New York Special: Bold, brash and back

Two years ago, some were saying that the city that never sleeps appeared to be in a bit of a snooze while LA’s industry romped ahead exploiting new forms and media. But now, by adopting a wiser approach to tech, New York agencies – both Madison Avenue massives and smaller, independent shops – are once again leading creative innovation 

“I’ve lived and worked in Europe,” says DDB New York’s recently installed chief creative officer, Icaro Doria. “I’ve lived and worked in South America. I’ve lived and worked on the West Coast of America. But there is this thing about New York where, at times, it makes no sense to be here; it’s too hot, or too cold, or too small, or too expensive. But there is also this feeling that you get addicted to when you live here. A feeling that everywhere else is just less important.”

And you can understand his point. New York lives in the world’s consciousness as one of the greatest cities on Earth. It has a number of iconic nicknames and its architecture and skyline is probably the most recognisable of any city. But, from a creative advertising point of view, is New York living on past glories? When shots last did a New York special, in 2013, there was much talk of the competition it faced from its West Coast rival, Los Angeles. LA’s creative output was, many said, more forward-thinking and in tune with the needs of today’s consumers than New York’s. The desire for longer-form, story-led content, people said, perfectly played to LA’s Hollywood-focussed, storytelling strengths.

One bad tweet and you’re twatted

Two years on though and the general consensus is that New York has got its mojo back – if it ever really lost it. “It feels like there is a lot of [good] New York work coming through these days, in the way that there used to be a lot of stuff from LA,” says Y&R New York’s chief creative officer, Leslie Sims. “And I think we’re seeing more interesting work too. I say interesting, because it’s not just one thing; it’s not just comedy, it’s not just emotive, it’s not just digital, it’s multi-dimensional work coming out of big agencies, and that’s fantastic to see.”

Another consensus from our last visit to New York was that the city’s agencies, and to some degree clients, had not navigated the broad world of technology very well. They were too eager to jump on every platform and the old adage, ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’, was roundly ignored. Now though a more, if not cautious, maybe thoughtful approach holds sway. “I think,” says Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s chief creative officer, Jay Benjamin, “we now understand those social media channels. And that’s what they are: channels. They’re media vehicles, not an idea in and of themselves.” However, says Benjamin, that’s not to say that agencies shouldn’t experiment. New technology, such as virtual reality, is coming to the fore and agencies need to be able to see how they can use new opportunities to their advantage. “With something like virtual reality,” says Benjamin, “you want to be able to play with it but not necessarily on a live project because you need to figure things out before you jump straight into them. Look at how some athletes use Twitter for example, it’s laden with mistakes. I’d like to make those mistakes on our own time so that when we’re doing work for our clients, it’s brilliant.”

Technology, believes Jacqueline Bosnjak, partner at music and sound design company Q Department, is what’s fuelling New York’s creative resurgence. “It [creativity] is out of this world,” she says, “and Oculus Rift’s virtual reality and the ‘cinematic reality’ of Magic Leap [Google-backed augmented reality start-up] are directly responsible.” But as exciting as new gizmos like Oculus and similar inventions are, the advance of that technology can also cause a problem for the advertising industry with many creatives eschewing the advertising arena for the world of Big Tech. Facebook, Google and other similar businesses are exciting and attractive opportunities for young creative talent. Those businesses are often at the more experimental end of the spectrum, willing to put faith in new ideas and explore different avenues of creativity which is appealing to this generation of maker-doer creatives. And while that’s not a concern specific to New York, it’s one that agency leaders in the city know they must face. Y&R’s Sims is well aware of the problem and believes it’s down to her and her contemporaries to confront it and that starts with building trust with their brands. “We want to make sure we’re doing something that’s actually going to progress [a brand’s] interests,” she states. “We have to ask ourselves how we pull ourselves out of taking eight months to curate a TV commercial. Those things need to be made, but we also need to do other stuff in a way that we feel really confident and the only way of doing that is to try some things out and build trust.”

One of the problems with implementing that, though, is also one of the positives of New York: its scale. Everything in the city is big, including the brands that reside there. “New York is probably, pound for pound, more dense with those [big] sort of clients,” continues Sims. “And they are fantastic clients, but they have a lot at stake. Globally, a lot at stake. So when you’re talking about brands that are in almost every household in America, the opportunity for epic fail is immense. It just takes one bad tweet… so that sort of explains why it’s not their fault [for being cautious], but the biggest danger is not to move with this new methodology of being out there and doing stuff, and not being paralysed by fear.”

Reinventing the new

Experimentation and innovation are, agrees Ed Brojerdi, chief executive officer of KBS+, the lifeblood of New York and something it is at the forefront of, despite the potential pitfalls. And that, in turn, encourages new talent to the sector. “What New York always seems to have,” he says, “is an edge on the invention of the new; new capabilities, new concepts. And that’s how the city drives the landscape forward a little bit. Silicon Valley has tech innovation and I think New York has creative innovation. And I think progressive agencies are providing career paths for those that have inventive, creative skills that don’t naturally apply to other industries.”

Currently, there’s no shortage of creative ideas and execution emanating from New York. Work for brands as diverse as Beats by Dr Dre, Dell, Newcastle Brown Ale, AT&T, DirecTV, Johnnie Walker and GE has pushed the creative envelope and, interestingly, that work has also come from a diverse range of agencies. “It’s been evolving for the past few years, maybe most notably since the turn of the decade” explains David Kolbusz, Wieden+Kennedy New York’s executive creative director, whose agency is behind recent work for Delta Airlines, Gap and the brilliant Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum posters. “Smaller shops have grown up and risen to prominence, becoming as defining a voice for the New York landscape as the larger, heritage-rich Madison Avenue shops. For ages this market’s voice was defined by your BBDOs, JWTs and TBWAs but now, when people think of New York, it’s as much about us, Droga5, Mother or BFG9000. Big and small, old and new now coexist peacefully.”

So, while there are some issues and dilemmas to address, as there are in all industries in all cities, it seems as though the perceived malaise of New York’s ad scene of two years ago is long gone and that the city now is focussed on what it’s doing, rather than what is being done by those around it. “We can be a bit of a ‘grass is greener’ industry,” states Droga5’s chief creative officer, Ted Royer. “We often think everybody else is wonderful. But New Yorkers don’t talk about what it’s like in other places as much. I adore Sydney but a lot of Australian creatives think about moving somewhere else and I’ve noticed a lot of people in London talk about coming to New York, but New York creatives, maybe because we have our heads so tightly to the grindstone, or because there’s so much shit going on here all the time, think less about going somewhere else.”

“New York is never going to give you a hug and whisper sweet nothings into your ear,” concludes Michael Feder, managing director of production company Hornet, “but if you take full advantage of what it offers, it can be an inspiring place in a way that’s infectious.”