Why madness matters | Stephen Corlett, 180 Kingsday | OnBrand '17

[Music] all right so hello my name is Steven Corliss I'm the managing director at 180 Kings day here in Amsterdam we're a creative international agency some of you may have heard of us and I just wanted to talk today a little bit about something that means a lot to me and I think probably should mean a lot to you guys as well I don't know whether this is going to be a cry for help or whether it's going to be a call to arms but for me I want to talk about why I believe madness matters in what we do and the jobs we have every day in brands I think that there's a real challenge for us at the moment and our story starts here we're probably a lot of us are in this situation day in day out looking at idea a or I did B and we're sat around thinking which one to pick there are many things going on in our mind implications decisions and we're all talking about one thing which which idea is the right one to do we all want to be right we want to be right in the meeting we want to pick the right thing to do the right thing at the right time with the right asset to the right people idea a or I did B and a lot of what we do today is being professionalized we have the tools we have the methodologies you have that analytics we got the data we've got the programmatic everything to help us be right but 400 million ad blockers in the world that's the biggest boycott in the history of mankind a lot of the work we do a lot of the stuff we pump out goes unnoticed is irrelevant and the question I have for us what I'd like to consider is there's a lot of what we're trying to do that's right actually doing it wrong and so day to day when we're thinking about ideas at 180 Kingston I'm sure you guys are as well you're spending that whole time thinking I want to do the right thing but my worry is my contention is we're ending up in a descent into the sensible rather than the nursing an ascent into madness because I believe I truly believe that in madness there is greatness so what I want to do today is just have a look at some of the things in culture the maddest ideas we've ever seen I remember why those are the things that stand the test of time did we remember and that we share so let's have a look at the anatomy of madness the origin of very ideas what do we need more of to help us create the ideas that we will be remembered for and that our brands will be remembered for we need more unreasonableness we need to be more unreasonable in how we think and what we want to say we need to be able to challenge conventions and States quote more readily day-to-day we spend a lot of our time in those meetings with people saying no we can't no we shouldn't have you gone mad and the point is I think there is a need for us to be unreasonable I used to work in London as an account exec was very young and as an Account Director always used to say that's let's not reinvent the wheel here and it was always one of those statements that kind of pulled everyone down he was kind of famous for this guy the wheel guy they called him and and of course what happened was the that the nature of the team and the work we created was always particularly reasonable and no one remembers it today there are people who are prepared to reinvent the wheel there are people who could look at something actually maybe we could do this better famously of course james dyson did that his barrow ball looked at the wheel and said actually you could do this better you can potentially create something that would be long lasting memorable and changed culture forever of course his his design went on to change the vacuum cleaner etc etc etc but fundamentally he was prepared to be unreasonable and when he thinks and then looks at problems what I love about it is he's always prepared to think wrong there's a little clip of him here talking about the importance of being prepared to think in the wrong way to create the ideas that will be long-lasting the some people come to inventing by being a scientist and that's brilliant I'm the other sort but I'm an artist but I understand the value of invention and I'm willing to try something very different to do the wrong thing wrong thinking a scientist might have difficulty doing wrong thinking so scientists will tend to think the right way of doing something the Vantage I have is that all my thinking is wrong thinking so I start from a different point and something different point is interesting because the first thing you do is have a failure a terrific leader because it's the wrong thing but in that learning process why is why is that failed I start on a different track my tracks a very different track to his track sometimes it'll be a complete failure and I'll fail but sometimes it sets me on a track which actually succeeds so great clip that it's really you know it's so hard for a state today to be able to go I'm gonna think the wrong thing here cuz we're all as I said desperate to be right now the other thing that Dyson talks a bit about there is this ambition and that's the second thing we need more we need more ambition about our thinking and about our work and I want to introduce you now to a man called Francis Ford Coppola Coppola was a film director he made a number of famous films Godfather and Apocalypse Now and for Apocalypse Now that's one of the great great examples and stories of ambition he headed into the jungle in the Philippines and if we've all done tough productions we had like difficult PPM's may be a difficult wardrobe choice here and there may be the casting the client doesn't quite like it this guy this is a proper production fuckup there's a typhoon there sweeps away the sets Martin Sheen has lead actor has his heart attack Marlon Brando turns up overweight and not knowing actually what film he's in and then the military who borrowed he's burrowed all the hardware from come in and said do you mind we need that back because we're actually at war now so we're just gonna take those helicopters back so when you guys are complaining about any tough productions this guy's got the he's already got the prize for that anyway everything's going wrong we're over budget we're over time people are being fired off the set all day no one's got a clue what's going on and he's going bigger and bigger and bigger and he's talking to everyone about how ambitious he wants it to be Warner Brothers I pissed they're like right this is not happening anymore we need to sort this out and they get John Milius was the co-screenwriter to go down there say John go down there and bring this guy back down to earth get him back in the boat we need to sort this out he's gone crazy he's gone mad John Milius heads down there just sort it out and bring Coppola back down to earth who knows what Francis had put together and they brought me back to put the script back together and everybody said thank God he's returned to reason thank god this will be all right now this is a new day you know this is the thing he'll finally be released and he's going there and tell him tell him does just that he's been crazy and we all this kind of stuff I was like I felt like Vaughn roadstead I noticed it going to see Hitler you know in 1944 and I was gonna be telling him there was no more gasoline on the Eastern Front and the whole thing was gonna fold you know and I came out an hour and a half later and he had convinced me that this was the first film that would win a Nobel Prize you know and so I came out of the room like thunder instead we can win it completely turned me around you know I would have done anything what a mad bastard like he'd convinced people they were gonna win the Nobel Prize for Peace they would stop war forever this film and of course the film's incredible it's amazing the behind the scene is even more amazing but the film itself is an incredible achievements and that ambition the couple had infected everyone including the guy that was supposed to go down there to stop him now just an aside Koppel has got a big place in my heart in the 180 180 part because after the shoot they talk to him about the challenges of production and when you have problems etc he said whenever you get into trouble keep going 180-degree turn turned the situation halfway around don't look for the secure solution don't pull back from the passion turn it on full force and about twenty years ago four guys were looking to set up an agency that really wanted to challenge the status quo and that quote was their inspiration and today it sits on our walls still as being the ethos about who we hire who we work with and what type of work we want to do it's a really powerful sentiment it's a really really lovely sentiment but fundamentally it's always about in terms of Coppola his incredible ambition he was never prepared to settle I think that's something we can all learn from because a lot of our time with it's a case well that'll probably do well that's a bit too hard or maybe we shouldn't push it so much further okay the next thing we need we need more self belief we all know that our best work comes from right deep inside ourselves when we've given more of ourselves than ever before 1955 Haywood Jones walks back into his house and give his gives his son David Boxer Records Fats Domino Chuck Berry Little Richard his son David he's nine years old picks up one of the records tutti-frutti by Little Richard and he walks over to the turntable he puts it down two minutes and 27 seconds later his head's fallen off he points to the turn Tony says that is what I want to do with my life he learns the ukulele he learns the guitar he joins a few bands at school he gets to school reports that say he's a pleasant idler and for a number of years David Jones is a little bit of a every day musician he he joins a couple of bands one called the Conrad's they're terribly leaves them and another one and then this is a mad bed his father who got him into all this thinks yeah I think you're pretty good and he writes a letter to a successful local washing machine salesman he says if you can sell records like you can sell washing machines we're gonna be in business now this is like sending your demo tape to blocker or to calm it it makes no sense but it starts to work David Jones and his band start to sell some records but then he loses interest in it and he goes off by himself he gets himself a haircut a little bit like everyone else at that time he starts to make English psychedelic rock and he changed his name from David Jones to David Bowie and it starts to get a little bit better he starts to feel like his voice is coming coming together but it's still there's something missing he meets a woman called Angie in a Chinese restaurant and they moved to southeast London in Beckenham and they wandered around looking like something that you've never seen before in your life there were two questions about this picture one Barry's on the right the second thing is what is the baby wearing so they walk around looking like something you've never seen before and he releases an album called hunky dory and it goes really well and he says everyone to everyone who will listen in the dressing room before he plays it for the first time he said this is not it there's something missing the next time it will be different and six weeks later he and Angie go out and they buy boiler suits and wrestling outfits and he goes into a room and he writes over three days a series of songs that will change culture and he walks back out on the stage in the same town in Aylesbury and he announces to the world see he Stardust and everyone's heads fall off and he walks off stage and he turns to the dressing room as they're all applauding him he says I told you it would be different this time now what's amazing about that story and I'm not a massive Barry fan but I love the story is that journey he went on to find himself in the maddest greatest of ideas that still stick with us today as a real cultural impact the stuff he done before looked a bit like the other stuff he had a haircut a bit like the other English bands he was in glam rock but it was only when he truly found deep inside himself his maddest idea that he had his greatest idea Barry talks a lot about what it means to find your inner story and what it means to be true to yourself this is a really lovely clip about the importance of self-belief and being true to yourself never place the gallery I think but you never learn that until much later on I think but never work for other people what you do always always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you've felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society and I I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations I think they produced their generally produced their worst work when they do that and if the other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area that you're working in you're not working in the right area always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being and go a little bit out of your depth and when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom you're just about in the right place to do something exciting the thing I'm also about that is is that he has what is our last piece fearlessness Berry was utterly fearless and great mad ideas of feelings I don't care what you think they defy you they will not be cowed and our final idea our final mad idea his idea they called Mohammed Ali we all know and love him but wow this is a fearless idea it will defy everything it will defy the expectations of the boxing establishments it will defy governments that want to send him to war it will defy his opponents time and time again and the one moments of fearlessness I want to focus on his obviously a famous one rumble in the jungle 1974 Ali is getting on and he has to fight George Foreman George Foreman is a huge fantastic boxing specimen people are fearful for Ali they will say you might be hurt you could be killed everyone's saying performance too big he's too strong we are fearful for you Muhammad this was a time for fearlessness this was a time for Ali to be at his maddest and his greatest it is befitting that I leave the game just like I came in beating a big bad monster who knocks out everybody and no one can whoop him that's when that little Cassius Clay from Louisville Kentucky came up and stopped Sonny Liston the man who are not late at floor Patterson price he was gonna kill me he hit harder than George his reach was longer than George is about a box I'm George and I'm better now than I was when you saw that 22 year old undeveloped kid running from Sonny Liston I'm experienced now professional y'all's been broke been lost knocked down a couple of that bad been chopping trees I've done something new for this fight I don't rustle what alligator that's right I have Russell what alligator I don't Tulsa what a whale out of handcuffed lightning thunder in jail that's bad on the last week I murder a rock Angeles Stone hospitalized a brick I'm so mean I make medicine sick hit the switch was in the bed for the room was dog in fast new George Foreman all are you chumps are gonna bow when I whoop him all of you I know you got him I know you got him picked but the man's in trouble I'm gonna show you how great I am and as many of you know Callie wins eighth round rope-a-dope a triumph of mentality really over physicality a triumph of being fearless all the way through so those are for me a four things we need more of because in the these we see madness and in these we see great ideas the ideas that we will remember that we will share that we will talk about that will have cultural impact so now well this is the tough bit right it's not easy to do this like I can stand here and say look let's just do more of this oh yeah yeah great great great it's not easy so for the last two minutes indulge me as I talk about something that we experienced at our own agency to show how tough this can be UNICEF came to us and said for many months in 2015-2016 the refugee crisis was on the front pages but it's still happening and at the beginning of this year it started to drift away there was Donald Trump on the pages and there was other things around the world and that the plight of children and the what they were going through as they traveled across the world was being lost and they said we need to put it back on the front page so he had an idea it was an unreasonable idea there was a huge ambitious idea that we really believed in we wanted to put a young arab boy and a Jewish war refugee together in a room and have them talk about the experiences that they both went through as refugees which were incredibly similar this was a really fantastic idea and everyone said this is a really stupid idea this is a bad idea this is not great and the UNICEF group said we can see why you want to do it but no no no no no political religious issues here that we are not going to be able to overcome we said come on it's really important so it's a very important message it's a really profound message so they said look if you can make it happen you can go and film it so we went and filmed it and it took a long time to get the right people and to find the guy and to find the boy were prepared to do it but they did it they got into a room and they talked about their experiences and then we showed it back to UNICEF and they said this is very very powerful but no no I'm sorry and then the Arab nations as UNICEF said no absolutely not are we gonna put these two people in a room together and you know what we said we said okay and we sat down and we said you're probably right and the idea went away and it was never gonna get seen and we also went back to our jobs and we thought do you know what they are probably right and then something happened somebody intervened to make sure that we all overcame our fearlessness we realized our ambition we knew we had to be unreasonable and we had to get our belief back this guy so now I can show you a case study a very nice case study about the film but know that this guy intervened and made it happen for us and it was just a great example how difficult it is sometimes it's easy to say ok you're probably right and walk away from it but luckily thanks to Donald Trump the world is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War two in a time when anti-refugee an anti-muslim sentiment is on the rise that sentiment reached new heights with president Trump's executive order banning all refugees from entering the United States made effective on Holocaust Remembrance Day UNICEF needed to rally global support for the millions of child refugees whose lives hung in the balance so they released a film to show the world that one of our greatest mistakes was being made again short connecti really cool bit can homages connected Arabs no skeleton to slow hotel code my mother said I had to go she must have known that she would never see me again [Music] College I know a human hand gel can hurt in a career in law so Cameron can you live I've never been more scared in life I thought I was going to die I am Elias lucky ones with no paid media and in less than one week the shared story of a young Muslim boy and an elderly Jewish man reached an audience of seven million people the message caught the attention of the mainstream press and was quickly translated into multiple international versions that spread around the world over 100,000 people showed their support by sharing the video including some of the web's most high-profile celebrities with millions of earned media impressions the film fueled global support for child refugees and Harry and Ahmed story became an important piece of the welcomed refugees movements giving hope that this time the world will choose to learn from history instead of repeating it so it's a great case study very proud of it but I get to show it to you because well we ended up finding our ambition again having our self belief not losing it and it's so easy I think for us to lose some of those things that make those ideas great that that little bit of madness that's important and so when we think about those things let's try and always remember that in greatness there will always be an element to this madness there'll always be an element to the unreasonable of that crazy ambition that weird self belief almost selfishness a fearlessness about it and of course when we look at the ideas we've talked about shared in our lives and the works we do it's always there those things that we talked about that are memorable the brands that really drive cultural impact or really growing have these elements about them so the next time we're in that room it's idea--a and I did be and everyone says I da that's the right thing to do that's the right one and everyone's starting to agree and says idea that's mad we shouldn't do that one that was the wrong thing ask them to stop take one more look idea be because I did be might have that little bit of madness in it's gonna be the thing that goes is gonna make it great and in the business the wearing of creating ideas that are memorable that stand the test of time madness matters thank you very much [Applause] [Music]