At Cannes Lions 2015, OLIVER Executive Creative Director David Shanks took the stage to talk about why agencies are finding the need to approach business in ways that are faster, smarter and more cost-effective.

1. In is the new In.
David Shanks.
davidshanks@oliver.agency
Twitter: @dgshanks
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidshanks

2. Our agency world has
been getting further and
further away from our clients.

3. ‘The trouble with marketing and
communications is that it is a little like the
Americans and the British.
They are separated by a common language.’

4. “The challenge for communicators is to move
from being viewed as a reactive function to a
proactive one, engaged with the outside world of consum
world of clients,” says one director.
We have got to adjust that positioning.’

5. Agency view.

6. Agency view Client view.

7. The Digital Panopticon

8. We are being watched.
The architecture of participation is
inherently an architecture of surveillance.

9. OLIVER
500+ people globally.
First in financial performance in The Drum’s list of 100
Google, Beats, Starbucks, Adidas, 3M, Pepsico,
AXA, Britvic, KPMG and Kimberly Clark.
Independently owned.

10. Oliver = Dark horse

11. Oliver understands The Creativity of Time.

12. .
And especially the notion that:
Time is a creative asset.

13. Time Convention 1.
Less time is now the most potent creative
asset in the modern world.

14. We need to to turn the positive
management of less time into
long-term, brand building,
strategic creative differentiation.

15. Quick means good in the modern world.
Turn this turbulence into
true opportunity to stay ready.

16. Time Convention 2.
We are living in different dimensions
from our consumers.

17. The biggest enemy to any agency is a
fourteen-year old kid with a laptop.
Apps are made in a month or a day.
Consumers expect responses on the internet
in under a second.

18. But developing ideas within this new
quick-is-good mindset is one which
too many agencies fundamentally refuse
to positively recognise.

20. Time Convention 3.
The Battle for the Interface.

21. Tom Goodwin, Havas.

22. These companies are incredibly thin and flexible.
They own the interface where the profit resides.
Their consumers form impressions, picking up and sharing
They are nimble in the way they consume media.

23. And it’s put them – particularly Generation Y’s
digital natives – ahead of where most corporate
structures allow companies to play today.
It’s all about agility.
And we’re always playing catch-up.

24. Time Convention 4.
We must learn the value of
rapid collision.

25. Our business is still based on separation.
We still do not like to mix unlike-minded
people or situations.
.

26. Collaboration is still generally restricted to
specific categories of people who feel
comfortable together because they speak
a common language.

27. This is safety in numbers.
But purer solutions occur when you
have more capacity for provocation.
Especially under time pressure.
Difference creates true differentiation.

28. Time convention 5
Time is now realtime
We also need to deliver dialogue in
realtime, because given consumers
expect responses in a second
or even less.

29. Marketers simply don’t have the time to
relay critical or highly relevant data to
people who are not living the experience
the way they are.

30. So. What if?

31. What if a different kind of
time-positive global resource is
now required?
How might it operate?
The clue lies in proximity, but is as a much
a proximity of mind as physical closeness.

32. Managing time as a creative asset is
now all about intimacy through proximity.
In is the new In.

33. With the new ‘agency’ part of this sweet spot was powered by
people who are proficient in creativity and technology?
Who understand the shifts in society and who can steer a path
What if:
The need for agencies to be
independent of their clients in order to
represent the consumer.
Has now been replaced by the need for
agencies and their clients
to co-exist in order to understand
the consumer.

34. With the new ‘agency’ part of this sweet spot was powered by
people who are proficient in creativity and technology?
Who understand the shifts in society and who can steer a path
What if:
The need for agencies to be
independent of their clients in order to
represent the consumer
Has now been replaced by the need for
agencies and their clients
to co-exist in order to understand
the consumer?

35. What if clients and agencies worked together
through mutual, extremely well-connected
centres or cells of creative intelligence?
That are much about learning and listening as
they are about producing and delivering?

36. What if these joint creative nerve centres
experiment as much as they execute?
Who make lots of mistakes, in order to learn?
And quickly?
In much the same way a scientific company would emplo

37. In ways that rids us all of redundant barriers and unneces
Through a tenuous and highly tensile relationship,
co-dependent on mutual intelligence and shared desire?

38. Each working to both its own and the
bigger global purpose.
Each sharing.
Each reacting in exactly the way the consumer demands

39. The final question we must ask ourselves:
What business benefit would this shared
intelligence provide?

40. The short answer is freedom.
Doing things quickly sets you free.

41. Liberating timely and highly-effective content
to realise the ambitions of both brands and their custome
Facilitating true empowerment through
instant shared knowledge and understanding.
Constantly changing and reshaping as we barrel through

42. By simply being faster, smarter and
much more productive.

43. What we do know becomes irrelevant.
What we can learn quickly
becomes critical.
In other words, freedom through time.

44. Together with our clients,
in their world.
Perversely, in order to maintain
independence.
Which is why In is the new In.
Thank you.