Northern Nevada Business Weekly: How did you get started in the advertising business?
David Branby: In college, my mom gave me the book "Ogilvy On Advertising." I read it twice, cover to cover, and knew it was my calling.
NNBW: What natural talents did you bring to the business? What did you have to learn?
Branby: I have always been a writer, so I brought that to it. What I had to learn was how to speak up and present my work. That was the greatest challenge for me, because I was a shy kid. Now I probably talk too much, but I work on being a good listener, too.
NNBW: How has the industry changed since you started?
Branby: Desktop publishing and the Internet were both game-changers, but for different reasons. In the early 1990s, we saw the rise of the "technicians" who knew how the software worked, but didn't know anything about design. But, they were cheap and fast and got the work out the door. As their perceived value rose, a lot of art directors and designers I knew left the business, so writing ads (which is what I do) became less fun because there were fewer gifted art directors to work with. On the flipside, those of us who stayed saw these amazing campaigns coming out of Minneapolis, San Francisco, L.A., New York, and London, so we knew it could still be done. It inspired us, and we kept working at doing the good stuff.
With the rise of Internet search and pay-per-click, people self-select their information, so there are opportunities for anyone, anywhere to market successfully for pennies. That's hurt both media and agencies. On the upside, people only buy what they comfortably understand, so there will still be a need for writers and designers to create lucid messages. On the flipside, everything's changing incredibly fast. There's already a huge shakeout happening in the business. It's going to be interesting to see what happens next.
NNBW: When we come back to visit with you in five years, what changes will we see in your firm?
Branby: I imagine the way this and many agencies will work will resemble the way Hollywood movies are made: Ad hoc collaborations of talented people who come together for a project, do it, split up, and reassemble in slightly different form for the next project down the road. In that scenario, the agency takes the role of the producer, putting it all together. It's already happening in this and other markets across the country, because the economics are driving it. It's a paradigm shift, and sad in a way, because the "tribal" nature of ad agencies or maybe it's the romantic view we know from "30 Something" and "Mad Men" is changing, so there's a loss with that.
NNBW: What are the challenges you'll need to overcome to reach your goals?
Branby: Attracting and keeping super-smart, creative marketing people. As the old saying goes, "An ad agency's assets walk out the door every night."
NNBW: If you could have a "do-over" in your career, what would you do differently?
Branby: I was desperate to make a change earlier in my career and went to work for a company I knew in my gut wouldn't be a good cultural fit for me. I stayed longer than I should have, even though my health, relationship, and career suffered. I learned to never do that again.
NNBW: What do you find most satisfying in your professional life?
Branby: Seeing clients' faces light up when they like the work.
NNBW: In your personal life?
Branby: Having a wonderful wife to come home to who accepts me and inspires me.
NNBW: How do you spend time away from the office?
Branby: Working on two 1950s office buildings my wife and I bought a few years ago. It's an investment in our future, and it's a point of pride: It's where we both also have our businesses.
NNBW: What's best advice anyone gave you?
Branby: Do the best you can with what you've got.
NNBW: Any final thoughts?
Branby: One of the consequences of the switch from traditional media to online marketing is that businesses are cutting back on "the people side" of marketing management, which is frightening. I see these ads on CraigsList looking for corporate marketing managers, and I just gasp. They look like they're hiring six different positions for one person's salary. It's unbelievable. Marketing is about having the ability to assimilate tons of data, distill it into something meaningful to your customers and then being able to communicate that in a highly engaging way. I don't know any one person with that kind of talent, energy, focus, or bandwidth; at least, no one you'd want to talk to at the company picnic. And I can't imagine great work coming out of it. Creativity is inherently collaborative. Good ideas can and do come from anywhere ... but rarely all from one person. James Surowiecki's best-selling book, "The Wisdom of Crowds", is all about this, and smart CEOs know it, but evidently, HR departments don't.
