Carl Johnson of Anomaly
What’s your big goal?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 212: Carl Johnson
Here’s a question. What’s your big goal?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I coach their leaders to help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Carl Johnson. He’s the Executive Chairman and one of the founding partners at Anomaly.
If you go to the company’s website, it says, in block capitals, “A DEVIATION OR DEPARTURE FROM THE NORMAL OR COMMON ORDER, FORM OR RULE.”
In Anomaly’s case, this is not hyperbole. The company pushes boundaries and defies norms all the time.
It’s one of the reasons that yesterday Adweek named Anomaly the US Agency of the Year.
Carl Johnson is an iconoclast. Meet him once and you’ll remember him. This is actually the third time he’s been on this podcast. His first appearance was in my second episode and that conversation set the tone for the kinds of insights I wanted listeners to benefit from. He was candid. Honest. And human.
This conversation breaks new ground. It’s a case study on building a world-class, creativity driven business.
So where does Anomaly go now?
"My big goal for the year is to do something so audacious, it makes even us gasp. And I want that to still be how we think. And I think anything that makes us shy of that level of ambition is a bigger threat than anything else. So I'm worried that the past couple of years affects that. So I want to make sure that we are punching really ambitiously, and scaring ourselves and stretching, because we can.”
There are two parts to the Anomaly leadership story that are worth paying attention to.
The obvious one is the boldness of their ambition. They set big goals. And they are unrelenting in pursuing them.
But the second and, I think, equally influential component of their story is one that doesn’t get talked about very often - their consistency.
If you go back and listen to my previous conversations with Carl - the first of which was almost six years ago - you’ll hear him talking about many of the same things in the same ways.
That consistency engenders trust - from employees and clients and from prospective members of both those groups.
Trust gets people to invest emotionally and take risks. Trust produces better questions and better answers.
Trust builds foundations that give you the confidence to define goals that are so audacious it will make even you gasp.
And that attracts world-class talent and makes them want to stick around.
So set big goals. But then behave with consistency so that people want to take the risks necessary to achieve them.
Here’s Carl Johnson.
Charles (03:11):
Carl, welcome back to Fearless. So good to have you back on the show. And to be with you in person this time.
Carl Johnson (03:15):
It's excellent, rather
Charles (03:16):
It is good, isn't it?
Here we are in your New York office. What is this space called?
Carl Johnson (03:21):
This space is DNA. This is the internal training setup we had. We came to the view that, if we really wanted to, you know, grow your own people, you had to commit resource, time, money. And so we've built, basically a never-ending curriculum, which is presentations and talks, to develop our own talent.
Charles (03:42):
Yeah. It's a really... The space has a fantastic feeling about it. Do you... For those of you that can't see, which is everybody since there's no video attached to this podcast, there are couches, there are workstations, there's a stage for presentations. There's screens and monitors, there's whiteboards everywhere. It's interesting, because it feels, the second you walk into it, it feels like a learning environment.
Carl Johnson (03:59):
Yeah, it's meant to be like that. We can livestream to every office across the world, and any other office to tune in. And all of the speeches and content is stored on a digital platform. Imagine if you're going home on the train, you can just listen to Anomaly all the time.
Charles (04:16):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (04:16):
(laughs)
Charles (04:17):
Clearly what you're teaching is working, because you were just, literally just, named Agency of the Year in the US. Congratulations.
Carl Johnson (04:24):
Thank you. Yeah. It's fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I mean, you can get… You can get over-excited, or you can get under-excited. I never quite know how to respond to winning things like this, because, to a certain extent, there's a degree of luck always. There's a lot of good agencies. And other years you've thought, "Well, we did really great. How come we didn't win that one?" And then other times you go, "That wasn't a great year, we shouldn't have won." This time, I think, I can see why we won. I can see why we won. And it is, without becoming sort of massively obsessed with trying to win it, which we're not, it does have benefits, primarily, to be honest, internal. The staff feel good. You know, so everybody will feel proud of a very tough year. And it gives you another bar to aim for as you go forward. So, yeah, we're very happy. There'll be a lot of drinking tonight.
And there'll be a lot of fun. There'll be a lot of well-dones, and a lot of thank yous. So it's great.
Charles (05:22):
So you say you can see why you won it. Why did you win it, do you think?
Carl Johnson (05:24):
I think we won because we did well on multiple fronts. That old, very old saying about you don't fight a war on multiple fronts. You have to fight a war on multiple fronts. You do have to. You have to win business. You have to look after your people. You have to continue to expand internationally. You have to continue to evolve what you're doing. So pulling them all off in the same year was, I think, the reason we did. And I think that in the context that everyone's been operating in, the key to it was, we have guiding principles, as we always have. You know me, everything is extremely clear, written down, thought through, that's not up for grabs. We don't have a debate every six months about what we believe in, we know all those things.
And I think that's the reason we were able to perform on four or five different fronts, is because we had the underlying principles. We knew what we believed in. We knew what we would do. We knew what we wouldn't do. And I think that's at the heart of it.
Charles (06:21):
How would you describe the principles? What are the principles?
Carl Johnson (06:24):
The key is all driven by... I mean, I read the submission. Me and a very smart lady called Jenny. And I read the intro bit where basically, I thought it would be fun to start with Shakespeare. (laughs) And being an over-educated Brit, that's what you do. No, so it talks about what lessons you could possibly share with other agencies about why we were successful. And, it was essentially that I think Shakespeare was right. That notion of "unto thine own self be true." And we know what we believe in. And, if we don't believe it, don't do it. So for us, it's about honesty, integrity, focus, hard work, meritocracy, enjoying the good bits. It really matters, and it doesn't matter at all. On one level they're old-fashioned, on another level they're eternal truths. somebody's old-fashioned is someone else's eternal truth. Now, to me, you have to know the answers to questions like, if you're going to fire a client, what reason would there be? If you're going to accept a piece of new business, why do you want it? And it can't just be because we'll take any piece of business.
So we've ground down all the difficult questions. We know what we believe in. And essentially, I think, we just executed on all fronts in a way that was absolutely true to us. And we made that very clear in the submission.
Charles (07:49):
Let's talk about honesty for a second, because honesty is one of those things that leaders throw out all the time.
Charles (05:12):
It's an easy and honestly, quite often fairly cheap thing to say. Right?
Because it doesn't... It's not always true. I know you well enough to know that you don't say things without intention. What does honesty mean to you within the context of running the agency?
Carl Johnson (08:07):
It means, why do we want this piece of business? You’ve got to answer that question properly. So I would much rather say, "We want this piece of business because, although the money sucks, we will learn a lot. And that has real value to us.” Why do you not want this piece of business? “I don't want this piece of business because it's too big for us at the moment, and we might fall over. And everyone's exhausted, so we're not even gonna try and get it. I know we need it, theoretically, but we don't, I don't want it.” You have to be able to say out loud the truth.
So I always... One of the questions I always say to myself is, on any decision, "Okay, Carl, imagine it's an all-staff meeting and you’re onstage, and you are announcing this. How are you feeling? You feeling good? You feeling like you're trying to bullsh*t people? Or is this the truth?" So for me the truth is the truth. And you got to be able to say it.
I remember going back all the way to 2009, whenever the financial crisis was. And we had an all-staff meeting. Of course, everyone lost tons of money. It was in the same building. We had less floors, but we were in the same building in Soho. And I basically said, "Hey look, the only way we'll make sense of this is to recognize that the world has changed and we're gonna have to do something. Our guiding principle is to keep as many people employed as possible. The only way to do that is to make everybody take a pay-cut. The only way to protect the least paid, is to have a minimum threshold below which you have no pay-cut. And then the rest of us will take a percentage pay-cut, that is, every single person would do that. I know it's not great, but it's what we need to do. And that's our guiding principle, we talked about it." Now to me, that's the truth. And everybody can feel the truth.
And so, for me, if you're not prepared to say the truth, you should ask whether you're doing the right thing. If we have problems with the clients, let's admit we have a problem. You know that whole thing? Accept it first, then try and solve it.
Charles (10:04):
Mm-hmm.
Carl Johnson (10:04):
And if the answer is you can't solve it, you then have to say, "Well, then well why do we have it then?" And then it becomes, is it so fundamental a problem that you have to fire the client? In which case, fire the client. And we've done that on a number of occasions. And if it's not a big enough problem, we just go, "Let's give ourselves three months to fix it. The senior people will intervene and try and force that client to fix these things. If they don't, then we'll fire them." Or it isn't the client, it's us. This problem is a problem, but it's us. We're not behaving correctly. So for me, the only position you can defend ‘til the cows come home is the truth. And I hate slick, insincere advertising people. No truth there.
Charles (10:52):
Right. And as you've said, you're a company, and you're a believer who plans ahead, who thinks it through, who wants to make sure that you're ready.
Carl Johnson (10:59):
Yeah.
Charles (10:59):
But when the pandemic hit, there was nobody that was ready for that.
Carl Johnson (11:02):
No.
Charles (11:02):
How did you meet... And we talked, I think two or three months into that. And you were focused very much on what is an office.
Carl Johnson (11:08):
Yeah.
Charles (11:09):
As you look back over the last two years now—
Carl Johnson (11:12):
Yeah.
Charles (11:12):
...what have you learned that stands you in good stead?
Carl Johnson (11:16):
I think I'll start with saying it was more difficult than I thought, okay? (laughs) One of the reasons that I think… I'm older than most people know. I've done more than one agency startup successfully, and I've done a lot of big jobs. I feel like I know how to do this game. So what underpins a lot of what I do is a lot of self-confidence, because I've seen it all done this play before. So really what I'm doing is plucking the right play out of the playbook. Not that hard. It's about selection rather than, this is a whole new problem. This time was a whole new problem. So for once, and it was very bad feeling for me—
Charles (12:02):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (12:03):
...I did not have the certainty in every step. And that was actually weird for me, right? Because I walk around going, "I know what I know, and I know what I don't know. And if I don't know how to do it, I tend not to do it." Like, I can't dance. I'm not dancing, alright? I've chosen not to dance, alright? I just can't do it. I look like an idiot. I know how to run an agency. I know how to run an account. I know how to get a campaign out. I know how to stand up and guide people. I know how to listen. I didn't know how to deal with that. But I listened to other smart people. And so the first thing to confront is, I don't know instinctively what to do. So to accept that quickly.
Long time ago, many years ago, I think I stole this from John Wren, when I first sold my first agency to Omnicom. It was, when in doubt, do nothing. And that's so counterintuitive for me. Because as a sort of, you know, snazzy account man, you're supposed to be going, "Do this, do that. We'll do this, we'll do that." And the notion of breathe, let it settle, digest it. Usually you're running off acting. In this instance, it was, accept you don't know what to do, gather the people around you that you need, the leadership teams. Really try and identify what the issues are. And then make sure that when you make your moves, you're certain of them, without hanging around.
So for me, it was just... It's not a problem that you don't know. But don't try and act like you do know. It's much better to accept it, solve it, move forward. And make sure you're asking the right questions. And one of the things that at Anomaly we've always been good at is to get to the underlying fundamental question. Is it a business question? Is it a staff morale question? Is it conceptual questions, like, what is an office? I mean the real question is, what is an office for? And what is an office good at? And what is an office less good at? So what are we really trying to fix? And so you'd go, well, I can still write a deck, right, on my own. Like I do quite often anyway, and I can do that from anywhere. What I can't do is whiteboard together. And, to be honest, I've not found a single digital tool that enables me to do that in the way that it really works.
Charles (14:22):
Yeah.
Carl Johnson (14:22):
And so for me that doesn't work. So the permanently, you know, permanent working from home is, to me, absolute non-starter for Anomaly. And it can't happen. We can't be Anomaly, unless we're standing around the board, building on each other's thinking. What about this? Looking at each other. You need the emotional intelligence. You need the collaboration. There's some things you can do. So basically we broke the challenges down, and got extremely purposeful about work. Writing a deck is different than collaborating around a whiteboard, is different than the creative team sitting together thinking, is different than a status report. And they can all take place in different forums. Let's make sure that the environment for them to be done well exists. That's how you get to hybrid solutions. Because work is hybrid.
And so for us, we've got to the point where we are supporting the purpose of the particular work. Because people say, "Well, you need an office." And you can't stop there. You need an office for what? And then you get to the softer things, like, you need an office, because if you're in this business, you like people. So we need an office because we need to be together on one level. Not necessarily every day. So we don't. So we have three days when we're together, and two days when we're not. If you want to come in five days, and some people do, you can.
But how much is done with the, you know, bouncing off each other? We do have the biggest bar in Soho, apparently, in this agency. And it's for all staff meetings, but it's also for working. It's also for getting to know each other.
So I think, you know, it's the notion of asking the big questions, getting to the fundamentals, and then working back out from there. So what we did that... I think we read everything we could. We listened to what everyone else was doing. We understand ourselves. We didn't chase headlines. There's lots of gimmicky stuff done, and you go, "Why?" We don't really care about all that. We care about getting it right for ourselves, and for our people. And to be honest, once we got to, what is the purpose that an office fulfills, and what do we lose. And I remember hearing, you know, horror stories of the sort of transactional nature of employment.
Let's pretend I'm 24 years old. I'm sat at my desk in my bedroom. And on Friday I work for Anomaly, and then I get a 25 grand pay rise and work for another agency on Monday. And I sit at same desk, in the same bedroom, and I always work on a different account, because I don't belong to someone else, because I've never been in the office. To me, that's a nightmare. We want people to have an emotional contract with the company. We don't want a financial-only contract. So where does the emotional contract come? And that comes from people and values, and being together. So we need an office. It's just how you structure that office. And then how you use people's time in relation to that. So I feel super good about the way we’ve solved that. And we didn't rush.
Charles (17:27):
There are a lot of agencies who are dealing with the fact that a lot of the people who are attached to their New York office, for instance—
Carl Johnson (17:33):
Yeah.
Charles (17:33):
...don't live anywhere near New York.
Are you in the same position as that? Or do you have more people who are local?
Carl Johnson (17:38):
We have more... We have quite a lot of people that are local. Yeah. And coming back to the question on the truth. The brutal truth is this, if you are an absolute rockstar, we're gonna be a little bit more flexible.
Charles (17:49):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (17:49):
Because you've earned it. Because you are more valuable. So we want people to come in three days a week.
Charles (17:56):
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Carl Johnson (17:57):
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. And we really want them... If they have extraordinary circumstances, we will always listen to that. And those are circumstances could be very personal. And that's fine. If they are also extraordinary rockstars, we will accommodate them one way or another. But we do believe that the company can't deliver Anomaly without collaboration. And we don't believe you can belong to Anomaly remotely, fully.
Charles (18:28):
What do you think will happen to the agencies who are becoming more... Like, not just agencies, but what do you think will happen to the companies that are becoming more virtual?
Carl Johnson (18:36):
I think it depends what work they do. If they are... If there's 700 engineers, they could work where they like. And they can pick talent from where they like. And that might be fine for them. I think for people, classic agency people who collaborate and interact with each other, I don't know how they can do it. I don't know if they can do it. I know we can't do it.
Charles (19:00):
So when you're hiring, you're looking for people who are local to the office that you have the opening in?
Carl Johnson (19:05):
Yes. Unless they work in a department where we don't need that. Let's pretend they're in the finance department, they can work anywhere. If they are meant to be the core strategist partnering the creative people, I don't believe that can be done, as effectively... When you're sitting in a creative review, there's so much, there's so much emotional intelligence. And the screen is a killer for emotional intelligence. How many times do you walk round an agency, and you look across and you see somebody struggling? I wouldn't know it if the screen was off. Or you see… I walk past a whiteboard, and there's a bunch of people round there scribbling trying to solve something. And you just drift by and you listen for a couple of minutes, and you just go, "I know the case they should read for this. We've done this before." So drive-by work, spotting people who need a lift. Two minute conversation on, with somebody on something can save them a day. So, for me, combine that with the social side of work, the energy you get, we will always need it.
And I think we've got New York and LA. But like I said, if someone said to me, if they are an absolute rockstar and they said, "Listen, I know why you want it, all right? If it ever really matters, I can just about do that, but I can only do two days a week, rather... No, I can't do the three." We would let them, but they have to be damn good.
Charles (20:33):
So you're a different agency as a result of the pandemic. Are you a better company as a result of the pandemic?
Carl Johnson (20:38):
I think our approach to work is definitely better. It's more purposeful. You don't have to wait... every minute can be better. So I think we are better because we've been forced to rethink what work is, and what form it takes, and what an office is, and what it needs to be. So I think we're actually better, yeah. And we're changing all our space over this last year or two. We're moving. We've been biasing office space to different things, rather than great big rows of desk. Everybody does need the ability to sit down and write at some stage, but you need more room. You need collaborative spaces, you need flexibility to hang together. Like our bar is basically perfect for a creative team to sit and mooch around. (laughs) And they don't need to be sat at a desk in a department.
We were always good about space. We were always good at thinking through space. And COVID has just accentuated it, and made us really interrogate it. So I feel good about that.
Charles (21:34):
So this award recognizes the work done by your New York office, and your LA office.
Carl Johnson (21:38):
Yes.
Charles (21:39):
Do they work differently now as a result of COVID?
Carl Johnson (21:42):
Yep. Well they work differently also because they moved office. Because we opened there about 2016. And we always liked the energy, when you're starting an office, of the community. So we... I mean, it's my fault, really. Me and one of the founders there, Isaiah, found basically a live-work space on Abbot Kinney. (laughs) So we moved into a house. (laughs) But there's only, like, two or three people there, right? But then we quickly outgrew that, so we had to buy another house— Not buy a house. Rent another house across the road. And then it's getting ridiculous, because you're working across the road in two houses. So we moved recently to a great big space, it's doing really well in LA. In West Hollywood. One great plate which can house 100, 200 people.
And the lessons we talk about, what work is, and all of that, are all global conversations. We're very connected. All of the offices, it is, it's one brand, one model, one culture. And the different flavor that is driven by probably the location. Berlin starts in a different place than LA does. The sun shines more in LA. But we stayed very connected as a leadership group. Because if you think about it, there's about 30 people. Say three or four big leaders in each office. Six offices, and then a few global positions. And so we share, we listen. It's not a sort of dictatorial place. Someone has to decide, and there's a few people who decide. But you want opinions, because, you know, that whole, ‘All of us is smarter than any of us.’ So yeah. This award is for combined efforts between Los Angeles and New York. And we're very tight with each other.
And a lot of clients are shared. People work across... We pool talent wherever the need arises. So we don't like that idea of, you know, rigid delineation between offices. We like fluidity and talent. So, a brief comes in where we usually anchor it in an office, but we will then cast a team that can draw from anywhere. Whether they be in Shanghai, LA, London, Berlin, whatever, Toronto. So that fluidity of talent's always been a big success. So, yeah. So we'll share this one across the whole country. It's good.
Charles (24:00):
Do you run separate P&Ls?
Carl Johnson (24:02):
We run separate P&Ls, but clients... So all it means is that if we are pooling the talent from different offices, we'll allocate revenue based on trust and judgment. (laughs) But you start with the premise again, do what's right for the client. Put the best people on it. Yeah, but they're not in the right city. That's our problem, not their problem.
So cast the perfect team, figure out our bullsh*t, i.e. how to allocate revenue ourselves. Don't deprive the client of the best people. And then I think that's, again, old school thinking to be that limited. But you know, honestly 20 years ago, it was full of fiefdoms, not Anomaly, but networks. Political fiefdoms weren't looking to help each other, they were looking to beat each other. And I think we... I always wanted never to be like that from the very outset. So the fact that we were always international in our minds, even the original partners, three Americans, two Brits, and a Dutchman. And we were always internationally aware when we started setting up offices primarily to make the talent pool of Anomaly as diverse as possible. So we've always liked that flow, and it's actually... It's exciting to start working with different people. Keeps everybody fresh.
Charles (25:19):
Mm-hmm.
Carl Johnson (25:20):
So we've always been fluid in the way we work across offices. We've always been connected. So in a way, COVID was not such a shock, because getting on a screen and talking to Shanghai, we've been doing that for years. So it was good.
Charles (25:33):
How are you doing in terms of diversity? When we last talked, I think it was actually the week of, or maybe the week before, George Floyd's murder.
Carl Johnson (25:39):
Yeah.
Charles (25:39):
It happened right at that time.
Carl Johnson (25:40):
Yeah.
Charles (25:41):
And obviously diversity became a massive topic in the industry—
Carl Johnson (25:44):
Yeah.
Charles (25:45):
...for, I don't know, what? Six months?
Carl Johnson (25:47):
Well, longer than that.
Charles (25:47):
Eight months? Nine months?
Carl Johnson (25:49):
No, it's longer than that. It is more fundamental than that. Honestly, it is, it is. I mean, I know the difference between a fad and something fundamental. I think you might see it more as a sort of, a moment of intervention, which forces you to ask whether you're doing it right. And I think that there are sort of in-built biases which take you away from the right answer. If you just let the water flow the way a river does, it would never be corrected. So interventionist action, even things like monitoring the composition of your staff, makes you conscious of the situation.
So basically, again, we've always been… if you go back to what's the right thing to do, and I don't just mean politically right thing to do, we've always wanted the most diverse gathering of talent from the most varied backgrounds, from the most widest ethnic groups, from the widest national bias, everything you can. So this was just a moment to go... We've always been quite good at that. Like I remember… maybe we weren't measuring everything. So I knew we had 23 different nationalities in this office, because that was very, that was in front of my mind. But that's not the same as your makeup. So again, you go, "What's the right thing to do?" Yes, but do it properly, and do it for real, and do it forever.
Again, screw the headlines, do it for real. Count the numbers, again and again. Get the kids young, bring them in, grow your own leadership. Strategically hire. Positive discrimination. Add the ri... I'm never gonna not be a meritocracy, but we're going to go out of our way to find the very best people where we perhaps weren't always looking.
When we were MAPE's Agency of the Year, I was very excited, alright? Very excited. Again, I think it was an example of us taking an issue, taking it for real, attacking it thoroughly. Not being hurried, not being rushed into gestures. I hate bloody gestures, because they're fake. Do something real that you'll stand by forever. So we're pretty good. But you have to go out of your way. Your outreach has to be different. You’ve got to make it someone's full-time job. So a global leader of diversity who has license to go where she needs, ask for any resources she needs. Ask for anybody's attention she needs. And that's just make sure we're tracking, and exceeding, and make it a reason to come here, not a reason not to come here.
Charles (28:24):
I mean, one of the issues with diversity in this industry is the talent supply chain.
Carl Johnson (28:27):
Yeah. Exactly.
Charles (28:28):
Predominantly white, predominantly male.
Carl Johnson (28:31):
Yeah. That's why sometimes you have to go young.
Charles (28:33):
And then teach them.
Carl Johnson (28:33):
And then grow, the same way you'd teach any kid that's coming out of anywhere. Yeah, and then teach them. And then there are others who have been in the industry for some time, and then you just have to work super hard to get them. (laughs) But then you have to have the best agency so that's a great job. Again, not gestures. Don't give anyone a job because they happen to be the right color. Because I think that's insulting to them, and insulting to the agency. Find the best people. Look harder.
Charles (29:02):
One of the things that I've seen is agencies had a hiring spurt.
Carl Johnson (29:07):
Yeah.
Charles (29:07):
And then 12, 15 months later, a lot of those people have left because the culture wasn't designed—
Carl Johnson (29:13):
Yeah.
Charles (29:14):
...to give them the kind of environment in which they thought they could be successful. It wasn't necessarily prejudiced, but it was not supportive.
Carl Johnson (29:20):
Yeah.
Charles (29:20):
How do you address that?
Carl Johnson (29:23):
We come down really hard on that. We have a very nurturing, if you like, HR department. A very... Everybody knows they can go to HR at any moment on any topic. So everybody knows that about the agency. And if anybody does anything inappropriate on any dimension, they get hammered. And everybody knows we would because we think it's wrong. So there's not a lot of room for, "Oh, they were just joking." You go... Phwoah. You know now. We've had mandatory training for the whole staff. We've had renewed training. You've signed these things. You know what it means. You've seen everybody speak relentlessly on this topic. We're not going to be very forgiving. This isn't the place to try that. It wouldn't work.
Because you defend it. Again, I'm on all stage, do the all staff…. I mean, this person didn't mean it when they said it. And you go, "No, that's not gonna fly." They're supposed to know.
Now, I think what that does is, it largely prevents it being a problem, because people know there's no wiggle room. It's only when it's ambiguous, or when people don't believe you mean it, that you then create the problem. You start strong on that, and stay strong. You leave less room for interpretation and excuses. You just go, "Nope, you can't do that.” So you don't. And if anybody complains we would be credibly decisive, because you have to be.
Charles (30:49):
Can we talk about new business for a minute?
Carl Johnson (30:50):
Yeah, new business. We like new business. I love new business.
Charles (30:53):
Well, I know you love new business, and, frankly, your track record is phenomenal.
And your intention towards new business as a process, as well.
Carl Johnson (31:00):
Yeah.
Charles (31:02):
Talk to me a little bit about your view of new business and how you go about it.
Carl Johnson (31:05):
I think our approach... I think this is one of the reasons we won this award this time. This was one of the reasons why we've grown so much over the years. So part of the reason for us being Agency of the Year, I know, is that two of the most high profile pitches in the last 12 months were Dunkin' and Bud Light. Everybody wanted them, we won them both.
And they were serious fights, as you can imagine. So, I think there's an underlying... There's a couple of things that make us good at new business. There are behavioral and psychological. And then there's actual principles as there would be to the... I can explain in a minute. A lot of us like sport. Okay? We like operating in a team. And in a way, a pitch is a major game. It's a fight in a game. It's a competitive sport. I'm too old to play competitive sport at any kind of level. But there are many principles that are the same. There's a match, you win, you lose. You operate as a team, you're interdependent on each other. You have to think about what you can do to beat everybody else, and then you have to give everything to win that game.
There's an adrenaline. There's an intensity. We make it fun. It's hard but it's fun. Because we also love the fight. (laughs) We just love it. We like being tested. We don't mind who we're against. We love all that. So there's something about it that really speaks to a part of our DNA, which is, we are inherently competitive. But we're collectively competitive. I'm sure a lot of us didn't play any solo sports, they were always team sports, because you win together and we like to win together.
Behind it, though, we know that it's very hard work, and it's usually on top of everything else you're doing. So there's a few reasons that what we really focus on… and I think agencies historically in my career, I've seen agencies being incredibly naïve about this. They get really excited they're on seven pitches. And you go, "That's not exciting at all. That's exhausting." Exciting is, we played three pitches and we won two of them. What I'm interested in is the conversion rate, because then every ounce of effort was worth it. So for us, it's about how efficient we are at winning.
So what that means is, you decline two-thirds of the opportunities you get. And you decline it for one of the following half a dozen reasons, which we've written down. Do we like, trust, respect the people? We exit if you fail at any stage on this list. That the number one question. The second one is, do we believe in the product, and do we want more of it in the world? So we're never doing guns, we're never doing cigarettes, we're never doing politics, because it's divisive. So unless you say "Yes, I want more of that," we're not even going to go there. Do we think we can honestly answer their problem? Because even if you could win it, you're going to get fired soon enough when it becomes obvious you faked it. So you’ve got to get through those three fundamentals straight away.
Is there value in it for us? And value is bigger than money. It’s money, it's learning, it's credentials, it's phenomenal work. We have to know the answer to why we want it. Do we have the capability of winning, in the sense of, we've got a fit team prepared to do this. The right people are available. Otherwise, again, you're just going through the motions, you work four or six weeks, you lose. So that's how we do it. And then we have one step, which I'm wary of saying on a podcast.
Charles (34:40):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (34:41):
But I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it, I don't care. I think we think about things better than most people before we begin. The art of war. It's a pitch. It's a competitive pitch. You are competing against three, four, or five agencies. What is your pitch strategy to win? No, not what's the client brief. What's the pitch strategy? How do you beat the opposition? Go back to sport. You don't play the same game every time without knowing what the hell the opposition play. We look at who we're against, we anticipate how they will come, and we will try and change the game to suit us.
If, for example, we don't believe that advertising will win, because it won't actually work, we will make it really clear in our pitch that the answer cannot be an ad. Every other agency that comes in with a phenomenal ad campaign loses by definition. We've made advertising wrong. So we will pitch without any, because that's our pitch strategy. And I don't think enough people, anybody much, has that conversation. Everybody rushes…. The first thing they do is, they get excited because they've been invited to pitch, so there's no filter on whether they should pitch. They pitch with whoever's available. They can manage to rustle some key people together maybe, but maybe they're not fully fit. And they read the brief, and they start working on the brief.
But there's a step before reading the brief. There's a step, step back and go, "How do we win? How do we change the game to suit us?” And you see this happen all the time in our history of pitching. It's been very clear sometimes when we've looked at the opposition and we've shifted the game, and then we won. And no one knows how we won, and you go, because we didn't tell everybody what we were going to do. And I think that pitch strategy borne of a love of the process, the pitching process. And years of collective experience or of about how to pitch. We'll never sell something that we don't believe in, but we will shift the agenda, or the criteria, to suit us.
Charles (36:54):
Yeah. I've always been struck by your relish of new business.
Carl Johnson (36:57):
I do love it.
Charles (36:58):
You love it, don’t you?
Carl Johnson (36:59):
(laughs) I do.
Charles (36:59):
Yeah, and it's a—
Carl Johnson (37:00):
It's a test.
Charles (37:00):
It's apparent. How do you get in the pitch? I mean, obviously your reputation as a company is you get invited a fair amount of times.
Carl Johnson (37:07):
Yeah. It's bizarre, okay? It's absolutely bizarre. It's the first agency in my entire life where we do not actively prospect. I can't believe it. I think that is truer in America than the rest of the world, for us. But in America, the brand is so strong. Our proposition is extremely relevant and distinctive, and we don't tell everybody all the details, so that they don't know what we're going to do. And so new business for us, I touch every piece of wood you can imagine, is two things. Organic growth by servicing our current clients so well we grow a lot from just them. Over-deliver to existing clients. And then, it is essentially qualification of incoming. And like, I said, we're in the... We have the privilege of being able to decline two thirds of what's coming in. And then, therefore, we don't go prospecting. So I've never seen that in my life.
We have a good relationship with consultants, we keep them informed. We don't chase a lot of press, to be honest, at all. But the brand has built a good reputation, and has created, if not a tremendous amount of understanding, a high degree of intrigue. A lot of clients go, "I don't really know what you do," (laughs) "But I'm intrigued to know more. Can you tell us what you do?" And then when we're explaining in the privacy of a conference room, we do have a tremendous story, and we have tremendous breadth and depth of experience. And we do believe in busting our arse for our clients, because we do believe in organic growth. So we wouldn't put ourselves forward if we didn't think we'd do a great job. And we are honest about whether we're doing a great job. And if we're not, we work harder.
Charles (39:00):
And if you don't chase press, where do clients hear about you from?
Carl Johnson (39:03):
I think they hear about a lot of consultants, and word of mouth. We talk at conferences sometimes. Clients talk to each other, and we still get press coverage, even if we don't actively chase it too much. Because you still break campaigns, and you still win pitches.
Charles (39:17):
Were you different when you were first setting up the company? Were you more proactive in terms of getting word about the company out? Has this evolved?
Carl Johnson (39:23):
Not really, no.
Charles (39:24):
You've always been.
Carl Johnson (39:24):
No, we've always been... We've always believed... This was not my idea, but it was one of our, my partners, Justin. He basically said, "You know what? Mystery should be one of our elements of DNA."
Charles (39:38):
I always aspired when we built our film editing company to get to the point where our number was unlisted.
Carl Johnson (39:43):
(laughs) Yeah. I think it's just you want intrigue, but you don't want the entire playbook out there. I would much rather be talking and explaining directly to clients, what we do and how we do it.
And we've never really attempted to chase the press. But we want every experience a client has with us to be good, because we believe in word of mouth, and we believe in delivering. And then your work's written about. And consultants are important, because so much business goes through consultants. And they know us, and we never let them down, you see. We're never on a list and then embarrassed a consultant. Not has never happened. We might not win, but we're never embarrassing. We might have been too bold, too radical, but we never show up with anything that isn't minimum interesting.
Charles (40:32):
How has your leadership changed over the last two years? How are you different now than you were pre-pandemic?
Carl Johnson (40:38):
That's another good question. I think, two things really. One would be the hesitation that would, that COVID brought about where I was... It forced me to go, “You don't have to know everything. You're allowed not to know everything immediately.” You're allowed to go, "I don't know." So, I'm much more comfortable not knowing the answer immediately. I don't mind that.
Charles (41:08):
How do people react to that? Because you are a…. You have traditionally been somebody who is very certain.
Carl Johnson (41:12):
Yeah.
Charles (41:12):
Right? You are very principled, you are—
Carl Johnson (41:14):
Yeah.
Charles (41:14):
...very thoughtful. People come to trust that—
Carl Johnson (41:16):
Yeah.
Charles (41:16):
...and depend on that.
Carl Johnson (41:17):
Yeah, yeah.
Charles (41:18):
How have they reacted to your lack of certainty?
Carl Johnson (41:20):
Well, bizarrely, (laughs) sometimes I do things without knowing I'm doing it. I'm just extremely confident about the fact I don't know. So there is certainty and strength in the not knowing.
Do you know what I mean?
Charles (41:30):
Yeah, yeah.
Carl Johnson (41:31):
Because there's a sort of... You can stand there quietly and go, "Okay, this is great. This is a question we've never been asked before, and we don't know." No problem, just like any other client question. Now let's do what we would normally do. Let's interrogate it, turn it upside down, pressure test it. And then we will leave absolutely sure of what our plan is. So I think it's... You don't have to know, you just still have to be confident that you don't know. It's confidence and security that you emanate. You know, that you have conviction about the fact you don't know. And that's not weakness. See, weakness and insecurity, those two are not helpful. But you don't have to know the answer, because we're seeing new questions. And I think that's what the people buy into. And then, because you're honest, you have to actually answer it.
So that one is... I only figured that out after the event. I was not doing that deliberately. (laughs) It's because I don't mind not knowing. I don't feel weakened by not knowing. I feel I don't know, but that's not weaker. You're not meant to know. Who the hell knows everything? So that was good. And then I think, a sort of greater awareness that the, if you like, the threat could come from anywhere. Before that, you'd sort of know, well, you might not, this might not happen. The client might not like this. You might not win any clients. All of those things were in the usual straight line of what happens in an agency.
COVID and things like that, and social issues, they tell you that the existential threat could come in from any direction. That it may have nothing to do with your work. And so you go, "Hang on a second. I need my head up." Head up doesn't mean look across the category, it means look across the world. Not just at consumers, and brands, and marketing. What the hell is going on? And be ready to grapple with those kind of problems, as well. So I think... And again, I didn't like that. (laughs)
Charles (43:31):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (43:31):
Because I'm a control freak on one level. And I like knowing, because it gives me the confidence, right? So the fact it could come from any direction, right? I'm worried about, are they rioting on the streets? How are the staff going to get here? Is it safe? You know, what is going on? This is not, can-we-sell-them-a-campaign type stuff. That all looks incredibly trivial in comparison. So I think those two things. They're connected, but they're different. But the core of what it is to lead people, guide people, support people, in and around all of this business of marketing, and business building, and brand building, is familiar stuff. And even when that moves forward, like, what the hell is the metaverse all about really? Everyone lost their mind on NFTs, and now they lost their money on NFTs. (laughs)
Charles (44:24):
(laughs)
Carl Johnson (44:25):
Crypto, what? Crypto this, crypto that. Everything is beginning to look like Second Life. (laughs) Right? All of the extraordinary change will never stop. But that wasn't surprising, and isn't surprising. And you do have to be ready for that. It was the fact that the, you know, existential threat is outside, and being comfortable with not having seen this before. But that's okay.
Charles (44:51):
One of the things we talked about last time, that you said you were very concerned about, was the fact that there were people not physically together. It was hard to see—
Carl Johnson (45:00):
Yeah.
Charles (45:01):
...who was doing okay—
Carl Johnson (45:02):
Yeah.
Charles (45:02):
...and who was struggling. And then you just mentioned, screen goes off, you don't know.
Carl Johnson (45:05):
Yeah.
Charles (45:06):
How has that carried forward?
Carl Johnson (45:08):
I think we try really hard to... We have a mentoring program. I like mentoring, because you are mentoring on a work point of view, but you're also... your emotional antennae are up for, ‘How are they?’. So we have a culture where you want people looking out for each other at every level, all the time. And so I think our point of view from the starting point was always good. Working in the office three days a week means you have a chance. So I think that when we got back to that, I felt a whole lot better than, I just got a load of black screens, and I don't know what's going on. So, to be honest, I hated it when we were fully remote. Hated it. I felt vulnerable to ignorance of knowing if anyone's okay. And to be honest, all you've got to do is go, okay, so I'm 25 years old, I relocated to New York, and I'm in a small flat which I share with someone I've never met. And I've got to work from there? And I'm scared, and I can't get home. That's a nightmare. So I think we biased prioritized looking after our people, and making sure that everybody had their eye on somebody, because without the people, we're a model. We're not a company, we're not a business, we're just a model, which is therefore useless. So caring about the people is a high priority.
But then, like I said, actively mentoring, lots of practical support. We spent a fortune on all kinds of benefits, all kinds of help. Even things like, okay, everybody can join Calm for nothing, alright, we'll pay for all that. We will actively do… we'll change the benefits like this. So we did a lot of work like that. And then, but now we're back, and creating the kind of... I think also creating the kind of company where it is that people would feel welcome to go to HR and say, "I'm really bloody struggling."
Charles (47:11):
The last two years in so many ways, I think, struck me as a massive traumatic experience for all of us in different ways.
Carl Johnson (47:17):
Yeah.
Charles (47:17):
Whether you lived it well—
Carl Johnson (47:19):
Yeah.
Charles (47:19):
...as you and I did in the places—
Carl Johnson (47:21):
Mm-hmm.
Charles (47:21):
...we were able to live or if you didn't live it well—
Carl Johnson (47:23):
Yeah.
Charles (47:23):
...we've all been traumatized in different ways.
Carl Johnson (47:26):
Yeah.
Charles (47:26):
Obviously some more than others. Have you seen evidence of that, as people have come back together? Are you conscious of that among the people?
Carl Johnson (47:31):
I think a lot of damage was done at the time. I definitely get the sense that everybody is regathering themselves at different speeds. I do think the resilience of humanity is extraordinary. And I think there'll be lots of lessons learned, but we will collectively, potentially be stronger and better. Because some of the lessons, because they should've been changed, things should've been changed.
Like I was saying about what an office is, I think the offices will be better now. We'll still have a bar. (laughs) But we'll have different use of space, and we won't make everybody go there all the time. But I think, with luck we'll be stronger. But what I'm seeing is, people remembering why they like being together, which is great. I was in London office the other day. It's so noisy, you could barely hear yourself speak, right? But that's because it's the excitement of people being together. You slam 100 people together, and they remember that that's why they joined the business.
Honestly, if it was not a social business, I would never have joined this business. And if we could never work together, then I would leave this business. I want to be with people doing things that are difficult, and succeeding. Now it used to be sport when I was a kid, (laughs) and now it's business. But it has many of the same characteristics. And I definitely see people feeling more and more happy, do good work together, laugh together, be praised, win and lose together. So, yeah, I don't see scarred people walking around. I see people growing.
Charles (49:14):
What will be expected of leaders in 2023, and beyond? What’s changed about leadership, do you think, going forward?
Carl Johnson (49:21):
I think they can't, I think they mustn't forget all of these things, ever. They weren't tactics. They weren't little short-term tactics. Not band-aids. They're fundamental realignments, or reprioritization. They really mustn't be seen as temporary. So, continue the thinking about your people, the makeup and diversity of your people, the role of work in people's lives. I mean, honestly, you've got to be able to answer, why should they come to work? I mean, I ask myself that all the time, as you know, like I said, overly-educated philosophy student. I'm going to ask that question again and again.
You’ve got to get a good answer, and you’ve got to know that everyone in your company can answer that question well to themselves. So there's got to be something to do with what they're being asked to do. Who are they doing it with? How much pleasure they get, how much fulfillment they get. And how much money they're earning. And if we can't answer that.… So I think the biggest lesson is, for me anyway, was really hang on to what you fundamentally believe, and adapt where you need to adapt, but don't do it tactically. Do it absolutely fundamentally because it's right.
You could argue that should always be how it should've been. I just think these were particularly impactful forces.
I actually think we’ll be better, because we'll have eliminated some things that we were doing without thinking.
Charles (50:49):
Yeah. I think that this whole experience has flushed a lot of what I would describe as two-dimensional leadership out the window.
Carl Johnson (50:54):
Yep.
Charles (50:55):
You have to be able to think on your feet. You have to be able to be an original thinker. You have to be able to be conscious of the kind of issues you've just described. And I think for most of our lives, that wasn't necessarily true.
Carl Johnson (51:05):
No.
Charles (51:05):
I think a lot of people were following a leadership playbook that their predecessor had left behind, and they thought they'd just do a bit more—
Carl Johnson (51:10):
Yeah.
Charles (51:10):
...of that. That clearly has not been the case.
Carl Johnson (51:12):
No, I think, for us, because we've always been like this, it puts real pressure on honesty, integrity, fundamental values, because we're talking real things here. People are dying. They were dying. It's not just, they didn't buy a campaign. It's different, and more important. And I think you have to be… you should have to be a more honest, authentic leader.
Charles (51:36):
Yeah.
Carl Johnson (51:37):
And commit, and look after your people.
Charles (51:39):
Last question for you.
Carl Johnson (51:40):
Oh, my goodness.
Charles (51:40):
What are you afraid of now?
Carl Johnson (51:43):
What am I afraid of now? That's a good question. I am mainly afraid of... You don't want to become cautious. Just because the world's tricky, you don't want to become cautious. So I think one of the traits of Anomaly is that we were bolder. We were fearless. We have to continue to be that. I don't want to get in any kind of hunkering down, let's be happy with where we are. I want to be permanently scaring ourselves. I remember this question I was asked years ago about, you know, "Hey, hey, what's your big goal for the year?" And the answer... I thought about it really hard, as you should. And I internalized a lot and thought, and I said, "My big goal for the year is to do something so audacious, it makes even us gasp." Right? And I want that to still be how we think.
And I think anything that makes us shy of that level of ambition, is a bigger threat than anything else. So I'm worried that the past couple of years affects that. So I want to make sure that, that we are punching really ambitiously, and scaring ourselves, and stretching, because we can. One of the advantages of scale is that you can aim really big. Because we have money, we have talent, and then all you therefore need is the ambition, and then the fearlessness to have a go. So I think that's the only thing to worry about, the rest we can do.
Charles (53:22):
Of that, I have no doubt.
Carl Johnson (53:24):
(laughs)
Charles (53:24):
I appreciate your honesty, your candor, and your insight as always. It's always a pleasure talking to you.
Carl Johnson (53:29):
No, I love it. It's good. You make me... I actually end up leaving learning something. (laughs)
Charles (53:34):
I'm very glad to hear that. Likewise.
Carl Johnson (53:35):
Thank you very much.
Charles (53:36):
Thank you.
Carl Johnson (53:37):
See ya.
—————
Let us know if there are other guests you’d like to hear from, and areas you’d like to know more about or questions you have.
And don’t forget to share Fearless with your friends and colleagues.
If you’d like more, go to fearlesscreativeleadership.com where you’ll find the audio and the transcripts of every episode.
If you’d like to know more about our leadership practice, go to thelookinglass.com.
Fearless is produced by Podfly. Frances Harlow is the show’s Executive Producer. Josh Suhy is our Producer and editor. Sarah Pardoe is the Media Director for Fearless.
Thanks for listening.
