Creative leaders must reassess the way they lead teams as Gen Z enters the workforce in greater numbers and becomes an increasingly important consumer demographic, according to Pinterest’s global VP of creative, Xanthe Wells.
Reflecting on her own journey from some of the world’s largest agencies to Pinterest via Google in an interview with B&T before her keynote at Cairns Crocodiles, Wells said, “You have to be totally open-minded and approach it with no ego. You may have all of this experience and have won all these awards, but you have to go, ‘You know, today’s day one.’ Ask what you can learn from them, how you can be better informed, how you can open the door to really hear what you have to say and make sure it’s truly open,” Wells said.
“Advertising, historically, has a lot of ego… The posturing of the industry, I’ve never liked it. I really try to model my own leadership in the complete opposite way. I want to be one of the team and help guide and shape the decisions we make, but truly informed what’s right and happening in the culture rather than coming from a place of ‘I know it all’. I know some things, I know how to craft things and bring things out into the world, but the actual content has to come from people who know it.”
Wells’ humility belies her incredible CV. Over seven years, she climbed from being a senior art director to a creative director at TBWA\Chiat\Day before joining Pitch as its chief creative officer and working on the likes of Burger King, Pepsi, Netflix and Nestle.
Then she went back to TBWA, spending a little over a year as the ECD of TBWA\MAL FOR GOOD, sister agency to the storied TBWA\Media Arts Lab and set up to service social good clients. Five years at Google followed, where she rose to become senior director and global ECD before Pinterest came calling two-and-a-half years ago.
“Everyone’s vision is different,” continued Wells, talking about the importance of an open and collective culture in creative pursuits.
“This Gen person may have a completely different vision that I don’t understand, but now they have the tools to express [themselves] exactly as they want it to be. We’re still in a supply and demand marketplace, so if that vision goes forward, that’s the vision that goes forward, right? It’s got to be bought by somebody. That’s how we’ll eventually figure out who’s going to supply the visions that creative what we do next. But I think it’s all fair game, though.
“Again, it’s less hierarchical. It’s not the Lee Clows, Dave Drogas or Dan Wiedens that decide what leaves the agency and goes out in the world. They’re legends, but I think it should be opened up to other legends who maybe younger, older or whatever.”
There’s an important demographic shift happening in the offices of the world’s advertising agencies, too. The industry is less white than it has ever been, though it is still some way from reflecting society. There are more women, too, though again, we’re still some way off a truly inclusive industry.
“I didn’t have a seat at the table when I first started as a woman, I was talked over, put on the ‘female’ brands, and wasn’t allowed to work on the ‘male’ brands. I had to claw my way up and through. I think it’s a little easier now,” she said.
Now, Wells and Pinterest believe that the tide has shifted. Consumers increasingly no longer want to be sold to. Instead, they expect brands to be deeply integrated into culture. It’s a point that Wells brought into sharp relief during her keynote talk in Cairns.
“We were seeing droves of Gen Z flock to Pinterest, which is not something that I would have expected, and we started realising they’re behaving in a totally different way on the platform,” she told a packed Cairns Convention Centre.
“It’s absolutely different from how millennials were, different from Gen X, different from Boomers. First off, they’re curating around aesthetics, which is not something we saw previously. Millennials were planning weddings, projects, and remodelling bathrooms. Gen Z is saying, ‘I’m going to have a board around beige because I like beige… They’re all curated around interests.”
Creativity as an idea or process for previous generations was held by a higher order of people. For Gen Z, creativity is their culture. There’s empirical proof, too, with 74 per cent of Gen Z saying they felt creative within the last month compared to just 61 per cent of adults who felt creative at any point.
“The way I grew up learning about artists was that you had to be a Jackson Pollock alone in your studio. The male artists, the solo geniuses. Now, luckily, we’re in a place where it’s remixing, collaborating, building on someone’s ideas,” said Wells.
“Just because you’re in charge now, you have a big title and you’re probably running a team, don’t be so ‘in charge-ish’. You have to open the door and submit to the process. And when you do, all your adult dreams will come true.”
It’s a future we’re thoroughly in favour of.
