Jan Jacobs & Leo Premutico of Johannes Leonardo
On courage, optimism and listening as a creative act.
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 176: Jan Jacobs & Leo Premutico
Hi. I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach and advise their leaders to help them maximize their impact and grow their business. To help them succeed where leadership lives - at the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guests are Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico, the founders of Johannes Leonardo. They describe themselves as a creative and effectiveness agency who exist to create a world of courageous brands.
However you define the company, they’ve demonstrated exceptional courage and produced relentless creativity for 14 years.
Their starting point for both comes not from leaning in but stepping back.
“We have a saying in the agency that the more unique the problem, more ownable the solution, you know. And I'm always amazed by the weapon that listening can be. It can get you to that point of identifying something that in itself, that is a creative act, because it does often present a canvas that you wouldn't get to otherwise. And anything that you put on that canvas is going to be original because its starting point is unique.”
In years to come, historians will write about this period as one of unprecedented change. An epoch that separated what came before from what is still to be defined.
Today, we live with two new realities.
Yesterday was an unreliable indicator of what today became.
And tomorrow, anything is possible.
Leading a business that thrives in that kind of environment has become exponentially more challenging than it was even six months ago.
‘Everyone stay home.’ That created a level playing field that is now officially over.
Now comes the hard part, redesigning your company so that it can win when there are no rules, no norms, no references, no comps and no best practices.
Now, leaders are really going to have to lead.
Which makes Leo’s recognition of listening as a creative act, an invaluable building block in the road to the future.
If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m willing to bet that your company is filled with brilliant minds.
Listening to them to get help with the answers is a good place to start.
Listening to them to get help with the questions is even better.
And makes whatever you come up with, not only original, but a competitive advantage.
Here are Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico.
Charles: (02:38)
Jan, Leo, welcome to Fearless. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Jan Jacobs: (02:42)
Thanks, Charles. Thanks for having us.
Charles: (02:44)
Jan, let me start with you. When do you… when are you first conscious of creativity showing up in your life? When are you first conscious that creativity was a thing in your life?
Jan Jacobs: (02:52)
Well, you know, it's interesting. I didn't really, I've never really thought of my past as being a creative one in terms of the way I grew up, but, you know, in thinking back on it, it very much was. You know, my mom was an opera singer and I have some vivid memories of being really small and, you know, playing with my toys by her feet while she's sitting at the piano, practicing scales and singing areas and all this kind of stuff. And it's really actually incredible. And I listen to recordings that she made back then and it's quite something. And I wish I, at the time, really appreciated what I was a part of.
And then I guess, I don't know, later, when I was a kid, I used to draw and build stuff all the time. You know, I made, if I saw something that I was interested in, I'd make it I'd draw it, I'd design it. I always, you know, I wanted to design plans and rockets and those kinds of things that's really… I wanted to do automotive engineering. That's what I was interested in when I was little. I discovered later on that it was really more the aesthetic component and the design component that I was interested in, not so much the engineering aspect of it.
Charles: (03:59)
Opera singing is an extraordinary craft, isn't it? I mean, it obviously requires phenomenal talent, but it requires real discipline and work. Were you conscious of that growing up, that your mother was practicing, rehearsing, working at it a lot?
Jan Jacobs: (04:11)
Yes. A lot. All the time. There was always music in our home. If she wasn't singing, there'd be classical music playing, but she was constantly singing as she was just walking through the house. And I guess it's, like you said, it's a craft, it's an ongoing thing. So I heard it all the time. And then interestingly enough, later on, my sister became an opera singer and my two daughters, the one that’s singing at the moment and the other one does acting. So I don't know, I guess it started with my mum and it's still going.
Charles: (04:39)
Leo, what about you, when did creativity first show up in your life?
Leo Premutico: (04:42)
I think like Jan, I don't, didn't particularly ever feel like I was growing up in a deeply creative environment, but it's funny when you do look back, you join the dots. And for me, it was really about the influence my father had on me. I keep saying he was a really romantic father, in the sense that he idealized the world in many ways. And he presented the world to us in a way that was very idealized and just made us feel that anything was possible. He'd immigrated with my mom to Australia when they're about 10 years old and were very hardworking, small business people. And that didn't prevent him from painting a picture of the world that way.
And I think when you're raising kids and I've got two boys now, 12 and eight, your influence happens in those in between moments. And when I think back to my relationship with my dad, it was really in those in between moments. It was the to and the from of soccer practice, you know, and I did a lot of soccer practice growing up. And it was the conversations in the car. It was the music that was playing through on the radio. I can remember very vividly, you know, Cat Stevens playing and my dad would talk about the lyrics. He would dissect them, even though he wasn't himself from an artistic background, I could tell that this stuff really touched him, you know, in deep and profound ways.
And he really built in me this love of language. And I remember, you know, the first World Cup that I watched in 1990 there was no Australia, you know, in that World Cup. So I was supporting Italy and I fell in love as much with Martin Tyler's commentary as I did with the game itself. So I developed, you know, this appreciation for the power of language, you know, how you could reorganize those 26 letters of the alphabet and create very different emotional outcomes from them. And again, it's not something I ever, growing up, I felt like I was destined for a creative profession. But looking back I can now see where it came from.
Charles: (06:53)
Your comment about parenting happening in between and sort in the cracks resonates with me. Do you think that's true for leadership as well? We always talk about the importance of having a mission and declaring and so on. But I'm wondering whether your perspective of leadership marries the one you've had of parenting.
Leo Premutico: (07:13)
It's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that, but it's a really interesting connection. And I think in many ways, it's why there's been so many good things that have come out of how we've been forced to work remote work. But also, but on the other hand, it's because you’re intentionally setting up those moments of connection the conversations you're having are more orchestrated and the moments that you have when you're in an office together, you are in a space together and you're crossing each other, those unintentional meetings and where those conversations can lead can have big consequences. And I think what we try and do as leaders is to try and create an environment where those moments can happen and it's something that you learn. You're constantly learning about it.
I became an ECD, I think at 26. I started Johannes Leonardo when I was just 29 years old, and I'll be the first to say that I was very much learning. I still feel today that I'm still learning on the job. But what we can do is make those decisions that enable an environment for great things to happen and great creative things to happen. And if I think back to what I wanted, when I was breaking into industry and the environment I wanted to be in, then it's trying to make that possible today. And I think in many ways that's what drives us is making those decisions, you know, having those conversations that create the environment. And initially, right, it was starting an agency from a blank canvas with zero clients. That's what it meant for us at the beginning.
To ask ourselves well, what is possible if you have a blank canvas and you have no legacy way of doing things? Like what can that lead to, and what can that lead to for your employees? Then it was those early conversations we had, whether it was with Martin or whether it was with clients about, as we grow, how do we continue that? Recently it was about deciding that we, you know… our independence was a big part of, you know, what made us, who we are in deciding to become more of an independent agency and buying more of that independence back.
And most recently it's about bringing Julia Neumann in to help run the creative department so that she can have closer proximity to the creative design department and, and really foster that creative culture, and nurture growth and nurture young talent so that we can become a great place for the next generation. So it's really about those decisions and creating that environment for those and like you said, which I wasn't connecting at all, but those in between moments to happen.
Charles: (10:13)
Jan, picking up on that theme, you guys wrote a really great article, I think it was the end of last year, right? In Muse where you talked about the fact you were somehow 13 years old, how did that happen? How did you guys get to be 13 years old as an agency? That seems like it happened in the blink of an eye. But one of the points you made in there was that you said, “Sweat the small stuff, people pay more attention to them than we've think.” And I was struck by that obviously through the lens that you were just talking about it in terms of communicating with consumers, but I was also struck by it through the lens of leadership, because I think that's also really true for leaders. Leaders don't often recognize how much the small stuff influences the people around them. The eye roll at the wrong moment or the sigh at the wrong moment or, you know, the head nod or the head shake at the, at the wrong moment can have a massive and mastering repercussion. I wonder whether you see a synergy between that which you were describing from a consumer standpoint and also the way that you have to show up from a leadership standpoint and what you've learned about your leadership over the last 13 years.
Jan Jacobs: (11:12)
Yeah. I mean, first of all, I'm never sure if it feels like a lifetime or if it feels like a blink of an eye. It seems to feel like both of those things at the same time. But yes, you know, it's interesting that this has happened to me a few times, and it's actually happening more frequently now, where we bump into someone or meet someone that worked with us decade ago, or even more, even before we started the agency and they would say something like, “You once said this one thing and it really affected me and I think about it all the time.” Or they will describe a meeting where I pointed to a detail and a layout or whatever and they were really taken by that kind of comment or that way of approaching the issue.
And you don't think about it when you do these things, but I think the details… I don't know, personally I've always had a really keen eye for detail and I notice a lot of things. And in the days, I obviously grew up when print advertising was a very big part of what we did. It is no longer, but it taught me that moving something by a millimeter actually matters. Even if you're the only one that knows that it's happened, it does matter, because if everything was a millimeter off it would be terrible.
Because the work is the thing that I've always been the closest to, that I grew up understanding more than perhaps leadership techniques or any of those kinds of things. I think I try to lead through the work. And the way that I approach the work and the way that I talk about is really, I think that's what people learn about what's possible in their own lives, how to approach a problem, how to make things better and all of those kinds of things. And there is a certain amount of, I would add, there's a certain amount of fearlessness built into what we do. it's always been like that I can tell you a lot about like some of the decisions Leo and I have made over the years, first independently and then together. and I think that shows up in our work and our management style as well. We're not scared to take some big steps when it's needed, you know.
Charles: (13:02)
You guys talk a lot about courageous creativity, which obviously resonates with me. I mean, the podcast is called ‘Fearless’. So, courage seems to be a fairly important part of the conversation. Leo, where do you think the courage part of this comes from? Were you a risk taker as a kid, for instance?
Leo Premutico: (13:20)
I don't know. I, probably, my mom would have a better answer than I would, or more accurate one. I think it comes from a need that you have. I remember this great article about Leonard Collins and in it, he said something to the effect of, whenever his girlfriends would talk about the Beatles, he never begrudged his girlfriends their love of the Beatles, but it was never the nourishment that he craved. And I think what he was getting at is that, as an individual, we all have different needs and different tastes and different things that nourish us as people. And so I think back to some of the, you know, decisions that we've made or moves that we've made, there were often things that people said, “That's an insane thing to do. That's not the right move,” or, “That's going to be really a difficult, you know, ship to turn around.”
But to be honest, I think us as individuals and then together, we've kind of needed challenges. Up until the start of my own agency, I think the longest I was in a job was, two and a half, three years. And so there probably is something to the fact that I've needed and I think, for Jan as well, have needed challenges to keep you on the edge of your seat. To keep you excited and to keep you curious and always feeling like you're venturing into unknown territory. That can take shape in starting a business. It can take shape in a new category that you're working in, or a new type of work that you're doing. It can take shape in many forms, but I think, it's something that's probably been wired into us. I don't know why, but we've been dealing with the consequences of it pretty much since the early days.
Jan Jacobs: (15:13)
And to be honest, I don't know if it's fearlessness per se, but I've always had this feeling that it's going to be okay. You know, like I've never… all the decisions that I, like big decisions that I've made, I've never really worried about them too much. Because I always think things are going to… and you know, what, if something doesn't work out, do something else. So it removes a lot of pressure from you. in my very first job actually, I remember I was in it for about a year and a half, maybe just going on two years and I was getting so frustrated because it wasn't going as I had hoped. I got the sense that I was in the wrong place. And I walked out of a meeting one day that didn't go well. And I was very junior at this point, of course. And travel agencies were still a thing in those days. And I ran across the road and I bought a ticket, an airline ticket to Johannesburg without having any interviews or any plan or anything, I just said, that's enough, I've got to leave Cape Town. I have to go.
You know, and then obviously moved to Johannesburg a few months later and I got a great job and so forth. And the same with moving to the United States. And I've never been to New York and never been in the US at all, got the job offer and kind of went, “Well, that sounds cool. Let's go do that.” Because if it doesn't work out, you do something else, you know. And I think same with starting a business and the same with taking on big challenges within that business. I think it's more a sense of things are going to be okay.
Leo Premutico: (16:26)
For me it was kind of my first job after university. There was, in Australia, we grew up in Sydney, there was a thing they was called at the time, the Answered Encouragement Award, which was for the best young, creative talent and, and forget the exact year now, but I'd won that prize. And what I decided to do at that point was to quit my job and to give this - I won't say burgeoning because it was, I maybe just say parallel career at the time - which was giving a soccer player a go because I just I felt like I was trying to do both things and not doing particularly to the full, the, the potential that I could. And I quit my job and, and decided to give this thing a go for real.
So for three months, I trained with my version of Mr. Miyagi, a Yugoslavian goalkeeper coach. And I trained with him a couple of times a day. And I had my younger brother had very kindly offered me his frequent flyer points to head over to Germany for football trials. And the day my flight was leaving, my appendix burst and I never made it onto the flight, and the comfort that I have and I say this with 100%, 120% conviction, is that I never really sort of left anything on the table, because I know if I played out with what I know now, I know that I would never have made it, you know, and if I did it, would've been, you know, on the bench of some Serie B or Serie C team, right?
And what was interesting is in that process of time away and training for three months is I kept having ideas, even though I wasn't asked, it was something that was still happening. and I realized in the process of that what I wanted to do. So even though I never made it onto the flight, the decision helped me in so many ways and gave me a lot of clarity coming out of it.
Charles: (18:27)
That must have been quite a moment, having put all that work in and then being denied at literally the last.
Leo Premutico: (18:32)
Yeah. It was when you say denied, maybe if someone was a more talented goalkeeper than me would've felt denied. And I know that I wasn't going to be the next Gianluigi Buffon, or….?
Charles: (18:48)
Jan, the idea of ‘what's the worst that could happen’ can clearly take us a certain distance in our lives. In fact, Chris, my wife and business partner, and I have used it a three or two or three times, I think, at critical moments, to say, “We know what our minimum level of success is. We have achieved this. We could try that if that doesn't work, we can always come back to this then.” And you could start a business using that philosophy, for sure, right? And because what happens? So if this doesn't work, I go back to working inside a company. But there comes a point in that journey where there is a lot of risk attached to that. There is real life risk. You've got children, you've got a business, you've got employees. And how do you navigate the transition? How do you hold onto the essence of that philosophy and apply it to the real world when there is real stuff at stake now?
Jan Jacobs: (19:38)
It's interesting you say that because I've noticed that exact thing. In the first, let's say half of the agency's life there was actually less pressure on, I'll just speak for myself, on me personally, than there is now, because now we're responsible for a lot of people who are responsible for brands, there's value, all those things that you've just mentioned. And I think it's interesting that you mentioned the phrase, ‘what's the worst that can happen’. A few years ago we were working on a Canadian insurance brand. And the line we wrote for them was what's the best that can happen? And the thought was, from an advertising point of view, people, and all insurance brands do this. They put fear into you, you need insurance because things going to go wrong, but the truth of the matter is they rarely do.
Yes, you need insurance, but you don't have to be afraid of it. It is something that's a part of life like other things that you need. So what's the best that can happen? Be optimistic and here's a company that has that kind of point of view in the world. That's the point of view we gave their brand. And I would say that's kind of how I look at things now. There's an optimism that I think has always run through Leo and I. I think that's connected to, let's call it fearlessness and in decision making is because yes, there's a lot at stake now, but I think I'm more excited than ever before about the future because of where we are as a business, because of the kinds of clients we have the kinds of people we have. You know, we generally, I would say a company of optimists, you know, there’s… we have wonderful human beings here. And so I think the fear factor goes away and is replaced by optimism.
Leo Premutico: (21:09)
And optimism, you know there's the surface level of optimism, which is like wearing it on your sleeve and being positive at all times. But for us, it's more about… you’re really asked if you're an optimist when you're staring at a blank page and there doesn't seem to be an answer. And you still believe that you're going to put something down on that page that is going to unlock a big wave forward for a company. Or when you've just traveled a long distance for a pitch meeting and you come back and you haven't won the business, and it's that belief that we may not have won that thing, but we're going to learn from this moment and next time we will. It's in those moments that you really find out whether you're an optimist or not. Not only the resilience to get through those moments, but the way that you use those moments to respond and become better as a result.
Jan Jacobs: (22:09)
Which reminds me of even just starting out in the business, you know, the blank page, I mean, as a young art director, the excitement of the blank page, of a new brief, of the challenge, I was never filled with dread by it. I was always excited by it and there's this huge kind of question mark over it. What am I going to come up with? You know, where is this going to go? How is it going to end? And so, therefore I think that the fear just gets replaced by enthusiasm, by, you know, so much motivation to do something special and to leave something out there in the world. That's because we have, you know… people see what we do. We have influences ad agencies and the brands we work on. So that's really exciting to me, is putting things out there that is valuable to people, that is engaging, and is entertaining, and all of those things.
Charles: (22:53)
Yeah. This idea that you can choose to be optimistic versus pessimistic, I think is really important and one to highlight, because just in day to day life, we are surrounded by forces that would like us to be afraid of almost everything because fear sells. I mean, you go on cnn.com, the first nine stories would be things that are just awful. I saw a tweet last week, about the statistics of hospitalization and dying for people that had been vaccination versus unvaccinated. I sent it to a friend mine who's really fixated. The odds of dying if you have been double vaccinated are one in 86,000. And she emailed me back, “Is that good or bad?” Now, I thought it was pretty good, but I thought, okay, well, she's asking for context. So I went and looked up ‘chances of dying from’, and the first thing that I… somebody that the website offered me, Google offered me, was chances of dying from a car accident.
So I emailed her back and I said, the answer to the question depends on how risky you think it is to get in a car. Death from COVID, if you're double vaccinated, one in 86,000. Chances of you dying in a car wreck this year, one in 8,690. So if you're worried about getting COVID, you definitely shouldn't be driving in a car because you're 10 times more likely to die in a car crash. So I think this idea of context is really, really important. I think from a leadership standpoint, your point about having a business, having a culture, having a philosophy that says, let's choose to be optimistic because you have a choice, is really important to identify.
In that environment, there are obviously some people who bring a naturally positive view of the world and other people who bring a naturally skeptical or concerned view of the world. Are you conscious when you're hiring people of looking for that characteristic and that quality especially?
Leo Premutico: (24:35)
I think it comes through in the ambition that somebody has and the willingness to believe that after, for instance, tough client feedback, that you can still get to great work. And in many ways, I think, we still very much, probably more so now than before, believe that, you know, the role an advertising agency at large, you know, from a macro perspective can add real value and has a big role to play even though things are changing so profoundly for our consumers.
And I think that's… I guess we are. We are looking for that sort of alignment with candidates as well, are you aiming high? Will you be able to respond to feedback and still believe that you can get to great work and are you proud and believe in the role that an advertising agency and advertising can play on behalf our clients? Because I think with time, all that's happened is that the value we can add has only gotten greater.
Jan Jacobs: (25:38)
Maybe even in the work also. We were interviewing somebody a while back and the person said something that sort of took me by surprise. He said that, “When I look at your work, it looks like you look for the best thing in the brand.” And I thought I was kind of struck by that. And I never really thought about work that way. It's probably something that, that happens subconsciously, but I do think that's true. And especially, we've worked with some old brands, you know, brands that have been around for a long time, if you work with Coca-Cola, they've been around 125 odd years, or Mass Mutual, 168 years, or all these… And not just old brands, the same goes for new brands, of course. But there's something in there that's been valuable to many generations of people, you know, because everybody talks about, oh, Gen Z is completely different from millennials, completely different from what came before.
That is true. But there is a thread that runs through all these things and certain things will always be valuable to people and it will always be important to people. And I think we look for those things in the brands, we look for the things in there that's going to make it valuable to the next generation and obviously relevant to them. I don't know if it's a conscious thing, but I would say there is a thread like that through our work.
Charles: (26:45)
Creating an environment and a culture like this requires an environment that is really fundamentally built around trust, right? I mean, you have to trust each other if you're going to take this very positive attitude and to your point, look for the best, whether in a brand or an opportunity you need people who trust each other to be able to take advantage of that. How do you create an environment that engenders trust?
Jan Jacobs: (27:08)
Leo always says the fish rots from the head down. The inverse is probably true as well, you know, and I think it starts with us. You know, I feel very blessed that I met Leo fairly early on in my career. I don't think I would be sitting here talking to you right now if that didn't happen. I certainly wouldn't have this business together with him and all the other great people that work here. And I think that trust is between us, it's really about a shared ambition and a shared point of view of what we do and what's great about it and why it matters and why it can be a great career for somebody, you know?
And I think it's probably true for most creative people that it is tough to let go as you, as you grow, certainly as you change from… the first time it happens is when you change from being a creative team to a creative director, where you're not the one going on the shoot so much. And then it evolves to a place where we are now, where we have a company full of people that are incredibly capable and you have to trust that those people are going to do the right thing. And they do, you know, the good people do the right thing. And if they don't, it's not for lack of trying, it's not because there's a different agenda or something else going on. I find, certainly between Leo and I, that's at the heart of it, is knowing that the other person's end game or point of view is the same as mine so if something goes wrong, it's not the person, it's the circumstances.
Leo Premutico: (28:28)
And then we, on top of that have a responsibility to make clear what it is that we are aiming for, for everybody else. And it's always surprising that if you run at the problem, what can the positive things that can come out of it? And when we started the agency one of our problems back then was, well, we can't show any of the work that we'd done previously, because it was done for another company. We probably need a website and what are we going to put on it? So it forced us to fill that hole, and what we did is we just started talking about where we thought the industry was heading, and the changes that were going to take place.
And what came out of the conversation was just this need of, how do we protect ourselves against all the change that is inevitably going to happen, right? Because it's going to be a trend that starts here, there's going to be a new shiny piece of technology, a new platform, and those things are going to be important, but they're going to be more temporary in nature. And we had no desire to be temporary experts. We really have this belief of the power of human insight and long term brand ideas.
So it forced us to put it down and where we ended up is going that, for us, it's always going to be about work that takes our audience and stops treating them like the recipient of a message, but can we get them to become the medium for our messages? Because if we can do that, then what is going to happen is that with time, they're just going to become more and more empowered to get behind and to share and, as we're seeing much more lately, to co-create with us and take these things to the next level. So it's being able to sort of share where it is we're heading, and then attracting those who want to get on that same mission.
Jan Jacobs: (30:27)
And that point of view of the consumer is the medium that we wrote back in 2007, when we started the company, has just become more and more true with every passing year. And we have some really strong examples of how successful it's been for us over the years. Adidas Originals, when we first started working on that brand seven years ago, now they went from, over the seven years, from one of the smallest business units within Adidas to the biggest one. Bigger than any of the sports units. And while the work and certainly the advertising context full credit for us, it did play a huge role because we gave that brand an incredibly powerful point of view that people could then rally behind, because before that, what they were doing it's just holding up a mirror to youth culture versus putting a point of view out to the world that people can get behind and share. And that's exactly how the consumers union works, is people amplify that message and become that voice.
Charles: (31:21)
So a lot of the attributes we've talked about - optimism, courage, engendering trust have been hit pretty hard by the pandemic. I mean, the pandemic has kind of come out and beaten them up pretty badly. I know you have talked about and written about the importance of taking advantage of crises, that crises can often create opportunities for doing exceptional, extraordinary things. How have you confronted the pandemic? How have you met that challenge specifically head on?
Leo Premutico: (31:50)
When we started in the agency in end of 2007, we had no idea when we decided to do that, that we were preceding a global financial crisis by a few months, right? And what that did, because I'm not comparing the two, the two obviously very different, but what that did to us is… you’ve got to remember, that at the time, we were four creative people. That was the make up of the agency. We very quickly learned that we couldn't be successful if our clients weren't, and it made us get in the boat with them and become real business partners of theirs, to really care about their problem. Because I think there's creating great advertising, but then there's using the creative skill of identifying the right problem and then making sure that as a creative person, you're selfless slash confident enough to be able to reorient your own process around solving that problem.
And I think that's what the global financial crisis did to us as a business, which I think is still very much with us today. COVID, and everything that's forced, has presented different challenges and I think as leaders, it's really asked us to operate and dimensionalize how we've thought about leadership. I don't think there's a leader out there who would say that it hasn't challenged them in new ways. I think we've had to try and lead on many new fronts other than just the work.
And if there were inefficiencies or cracks, I think working remote has in some ways really made those obvious and things to address, and then there are things that have been helpful and positive about it that will inform the next era of the business, as well. So, yeah, it's obviously very different to when we first started the agency. We're a very different size company now with different responsibilities. But going through the experience will, I think just like the previous one, in the long run make us stronger and better for it.
Charles: (34:01)
And Jan, what made you guys decide you wanted to buy yourselves back?
Jan Jacobs: (34:07)
I think it's doubling down on independence I mean we started as an independent agency, even though we've always had the affiliation with WPP. I mean, what's interesting is, what Martin Sorrell did with us was unique in the sense that he'd never started an agency before to begin with, obviously he'd built his company WPP through acquisition. So we were already an anomaly within the network. And over the years we just felt that our, our biggest success was with more independence And we just wanted to back ourselves going forward in that regard. Clients come to us for the kind of work we do, not for the network we belong to or the affiliations we have or any of those kinds of things. They come to us for the kind of thinking that we provide. So we just, we were just doubling down on that as our future.
Charles: (34:51)
And has the act of becoming independent again changed the agency? Can you tell the difference?
Leo Premutico: (34:58)
I think it just puts more in control of your own destiny, I guess. I think being able decide freely what pitches we want to invest in, what's right, what isn't for us. Being able to move on things quickly, being able to reorient our own processes around the client issue. It enables us to do these things that we were doing anyway, but to continue to do them in full force, I think that's really what it's done.
Charles: (35:24)
What role has fear played in your lives?
Jan Jacobs: (35:28)
When we were working in London, when Leo and I just started working together, there was an interview in an ad publication that was an interview with a famous director. I forget who it was. But he said something that stuck in my head. He said, “You don't know fear until you have children.” And then shortly after, maybe a year or so after, I had my first child and I knew exactly what he meant. You know, as soon as you are not the most important person in the world to yourself, you have fear. You worry about those people that you care about. I guess that's actually for the first time that I really felt it and I, to be honest, I still feel it about my children. And my oldest, you know, got another year left of high school and then she goes out supposedly into the world. You know, off to college and everything and I'm fearful about that which is I shouldn't be, but, you know, that's just the way life goes.
Actually, a friend of mine, we surf together a lot and he was talking about in the eighties or the nineties, there was a surf brand called No Fear. People used to put these stickers on their surfboards, ‘no fear,’ like these big sort of animal type, no fear stickers. And he was really annoyed by it. And he said, that's nonsense. If you paddle into big surf, everybody is scared. There's, it's just a nonsense brand. It doesn't make any sense. And he's right. You know, I think fear is a part of life.
I said this to my boy the other day when he was running out onto the soccer field. And he said to me, it's first game of season, and he's very nervous. And he, he's kind of, you know, intimidated and all these things. And I said to him, everybody feels that way all the time. When you go on stage, when you run out onto a soccer field, when you paddle, there's a big wave of coming, it doesn't really matter. When you start a business, you know. But all of these things are… you have to use that as a positive energy. you have to know that it happens to other people as well. You're not the only one, it happens to everybody. And you turn that energy into something, that makes you stronger, you know, that projects optimism and just moves you in the right direction. Because you can't cower from it. That's not the right response.
Charles: (37:13)
No. And I think a lot of people would say, I don't think this is universally true, but I think a lot of people would say, “If I don't feel afraid, it probably isn't worth doing.”
Jan Jacobs: (37:21)
Yeah, that's right. Fernando [name inaudible] who started the agency with us. he's now the creative director of, of Vogue in Italy. he always says, “The bigger the problems, the bigger the life.” So whenever, whenever Leo and I feel really inundated and there's a lot on our plate and a lot of problems, it's a sign that we are living a big life. That there's a lot of things going on, we're involved, and a lot of things… And it's exciting. And I do think if you just always have that positive lens on things, that's how you get through these difficult times.
Charles: (37:50)
Leo, what about you? What role has fear played in your life?
Leo Premutico: (37:55)
I mean as you guys were chatting now, I think it's interesting, when you think about in terms of the work, right? If the lens for judging work, doesn't make you frightened… I'm not sure that's the right way to judge and go through work. I think you can go to a client and say you have to take this risk. And that's the path to great work. But I feel like there's a difference between asking someone to take a risk, as opposed to going, here's something that's not quite, just shooting in the dark and it feels a little more informed and it's about asking someone to be courageous. And that you're in it with them.
When you think about the role of fear in the work that you're doing, then yeah. Our best work, has always been about, do we know the outcome of this? And it's quite often not, right? So we're going to get into doing something that we haven't necessarily done before. And that usually comes from, and I know we touched on this earlier, that usually comes from identifying something that is true, the real issue, And if I think back to the work that we are most proud of, that's often where it's come from because when you put it in the context of, here's the problem that we're trying to solve, or here's the thing that we've identified, there's a lot more rhyme and reason to it and it takes you to a place that whilst it's nowhere we've been together. We haven't done this before it feels more like the right choice, even though there are risks associated with it.
We have a saying in the agency that the more unique the problem, the more ownable the solution, you know. And I'm always amazed by the weapon that listening can be. It can get you to that point of identifying something that in itself that is a creative act, because it does often present a canvas that you wouldn't get to otherwise. And anything that you put on that canvas is going to be original because its starting point is unique.
Charles: (40:07)
And Leo, how do you lead?
Leo Premutico: (40:12)
I think it's by the upstream choices that you try and make, decisions you make that unfold weeks or months later, or sometimes years later that result in an environment and creative culture. And then try and replicate the sort of environment that when I was breaking into the industry, would've wanted. You know, and you don't always get it right. And you always feel like you're on that journey, but a place where, if you're ambitious and you’re in this industry, because you believe that it's a level playing field and ideas, if you have the idea that your career can accelerate, that it nurtures that mind, and is going to be a great place for that sort of person, that's really what we're trying to focus on.
Charles: (40:56)
Jan, what about you? How do you lead?
Jan Jacobs: (40:59)
I think through the work, it's the thing that I've always understood the clearest. When I was a young art director in Johannesburg working in a really great agency, I was working at Hunter Scars, this was in the late nineties, I remember reading an article in Communication Arts and was written by a young art director, my exact age, on the other side of the ocean, he was working at Fallon McElligot here in the US, it's still called that. Tom McElligot was still part of the agency. And they were the, one of the best, if not the best agencies in the US at the time, and they said to him, “What's so great about working here, how do you get inspired?”
And he said he doesn't have to read award annuals he just goes over to the photocopier. And just the stuff lying around there from the other teams is so incredible that you just race back to your desk to do better. And it just stuck in my head. And I always thought, that's the kind of agency I want to be in. That's the kind of agency I'd like to build. That's the kind of place where, that is what's unique about advertising in so many respects. There aren't too many industries and too many kinds of companies where young creative people can come in and do amazing things and do incredibly visible things out in the world and have such a wonderful open culture to work in where there's no real right answer. People are just looking for the best idea floating around the agency.
And you can be young and old, and it doesn't matter what your background, if you're the one coming up with that idea, anything is possible. So I try to always lead through the work by talking about the work and the possibility it has in people's lives and trying to help people make it better so they can see their own progress through that. And it's simply because it's the thing that I understand the clearest in our industry.
Leo Premutico: (42:34)
As founders they're the moments that you're proudest of, is when, an individual group of people coming in, they achieved something that maybe they didn't even think was possible and you see that happen. You see how it changes, how it accelerates and changes their careers. At the end of the day, yes, the work is obviously the common thread there and what you focus on in that process. But they're the moments that you remember and that remind you of why you started an agency in the first place.
Charles: (43:08)
And what are you afraid of?
Leo Premutico: (43:13)
Good question. Unrealized potential, I think is, yeah, probably a whole bunch of other things. Let's have an hour follow up.
Jan Jacobs: (43:32)
I think unrealized potential. You know, at the end of the day, when you start something, you have no idea how it's going to end. And what's interesting… you mentioned the pandemic earlier, I mean, there's not a leader in the world that has any experience with something like this. You know, usually CEOs of large organizations in the world have, they are in that position because not only are they brilliant at what they do, but they've got a wealth of experience through many years and different companies, and there's virtually no scenario that they haven't already faced in some sense or another.
But this is not the case. There's not a leader in the world, doesn't matter what industry, that have ever lived through anything like this. So no one knows the outcome. What do we have other than optimism at the end of the day? Just to know that everyone's in the same boat I think that people with the most vision at the moment, the people with the most passion for what they do… and there's been a lot of debate in the ad industry since we've started the business, is the model dead? Where is this going? Is there space for creatives or brand agencies or whatever you want to call them?
And the truth of the matter is, that is still the valuable thing. That is the most valuable thing to a client, is their brand. And reinventing that for every new generation is what we as an industry do the best when we're at our best, that is what we do. Coming out of this, whatever form it's going to take is potentially an endemic disease in the world, whatever form it takes, you know, everyone's going to be in the same boat and that, and I do think the value that we can bring as a great creative agency is going to remain.
Leo Premutico: (44:56)
And the real things to be afraid of aren't tied to our professional careers, are they? It's really around the loved ones and health and things like that. So it's, all relative and that's the important stuff. And then everything-
Jan Jacobs: (45:11)
Yeah.
Leo Premutico: (45:11)
Everything else is, you try your best and if it doesn't work out, then you just try and learn from it and make sure the next time round you are better for it.
Charles: (45:19)
Yeah. It is indeed all relative and how easily and quickly we forget that.
Leo Premutico: (45:23)
Yeah.
Charles: (45:24)
Thank you both so much for coming on today. You guys have always espoused I think such a clear, strong and consistent message and philosophy, and it's clearly stood you really well over, now, 14 years. And I wish you nothing but success going forward.
Jan Jacobs: (45:38)
Thank you very much, Charles. And thank you for the opportunity, it's been lovely talking to you.
Leo Premutico: (45:43)
Thanks so much, Charles. Really, really enjoyed it.
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