“My advice to young people is to be the Richard Branson of advertising”
In the premier episode of “The A-List”, host Tom Christmann interviews Rob Reilly, the Global Creative Chairman of Mcann Wolrdgroup. Reilly is one of the most well-respected creatives in the industry and has been recognized at Cannes with multiple Titanium and Grand Prix Lions awards. His 20+ years of advertising experience have made this interview a must-listen for anyone in, or looking to get into the advertising industry. You can listen to the full episode and view the shownotes below:
Shownotes:
(0:00 – 1:36) Intro
(1:37 – 5:49) Rob Reilly’s Background
(5:50 – 12:42) Presenting, selling, and being a charming provocateur.
(16:00 – 18:12) Millennials and the culture of instant gratification
(18:13 – 32:00) Reilly’s career journey
(32:20 – 39:35) An evolving industry, purpose-led marketing, and the future of advertising
(39:36 – 47:00) Advertising portfolios and landing a job
(47:01 – 47:58) Outro
The A-List is brought to you by the Adhouse Advertising School, New York’s newest, smallest and hippest ad school. You can subscribe and rate the show on iTunes or listen along on Soundcloud. For updates on upcoming episodes and guests, be sure to like the A-List Podcast on Facebook and follow host Tom Christmann on twitter. If you want to be interviewed for an upcoming episode, contact us at AdhouseNYC.com.
This past January, our Chief Creative Officer Tom Christmann was invited down to Miami to be a guest speaker at the world-renowned Miami Ad School.
The campus, which is nestled among the mural-covered warehouses of Miami’s design district, is a creative utopia. The sun ricochets off the building’s vibrant pink exterior. The courtyard is full of abstract sculptures, all of which are equal parts wacky and genius. The inside is just as inventive, with denim-lined walls and a towering gorilla constructed of duct tape.
This is much more than just a school. This is a museum of ideas. A place of inspiration.
Tom approached the podium and addressed the student body as “the leading creatives of 2020.” In a way only he can, he inspired and challenged the room full of young writers, designers, planners, and thinkers to use their creative power for good.
Over the course of the next half-hour, Tom shared his unique perspective on advertising with the audience. He talked about the future of brands, the power of actions over ads, and the qualities needed to hone your creativity and direct it toward making a positive impact on the world around you. It was an empowering presentation. To view an excerpt from the speech, check out the video below.
Throughout the remainder of the week, Tom led two classes in an agency-simulation exercise. In a very real-world scenario, the students were assigned a client, handed briefs, and tasked with presenting campaigns in just two days. Watching the students, many of whom were from foreign countries and different cultures, come together as a team to collaborate on ideas left us feeling inspired. Creativity is the language of the world.
We’d like to thank all the staff and students of Miami Ad School for welcoming Tom as one of their Industry Heroes. We hope to be back again in the future!
To hear more from Tom Christmann, look out for his upcoming podcast titled “The A List,” in which Tom interviews a who’s who in the creative world.
How does a digital direct brand reinvent itself for the direct 2.0 economy?
For Quicken Loans, it started with a big, inspiring idea:
Revolutionize and reinvent the mortgage process for today’s digital consumer.
But how does a mortgage-lending company offer something that no other mortgage-lending company has offered before?
For Quicken, it was simple. They don’t.
They don’t reinvent the product. Instead, they reinvent the experience from top to bottom, with an objective to stand up to the expectations of a Dollar Shave Club, Airbnb, Warby Parker world.
The competition was the backdrop. Mortgage-lending companies were old, slow, and boring.
To be for the digital consumer, the new experience needed to be futuristic, innovative, and direct. They needed to think like a tech company.
And they did. They assembled a team of over 450 engineers to build this new digital service.
After five years of research, testing and development, Quicken Loans was ready to lift the curtain on their revolutionary masterpiece – and what better way than an iconic spot during Super Bowl XLIX?
RocketMortgage was launched! The spot went viral. Direct 2.0 had reached the mortgage industry.
So how is it different?
With RocketMortgage, you can get a loan approved within minutes. The entire process is completely paperless, and the interface has the technology to verify your bank statements on the fly. No other service can offer such a streamlined and seamless user-experience. For RocketMortgage, it’s all about the customer.
Emotional Match. Creative Fatwood. Momentum Fire. Rocket Mortgage assembled all of the most important elements we look for in a blazing inspiring action brand.
And unlike its competitors, RocketMortgage delivers on its expectations. They’ve generated the optimum action, prioritizing the consumer and designing every detail of the service around their journey, successfully ridding the process of any gaps, logs or blocks.
They’ve put the power back into the consumers’ hands, leaving them feeling impassioned and inspiring them in a visceral way. They’ve managed to turn their inspiring idea into relationships, as Quicken Loans is now the leading online mortgage-lender in the United States.
That’s why RocketMortgage is our Inspiring Action Brand of the Week!
Many advertising agencies in the US have been taking their clients’ media dollars and distributing them in ways that pad their own profits, rather than doing what’s actually best for the client.
They do so in the form of rebates, mark-ups and pre-arranged agreements, all of which take place behind closed doors, completely unbeknownst to the client. If clients are aware of it, they are under the assumption that the agencies do this for better negotiating power, or for more efficiencies…but that is rarely the case.
The bottom line is that marketers are losing media efficiency and the ability to improve their own results. They can’t see what their media spend is really buying, therefore they can’t optimize it. A chunk of every dollar they spend is being wasted before they even begin.
Meanwhile, honest agencies are kept out of the running for significant accounts because they don’t hide their sources of profits, therefore they appear more expensive when they are anything but.
This has got to stop, but it won’t until every marketer is educated and committed to transparency.
Our media arm, Proove Accountable Media , was established to combat these dishonest agencies through providing clients with a better option – and to Proove there’s a better way.
Since it was founded, Proove has been directed by Agency Partner Adam Lutz, who, as evident from last year’s Business Insider article here, has become one of the leading pioneers on media transparency and accountability today.
So how is Proove Accountable Media different?
We only buy media that actually runs.
We don’t force our clients to use a prebuilt trade desk or limit them to particular buying technologies and data partners.
We never saddle our clients with pre-arranged investment commitments. Our job is to evaluate every partner, technology and ad buying platform and give the client the most relevant opportunity to fit their needs, not ours.
We don’t markup inventory or create revenue streams that ultimately deplete our clients’ media budgets.
Everything we do, buy, manage and execute is transparent and in our clients’ best interests.
To be an “agency” implies fiduciary responsibility to put the client’s best interest first. It’s why we got into this business in the first place, to help our clients grow and prosper. We over-communicate. We over collaborate. And then we over deliver.
Unlike the rest of the industry, we are a true agent of the client.
Hold everyone of us at DiMassimo Goldstein and Proove accountable for these promises. We already do.
