Lowe Lintas & Partners: Lowe's common denominator

Graphis, May/Jun 2001 by Aldersey-Williams, Hugh

Does advertising go through "grand periods" worthy of capitalized names like those in art and architecture? It seems clear now that British advertising went through a Baroque phase during the economic boom of the late 1980s, when it was funny, self-indulgent and often outrageously expensive. The London agency Lowe Howard-Spink played a prominent part in the high jinks, which obtained their highest expression in beer commercials. Fueled by unprecedented budgets and a powerful sense of their own self-worth, the advertising creatives spilled out an elaborate phylogeny of parody spots, with brand spoofing brand seemingly ad infinitum. The whole edifice was built upon the notion that drinkers were talking about their commercials in the pub.

Those happy days, however, are now a dim memory. Eventually, somebody figured out that all this wild excess was doing little for the product. Since then, something strange has happened to the famed creativity of British advertising. People no longer talk about ads. There is less to make you laugh and leading figures in the industry have been driven to confirm that things are not what they were.

What happened is that British advertising, like everybody's advertising, has gone global. Lowe Howard-Spink became the founding agency of the Lowe Group in 1999, and subsequently Lowe became part of the Interpublic Group and merged with Ammirati Puris Lintas. Now, Lowe Lintas & Partners Worldwide is the world's fourth largest advertising group (in 1999 they achieved billings of $12 billion). Somewhere at the top of it all is Frank Lowe, one of the few creative figureheads left in British advertising, and under his guidance are 14,500 people in 80 countries. By the year 2000, analysts were calling it the industry's biggest start-up, and yet nobody knows whether there will be a price to pay for this steroidal expansion.

The outcome will matter in different ways to Lowe Lintas' clients. The list includes some corporations vilified as the forgers of global brands, such as Coca-Cola and Nestle, but they also produce work for companies where national origins are an important part of the corporate culture and positioning of the brand, such as Zanussi in Italy and Saab in Sweden.

In both cases, the answer is greater creativity, believes Adrian Holmes, the chief creative officer of Lowe Lintas & Partners Worldwide. Holmes' greatest responsibility is to see that creativity is boosted worldwide even as the massive network takes shape. It is a bold attempt to disprove the conventional wisdom that small and local equals creative. Meanwhile, the world is changing in ways that may assist his mission. Charles Inge, the creative director of Lowe Lintas London, for example, can reel off names from all six continents in his team. Between them, they should be able to create global advertising. The same goes for equally cosmopolitan teams in other cities. But what is global advertising? Can it also remain creative?

At this point, the phrase "lowest common denominator" becomes inescapable. This is not the evil of the cliche. Remember your math: the lowest common denominator of two numbers is a higher number; in advertising it could be something better than the components from which it derives.

Humor is an obvious common denominator. But what enables us to laugh at foreign-made ads? Not wordplay. Slapstick? Perhaps. But do all cultures find that funny? Graphics can be universal. One of Lowe's Reebok spots simply slants a white line across the screen: the line assumes meanings appropriate to each of the sportspeople who run, jump or hit a ball past it in rapid sequence. The image is striking and recognizable by all. Lowe's famous advertising for Smirnoff is equally visual, turning the optical distortion produced by the vodka bottle into bizarre hallucinatory fantasies.

There are other more or less universal touchstones. Take Inge's work for the Belgian beer Stella Artois. The brand has long relied for its appeal on the proposition that it is unaffordably expensive. This conceit has provided a rich seam for creative advertising. Recent commercials pastiche the Jean de Florette films, which were widely seen enough to guarantee the global translation. The print ads show disrespect for universal icons-a Ferrari Dino, a classic Eames chair-- each of which has been scraped by somebody using it to open a bottle of Stella.

People have been wrong to think that the visual is the only answer for global communication, Inge believes. Both he and Holmes nurture the hope that speech and text are not dead. "The danger of global advertising is that it kills dialogue," says Inge. "To try and write global advertising is impossible. I personally write for the guy next door, in your own country." This is the paradox of creativity in the global market-it is neither possible nor helpful to bear in mind the sheer number and diversity of the people who will ultimately see and read your work.

Sex is a universal that cannot be ignored. Different taboos make it a minefield, of course, but this has not stopped network agencies from wading in. Perhaps the most successful exercise in this genre, and one of the most widely seen commercials of recent years, was "Break" for Diet Coke, created by Lowe Lintas, New York, in which female secretaries gather round an office window at the time when they know the hunky laborer outside will strip off his shirt. A thornier problem arose with the same office's work for Heineken, where a sexual taboo became the common denominator intended to make the ad work internationally. One young man's hand brushes another's as they pass a glass of beer. Each suddenly fears that the other may be gay. It may work in up-tight America, but elsewhere, it just looks homophobic.