Brands Can Achieve More With Brave Work: Susan Credle, FCB Worldwide

The creative fraternity stepped up during the crisis, evolving from doing ‘indulgent’ award-aimed creative towards healthy work that kept businesses going, people employed and built the momentum of the industry itself. “Moving forward, this is the kind of work we should do, where we are true partners to our clients, making a difference to their businesses and brands,” comments FCB Worldwide’s Chief Creative Officer, Susan Credle.

A power in her own right, the pandemic is hardly the first crisis that Credle has braved. Even as the shape and impact of this crisis is different, she explains that some rules do not change. “History shows that in tough times, brands can achieve more with brave work. Marketers that take the bold steps will come out ahead.”

Credle believes that the needle had already moved on what agencies, and what creativity, of the future should look like. “FCB is perhaps the oldest agency, and we have been called a traditional agency, but if I look at the kind of work we did in the last few years, it is all very modern, interesting, participatory and included technology and data. The lockdown forced that side of us to the forefront,” she observes.

People have adopted new behaviour during the pandemic but Credle believes that underlying consumer behaviour still has consistencies that marketers can exploit. “Shopping online is not different from when people could buy from stores instead of the earlier over-the-counter purchases. Brands are fighting to be picked up from the ‘shelf’. And the primary reason they would be chosen is if they build the brand,” Credle points out. 

With this in the backdrop, not only did brands up their game but several good renditions of putting creativity to work were also seen during the year.

A result of this also is that the role of creative agencies has changed from ‘the film people’ to true creative problem solvers. “That was always meant to be our role. It changed as the business and media landscape evolved and the film was our area of strength, but we have once again gone back to the position of problem-solvers during the pandemic,” explains Credle, indicating this as a positive change in the year.

Quoting the #BoycottTanishq ads, Credle also warned about the kind of work that agencies must do in sensitive times. She cited the FCB scale for creative conversations as a benchmark. The ‘one’, ‘two’ and ‘three’ on the FCB scale stand for damaging, invisible and noticed work respectively. ‘Four’ is provocative, ‘five’ creates behaviour change and ‘six’ is a never finished idea, which pertains to platform thinking and brand building. 

“As creative professionals, we aim for the ‘4,5,6’ work. But the difference between damaging and provocative sits very closely together. You must know when it is right to push into something provocative, and when it is not. You have to know what you want, what you are, and it should feel right,” she advises.