’m hoping that Obama and the new way of looking at the world, is going to be much more inclusive and much more sustainable. I hope.
SS: What do you personally do in your business life to make the world a better place?
KR: We bought a company called Act Now and have created a programme called ‘Dot’ - Do One Thing. We have that programme running throughout Wal-Mart in the United States and Canada with every employee. I know that you as a consumer feel: ‘what on earth can I do about this?’ Well, here’s a list of things you can do – you can go to work on a bike, you can eat healthy salads, you can lose weight, you can stop smoking, you can turn off all the vampire electronics etc. We’ve put the same programme through Saatchi & Saatchi.
SS: You are an ad man, you spend time figuring out how best to convince people that they need to consume things. Why don’t you spend some of your obvious energy and talent convincing people they don’t need to consume things?
KR: Saatchi is peppered with ideas for the World Wildlife Fund, the NSPCC and we’re the global agency for the Red Cross. We are probably one of the most active agencies in the world working on specific campaigns that we think can make the world a better place.
SS: Would you agree that we should be spending more time convincing people they don’t need to consume some of the things that they currently do?
KR: I think the consumption argument is around the idea that you think consumers are obviously stupid, and that we can inform someone who is really intelligent to do something they don’t want to do.
SS: It’s not about stupidity, it’s about the collective. You’re committed to sustainability, part of that surely has to be changing consumption patterns and, in some cases in the Western world, reducing consumption.
KR: We have to reduce consumption everywhere. We’ve got to increase people’s awareness and give them tools so that they can create livings and better lives for themselves. The idea is to be sustainable in environmental terms but also to have social and cultural sustainability. This whole localisation of enterprise is absolutely vital. What we absolutely want to spend our time doing is helping people build enterprises and live better lives that are sustainable. We don’t want to become preachy politicians and do-gooders.
SS: Kevin Roberts, thanks very much for being on HARDtalk.