Last year was 123w president and CEO Scot Keith’s first trip to the Cannes Lions Festival, but he saw little and spent most of the week away from the madness rehearsing a presentation with his partner and creative director Rob Sweetman. It paid off.
The talk was so popular that festival organizers asked the agency to come back again, and this year they have Martin Sorrell and Al Gore opening up for them. Well, at least that’s the way they see it.
As usual, Cannes Lions is offering a jam-packed slate of speakers over the seven days of the Festival. The biggest names from the industry like Bob Greenberg, John Hegarty, Chuck Porter and Rei Inamoto are interspersed with other business leaders and A-list celebrities with a reputation for innovation or creative thinking like Gore, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Kim Kardashian West and Marilyn Manson.
The story of how the small-but-growing Vancouver agency was invited back to be part of that group for an encore presentation started in April 2013. The shop launched with an attention grabbing, idiosyncratic website that was just inside the entry window for that year’s Cannes Lions. Nine weeks after launching, the site won the agency its first Lion.
That success caught the attention of festival organizers who contacted 123w last spring. “They said they were doing a couple of presentations on top independent agencies around the world. They asked us to tell our story and we ended up doing a whole presentation,” said Keith. 123w’s “low overhead, high talent” business model sees smaller-than-average full-time staff, relying instead on an expanding and contracting pool of freelancers for project work and, wherever they can, partnerships with other agencies.
Booked to one of the secondary stages last year, 123w was up against Jared Leto in the main theatre so they weren’t sure if anyone would show.
“He’d just won an Oscar. And he’s much better looking than us,” said Keith.
But the small theatre was standing room only. Lots of people, particularly creatives, who’ve established themselves in larger agencies, think the logical next step along their career path is to do their own thing, said Keith. “People were interested in our different type of model for an agency.”
Last year it was about how they did it: from a garage in Vancouver to the Cannes winners list in less than a year. This time, with Bryan Collins taking Sweetman’s place alongside Keith, the presentation will be much more advice-based, explaining to attendees how they can do it themselves.
“We get asked all the time by people, how did you do it. And we have been pretty good about trying to help out others, particularly creative. There are so many great creative people in Canada, but [starting a business] is not necessarily their kind of thing,” said Keith.
They’ve also got a prime, main-stage, midday spot on Friday, immediately following Sorrell and Gore. “We’ve been joking that Al Gore is opening up for us,” said Keith.
While sharing secrets to their success with a room full of potential competitors may seem counter-intuitive, 123w believes it can be beneficial as the industry shifts to a new age that will see a lot more collaboration among agencies big and small.
“You can never go wrong by telling your story if you have a good story,” he said. Even if it inspires others to start their own agency back home? “Will they be competitors if they are in Canada? I guess, but they could also be collaborators.”
