Suzanne Powers on Harnessing The Power of Creativity to Drive Impactful Business Results
The Founder and CEO of Powers Creativity reflects on the insights gathered throughout her extensive career in advertising and demonstrates how today’s brands can optimize strategy and creativity
Suzanne Powers is the founder and CEO of Powers Creativity, a company dedicated to helping organizations and people unleash creativity to drive business impact. Her company is founded on the belief that creativity is not a happy accident but rather requires diagnostically driven, intentional design to craft and calibrate the conditions for creativity to thrive.
Suzanne was one of the original agency strategists and has a career that includes leadership roles at McCann Worldgroup; Crispin, Porter + Bogusky; and TBWA/Chiat/Day. She has worked with some of the world’s most famous brands, including Mars, Coca-Cola, Mastercard, Microsoft, and GM. Before launching her agency, Suzanne spent a decade transforming McCann Worldgroup into a world-renowned strategic and creative powerhouse working across all agencies, geographies, and brands. She held various roles across the company, including global chief strategy officer, global president, global chief product officer, and chair of FutureBrand.
The Continuum sat down with Suzanne to talk about her impressive career, the importance of strategy, and what it means to power creativity.
How did you get your start in advertising?
I started in retail marketing and entertainment PR. The combination of both helped me learn that I liked research and creativity. With PR, I liked working on the positioning of clients and writing press releases. With retail, I did everything from the signage to the research on daily foot traffic. At the time, we were still talking about shopping malls, which were still thriving, but I have to admit I got sick of the repetition of retail marketing because it’s very seasonal.
I think it was the second year when we were starting to get ready for what one does around the holidays—you know, setting up the gift-wrapping station and hiring the elves—that I thought, I can’t do this anymore. I called in sick, went to the newsstand, and bought a copy of AdWeek. There was an ad for an account planner at an agency called Lord Dentsu, which doesn’t exist anymore. The ad described the planner as part research and part creative problem solver, which I found intriguing. In those days, planning was a very novel idea. British agencies had planners, but in the US, we just had research departments and media planning departments. Account planning wasn’t a thing.
I remember the ad said, “Our planner is leaving us, and she has very big shoes to fill.” So, I drew a shoe and wrote my little pitch in it. I got the job. I was one of the first people doing account planning in a US agency.
What was a planner or strategy job like back then?
I had to learn quantitative and qualitative research. I became a trained moderator and did my own focus groups and on-the-street interviews. We didn’t have the internet but had LexisNexis and Hoover’s. We would get the data and then look for patterns. That’s what account planning is; you find patterns so that you can come up with insights that will then help the creatives figure out what they should make.
I loved it. I was at that agency through maybe four name changes and mergers. My role kept expanding. I started to work on positioning the agency itself and applying strategy to the company. I would also work on getting new business and writing the pitch decks.
You stayed on the strategy side for most of your career. What was your next move?
An LA agency approached me and asked, “Can you start planning for us? We only have a research department, and our client has said that if we don’t evolve from research to proactive account planning, we’re going to be in trouble.” I loved the idea of starting from scratch and really modernizing the agency’s approach to strategy.
That agency was sold to IPG after a few years, and I moved on to Chiat Day, which I chose because they were known for creativity. I actually took a demotion. I wanted to get over there so I could learn all the secrets of great creativity. I walked through the doors and quickly realized they didn’t have a lot of secrets. Like everyone else, they just made it up as they went along. What they did have was more than their fair share of talent, and that makes a world of difference.
I stayed there for over ten years in various strategy leadership positions. It’s where I started to do global work and where I was when I had my kids. They moved me to New York, where I raised my kids. They became TBWA/Chiat/Day, and I went from strategy department leader to global strategy leader. Like in my previous roles, I also worked on new business and positioning for the company.
I also got to work on formalizing our processes. Disruption was the methodology that the agency had always been known for. The founder wrote a book called Disruption. While I was there, we created a whole disruption methodology that everybody could use. We would take clients through it, and it helped us do great work globally.
“I put my analytical hat on to figure out why they were doing great work, but honestly, it was not rocket science. It was a team that actually respected each other, had big ambitions, and brought clients into those ambitions.”
You went from TBWA to Crispin, which was then Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. How did you get that role?
At TBWA. I worked on the Pedigree pet food account. We created a global campaign in 60 countries and, apparently, Chuck Porter loved it. He actually sent a note to Lee Clow telling him how much he loved the campaign. Years later, I’m at a hotel in Toronto doing a global Pedigree meeting. There were 35 or 40 clients flying in from all over the world for this meeting, where we were going to plan the next chapter of the campaign. I’m running all over the hotel trying to get everything anyone might need set up, and Chuck was there having dinner with Miles Nadal. At the time, Miles was running MDC Partners, which owned part of CPB.
Miles asked me what it was that I was so busy doing. I remember he said, “Everybody knows you. You're running around. You're collecting people. There are all these kinds of important-looking people arriving. So, what exactly do you do?” I explained I was a global strategy leader across Pedigree and other brands like Snickers and Skittles and all that kind of stuff and that we had clients coming in for a strategy session. He said, “They don’t seem to know how to do it without you. You should come do this for us.”
Eventually, I did go work for them. My job was to globalize Crispin and help the brand figure out where in the world it should be. We opened an LA office when I was there and a more proper office in London. Chuck and I went down to Brazil to figure out who to partner with there. We were really working to globalize Crispin as a brand and as a company, which meant I applied a lot of my strategy skills to the agency itself.
I loved the job, but Crispin only had a small presence outside of the US, and I wanted to get back to something even more global, so I went to McCann. It’s funny, sometimes at Crispin, I felt that my job was to be the adult. I had to reign in the creative chaos with some rigor and discipline. At McCann, I was liberated to be more of the crazy one. They had adulting going on in spades. In fact, by the time I got there, they had adulted themselves into boring. It was kind of a massive monolith machine of mediocrity. I was allowed to be the one who was pushing, and that was quite liberating.
You had many roles at McCann. How did you start, and where did you end up?
I started in strategy, but it was definitely strategy for the company. The CEO had just come in a few months before me. He was highly ambitious, wonderful, and difficult. Very difficult. We fought all the time, but I loved it. He's a properly amazing, brilliant businessman. In former jobs, I’d have to be the shadow CEO, if you will. I didn’t have to do that in this McCann job because there was a real leader who knew what he was doing.
McCann was a little bit of a mess at that point. It was 17,000 people in 100 counties. It was global on a massive scale, but what was missing was a bit of the crazy and the creativity. It lacked the confidence, swagger, and ambition to do great work. Part of my job was to bring that back.
I traveled a lot. I really got a vibe for what was working. There were two markets in the world that were doing great work. One was Romania, and one was Australia, Melbourne to be specific. I put my analytical hat on to figure out why they were doing great work, but honestly, it was not rocket science. It was a team that actually respected each other, had big ambitions, and brought clients into those ambitions. It's all the things that we know are critical to helping creativity thrive.
We also brought in a new creative leader named Rob Reilly, who I knew from Crispin. We were a good complement to each other. I was getting the process into working order, and he brought creative vision. He brought swagger and confidence. We did a talent shake-up. Talent followed both of us, and we brought in new people. I focused more on global, and he really got New York in order. My instinct was to start globally, and his was to say let's make the house band the best house band that it can be first. We were a good team together with the CEO.
I joined in 2013, and by 2018, we were back on top. We really changed the company's culture and brought the creative spirit back. We were sweeping Cannes and the Effies every year, and that’s when I became president.
“The new business diagnoses, designs, and activates the conditions for creativity to thrive for organizations and people in a variety of fields.”
That’s a huge job. Were you excited about leading the agency?
I'll be honest; I didn't love the president thing. In my first few months, we were deep in COVID, which was a stretch for every leader in the world, and I was in a new role for me. I was working on keeping our global staff safe. We’d also had some big departures from the agency, and there was a lot left up to me. It felt like it was all the adulting parts of the job without the creative part. When a new CEO came in, he gave me the opportunity to redefine my role, which I was grateful for.
I realized what I love to do is to calibrate and ensure that the product across all our offices was excellent. So, I took a page from technology companies. They all have product officers who are the people who actually design the systems to make whatever it is that's being made, whether that's a tangible product or an intangible product. It’s about process and the people and all the systems that we need to ensure that our people are set up for success and what they're making will drive the needle for our clients and be incredibly powerful. I asked to be the global chief product officer, and the new CEO went for it. It was the first time that title/role had been put into an agency.
He also gave me a second job, which was to chair FutureBrand, an agency that basically did brand design. I love that side of the business and hadn't spent enough time doing it. I really enjoyed taking on that company, especially because it's filled with wonderful people.
I think that double role prepared me for doing my own thing, which is basically like being a chief product officer but for clients.
You’ve been on your own at Powers Creativity for just a few months now. What made you decide it was the time to leave and start your own thing? And what is your company doing?
You know, it's probably similar to getting the gift wrap station and the elves ready again. In any job, you start to do a little bit of rinse and repeat. You can always inspire yourself and find new challenges, but I realized that I wanted to start working with different types of companies. For years, I had a business idea in the back of my mind, and I guess as I started to get a little bored, it came forward.
The new business diagnoses, designs, and activates the conditions for creativity to thrive for organizations and people in a variety of fields. My first clients have not been agencies, which is great. One is the Clio’s, which is not just an award show. They also do a lot of content development. They’re in the service of creativity, but I’m trying to help them figure out how to channel creativity across the growing Clios ecosystem. I'm also working with an executive search firm talent agency to help them modernize their approach to finding talent. Their business is really changing because of AI and the different technologies that have—or at least are trying to—replace search firms.
“When you work with these companies, there's always a variety of ways to help the organization channel creativity across the business, from the quick wins to the re-calibration that will drive total wholesale change.”
You’re still building your client list. Do you have a dream client?
I mean, I do love a packaged goods company. I really do. They make tangible things and often don’t think of what they do as creative or believe they need to be creative, but they are because packaged goods and consumables are innovated for our hearts. I also love complex, big global organizations because they often complicate things that don’t need to be complicated. When you work with these companies, there's always a variety of ways to help the organization channel creativity across the business, from the quick wins to the re-calibration that will drive total wholesale change.
I’m also enjoying founder-led companies that are at the point where they're ready to scale or grow beyond a model where the founder is doing everything. I love an ambitious founder who knows who they are and what they're great at and is ready to go forward and evolve.
Mostly, I want clients who believe creativity or innovation is at the core of their offering. Clients who believe this are often hindered by something in their organization, or maybe their product pipeline is stuck, or a competitor is eating their lunch, and they don't know why. I want those clients who are enlightened enough to know that something is not working and bring me in to help diagnose what that is and design solutions together.
Why did you put creativity in the name instead of strategy or brand?
I put creativity into the name because I get the most impact for my clients and the most joy for myself when I help people and organizations channel their creativity. I still love the little tingle that I get when a product developer or a creative in the ad industry does something a little surprising because we've set up the conditions for them to push and flourish. The ultimate success is when I’ve given someone enough insights and just enough process that they can play, and then they surprise me in return.
Obviously, I’m a strategy and branding expert, but I wanted to go beyond doing strategy consulting or brand consulting. This is different. I want to power creativity.
May 21, 2024
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