Leo Burnett is one of the greatest ad guys in history. Though he has sadly departed to that great advertising agency in the sky, his philosophies and legacies live on — and none more so than his thoughts on how to produce the best possible creative work.
Leo once famously said: “Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun.” He instinctively knew that when creative people got in the mood and got in the groove, they could create campaigns that could launch their clients into the stratosphere and generate millions of dollars in revenue.
Over the years, creative people at Burnett have delivered on Leo’s philosophy by producing one wonderful campaign after another — including “The Army of One” for er, the army, “Fly the Friendly Skies” for United Airlines and “The Marlboro Man” for yep, you guessed it, Marlboro. So given this track record of success, it won’t surprise you to know that Leo Burnett’s executives often went out of their way to ensure that fun, and indeed happiness, pervaded the creative department. And no one went further than the London office did way back when Mrs. Thatcher was in Downing Street and everyone in Britain was in flares.
At the time, depression had descended over Burnett’s creative people for a variety of reasons — many of them unbelievable and all of them un-publishable. (At least in this blog anyway.) But suffice to say, life officially sucked. And so did most of the product coming out of the creative department. So the agency that created the Pillsbury Doughboy desperately needed to lift everyone’s spirits — and help their creative people produce, well, more dough, boy!
Enter from stage left a creative account guy. (Yep they do actually exist at times and the Leo Burnett agency has them more than most.) His idea for solving the problem was crazy on paper and in practice. And it was this: hire a psychiatrist and invite him into the agency to talk to the creative people en masse and help them with their depression issues. (That was essentially account guy code for “hire a guy who deals with nutcases on a daily basis to deal with the nutcases in the creative department”, but never mind.)
In the advertising and marketing industry, nobody ever runs away from crazy ideas because they have a habit of working. And sure enough, the agency management team quickly signed off on this particular “mad man” suggestion, and an “en masse therapy” date was set.
On the given day, the entire creative department filed into the main agency conference room — a sad, dejected, miserable bunch, who were hardly in the mood for the “don’t worry, be happy” pep talk that was coming their way. The 9:00am start time for the pep talk came, and unfortunately went. So did 9:15am, 9:30am, and 9:45am. At 10:00am, an embarrassed HR lady shuffled up to the front of the room and explained the delay. “Er, well, we actually hired a psychiatrist to come in today and talk to you about depression, but I’m afraid he won’t be able to make it after all. He, er, well, committed suicide over the weekend.”
Hysteria erupted. Wailing wafted through the corridors of the agency. And the Leo Burnett creative folk began to cry uncontrollably — with laughter. Rightly or wrongly, people’s spirits were lifted by the black humor of it all and before you could say, “snap, crackle and pop”, the black clouds that had hung over the creative department simply evaporated into thin air.
The Leo Burnett’s creative folks quickly went back to their brilliant best and as you’d expect, they soon began producing great campaigns that generated mega mula for their clients. All this was conclusive proof that the agency that gave us the Jolly Green Giant knew how to give us jolly creative people too — albeit it with the help of suicidal psychiatrists at times. Leo would have been proud.
