'Paper-shuffling' label makes the suits shirty

By IRENE CHAPPLE

With the titles come the stereotypes.

In adland, there are the "suits" - the account managers - and the "creatives", those who produce the advertisements.

One title suggests a paper-shuffling role, the other hints of artistic genius.

In the words of one long-time player, the suits have, for "thousands of years", been saddled with an image of being second-class players in the industry.

The suits - as intermediaries between client and creative - are said to take the flak not only from disgruntled clients but from creative teams zealously protecting the purity of their art.

The suits took another hit when highly respected creative Mark Waites, of London agency Mother, visited New Zealand for April's ONTV Conference.

Mother, which proclaims itself a suitless agency, was started in the late 1990s on the back of a $50 million account.

Waites said the agency's formative success was partly due to "having no account people".

His comments, according to a report in AdMedia, provoked roars of laughter.

"We don't have account people, it's true, because basically they get in the way," he continued. "What we do is, we get it right, right off the bat."

Waites' point: Talk direct to the clients, understand what they want, and save a bucketload of time.

But now, it seems, the worm is turning. Suits, with their increasingly diverse workload, are gaining kudos and New Zealander James Hall, for one, is a suit with a reason to smile.

The chief executive of London's Saatchi & Saatchi office - in the job for just over a year since leaving New Zealand - is now, according to the judges at this year's Cannes International Advertising Festival, leading the world's top agency.

Hall has no issue with the industry label, although he agrees it could be derogatory.

And, he counters, "I've heard the creative team being called the colouring-in department on many occasions."

Many in the industry observe that there is a blurring of preferred clothing - suits, it seems, are no longer the standard uniform of the, umm, suits.

But Hall bucks the trend. "I wear a suit every day except the weekends. I am encouraging the suits in London to wear suits."

Creatives are not required to wear suits - "because they're not involved in the client's process."

Colleagues remember Hall as a quiet young suit, who once cancelled a flight to listen in on a client meeting. Now 43, he promotes three basic rules the good suit should follow: "Take overall ownership of all the issue, have a strong point of view and understand the client's category."

If suits don't understand the client's broader issues, says Hall, they will become bag-carriers.

In the 1970s they needed permission to enter the floor populated by the creative team.

The boundaries have blurred since then. The hugely successful Steinlager tagline "They're drinking our beer. Here" was dreamed up by suit Terry King.

Now heading his own agency - Blackwood King and Partners - King rebuffs the label of suit, believing it inaccurate.

He prefers "strategist idea developer" - although that's not on his business card.

The success of the eight-year Steinlager campaign was a result of thinking about the consumers' response - the domain of the suit, says King.

"The strategy was to establish that New Zealand's beer was being accepted overseas ... We found the response and then found the creative to go with it. It was the analysis that led to the creative."

King was then working with Roy Meares, a prominent New Zealand creative now heading MearesTaine.

Meares' agency prides itself on close client relationships, and has equal numbers of suits and creatives on staff. In larger agencies, there are two suits to each creative.

But Meares, unlike Waites, believes suits can be vital players.

"I have worked in agencies where clients will be serviced by tiers of suits and I've always been suspicious [that] it's a lazy way of handling business ... the person at the bottom is generally doing all the work.

"Clients can get pissed off, because they only see the creative once in a blue moon."

MearesTaine is "incredibly cautious" about employing suits, says Meares, but the good ones are "stimulating and great to have around. Good suits are fantastic strategists".