What Creative agencies can learn from Les Bleus

This post was originally published in Mix Marcomm magazine, August 2018 print edition

Twenty years after winning the World Cup as a player, Didier Deschamps managed to win it again as a coach for France. There’s so many similarities between 1998 and 2018 France teams : some controversies before the competition, tough first game, a pretty conservative coach, a team immune to external influences…but one was absolutely striking : Despite having great players, their main strength was the Team itself. Despite having Zizou in 1998, Zinedine only became Monsieur Zidane only after the 1998 final.

This world cup showed us that teams built around the “you-are-a-football-god-please-save-us” type of players went home early : Argentina was Messi dependent and Portugal hoped Ronaldo would unlock every game.

Some might try to explain this outcome as the result of individual failures or coach limitations but it’s how the modern football evolved that explains why teams are the key. And there’s similarities with how the Creative industry evolved.

Football is becoming a very complex sport where data tracking (especially for players physical performance) and fast adaptation to game circumstances (skills required from players) are making a real difference.

The creative business today is very similar to modern football : more formats everyday, new channels and mediums and abundant data tracking to measure every moving part of campaigns.

Similarly to football, Creative team players are today asked to have more and more skills to be able to find solutions for every channel, build ideas that can answer new and sometimes loosely defined challenges. That’s why today, counting on one player, both in football and the creative business, to win the “game” and drive everyone else is challenging.

Building a creative team for today’s creative business, means looking for, not only strong individuals, but a group of talents who not only will work together but essentially work for each other : create, lead, follow, build, support and challenge the work depending on the situation but always for the sake of better ideas.

One way the Creative industry tried to tackle the growing complexity, unlike Les Bleus, is by building teams of specialists and experts, creating more silos built around people who instead of spreading their expertise and using it to elevate the work, build their own mini-consultancies. Like Neymar, they sometimes play with the team but most of the time expect the team to play around their “expertise”.

Many headhunters Linkedin updates are shouting their hunt for creative “SUPERSTARS” ( All-Caps? Really?). Beyond the lack of a reasonable definition for “superstar”, it’s the thinking behind it that is flawed.

Looking for the best talent is an evidence but in today’s creative industry, we need people who, to borrow another football expression, can make “sacrifices” : people who appreciate other’s ideas, trying to add something to their thinking, sometimes taking the backseat and helping with less sexy work.

Olivier Giroud is the perfect example : a world-class striker with an incredible talent. He spent the whole world cup defending, running, fighting for every ball without scoring a single goal. He definitely didn’t do what he does best , scoring goals, but he was extremely valuable for the french team and took home a well-earned medal, all other strikers would swipe their goals for.

As games circumstances can be unpredictable, a creative department daily life can be full of surprises : managing those changes while staying focused on delivering great work is expected from creatives in the industry today.

Talented creatives who think for the team and with the team, even during tough “games” can, like Les Bleus, keep “playing their football”, do the right thing and pull off the campaigns that would truly be a “great team work”.

Since you’re here, you might want to read about how This Gojek driver pitched me his startup idea , what I learned when a colleague told me “You are a dictator” or Why I started a newsletter (and think you should, too)

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