On how believing in humanity and people rather than power and toxic business tools will make you more successful, with Creative Partner, Adrian Rossi

Tell us a bit about your background and how you ended up in advertising to become the number one creative director in the world…

I was always on the creative side at school. When I was 16, I saw a programme on BBC One about advertising and I thought, ‘ah, people actually think up those adverts I see on TV, that’s interesting. And oh wow, look at those offices they work in and those cars they drive and those suits they wear…’

So I wrote to an agency called Young & Rubicam, which is now part of WPP, where a creative team took me under their wing and nurtured me. I was shocking. But they persevered and kept giving me pads and pens for free, which I thought was amazing. So it was actually all the free shit that hooked me.?

I ended up going to the School of Communication Arts against all the advice of my A-Level teachers who thought I should be doing the Oxbridge exams and taking a more academic route. I was 18 and the youngest person there – there were people in their 40s, people from all over the world, and it was a really diverse, multicultural place to learn. It had a really great feel about it.?

After college I did placements ad nauseam and eventually got hired at Saatchi & Saatchi. Their attitude was, if you can imagine it, we can make it. At one point the Creative Director signed off one of my ideas for British Airways to build the second man-made object that could be seen from space. It was only when the budget for production alone hit ￡50 million that we stopped it. But by and large, if you could think it, they would make it. We were doing these experiential things that are bread and butter to an agency now, but then were unheard of. An unbelievable place to work, surrounded by talent.

I was then headhunted to BBH, which was the opposite of Saatchi & Saatchi in terms of size and scale – we were small, boutique, elite, with far higher expectations. That was where I learnt craft and strategy – how to write, film, art direct, design – all things that take time, practice and the help of a brilliant team who’ve done it before and can show you the shortcuts, accelerate your learning.

I left BBH to go to a digital agency, Glue Isobar, when digital was kind of a funky thing to do, but I’ve spent my whole career doing the opposite of what people thought I should be doing. It was another incredible experience where I learned the language of digital and a different way of thinking that influenced the rest of my career.?

From here I moved to AMV and after a year and a half got promoted to take over the place, which was a big surprise. The culture was incredible and I set out a vision to win more awards across more clients than anyone else, then in the next year to win more awards across more platforms and clients than anyone else, then to win on the global stage. Wonderfully talented people around me won several Cannes Grands Prix, we won our first Black Pencil, by this point we’d won over 50 Gold Lions as well, and I was voted the number one creative leader in the world. But again, that was because of the people around me and so I was actually more excited for them than myself.

Do you think the skill to find and work with the right people is what makes success?

Given the right conditions and confidence, people who might ordinarily just be good can be great. We put in place a system to search out the best people around the world, not necessarily from college, but from all walks of life who could bring different viewpoints and ideas. This gave the agency a structure, a spine, that wasn’t there before. If you nurture people and help them to be happy, they’ll do great work. Focus on the human perspective and work back from there.

I’d been headhunted to Grey as Creative Chairman and it was there that I first met and worked with some of the Group Of Humans. When I first spoke to Rob Noble, the founder, it was clear he aligned with my values straight away. I’ve realised life is too short to not work with the right partners and right people.?

When you have a group of people who don't have the same aligned vision, things are a lot harder, things take longer and the output isn't as good. Whereas if everyone has the same alignment and same vision, and you get on at a personal level, then success is pretty much guaranteed. It’s these kinds of relationships that nourish me.

Is that what Group Of Humans offers you?

I’m not in this professional life to do what everyone else does. I want to do things that challenge me, and a part of that is knowing what I’m good at and where I want to focus my energies.

I could have gone back to agency life but the big agencies are slowed down by process, by how they’re remunerated, which means they can’t evolve as quickly as they want to. It’s funny when you pitch a client and are trying to convince them to do something brave but you’re in an industry that structurally hasn’t changed very much for 100 years. Look at Mad Men and Don Draper – bar the suits and oyster lunches, it’s still pretty similar.?

If you keep adding the same inputs you can’t expect the outputs to differ. If you look at other industries – be it sports teams or tech companies – they evolve and change so quickly and if they didn’t they’d be dead in the water. Advertising is still very slow in its evolutionary cycle and you can see the advertising pie is being nibbled at by lots of different kinds of competitors.

GOH is interesting because it’s set up structurally to be very different. The people are different, the input is different because the skill sets are different, which means the output is different.?

How does that manifest itself working with other HUMANS?

Rob has assembled the Navy SEALs, SAS and SBS together in one. In fact someone probably is ex-SAS there but we’d never know, such are the people involved. I was working on a project a while ago and joined a call to see part of it that I wasn’t working on and thought that for a group of people who’d never worked together before, they all went in without ego and with the client’s best interest at heart.?

From trying myself, I can say it’s so damn hard to create a culture where people work for each other, because sadly most people are out for themselves. However he’s done it, whether it’s something in the water – to see that in full flow is just beautiful because it’s so hard to do. I even called to congratulate him on it!

At GOH there’s such an eclectic and diverse mix of people that I always look forward to working on a project because I don’t know who I’ll be working with and what they’re going to be bringing to it. You can look at someone’s LinkedIn profile, but LinkedIn with its algorithms is pandering to a toxic social culture of self interest, power and money dressed up as a business tool. Until you actually work with someone you won’t get that ‘wow’ moment where they blow you away. I haven’t worked with any other company that can do that like the HUMANS, and so our ability to offer that to clients of any shape or size or problem is probably unparalleled.