The process that awakened the "agency of my life" (as I call the home of the legendary Leo Burnett, because that's where I celebrated my greatest international successes and - more importantly! - found my creative home) awakened worldwide, began with a question: "How do you measure, assess, purposefully discuss the quality of creative work - from Adelaide to Lima, from Toronto to Oslo?" I first asked myself this question in April 1986, when, freshly arrived in Chicago from Frankfurt, I took over the creative leadership of Leo Burnett, first the international part, later the entire agency. Part of my job was that, as Chief Creative Officer, I had the final decision on what to recommend to our clients. So it happened that before a client presentation of a new campaign, I asked a creative director responsible for an account what he thought of the work so overall - how he judged it. He said, "Great!" I replied, "What's great?" To which he replied, "I mean: It's very good, Michael!" "From my understanding," I noted, "great and very good are two different qualities." The debate went back and forth a bit more, and because I really, really liked the work, felt it was independent and bold, I ended the discussion with, "I think it's brilliant!"

Although I had been shown a brilliant campaign that day, I went home in the evening with a headache. We couldn't discuss the quality of our work like that! We needed a clear consensus for our company about the quality of our work, clearly articulated goals, what was good - and what was not. We needed to learn to be purposeful in our analysis - and "bold." And so we set out to articulate qualities, to define a standard that worked for us with a global perspective and neutrality in terms of culture, industry and execution. That in itself was a bold undertaking, because the fact that such qualities had not existed before suggested how difficult they would be to define. As you know, what comes easily has usually already been done by someone.

"Best in the world, bar none"

At the top of our scale, we placed a maxim that agency founder Leo Burnett had left behind: "World leader, without exception." In keeping with the company logo (a hand reaching for the stars), that was "10," the "top shot," yes: perfection. We then agreed on nine other parameters, dedicated in sections to what was desirable, what was to be avoided, and the execution of each. A brand achieves long-term ownership when it defines a new standard in a category with its product or service: That is, when it totally fills a niche or implements market leader ambitions (the "most masculine" cigarette for Marlboro or the "greatest" self-confidence for Always). On our scale, this strategic criterion became the "8".

We certainly haven't forgotten the "9", but I had to anticipate the "8" - because the "9" represents its implementation. Here, too, setting a new standard in communications that gives a product or service a distinctive long-term language, tone, culture and leadership, creating a leading brand (maybe even an icon?!). Think "Marlboro Country" or "#Like A Girl" for Always.

What do we want - and what not?

Just as important as defining what we wanted to achieve, became what we wanted to avoid (and which is still the scourge of advertising today): Clichés, the norm of things, the tyranny of mediocrity. Whether advertising cars, cosmetics, cleaning products: differences are usually very marginal. Why is that? What is known tests well - what is unknown polarizes (also negatively). That's how you eliminate risks. But we preferred to eliminate mediocrity. So we made clichés our "4".

Even worse: uncompetitive advertising (our "3"), which competitors can buy our guts for; unclear content, unclear design, time-stealing annoyance, which drags the product and brand into the abyss (our "2"), and finally: frightening, repulsive advertising. Cases for the advertising council, inhumane. One of our network agencies actually published something like this once, the "New York Times" publicly put us in our place for it (and rightly so!), and we had the bar for our "1".

Push the "up", avoid the "down"

Now we have defined which qualities we want to strive for and which we want to avoid. What do we have to do to push the "up" and not give the "down" a chance? First, we need to develop strategies that are capable of setting new standards. In other words, they must be innovative, i.e., they must bring about a conversion from previous behavior to new behavior: a "5" on the scale. Second, ideas that implement innovative strategies must have freshness: on the scale the "6". Third, the fresh ideas must be produced so excellently that the idea becomes visible, moves, provokes thought. This is an area where good ideas are very often lost due to weak production. After this realization, we wrote ourselves a sentence about creation: "Once an idea is sold, the work begins" - on the scale the "7". The discussion about the quality of our work could begin, adding one more crucial point to Leo's "Best in the world, bar none": Inspiration. Because if our work doesn't inspire people, it's worthless.

Intermediate space and "7+" line

After a few years, I had the impression that there was still too little movement. In our network of about ninety agencies, four or five were creatively strong, the rest fell short. We acted "bold" again and made a thick line between the "7" and the "8": The respective agency bonus was linked in part to how many "7+" projects a site implemented per fiscal year. For the vote, we put the national work up for discussion internationally on a quarterly basis. The effect: There was much more exchange, business was buzzing, customer satisfaction increased, good minds flocked to us, and 27 of our agencies were named "Agency of the Year" (in some cases several times) over the next five years. The U.S. "Advertising Age" gave us "Global Agency of the Year" and the "Gunn Report" listed us as the most awarded agency in the world. "7+" is still practiced today, by the way, in a wide variety of adapted forms, by agencies or clients like Heineken.

* Michael Conrad was born in Leipzig in 1944; fled to the West with his mother in 1952. After an apprenticeship as an industrial clerk and various jobs, the autodidact joined Young & Rubicam, later Ogilvy Mather, in 1968. In 1972, he was involved in the founding of TBWA in Frankfurt; this was followed in 1975 by the founding of Lürzer, Conrad. In 1980, he merged with Leo Burnett, where he rose to the position of global Chief Creative Officer. Michael Conrad is married, has three children and has lived in Zurich since 2000. He is co-founder of an Executive MBA for creative leaders at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.

m&kMartina Hingis, tennis has accompanied you from an early age - there is a rumor that you were already leaning on a racket when you couldn't even walk properly. Is that true?

Martina Hingis Yes, probably so (laughs). I can't remember the very early years, of course, but I grew up on the tennis court: my mother was a professional player in Czechoslovakia and I was always there at practice. There are photos of me between the rackets and balls, on the edge of the court, with my toys. So I think the rumor is true.

What is your first conscious, own tennis memory?

My mother and I came to Switzerland from Czechoslovakia in 1988. Because I wanted to play as many tennis tournaments as possible, but there was no children's category here at that time, I was already on the court as a young girl with Swiss housewives (laughs) - ambitious amateur players, so to speak. They often said, "How cute!" or, "You're hardly visible behind the net!" and wanted to play me. But they quickly stopped when they realized that I always win.

From this, I take away two life lessons: that you'd better be prepared for more than you might actually expect - and that you have not only a Plan A, but also a Plan B and a Plan C.

American track and field athlete Ed Moses once told me how he remained the undefeated world champion in the 400-meter hurdles for nine years, nine months, and nine days: he always trained, he said, for the 800-meter run! (laughs) Ed said, "You know, Martina, if I can do the 800 meters - then the 400 meters are a piece of cake!" And on the second point: Yes, I always had a Plan B or Plan C in addition to my Plan A. It was very important to my mother in training that I have a broad tactical and technical base. I often miss that a bit in current women's tennis - my generation put more emphasis on strategic skills and a broad technical repertoire. A big match is often also a feeling-out, a waiting game: You're facing one of the Williams sisters and have to catch the moment when she shows a weakness; have to be precise where she allows herself an inaccuracy; have to have an idea that she doesn't have.

Was it always clear to you that you wanted to be a professional tennis player? Or were there other career aspirations as well?

Because I was able to experience success so early, that - took on a life of its own. I won my first Swiss championships at the age of twelve, as well as the youth tournaments in Paris and Wimbledon. A steep, rapid ascent. And then I wanted more.

And you got more: In 1996, you became the youngest Grand Slam winner in the history of tennis when - just fifteen years and nine months old - you won the women's doubles at Wimbledon with Helena Suková. Didn't you feel incredible pressure in the context of such world tournaments?

No - that was actually the beauty of it! When I was young, I didn't deal with the pressure at all, for two reasons: One, I was lucky enough to have beaten most of my opponents in the big tournaments before elsewhere. So I thought, for example: Why shouldn't I beat them here in Miami, I already won against them in Hamburg!? And I was convinced that I had time: If I didn't win this or that tournament, then I could come back a year later and try again. That was my mindset.

I think that fits in perfectly with the motto of the event at which you will be the star guest in November - DirectDay is running under the title "Bold is Gold! And this is how you describe your career: You were ambitious, but you also had fun and believed in yourself very strongly.

Yes, I have always been able to rely on my game. Even in situations where I was behind or under stress, I knew that I could master the next shot and that I would deliver my performance. Self-doubt was not a problem I suffered from - especially in my "first career". Sure, nobody wins every game, always has a good day. But I acted at every moment with the conviction that I can - will - make the next point.

How do you protect the self-confidence you describe if you do suffer a defeat - perhaps in a match or tournament that was very important to you?

It has always helped me - and I think this can be applied to many areas of life - to analyze afterwards what didn't work or what external factors played into the result. If I lose to one of the Williams sisters, who are on the other side of the net with all their muscles and enormous size, then I know: I have to train my condition and my strength even better to compensate for the physical differences next time. And sometimes you just have to accept that everything is "too much": I once ran out of breath at the Australian Open when the outside temperature was fifty degrees, okay, that's ... to put it casually ... crappy, but then you have to tick that off.

As a very young player, you said earlier, things "took on a life of their own". Later in your career, however, you had to make very conscious, courageous decisions: The comebacks in 2006 and 2013 were conscious steps that were not without risk for your reputation and your "legacy" ...

When I made my first comeback in 2006, I asked myself, "If I don't try it again now, might I blame myself for the rest of my life?" So I did. But of course I was more afraid of failing now than before - after all, I didn't want to embarrass myself. Nobody forced me to return to the pitch after my first retirement in 2003. I knew that if I did that, people would understand that I wanted to do it myself. And then I have to deliver. Fortunately, I managed to do that (laughs). I had great matches, great tournament wins, before injury problems came up again in 2007. And the second comeback in 2013 ... to be honest, that wasn't planned at all! I actually only wanted to coach. But then first Daniela Hantuchová asked if I wanted to return to the WTA Tour with her in Carlsbad - and then I won the Sony Open tournament in doubles with Sabine Lisicki. We can't go into detail here now because the history of the matches that followed would take up too much space - but in January 2016, for the first time in almost sixteen years, I had the No. 1 position in the WTA doubles world rankings again, together with Sania Mirza. A nice encore for the second, totally unplanned comeback, right? (laughs)

Another learning for me: It can be worthwhile to surprise yourself sometimes.

That's just it. Sometimes there are situations, turning points in life, at which many things are decided - and whose significance you could not have foreseen. You simply have to dare.

How important were your competitors for you, actually? David Coulthard, who appeared on DirectDay two years ago, once told me that dueling with Michael Schumacher made him a better race car driver. Did you have rivals who improved your game?

I'm the same age as Venus Williams and a year older than Serena Williams. I was better as a junior and at a much higher level, but then they both caught up - and when we met, those were matches where I took a lot away for myself. The first US Open match against Venus - I admit that honestly - was probably also the first time I didn't sleep that well before a match (laughs). But I won. You don't lose to your peers, I thought to myself at the time.

So sporting excellence pushes and reinforces each other?

It's not really fun to play regularly against people like that, because it takes an insane amount of energy. But they were certainly the best matches I played back then. The effect you're talking about has also been seen in men's tennis in recent years: Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have been working off each other - and whenever one was better, the others trained to catch up. And the matches became more and more incredible.

Roger Federer has just retired, Nadal and Djokovic are flirting with a similar move for 2023 or 2024, according to the relevant media. If you yourself were part of a "tennis generation", as you were, is it strange to see such a generation retire?

I don't want to sound arrogant at all, but women's tennis in the peak years of my career, that was a really great time, a great generation of players. Venus and Serena, who represented the USA. Mary Pierce from France. Conchita Martínez from Spain. I could list several more people now. What I want to say is: all of them brought their fans, their special style, were ... unique. And when that ends, it is of course associated with a certain melancholy.

How did you experience the transformation from top-level sport back to a "normal" everyday life?

Oh, I think - every person who has done a job that was important to them, whether as a manager, a lawyer or even as a tennis player, feels a break after their career ends. Then you have to find something new that fulfills you. In my case, it's certainly my family: I have a little daughter who is the most important thing in the world to me. The best gift tennis has given me is the time I can now spend with her. And I regularly go to my mom's tennis gym and teach the kids there. We currently have a 14-year-old player with us who is the world number one in her age group and whose progress I have been watching for five years. It's a different feeling of happiness than when I played myself, but it's also wonderful.

If one day your daughter expressed the desire to become a professional tennis player ... would you support that?

Yes well, if it were her wish, then I would support that for sure. But I would also do that for all the other wishes and plans she has. Maybe we should give her a little more time to decide, she's only three and a half years old (laughs).

You appear incredibly likeable and down-to-earth. Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize something and thus introduce my last question: You are one of the most successful tennis players in the history of your sport. You have achieved everything that can be achieved in your discipline. What advice would you give to people who, like you, have big dreams and want to realize them?

You just have to live out your passions and then consistently pursue the goal or plans you have. It's very easy to say, but we all know how life plays out sometimes. How you can lose sight of goals or get off track. That you sacrifice dreams because reality seems to throw a wrench in your plans. But I say: You have to hold on to your dreams, with all your might. And you have to create an environment that supports you: a family, friends who accompany you for part of the way. And, perhaps finally, it helps to be realistic. I wanted to win the cantonal championships in Switzerland, then the national championships ... That was my first goal. Wimbledon came later.

Direct Day 2022: The interview with Martina Hingis took place during the run-up to Direct Day 2022. There, on November 15, she will talk about the highlights of her career, in keeping with the motto "Bold is Gold". Every year, Post Advertising organizes this leading event for the dialog marketing industry; this time, for the first time, at the Kongresshaus Zurich. Secure yourself now last remaining tickets. 

Martina Hingis (born September 30, 1980) is a former Swiss tennis player. Born in Czechoslovakia as the child of two tennis professionals, she came into contact with the sport at an early age - and after her mother moved to Switzerland with her in 1988, quickly celebrated cantonal and national success. A spectacular rise to the global tennis Olympus followed, which only ended in 2017 after several comebacks. Martina Hingis now works as a junior coach and is the happy mother of a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter.

Hingis won 38 titles at WTA tournaments in singles and 42 in doubles. She also won five Grand Slam titles in singles - the Australian Open three times and Wimbledon and the US Open once each - as well as thirteen Grand Slam titles in doubles and seven in mixed. In 1998, she managed to win all Grand Slam tournaments in the same year with different partners. Between 1997 and 2001, she spent 209 weeks at the top of the world rankings. She is the youngest player ever to top the singles rankings. At 16 years and three months, she was also the youngest winner in the 20th century of a Grand Slam tournament in singles. After retiring at the age of just 22, she decided to make a comeback in 2006, which took her once again to No. 6 in the world rankings. On November 1, 2007, she said goodbye to professional sports for a second time. She returned to the WTA Tour again in 2013, this time only for the doubles competition. Hingis is one of seven players who have topped the world rankings in both singles and doubles. Only she, Martina Navratilova and Arantxa Sánchez Vicario even managed to do so at the same time.

Journalists, the German satirist Karl Kraus once said, are those people who always want to have known everything beforehand afterwards. There is no doubt that his accusation cannot be entirely dismissed; especially when journalists act not only as reporters but also as critics. Then one can always counter them: "If you really could have done it better, why didn't you do it yourself?"

Well, perhaps because many of us (the author of this article explicitly includes himself here) are more suited to theory than to practice. But perhaps also because for every "level" there must be a "meta-level"; for every product there must be an independent evaluation - this constitutes the essence of public debates, no matter whether they are in business or politics and no matter what the topic. It takes some to "do" and others to analyze the result.

If you follow this premise and apply it to the Swiss marketing and communications industry, then DirectDay 2022 really won't come a day too soon: Its motto "Bold is Gold" is almost like Jakob Bosshart's famous "crying in the wilderness," opposing a dictate of mediocrity and risk aversion that has become established in our country's communications industry. This, at least, would be the analysis from my ivory tower of business journalism that can be listened to (or against which, as I said at the outset, Karl Kraus may be cited). The reasons for my observations are manifold, they can hardly be held against a single individual personally, and one could write a book (or at least an HSG master's thesis) about how the industry has maneuvered itself into a conformism from which it now hardly seems able to pull itself out. But that would be too little help at a time when rising inflation and recession demand quick action. Instead of over-analyzing the status quo, the stakeholders must take the reins quickly and "boldly" - because it would be madness not to take any risks now.

"Risk Awareness, Reversed"

As "Advertiser of the Year" David Schärer suggests in the interview on the left, this will first require a total reversal of risk awareness among all those involved in the industry's processes. Marketing and communications executives, who manage budgets (and, admittedly, often have a hard time doing so: According to the Harvard Business Review, around eighty percent of American CEOs feel a "latent" or "acute" distrust of their CMOs - figures that are likely to be similar in Switzerland), must finally abandon the principle of "Don't fix what isn't broken". Mediocre marketing that relies on supposed "security" does not preserve the status quo, but endangers it in the medium and long term. The idea that "another year of candy bars on a white background" would be enough to keep sales at Valora kiosks constant may seem tempting. But what if, in said year, a competitor emerges to blanket the whole of Switzerland with a guerrilla campaign and really ruin their carefully cultivated "share of wallet"? I have a suspicion where the (already suspicious, see above!) CEOs would look for "pawns". So the new watchword, especially in difficult times, is: Risky is not to do something extraordinary; risky is to do nothing at all.

Posture is "bold" - or arbitrary

Let's go one step further: Does your company claim to represent an attitude? Does it write the equality of all employees, regardless of their origin or sexuality, on the rainbow flags hoisted in front of its Zurich headquarters during Pride Month? And is this then used for proper self-promotion? As much as this action is to be welcomed in principle, it is not an attitude, it is cheap symbolic politics. The few die-hards who are still bothered by such communication measures in Switzerland are not relevant. Marketing based on attitude only becomes credible if there are people who are made angry by it. Yes, angry! When the same flags are also hoisted in front of offices in Moscow, the United Arab Emirates or African capitals where "homosexual propaganda" is subject to draconian penalties. Or when supporters of Donald Trump burn their sneakers because Nike testimonial Colin Kaepernick openly protests against the ex-president's xenophobic policies, yet continues to support "his" brand. The success that Nike's attitude campaign around Kaepernick had afterwards was celebrated by award juries and trade journalists worldwide - and many marketers probably felt a certain envy of never having triggered such an impact themselves. But, as I said, impact comes through attitude, and attitude is "bold" - or arbitrary, and therefore redundant.

The economy of attention

Those who have no use for attitude-based advertising can also approach the significance of expressive communication that is clearly differentiated from the mass of advertising messages via pure statistics: The most conservative (!) estimates assume that people in German-speaking countries are confronted with 300 to 500 advertising messages per day; other studies assume 3,000 to 10,000 such messages per day. The truth will lie somewhere in the middle - but combined with the flood of information that pours in on us via our cell phones, our laptops and print media, that is - to put it casually - simply a whole lot of input. And here it comes, the moment of truth for all marketing and communications managers: Would you yourself notice what you commissioned from your agency and what is now circulating in Switzerland or internationally among "only" 300 or even up to 10,000 other messages? If you can answer this with a spontaneous, convinced "Yes!", then congratulations are in order. Anyone who hesitates has actually already answered the question with a "No." And that's why events like DirectDay, which take "Bold is Gold" as their theme and hopefully inspire a few hundred people (multiplied by this magazine, at most a few thousand) to pause for a moment, are so important. This industry can't keep doing what it's doing. No one is asking you, dear readers, to perform miraculous deeds. Just a little bit more courage.

How much courage does it take today to act "boldly"?

In a completely fragmented media world, where we are exposed to information content equivalent to several daily newspapers per day, messages have to be assertive - otherwise they get lost. This is so obvious that I always argue for a reversal of "risk thinking" in the industry: the question "What if we attract negative attention?" is readily asked. But it would be much more important to be concerned about not attracting attention at all.

To do this, you have to get the decision-makers in the companies out of their comfort zone. How difficult is that?

Attention costs a lot of money, and I see it as one of our most important tasks to manage the resources of our clients responsibly. So we have to get them out of the comfort zone of mediocrity - and say clearly: those who are remembered are the nonconformists. To do this, we put together a coherent and "bulletproof" argumentation as a team. And in pitches, I like to describe the impact of a campaign "from the end": What media potential do I see in a bold, polarizing proposal? What headlines can we generate? That helps enormously.