AgTalk | Courage is the key to change: Leo Burnett's Mark Tutssel

In addition to personally winning every major creative accolade, including the prestigious Cannes Grand Prix and 45 Cannes Lions, Mark has had the honor of chairing the world’s greatest award shows, including: the Clios, International Andy Awards, D&AD, Adfest, Eurobest, YoungGunns, Addys, Sharks and Spikes. In 2008, he served as the President of the Cannes Titanium and Integrated Jury and, in 2010, he served as President of both the Film and Press juries at Cannes.

 

Adgully caught up with Mark Tutssel, currently, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett worldwide to learn the working and strategies of the agency going forward.

 

Prior to becoming Worldwide Chief Creative Officer, Mark was Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett London. There, the agency was the United Kingdom’s number one creative agency and, in 2001, was the World’s Most Awarded. During that time, two of his clients – McDonald’s and Heinz – were named Advertiser of the Year in the UK.

 

Adgully (AG): How has been your journey with Leo Burnett so far? Share with us two key milestones of your journey so far.

 

Mark Tutssel (MT): The first chapter of Leo Burnett’s journey with me opened in London where I was the Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett and during that time we were one of the top creative agencies in the world with number one network. I am happy that I got the privilege to work with many iconic brands like Mercedes Benz, McDonald’s and Heinz and made amazing developments. I had a great time producing work with Leo Burnett in every market place and that work I am really proud of.  With all the work done, we had built a very strong culture and brave community with which we held up being the top trade agency as well. As a result of which I was asked to move to Chicago to our Flagship office. This agency gave me a really different approach towards creativity in mind and made me rich in terms of experience as in it made me much bolder when it comes to market communication.

So it’s a great honor and privilege to work with an agency like Leo Burnett which has the power of producing such great ideas in any market place.  

 

AG: What is your vision for the company and what goals you would like to instill in the young team?

 

MT: I think all that I can tell the young team is to be brave in this domain with the kind of work they produce and don’t forget courage is the key to change. Also constantly evaluate the work you do and where you stand. I think that now we have to think in a completely fresh and dynamic way and with constantly breaking the mould thus giving an idea to look at the new ways of connecting with the people. The future is about contemplation and now we have enormous channels of connecting with the people and an open canvas of opportunities to tell stories in new ways. The message is always to experiment, take risk, fail and learn to handle failure and progress with more focus. The ability to tell stories in a beautifully well crafted fashion is really important.      

 

AG: What kind of developments do we see in the coming future?

 

MT: The industry is changing and evolving with each and every segment. In this year’s Cannes we saw the introduction of ‘Mobile’ and ‘Branded entertainment and Branded Content’ which clearly marked the industry’s evolvement. Mobile is everywhere; it is the first thing that you use in the morning to the last thing in the night. With Mobile being the primary channel today in terms of communication and we really need to leverage that channel. Also ‘Social’ plays a very important and huge role for us and our clients as well. So, I think we need to find ideas that captivate people. If we see, ‘social media’ is a great opportunity today that creates a one-on-one interaction between people and for me Social Media is not only about media, media is not social and cannot be but it’s about making ideas social.

Hence, the most important trend for me is the quality of thinking and quality of ideas because at the end of the day, one thing that won’t change ever is the fact that we need to have great ideas in this industry. I believe that ideas not only excite us but our clients as well.

 

AG: Where and how would you like to rate advertising industry in India?

 

MT: Ohh! The Indian advertising from the last ten years has had seen a prolific rise in terms of quality and quantity. Over the last ten years we have got over 20 awards in Cannes Lions and that too in every channel and we were the first Indian agency to win that!  We had seen some of the amazing body of work originating from India, not only in terms of advertising but India has proved its quality of talent in the fields of film making, storytelling etc as well. India is now at the world stage and I expect to see India representing its best and grow at its fullest creating a great nation that is full of amazing ideas and India has that appetite to change. 

 

AG: Where according to you advertising domain lacks and what strategies do you think would help the industry buck up? 

 

MT: I think today’s generation is really different. During our times, Advertising was a really tough and difficult field to get into but today the new generation having so many outlets for their talent. They are so prompt when it comes to adapting any kind of technology and are so active towards Social Media, mobile and so on. We need to give them the pace and ability to create a product. The challenge that is industry faces is retaining the best talent and attracting the new talent and so it is really important that we stay an attractive proposition for them.

 

AG: What successes/failures have you experienced (professionally), and your learning’s from them?

 

MT: (laughs); According to me failure is very healthy. I obviously had both some failures and some successes but I feel that you should always learn from failure which takes you to the next level. Creativity changes the way people think and behave and also changes the brand’s perception.

 

AG: Going forward which is the most successful advertising media in your opinion and why?

 

MT: ‘Power of people’ is the most important thing today. As we move forward the brands need to form a trust point and allow the brand to be their part of life and allow people to play with the brand and build interactive brand stories. Also we need to constantly change the communication process. Social media will be all over few years ago making it more exciting. We as an advertising agency use and leverage each and every channel that we have today. 

Under Mark’s creative leadership, Leo Burnett continues to be recognized for its new-world thinking, consecutively topping the “All Gunns Blazing” category in the annual Gunn Report for the past three years. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal@adgully.com]