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St Luke's laws for building a world-class agency
Our Marketing Bureau
Chennai: "Go back to where you came from", says St Lukes chairman, Andy Law. Speaking at `Future Shock' - the international Advertising Convention at Chennai on Saturday, he said that advertising agencies should constantly learn, experiment and assimilate knowledge. In 1995, Mr Law launched St Lukes with 35 people, which today with 120 people has more clients waiting in the queue than it can take on. The agency became the UK runner-up Agency of the Year in 1996, Agency of the Year in 1997 and World Agency of the Year in 1998. In 1999, it won the Business Ethics magazine's Millennium Ethics Award for being the most ethical company in the world. It's clients range from MNCs and large Corporates like Ikea, British Telecom and Sky TV to the British Government itself. How did it achieve so much in such a short time? "By putting people before money", says Mr Law. But those aren't the only tenets of success. Consider St Lukes' leader's other laws: Caring for their human capital: Human beings, the learning beings that they are, are the most important asset of the organisation. Unlike other forms of capital which depreciate with time, human capital appreciates in value over time and if looked after properly, they will work better and more creatively.Reinventing as a creative pursuit for personal transformation: Work should be a source of learning, growing and developing, thereby a means for personal transformation for every person in an organisation. Encourage all members of the staff, right from the receptionist to the chairman, to not to be restrained by their roles in contributing their best to the organisation.Share knowledge within the organisation: Every bit of information that comes into the agency is circulated, resulting in an incredible amount of knowledge-sharing and learning from each other.Avoid hierarchy and formality within the organisation: If each member of the organisation should feel equally important, then it would be necessary to level the playing field for everybody. In St Luke's, decisions are atomised and distributed among the staff, giving each person the power and responsibility to decide independently on organisational matters. Whatever the designations, people behave more naturally with each other, while departmental meetings are held casually - in the passage, on the staircase.Make the workplace more inviting: Formal office environments are boring. So, St Lukes rethought the interiors of its office, by asking their clients the kind of office they would like to come to and succeeded in creating an informal and inviting workplace for themselves and their business associates.Limit employee turnover: The agency believes in keeping its people for long-standing relationships with its clients, as well as recruiting young people and learning from them. It had around one per cent redundancy in the last five years, which is incredibly low for an ad agency where employee tunovers are very high. Every employee is made to take a compulsory holiday of four weeks every year and longer sabbaticals are planned after five and ten years, to rest and rejuvenate themselves.Hire people from different cultures: This helps in sharing values, bring about better understanding and learnings from cultural diversity.Involve clients in the creative process: Clients are not `dullards' who hinder the creative process, but should be seen as a catalyst to creativity. Instead of one creative, St Luke's gives its clients two-three options to choose from as well as involves them in the whole process. Agencies should look at what the clients actually need. This helps in covering a much longer distance with their clients in a set time, he says.Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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