Why Quirk was voted The Agency To Watch ...

Adlip: What makes your peers believe that Quirk is the agency to watch?

Justin Spratt: I think it's because we have realized that there is huge value in what the Classical agencies bring - and that is the understanding of a Big Idea and how the big idea can live every where. What's been missing I think, is an ability to put digital into that and I think the reason we're an agency to watch is because we bake-in digital right from the start. Digital informs everything that we do - we don't just see digital as a channel. Our kids (youngsters) here are digital natives and so the guys that would traditionally have gone into your Classical agency and thought of Big Ideas for 30-second TV spot and 30-second radio spots are now thinking about it from a digital platform point of view.

Adlip: What's changed at Quirk in the past 12 months?

Justin Spratt: In the last 12 months we have made some significant investments in classical advertising competence. We have hired Con Bertish in Cape Town, and we have hired Fran Luckin in Johannesburg. Con was the ECD at at JWT Cape Town, and Fran is the former ECD of Ogilvy Johannesburg. These are significant investments, because it takes time to build this level of competence - you don't hire one of these guys, and then all of a sudden start winning awards. It's a DNA thing, you need to start baking-in this different way of thinking about an idea, try to pull yourself away from production mentality and great tactical ideas. You move away from that and try and think about a core big idea that can really live across multiple channels and in multiple formats. We are also starting to think very much about brand narratives - there is this like 12 month content plan story that needs to be told, and whilst you need to have the tactical stuff in there, you really need to carry the brand with the content that is being generated.

It's not about the short campaigns where you spend a lot of money, you get a lot of fireworks and then it goes away...

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