I asked Rob Schwartz how he made the jump from CCO to CEO.
When I started this Tumblr two years ago, I scoured it for blogs about advertising that I could learn from. A Creative Director here at the agency told me I had to check out the blog Metal Potential. I was drawn to its brevity, how quickly he cut to the work’s competitiveness. When I later found out that the person behind Metal Potential was also a CEO, I was blown away. I had to find out how someone who ran one of the best creative departments in the industry made the move to running one of the best agencies in the industry.
Back around 2002, Lee Clow made me the Chief Creative Officer of our Los Angeles office.
At the time, he gave me one of the keys to success for a CCO and a company at large. Over tacos at the Hacienda restaurant in El Segundo he scribbled his wisdom on a paper napkin. It said, “Great people + great work = growth and profits.”
For the better part of a decade this formula served me well.
Then on January 5, 2015, I stepped out into the atrium of TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and said to the 150-person crowd:
“My name is Rob Schwartz and I am your new CEO.”
What I had come to find out is that there’s a big difference between CCO and CEO. Of course the similarity is in the Chief part. You are both leaders of teams. Yet where the CCO has a purview of all things creative, the CEO has a purview of all the creative things and literally everything else. Namely, the pre-creative period. The development and execution of the creative product. What happens after the product is developed. And taking all of the necessary actions to make sure the creative product happens – all of the support, all of the people, all of the systems.
So, while the “Lee napkin” still held truth, I soon learned that there was a whole lot more.
The 4-P’s: A CEO’s Best Friend
When I first took on the CEO role, I organized and began analyzing the task in four areas: Product, People, Process and Profit. (I’m no genius; I simply borrowed this model from Marcus Lemonis of the TV show the “Profit.”)
In fact, if you look at any business, especially your own, it really boils down to these things. What’s your product and is it great? Who are the people making it? What’s the process to achieve greatness? And profit – are you being fairly compensated and earning a strong margin?
So, let’s take a look at the differences between CCO and CEO through this “Four-P” lens.
Priority One: Product
As a Chief Creative Officer or as a CEO, the main objective is the same – deliver a powerful and effective creative product. As a creative, I was obsessed with the quality of the work from the blank sheet of paper (or blank screen) until delivery. I sweated over every verb and adjective. Every image. Every director. Every voiceover. You name it. As a CEO, I’m still on the lookout for those things (although I work with some truly gifted creatives, so most of that is sorted), yet I now find myself obsessed with so much more.
Allow me to explain.
Whereas I used to wait for the brief as a creative, as CEO, my involvement starts much earlier in the process. In fact, it starts the second I meet with the client. I listen closely to the business problem. I try to understand who will be involved in the decision and approval process. I start to ask questions about the media, the target audience and the budget. At the same time, my brain starts working into overdrive thinking about who will work on this project at the agency and how will we inspire them to create something great.
It’s a People Business
As a creative director, my main priority was to keep the people who worked for me inspired, productive and relatively happy. (They were creatives, after all, and “happy” is a relative term.) As a CEO, I am still focused on retention. And I spend quite a bit of time and effort on ensuring that we create a work environment that is unique, special and productive. But one big difference I have noticed is as CEO, I spend an incredible amount of time recruiting. I am constantly on the lookout for great, new talent. And I noticed that my calendar, on a weekly basis, has several meetings with new people. Some are candidates. Some are soon-to-be candidates. Some are simply people who make me smarter. But while I was inwardly facing as a CCO, as a CEO, I’m looking inside and out.
Process: You Need One
As a creative director, I was ok with process. I was also more than ok with chaos. You need both. That said, as a CEO, I am more aware of processes. First, I study the process now to see if everything we are doing is yielding the best creative product. Secondly, I look at process to see if there are ways we can do things smarter, faster and ultimately better.
Show Me the Profit
I have to say that when I was a Chief Creative Officer, I could care less about the profit of the company. Sure, I wanted the money to pay for great people, to buy cool furniture for the office, to pay for award show submissions and, of course, I wanted money to bonus people who really went above and beyond.
But I never thought for two seconds that we as an agency might not be getting compensated fairly. Or that there was a demand, and a huge difference between delivering an 8% profit margin and an 18% one to our bosses. It simply wasn’t on my radar.
Well, as a CEO it certainly is now!
Sure, I can’t escape the various 9+3 and 6+6 financial reporting meetings.
But now I am looking at profit as a way to measure, invest and reward. More than ever, I am looking at the money because I think agencies are getting taken advantage of.
It’s been well-documented that the key issue is that procurement folks look at an agency creative product in the same way they look at commodity product from companies who provide them with staplers, paper clips and flash drives.
But ideas and stories – the truly unique product of an agency – have a very different value than an office supply commodity.
Supplying a paper clip and creating an idea like “Think Different” are not the same. It’s Apple to oranges.
And frankly, as a CEO, I’m more aware of this than ever. Because as the world gets more distracted, as more devices and platforms proliferate and the further the media landscape fragments, the product an ad agency makes – and the product only an ad agency can make – will become more important. More valuable. Because the agency product – the idea – is the one thing that can unify this Balkanized marketing universe. And it will arise from the sum total of the People and Process – the very thing of which I am the CEO. It’s this kind of stuff that, yeah, as a Chief Creative Officer I wasn’t thinking about.
But I can’t stop thinking about it now.
From the Desk of the CEO
I couldn’t be more satisfied making the transition from CCO to CEO. After all, my enthusiasm and belief in the power of a great creative idea has not diminished in the least. If anything it’s gotten stronger. What’s even better now is that I can craft more ways to make something epic. I have more influence over the People and Processes that help formulate something great. And I am going to try to find smarter and fresh ways to get our agency paid for this work.
All of which makes being a CEO, well, the most creative job in our business.
Rob Schwartz Chief Executive Officer, TBWA/CHIAT/DAY NY
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