Campaign Promotion: The Ideas People On The Record - Andrew Walmsley

the head of digital media at Bartle Bogle Hegarty fed into the success
of an online media agency that has been agency of the year eight times
in eight years. "The trick," Walmsley says, "is looking outside our
industry for answers." As he explains here, mixing apparently unrelated
ideas works too.

- Tell us about your inspiration.

I try everything, join everything, do it all (under a pseudonym).
Digital is changing our lives at such a pace that there's no substitute
for total immersion - it's the only way to build a world view that can
help our clients address the challenges and opportunities it
presents.

I also listen to Radio 4 a lot. Although Sailing By and The Archers
drive me mad, the ability of this remarkable institution to surprise me
and put stuff in front of me I'd perhaps never choose to listen to, is
of more value than ever in a world where increasingly we select only the
things we already know we're interested in.

- How do you make your working environment work for you?

Mess. I don't know how it works, and it tends to drive people mad, but
that's the way it is. I used to think that being really tidy would help
me to be more effective - but I've come to realise that sometimes I have
to let this stuff alone. Ideas have a strange habit of coalescing out of
the cloud; it doesn't seem to work when you force it.

- How do you turn a good idea into a great one?

Usually, it's the synthesis of two or more things from apparently
unrelated fields. Even if the saying's true that there's nothing new,
there are always new ways of mixing, combining and inverting existing
ones. Then there's hard work. Testing it, challenging it, getting
others' views.

- How do you unstick an idea when it's stuck?

It's just as important to know when to junk them. Lots of people in my
position talk about having too many ideas - often time can be wasted on
getting stuck (ideas have a habit of coming back to life after they've
been parked for a while).

- Give us a real example of how you came up with a good idea.

While studying operations management, I learned about the discipline and
how companies such as Toyota apply it to improve quality, efficiency and
output, and marvelled at how nobody had applied it to media. Media
agencies hand-crank pretty much everything, sending out plans in Excel
that are vulnerable to error and fail to capture the knowledge that's
created in the organisation. It's an £18 billion cottage
industry.

I brought workflow and knowledge management across from manufacturing
and applied it to media, using software we wrote that now sits at the
core of the agency's business and is being licensed by other
agencies.

The idea came from looking outside our industry for answers, to a
question that hadn't occurred to our competitors.

- Great ideas are often so risky that frequently they are hacked to
pieces. What's your advice for nurturing a gem and selling it to a
client?

Never sell. Never. If you sell, it's because you lack confidence in the
idea or your ability to communicate it. It challenges people, and often
their response will be to push back. If they like the idea, they want
some ownership, and that's what makes people add bits here there and
everywhere. So the objective should be for everyone to arrive at the
solution together, even if it's really yours - you get less fame, but
the outcome is one you believe in.

- What are your creative trade secrets?

If they were secrets, I wouldn't tell you.

- Tell us about a turning point in your career.

In 1994, sitting in an Irish bar in Manhattan with six philosophers -
all teaching and studying at Colombia University. All from different
countries, and all with a passion for cricket. Turns out they all used
Cricinfo on the web to keep up with their obsession. I'd been using the
web for a while then, and this was the point I realised how big an idea
it was - how it connects people and that this would change media
forever. The real power of the internet is the connection it enables
between consumers and the ability it gives them to collaborate.

- Name the most inspiring person in your working life.

Too many to mention.

- You have 24 hours away from professional responsibilities and a brief
to re-energise yourself. What will you do?

Play with my kids. Go to the pub.

- What motivates you?

Learning. Everything else flows from it - success, fulfilment,
happiness, money. Learning's the most important thing, and whenever I've
got it wrong in the past, it's because I've prioritised other things
that have given me short-term benefits but not positioned me effectively
for the future.

- What ideas should we be taking more seriously?

The impact of communication and collaboration between (and with)
consumers. We have to recognise that ethics, transparency and quality
are features of our business that consumers will expect as hygiene
factors. Our failures will be public and painful, and our successes
accepted without acknowledgement - it's up to us to respond and create a
new way of working with our customers.

TAKE THE TEST

The Ideas People is drawn from major research conducted by The Economist
in 2007. It's built on essential truths about the world we live in and
The Economist's readership. One is that ideas, not products, are the
currency of the modern economy. Another is that Ideas People are the
stars of the 21st century. They produce and implement new thinking, they
influence others, they have stamina. They are turned on by new ideas and
opportunities. Are you an Ideas Person? Go to the quiz at
www.theideaspeople.economist.com and find out for yourself.

Andrew Walmsley is a ... Pioneer Catalyst Builder.