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Capability Building at J Walter Thompson

The Need for Capability Building

Brand Communications agency J Walter Thompson found that increasing competition from management consultants and brand strategy houses was eroding their position in their traditional domain of strategic branding, creating the danger of agency work becoming executional and commoditised. Agency staff were also being asked to develop creative solutions without being given a view of how their work was to sit in the wider business context.

Recognising the potential impact these issues could have on their business, JWT decided to rapidly strengthen their position by giving a wider range of staff a set of core ‘business skills’ to help them gain insight into clients’ business issues. Conventional workshop training would have taken too long to implement as they wanted to benefit from the cumulative effect of all client-facing staff developing these skills as quickly and cost effectively as possible. To achieve this, they decided to develop an accelerated learning programme with Imparta.

A Blended Approach

The Imparta programme at JWT combined a number of different elements to attract staff interest and maintain the momentum of accelerated learning.

The vehicle for building the knowledge and skills which would allow staff to analyze and understand their client’s business was a sophisticated programme consisting of animated tutorials on core business concepts, and a rich computer simulation ‘Business Kinetics’ where in the shoes of a Marketing Director they could address marketing and organisational issues typical of their clients’ experiences.

As JWT wanted to take the accelerated learning programme across its globally-distributed business quickly, a set of workshops was designed to introduce the programme to client-facing managers across the world. A roll out structure was created to enable the programme to penetrate the whole organisation by Imparta training a group of internal ‘champions’, to facilitate this. Wiithin 6 months, 70% of client-facing managers from Bangkok to Sao Paolo and from London to Miami, had been introduced to the Imparta programme.

At a later date, specialised ‘application’ workshops for senior teams in London and New York were devised to apply selected concepts to real agency issues, with participants taking out projects for onward action.

Outcomes

After the customised ‘Business Kinetics’ programme of business theory tutorials and simulation had had time to embed in the organisation, J Walter Thompson’s entry on this programme won two gold medals for training effectiveness from the Institute of Practioners in Advertising. The business impact they reported included:

• A higher number of staff assessed in reviews as having the business knowledge to be moved across different accounts, providing better flexibility for the company and development for individuals.
• The business frameworks provided were used to help structure communications to clients.
• More staff able to take on more added-value work as the business understanding helped staff to develop tailored messages and points of view that engaged clients and gained access to more ‘strategic’ discussions.
• Reduced costs of sending staff out to external business school short courses.
• Senior managers identified which business areas they should be exploiting further, leading to ideas for new products and services.

Understanding the Client’s Business Problem

JWT’s Chief Learning Officer said: “If we want to say we are offering integrated brand communications, we have to start with an understanding of the client’s business or marketing problem. This programme has given us that understanding, and we are now in a position to deliver quality creative, underpinned by a sound grasp of business issues.”

J Walter Thompson is a large communications agency, and a flagship company within the WPP Group. With global coverage, it has over 9,000 staff, 3,000 of whom are client-facing. JWT works across a range of industry sectors, helping clients to drive increased sales and build long-term value for their brands.

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