Cost pressures to blame as respected creative director Luke Chess + digital CD James Theophane depart Clemenger BBDO Sydney
CB Exclusive – Campaign Brief can reveal that Clemenger BBDO Sydney creative director Luke Chess and digital creative director James Theophane have both left the agency, believed to be driven by cost pressures.
Chess (near left) joined the agency nearly two years ago from the CD role at Lavender, Sydney.
When contacted by CB, Chess would not be drawn on the details surrounding the apparently sudden departure: “I can confirm that both Theo and I have left Clemenger and are currently discussing our next move,” said Chess. “For now, we have no further comment.”
Both Chess and Theophane joined Clemenger in February 2011 as creative directors, and have helped bring the agency new business, industry recognition and awards success.
Chess was pivotal in Clemenger Sydney’s first Gold Lion in 22 years (for Virgin Australia) at Cannes in June, while Theophane conceived and developed ‘Mimeisthai’ for the agency – the world’s first spoken-word trending engine which debuted at TEDx Sydney this year.
Before Lavender Chess was CD of Saatchi & Saatchi, Auckland for two years from January 2008 until January 2010, and was ranked among the world’s top 20 CDs in the Big Won Report at Cannes 2009. Prior to NZ, Chess was a senior creative at Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney.
Theopane (above left) joined in Clems from R/GA, London. He has also worked in Amsterdam, Sweden and NY creating work for the likes of Nokia, Nike, D&AD, Pepsi, V Energy Drink, Electrolux, Sony PlayStation, Oxfam, British Heart Foundation and Wired Magazine.
He has put a pop-up restaurant atop a neo-classical building in Paris, created a gigantic interactive chandelier that played Christmas carols. Hacked an oil painting and launched a fully interactive round the world yacht.
74 Comments
How many creative directors do they have there now?
Probably 10.
Both really great blokes, I’m sure they’ll be missed at Clems.
Sad for the guys, but they won’t be the last. The truth is the industry doesn’t need talented creatives any more. Integrated campaigns have become so diluted that it is usually the planners insight that becomes the big idea wrapped in some glib platitude involving a class 1 TEFL phrase. We have handed over creative to consumers with spectacularly awful results. And the social media content is king mantra means quantity has replaced quality as the industry benchmark. The only people smart enough and strong enough to fight against this dumbing down are the very ones who are now being culled. Their replacements – hired at a fraction of the cost – are destined to join the chain, fleshing out formulaic me-too campaigns as suppliers rathers than originators. The smart kids will look elsewhere and advertising will return to the awfulness of the 50’s and 60’s. This has process has already happened wholesale in some shops. It’s just a matter of time before it becomes the industry norm.
Thanks for the Lion, off you go. Lovely.
Been there Chessy, it sucks.
Get a big fuck off payout, dust yourself off, find somewhere nice to work where the clients aren’t psychotic fucktards. And in 2 months time that place and Shit Leonards will be a distant memory.
I don’t know James but Luke is a great bloke.
This is simply proof once again that awards and subsequent rankings in creative charts aren’t worth a pinch of shit. They are merely fake carrots to dangle in front the engine room of this industry.
the irony!!!!!!
All that hype over that Cannes winning virgin layout.
Sorry to hear that, but creatives taking jobs there need to go in with their eyes wide open. Clems go through staff like nappies. They shit on them and when they start to smell bad, toss them out.
one of the best and most accurate comments on this blog for ages. original thinking is being planned out of the door by talentless ‘strategists’ without an ounce of creativity in their bodies.
Chocks away, Baron Von Chessy
Good luck to both of you. You have been great mentors, thank you!
A
Undoubtedly, it’s the clients and management that kill the creative juices at Clems: neither want to risk their jobs buying daring, bold work—the only difference is one will stab you in the front.
I’ve worked with Luke at two of his agencies now – he’s a great creative, and thinker, and I’d be very happy to work with him again. I’ve been around a long time, and seen many agencies move a lot of their “weight” from the creative to the planning department. I don’t think it’s been a smart move. Too many agencies are way too light on thinking in the creative department. The old style agencies like TCP, where all creative were senior, great strategists as well as creatives, was a formula that worked brilliantly (the old Palace I said!) – more agencies should study what worked there and try and emulate it. Back to more senior thinking creatives and few planners I say!
Back to being a networked service agency it is then. Quick, hire more suits.
I hadn’t heard of theo before i worked there. i’m surprised they let him go. one of the few that could change that place. seems like a really odd call to make. good luck buddy.
It’s true. Clems Sydney don’t give a toss about their people. They feed them bullshit to get them in, they work them hard producing sub-standard work and then they spit them out the other end when they’ve served their purpose. Be honest Clems Sydney, you’re just a money making machine that pretends to care about creative.
Well put Kes. These so called over inflated ‘strategists’ seem to be given free reign more and more these when it comes to unthought out creative input, that the top level invariably buys into. Clems is certainly not the only networked agency north of the bridge where this is rife.
‘Client’, you couldn’t have put it better. There are many agencies that have moved their focus/seniority to other departments in recent years (one in Sydney instantly comes to mind). They are now bearing the fruits of that decision.
I think clients need to learn to look past the buzzwords and sales pitch and realise who is really delivering what it is they are paying for.
Clems are getting rid of the wrong people. There’s a few there, who are better at playing the game than actually contributing to a great agency.
Clems Sydney sounds like Carlton Football Club.
Great creatives think, plan and then create. Intelligent Creatives that are given the research and background they need by the client are more than capable of contextualising their ideas within an effectively planned strategy all their own.
There’s not enough really good briefs in Australia for all the good creatives working in the business. So they can’t all be employed at the salaries they deserve.
However, there’s an over supply of shit briefs for shit creatives willing to work for shit money to do shit work. Worse, there’s plenty of clients happy to see shit work on shit briefs by shit creatives to propel their shit brands to shit results in shit categories.
Result? All our best creatives are forced overseas to do great work leaving all the shit behind to ensure that our industry will always be shit.
How many Aussie superstar creatives are ex pats…? Think about it.
I have worked with Luke. He’s a brilliant creative and generally all-round good bloke. With a track record like his, there is no doubt he will land another gig quickly.
However, I don’t understand the slagging off of other departments. Clems has recently retrenched plenty of staff, from a variety of departments – it just doesn’t get reported on here.
Too many suits and planners think they’re creatives. That’s one of the biggest problems with advertising in Sydney.
As the old saying goes “a fish stinks from the head”
If you think it’s up to the brief to make you good, you obviously don’t have much drive. Buy me a pony.
There’s no doubt about Clems. It’s lost its way and obviously has no respect for its people. But … BWM, Lavender, S&S NZ, Clems – All short stints.
Luke, you have to ask yourself some questions.
the planner v creative thing is stupid.
Truth is, at these dumb agencies there is an inner sanctum of board people
from accross all departments whose sole purpose is to serve their own interests.
Everyone is expendable, especially foriegners, as the board award themselves new executive-directorships and bonuses.
‘the fish rots from the head’
Clemenger Sydney is, and always has been, an agency built on relationships, not ideas. That’s why it will never be the creative powerhouse that the Melbourne office is.
So it makes perfect sense to invest less money in creative and more in planning. After all, they are the sales people in this business – an extension of the account service department that tells the clients what they want to hear.
Creatives (including myself) are mostly at odds with clients, trying to convince them to do something they don’t want to. This in turn, risks the relationship between the agency and the client.
If you want to work at an agency who’s main business is ‘ideas’ rather than ‘relationships’, head south.
Planners and suits… they came in when the MBAs of the world figured there was a truckload of money to be made from advertising. Before that it was just creatives solving a client’s problems.
Honestly, if you’re a half decent creative, you do the job of a planner. The best ads aren’t random thoughts, they’re what happens when you tell the truth beautifully, when you find an insight and showcase it in a simple, powerful way.
It’s why all the big agencies were founded by creative people, not by Martin Sorrel or some planner.
The truth of it all is this: advertising no longer wants creative people. If you really are creative, find something else to do. And if you’re not, well, just become a planner.
Planners that seem to think they’re creatives? Happens a lot in St Leonards – it’s common.
I attended a seminar/workshop once where Fred and farid were speaking. If you haven’t heard of these two blokes, read up about them – they’re one of the most awarded creatives of all time, they’ve got their own agency now. Now here’s the thing that few people now – Fred and farid were originally planners. They became creatives. They don’t ever hire planners and loathe them like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll never forget what they said at the seminar. “planners are good at making coffee. Use them for that and nothing else.”
I don’t really understand why Clems would let a guy like Luke go. Internally everyone enjoys working with him. Clients respect him. And, he wins awards. Surely that justifies the money you invest in him?
Have to say, there are some wonderfully articulated, well reasoned and accurate summations of the general plight/truth of not only Clems Sydney, but the general state of advertising and creativity.
You can always go back to Lavender
Jesus, can you all grow up and stop blaming your planners or suits for your lack of career traction?
In great agencies, the lines between planners, creatives, production and (yes) account people are wonderfully blurred. As it should be -everyone has a job, yes, but it always overlaps with that of others. And magic comes from the overlap.
It’s kinda like how very few “copywriters” can really write, and most “art directors” rely on the studio. But, together, they create better ideas than each ever could independently.
Extend that to the rest of your colleagues (assuming that they aren’t dicks) and you’ll get to very f*cking cool ideas that you’d never have necessarily got to otherwise (I’m thinking of the Droga5 campaigns that you all jizz yourselves over… and which tend to be the very big integrated affairs riled against by Kes).
Blaming others and ring-fencing yourself just makes it worse… Stand up and get involved. Find a smart planner or UX/IA person, or suit, or producer and do some cool shit together (unless of course you’re a no-talent hack who would be exposed by playing a more open team game).
Dear pony lover – you’ve obviously only been in this business five minutes.
But please, feel free to keep busting a gut to show us how good you are – on your shit briefs in your shit agency for your shit clients intent on doing shit work – and see how far it gets you.
When most planners and suits are hell-bent on selling their own creative solutions (disguised as ‘client’ debriefs), it’s no wonder the finished product ends up being dog shit. If planners and suits want to be creatives, they need to go and do AWARD School.
I haven’t heard of the Luke guy but I have worked with Theo and the dude was solid. A nice, energetic bloke with loads of ideas and great to work with. I hope that place hasn’t sucked the life out of you man… wouldn’t be suprised if you head back to the UK. Good luck with it.
Lastly on what ‘Kes said’
Main, you nailed it. Absoutely nailed it. With more information needed every minute to push thru the internet tubes… creativity really is taking a back seat. Every agency I work at is all about social media and content is king. In some instances they just have randoms creating the content for the ‘machine’
There’s two ways you can go, hold onto the precious creative dream with your television and print ads… or evolve and move into creating products and startups. This is where the best creative people are moving. Why bust your balls for the agency and their clients products when you can create and market your own?
Build your own product, build your own brand. Use your creative skills for your own good and stop making your agency and their clients rich.
Wow, there seems to be a lot of defensiveness going on here.
The best creatives I’ve worked with are confident enough in their work to let other people into them. It’s only the mediocre ones who guard their ideas like a skinny new guy in a prison mess hall.
Wankers in suits’ has nailed the issue, though: planners and suits shouldn’t try to “be” creatives (and so they shouldn’t have to go to AWARD school). Great planners and suits work with creatives, not instead of them. It’s called collaboration -some people on here should look it up.
That being said, this really only functions if you work with brilliant, ego-less people. If you don’t, please just kill yourself now.
Planners wrote single-minded briefs
Creatives presented new ideas, not recycled ones
Suits sold in concepts or didn’t bother coming back
Clients trusted agencies and not their marketing checklists
There’s definitely something to be said for not blurring the lines.
Is it just me, or does the guy on the left look like John Travolta?
You can be popular with award shows. Popular with staff. Popular with clients. But nothing beats being popular with management. Nothing.
@2:15PM. You have accurately and succinctly described the 80s at The Campaign Palace. It was a great time.
It’s a tough game and talented, decent people get hurt.
@Remember when..
Agree, everyone should know their roles in an ad agency, not want to be anything but and aim to do what they’ve been employed to do to the best of the their abilities. This will depend on the culture of the agency. But a good agency will have this structure/culture firmly in place, like a well oiled cogs in a machine. You blur the lines too much and there is chaos and dysfunction.
I was in a creative review not so long ago where the ECD and co-owner of the agency actually said to the suit that if they didn’t sell the work then they’d better not come back. A golden moment that i will forever cherish.
I’m sure James Theophane is making enough money out of his online hit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA
@Rugby is absolutely right. The contrast between his post and the hysterical shrieking of many of the others on this topic says much about the state of the industry today. An agency where the internal relationships are adversarial will never produce great work. When management retrench those responsible the work, retention, and client satisfaction will improve.And good creatives like these guys will be safe. The fault here lies with the management’s inability to use sensible criteria for selecting the victims. But hopefully they will spot them by Christmas.
“I was in a creative review not so long ago where the ECD and co-owner of the agency actually said to the suit that if they didn’t sell the work then they’d better not come back. A golden moment that i will forever cherish.”
I bet they were joking though.
Okay, let’s look at it this way.
Are all the extra people involved in a collaborative job these days adding as much value as they’re taking (both in monetary value and timeline value)? Are the ads so much better now than when there were fewer people involved? Look around the boardroom table at your next meeting/presentation. How many people are there? What do they do? What do they add?
Some people are simply creating the illusion of work, and some people are doing it.
Which department does the work ultimately rest with?
1. Reel good people in with “going places” garbage
2. Pay them shit
3. Spit them out
Collaboration is only necessary when you have weak management.
@nostalgia
Jay Furby?
Sorry Groucho.
I think I know who @Rugby is. If I’m right, his CEO has the biggest ego in the business, and woe betide anyone who has a different opinion to offer then his.
@ step by step to Clems sydney.
you forgot:
– Work them like Ryan Gosling’s rectum in a Turkish prison
– Back them to their face, but not to the men upstairs
– Let clients get away with whatever they want
– stab them in the balls while blaming the men upstairs
@Just a guess even if Rugby was Alan Jones on this occasion I would still have to agree with him. Though if he was Alan Jones I might have to cut off my two typing fingers for doing so.
Reckon they’ll be fine. This song sums it up beautifully.
http://youtu.be/3TXdThMHEPU
Hasn’t Clems Sydney got 2 Client Service Directors? Hmmm.
Actually, “collaboration” is a con. It is not a two-way process that allows the creative department to have a say, for example, on how best to manage client relationships, or the composition of research group demographics. It doesn’t open doors to senior management meetings, client briefings or the strategic direction of the agency business. All these things remain the closely guarded preserve of Account Management and Planning. What “collaboration” does do, however, is legitimise the process that a properly functioning traffic department is designed to stop. The never-ending discussions, badgering, hectoring and general interference that both planning and account management bring to the creative process; a process that is no longer linear and definitive, but incremental and never-ending. That’s why they got rid of all the traffic departments and gave the administrative function to the junior suits. That’s why we all sit in open-plan offices now, where the incessant chatter of non-thinking staff disrupts our thought flow. And that’s why it feels like getting an idea past the CD is now the start of the creative process, rather than its conclusion. If you’re senior enough to remember how great agencies used to be structured around properly servicing the creative department, you’ll understand how pernicious the collaborative model really is for our craft.
+1 Kes.
All for harmonious working relationships, but most of the time collaboration means the people who should be convincing clients what’s good for their business waste time coming up with ideas they think the client will like, and the ones paid to do the ideas end up being the ones who guide the client through the process.
Inevitably it gets to a point where account service start asking the client what they want instead of telling them what they need – until the client think ‘why don’t I just do this myself’ and leave.
The irony is it actually makes working relationships more fraught, as nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing. Yes departments should talk to each other, but not to the point where they do each others job. As Kes put, it’s a con, and detrimental to bottom line.
@Kes -you’re right, collaboration is a con… but only if you work with wankers who only pay lip service to it.
Sadly, that seems to describe the work culture of most Australian agencies (or is it just the culture of those who employ people with nothing better to do than sound off on here rather than actually making an ounce of f*cking difference to their real world?).
@Just a guess: wrong guess.
This thread is a beautifully-composed microcosm of everything that is wrong with humanity today. Everyone blaming the power-brokers for their own, self-ascribed powerlessness.
Remember guys, if you’re not part of the solution…….
…Denizen’s right about that John Travolta thing.
Dear Remember when, Nostalgia, Nostalgic, Kes & Carl,
What is it like to wake up and realise that your skill-set (of being able to write one 30 second ad and then going to lunch) has so little value in this ever-more complex marketing universe?
Kind regards,
Reality.
@Rugby not Relay
Remember, the collaborative rugby approach “may not apply to organizations where product development is masterminded by a genius who makes the invention and hands down a well- defined set of specifications for people below to follow.”
Surgery is collaborative. It takes a team working together. Yet each participant is a specialist with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. It only works if everyone respects each others’ skills and limitations and allows each participant to get on with their job without undue interference. I reckon making ads is the same. It takes highly skilled people doing the job they were born to do to the best of their ability and not kidding themselves that they can do the other person’s job better than them.
@boo fucking hoo
…ever-more complex marketing universe…?
You’ve told us all we need to know about you.
Boo fucking hoo / Reality,
Ahh, you obviously have no idea that your job of answering emails, phone calls and sending invoices is so easily replaced with technology. Ideas won’t be.
As I said before, some people make the work, some people make the arrangements. There’s little doubt which camp you fit into.
wonder how the Rolling Stones would have fared if they’d had a planner?
I’m not privy to the inner turmoil of the large advertising corporation but it seems to me that everyone sees plenty of ‘dead wood’ in the process.
That being said, if I were a client, I’d be ringing Luke and/or James and asking them to cut through all the s**t and produce some of their award winning work for me.
@ anonymous
I agree Anon, surgery is collaborative and each team member plays a clearly defined, critical role. And you’re right, the anaethetist never suggests to the surgeon that perhaps he should put a stitch here and there, and the radiographer never grabs the scalpel and marks X on the patient’s chest to identify the target organ. But unfortunately/fortunately creativity isn’t an exact science – nor is successful advertising – and people normally don’t study six years before they pen a line of copy or book a media spot, and so everyone thinks – now and again – they might have a good idea or suggestion outside their general purview – so they put it forward.
I worked as a despatch clerk at McCann Erickson Advertising in the mid 80s and had the good fortune of watching creatives such Ron Blaskett, David Crane, Andrew Wilson and Jay Mo Lo do their stuff with uber clients like BHP, Holden, Swatch and Coca Cola. And sometimes when I was filling up their fridges or delivering telex messages, they’d ask me what I thought about this and that – and very rarely, I’d notice half a snippet of what I’d said or observed – appear in their work. On the other side of the coin, sometimes the guys would be so good as to tell me how often to “stack the fuckin’ fridge you slack arsehole, better get some more in pronto, go nick ’em from the boardroom cos they’re colder …” I really appreciated those insightful suggestions.
Anyway, I spose what I’m waxing lyrical about is that there aren’t any strict demarcation lines in an ad agency. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll work for one that’s not too desperate for the next client cheque so people will be a little more considerate. That’s the key, I think. When the bottom line starts to go a bit pear shaped, it can do awfully strange things to people – creatives and suits alike.
Yes yes, Kes said:
Planning has become the snake oil that clients are begging agencies to sell them.
Who hasn’t sat through client presentations these days where the PowerPoint deck is 40 pages of planning Venn diagrams, 15 pages of creative and 5 of costs with the client glazing over after the first 10.
The one thing that will always irk the power grabby planners is the knowledge that despite their lengthy PowerPoint docs, the best campaigns have always come about through an instinctive but illogical thought from a creative.
But so many young planners these days have penis envy of the creative department, with the planning department full of young former PAs and receptionists and bullshitters who very confidently regurgitate buzzwords, marketing speak and social marketing theory and who also see no problem with throwing in ideas for someone else to have to work up.
Doesn’t anyone ask themselves that despite an ever increasing size of planning departments in some agencies, the work doesn’t get any better? Sure some planners are great. But just tell creatives who the audience is, what they like doing, where they get their info then get the f**k out of the room and stop hanging around the CD like Wormtongue from Lord of the Rings.
@Rugby not relay
Yes wonderful theory Rugby, but you don’t get to choose your planner. They’re just assigned to you.
In my time I’ve had two briefs stolen off my desk by planners who took advantage of a power vacuum and presented their ideas to the client. Another planner stated that he thought it was the job of the creative department to work up planners ideas. Another planner firmly said it was he AND the creative director who would choose which route to present. Another recently popped in to a meeting and said ‘Hey why don’t we turn people’s mobile phone bills into a cool 3D online data visualisation that they can interact with’. The above actions have all either led to the worst ideas the agencies produced, two sackings and once the loss of a client – all to indulge the planners whims to see if they can be creatives.
Collaboration sounds great, but it’s not when you end up working with the insecure and the power hungry.