Wieden + Kennedy: A Look at Creative Advertising

“We figured out the importance of being stupid” This is how Dan Wieden, co-founder of the renowned advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy, describes the key to his agency’s success. The agency is known for its creative, unconventional ads for companies such as Nike, Old Spice, and Chrysler. 

Advertising is an interesting domain to study in terms of creativity, because the creative product’s success is determined by how much it influences the behavior of the audience. Thus, advertising requires a broad form of creativity that in some ways even transcends differences such as the different cultural views of creativity Lubart describes as “eastern and “western.” Creativity in advertising is not only focused on individual discoveries that are “novel and appropriate,” but also about tapping into timeless ideas about who people are and presenting them in a fresh way–what Lubart might consider the “eastern” idea of expressing “an inner essence or ultimate reality” (Lubart 339-40). Creative ads often involve the re-imagination of a truth that people inherently understand, but hadn’t thought of in a particular light before.

For an example, take the advertising Wieden + Kennedy created for Nike. It was Dan Wieden who came up with the “Just Do It” slogan to capture Nike’s goal of inspiring ordinary people to participate in sports, which had previously been associated with professional athletes only. The simple insight behind this slogan–that people have a million excuses for not pursuing their goals–resonated so deeply with people that they found inspiration for their lives in Nike’s advertising that went beyond just getting out of bed and going for a run. In the documentary Art and Copy, Wieden and other members of his team recall letters from people saying the campaign had inspired them to do all sorts of things–pursue their dream job, leave an abusive partner, ask someone out, and so on. There was a similar result when two women in the agency, Janet Champ and Charlotte Moore, created a Nike campaign centered on building women’s self-confidence. They drew on very personal experiences to create ads that reminded women they didn’t have to be who anyone else expected them to be. The message was so powerful that mothers were telling the agency that they were showing the ads to their daughters as a way of reinforcing what they’d tried to teach them about self-worth. Advertising like this certainly requires new or fresh ideas to catch the audience’s attention, but at its core it relies on tapping into timeless human emotions, and reimagining these inner truths in a way that hadn’t been portrayed in advertising before.

One reason that Wieden and Kennedy were so successful in a business filled with creative people was the power of their collaboration. As in most advertising partnerships, each brought particular skills to the table–Wieden was the copywriter who articulated the message for an ad, and the Kennedy was the designer who expressed this message in a way that would capture the audience’s attention. They also brought very different personalities. Wieden is more outgoing and known for always pushing boundaries, and is the better-known figure of the pair as the spokesperson and public face of the company. Kennedy may be more in the shadows (and has since retired from Wieden + Kennedy), but brought fifteen years of experience in the Chicago advertising world to balance Wieden’s initial lack of experience working with traditional big-name brands. However, another key factor in their successful partnership is something they had in common. They both hated the self-importance advertising could take on, and in a 2008 interview, said that to this day they consider one of their biggest strengths to be the fact that they had the mentality of outsiders who weren’t “living and breathing and eating advertising every day.” They loved the work, not the insular culture or perceived glamour of advertising, and that’s why they started a tiny agency in Portland, Oregon, far away from the big advertising agencies. They had nothing to lose when they started working together, and this intrinsic motivation helped them create advertising that was more authentic and provocative than many of their competitors. They didn’t care about failing, but only about the fun of creating work that spoke to people.

Another part of what made Wieden and Kennedy successful–and continues to make their agency successful–is the organizational culture they created. In an interview, Wieden described the agency as a “ship of fools” when they started out. Since they weren’t located in a major advertising market, the employees they attracted were almost never top talent. However, he says that the fact that their agency was “naïve, even stupid” when it came to figuring out how to advertise successfully ended up being its greatest strength. As he put it, “when you don’t know, you try desperately to find out, but the minute you think you know it all, that’s when you start believing your own historic wisdom, and you’re not stupid anymore, you’re dead.” It was the goal of remaining curious, driven, and “stupid” that became the soul of their agency. Wieden recalls that when they realized they couldn’t compete financially with larger agencies, they decided “to create a culture that’s so damn weird, so wild, so sticky, that it would hurt your very soul to leave the place. And that culture, if it’s seen as our highest priority, and nurtured properly, it just might create the kind of environment that would not only retain our best people, but inspired them to do the best work of their lives.”

Wieden + Kennedy’s culture is all about authenticity and taking risks. Their walls don’t feature awards, but pictures of employees that capture who each person truly is–some are even pictured hanging from trees or sitting on a toilet. Also prominently displayed is their motto–“fail harder.” They believe it is the ability to fail that leads to success. Wieden and Kennedy also interact closely with the other employees and involve them in decision-making. Even in his retirement, Kennedy comes into the agency several times a week because he says he would miss the camaraderie and the chance to work with young, fresh minds rather than his own peers. Thus, the organization’s culture matches many of the creativity-fostering traits that Amabile identified in her research, including “encouragement of risk taking and idea generation, supportive evaluation of ideas, collaborative idea flow, and participative management and decision making” (McLean 235). Wieden and Kennedy deliberately set out to build an agency that fosters creativity, and it continued recognition for creative advertising shows that their approach really works. 

Additional sources:

On David Kennedy’s role in the agency: http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/david-kennedy-67238/

Wieden + Kennedy agency website: http://www.wk.com/