Advertising's Enfant Terrible
Havas Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer Jason M. Peterson has a million followers on Instagram, is pals with A$AP Rocky and wants to steal McDonald's business. The 48-year-old former skate rat from Phoenix (Havas Chicago boasts a half-pipe near its data desk) discusses all that, plus his secret to hiring great talent.
When I met you, you said you'd rather be featured in
HypeBeast than Ad Age.
For sure. Advertising right now is in this creative fucking
nowhere's land. I want to be a chief creative officer that's
tapping into what's going on in culture, art, music, fashion,
design in a real way, versus being an advertising creative
director. I'm much more famous in Highsnobiety and Complex and
Hypebeast as a photographer than I am in Adweek and Ad Age.
Talk about that. You have a million Instagram
followers.
If you're not really tapped into social in a real way, you don't
know what the fuck you're talking about. The advertising solution
to digital advertising was creating the banner ad, which is a
fucking joke. You've never clicked on a banner ad, because you have
an IQ, and no consumer you want to attract ever has. And that's our
main advertising vehicle? That is fucked up as an industry. That's
not why I got into this.
What's your favorite platform?
I love Snapchat. Dude, I'm 48 years old. I have a 17-year-old son
and a 15-year-old daughter. It took me forever to understand how
Snapchat works and that's why I love it. I love it because it just
proves out that I'm old and stupid. What I love about Snapchat is
that those guys are just fuckin' pirates. They don't give a shit.
They'll weather any kind of storm, which they're kind of in now
because of Instagram grabbing some of the highlights of their
platform and operationalizing them. I love Instagram because it
taught me what social media really is.
Which is?
First of all, it's not advertising. Social media is sitting down,
having a conversation. And to have a successful conversation you
better be listening as much as you are talking.
Your clients are these brands Like Reynolds and
Hefty—not exactly hip. Your Instagram and your general vibe
is pretty hip. Is there any tension there?
A bit. All brands need to find their voice within social media or
they're not going to be in existence any more. I'm not arguing
versus traditional mediums and television and billboards. Those
will serve a role in it. But unless a brand really has a social
voice, unless they stand for a set of beliefs, unless they're a
social brand, they're not going to exist two years from now. Most
CMOs are scared. Most CMOs are admitting to us that they don't know
what the fuck they're doing.
So what do you tell them?
I want to move from creatives to creators. The Apple "Shot on
iPhone" campaign changed our fucking industry. It's a wake-up call
that nobody listened to. I sat in a movie theater and watched this
beautiful slow-motion black-and-white footage of a waterfall and I
said, "Fuck that's amazing." And it said, "Shot on an iPhone." And
I said, "Fuck our industry's done."
Is it done, though?
I don't think it's dead. I'm an advertising nerd. I believe in
advertising. The problem with our industry is we're the first to
talk about innovation. We're the first to talk about what's going
on with the consumers. We're the last to do anything about it. It's
because we're crippled by the way we make money. For an agency to
make a video that's going to go on Facebook for a client, at best
if they pull favors with a production company, it's going to be
$100,000. For a video that's going to be on Facebook? When your
competition is kids making dope videos on their iPhone? People
don't hate marketing and advertising. They hate to be disrespected.
So how do we act like those kids with iPhones?
Good question. How do you?
I hire kids who are just like Casey Neistat. Because of my social
clout, I can go, "Hey I'm hiring people at Havas, come walk around
and take photos with me," and fucking 500 kids show up who don't
know anything about me as the CCO of this ad agency.
So you're literally hiring kids off the street to do
creative?
I hire on three things: I only hire nice people; I don't hire any
assholes. I hire people who are optimistic and ambitious. Then have
a level of talent. Have curiosity around creativity. Our industry,
I'm convinced, hires the opposite. We hire really talented, lazy,
negative assholes.
You yourself aren't 20.
I'm fucking old, dude. I'm an old man. But I can teach these kids
advertising in 15 minutes. I'm convinced that experience in the
industry is the worst thing you can have. Half the time when we're
doing something I don't fucking know if it's going to work, but
we're going to fucking do it. Because I'm sick of doing it the same
way.
How do you teach advertising in 15 minutes?
Advertising and creative is simple: It's something that moves you.
It's something that makes you laugh, makes you feel something. You
know what I say to these kids? I go, "Imagine you're just talking
to your friends. How would you say something interesting to
them?"
Who are your dream clients?
Here in Chicago we're all about iconic American brands that have
lost cultural relevance and I want all of those. In some ways I
don't even believe in brand strategy any more. I could close my
eyes and tell you the brand strategy for McDonald's. The problem is
McDonald's is operating in this crazy defensive vacuum rather than
being what's awesome about McDonald's.
So McDonald's would be a dream client?
Hands down. McDonald's is in my white trash American DNA. I love
that brand for the experience. When I look at it now I'm saddened
by how they've gotten it wrong. You guys had this amazing product
and you had this amazing experience and you forgot how to talk to
people. You're a bunch of old people trying to talk to young
people. You're a creepy old uncle at a teenage party. Just
stop.
You work with Coke and Camel. You want to work with
McDonald's. These are not necessarily the best brands for people's
health. Do you care about that?
I do. Obviously I care about that. I'm a straight-edge guy: I don't
smoke. I don't drink. Nothing. The thing about Camel is that
they're the nicest clients in the world. And you're not allowed to
target people that don't smoke. You're only allowed to talk to
people that smoke other brands. I'm saying, "Don't smoke that
brand. Smoke this one because it's cooler." People make their own
choices about what they do. I made my choices.
You also run these events and little pop-ups and
concerts that don't have anything to do with
advertising.
God bless my CFO because he's been very patient with the crazy shit
we've done here. Havas is a large advertising agency where we
create a lot of work for multiple channels for clients across the
U.S. At the same time I always had a vision to launch a different
company, which we did two years ago. The Annex is an
outward-facing, millennials-for-millennials young person's point of
view on this. I did Vic Mensa's record release party. There's 950
kids in here going insane listening to his album for the first
time.
What does that have to do with selling Reynolds
Wrap?
It all comes around. It's about attracting talent, it's about
creating content, it's about building and bringing these brands
into these relationships we have with the culture. Ad agencies
always bought their way into culture.
Meaning?
"Here, Beyoncé, here's a million dollars. Hold this can of
Pepsi." We all know now—because we follow her on every one of
her social channels—she doesn't drink Pepsi! Unless you're
authentically within culture, brands are going to fail at it. Pepsi
is a perfect case in point. Here's a client that says, "Oh we got
it. We know how to do this with these young kids." Dude. When you
get it wrong, your brand is dead. And if that goes viral, there's
no recovering from that.
Research suggests that the only people who cared about
the Pepsi Kendall Jenner fiasco were people in
advertising.
Younger consumers hit up on it. It's a piece they were embarrassed
of. It'd be like their parents trying to be cool. They're still my
parents. I still love them. Just, don't do that again, Mom. That
creeps me out.
