I once worked for the CEO of a very large American retailer. I did various things for him and his team for years. And he was just about the best leader I ever saw. He had all the EQ, modesty and empathy traits they bang on about on LinkedIn. But he also had all the other, darker talents like being an occasional motherfucker, brutally single-minded and always right, which are usually absent from those kinds of posts.
But he was lousy at speeches. I must have watched him a dozen times over a 10-year period across at least three continents. And every time he talked to the troops he pretty much said the exact same thing. Zero variety. By the end, I could skulk around the back of the group being addressed and mouth exactly what he said and when he said it. It was a weird Achilles heel for a man of such gifts. I put it down to being stretched or selfish and moved on.
Then I read a great article in the Harvard Business Review about leadership essentially being repetition. Two researchers had shadowed a bunch of senior managers and found that the ones who said the same thing over and over had way more impact and ultimate success than those who changed their messages. I emailed my old boss the link and he sent a one-line response: “They are correct.”
I feel very much the same way about this week’s Grand Prix-winning IPA case study from McCain. I have competed against McCain before. I’ve uttered the immortal words “Jesus these fuckers are good!” and seen only sombre head nodding from McCain’s unfortunate rival. This week’s champion IPA case provides 10 years of evidence of why they are so good. It’s an incredibly impressive body of work.
But you also learn nothing new. There is a total absence of new thinking, introduced acronyms, innovative approaches or anything else even faintly unfamiliar. In the 39 pages it takes McCain and its peerless agency adam&eveDDB to explain how they held off private labels and German discounters, you encounter precisely nothing that has not been said and proven before. And it’s a masterpiece of effectiveness because of – not despite – this fact.
