A Farm And A Studio: The Making Of Edelman UK's ECDs

Edelman creatives James Woods and Jamie George Cordwell might have similar sounding names but they approach briefs from entirely different angles. And yet together they form the perfect leadership duo.

Following Emma de La Fosse's retirement at the start of this year, the ECDs have taken the helm of Edelman's creative team, and its roster of top tier clients.

Drawn to diverse accounts and the power of earned media, the pair first joined forces whilst at Edelman, but bring experience ranging from Ogilvy and Cossette in Toronto, to AMV BBDO, Fallon and Dare in London.

Woods is a a problem-solver who takes on dense briefs and delivers results such as DP World's Titanium award-winning campaign 'Move To Minus 15'. However, his lighter side has seen him spearhead Haribo's Halloween work and, in an earlier pre-Edelman life, lead an activistic campaign to kill Go Compare's figurehead Gio Compario.

Meanwhile, as the art director of the two, Cordwell provides creative leadership for the consumer-facing accounts Xbox , Microsoft and Unilever.

Between them, they have a raw talent for painting, a meticulously detailed approach to problem-solving, and an ability to find hope in every challenge.

We caught up with the pair to find out what led them into advertising, creating work that hits the headlines, and fostering a collaborative environment.

Creative Salon: What role did creativity play in your childhood?

Jamie George Cordwell: I was quite fortunate in that my dad, being a photographer, had a studio and worked on shoots, so I was around sets from quite a young age. On the downside (I’m not going to tell you which ones because there might still be photos around) I was drafted-in to be the little boy in some of the adverts.

But actually, it was great because there were always agency people around and, for me, it was a way to see everything that was going on behind the camera. We always see the finished product, and as consumers, I don’t think people need to see the work that goes into it, but I think part of being a creative is having a curious mind, and you always want to know how things work, at least I do, so that was a part of it. I was quite fortunate that this was back in the days of film so my dad would take me into the dark room and show me how the processing worked and it set me off on this path of creation. There was never an age where there wasn’t a sketchbook in my hand or something similar.

James Woods: My experience was the total opposite. I grew up on a small rural farm in Suffolk. I recently read Stephen Fry, beause he’s from Norfolk, say he grew up miles away from the nearest avocado and I feel that’s true of me. My grandparents were farmers, my dad’s a farmer and my family always lived in that small area. But I got into design at school and a cousin who was quite a bit older than me, suddenly left university and got a design job at Lotus. No one from our family, or that area, had a job like that but it lit a spark in me to realise it was possible. That was the glimmer that started it, I realised that there’s a whole world out there.

I don’t regret the rural experience at all. It’s quite amazing being outside and inventive in what you’re doing. There’s also a level of freedom because your parents often didn’t know where you were and you and your mates had bikes and you could all get away. Mum and dad worked on the farm so they were often down at the field and you did have to get up to your own stuff and invent your own fun. There was creativity and freedom in that.

Was there any particularly inspirational people or a moment that helped shape your path or way of thinking?

JW It was a teacher. He was about half my height but he was incredibly neat and precise. He was a design teacher and he just had this area of calm up in one end of the school which was the design space. The school was quite chaotic, it was an ordinary state school but you just went into this area of calm. Everything was immaculate and perfect. It brought focus and attention to detail and you could just go and hide away there.

I remember him telling me that he’d done a design exam once and he’d drawn it all from the wrong perspective and only realised in the last five minutes. I asked him if he tried to draw it out again and he said "no" because he’d put so much detail into it.

He thought in this calm quite intense way. I remember him talking to my mate who wasn’t into design at all and my mate had done a piece of work where you could tell he hadn’t put any effort into it. He said, “So you couldn’t do it any better?” My mate said, “No, I’m just not into it”. The teacher said “That’s a shame. I’ve got £100 in my pocket – can you do it any better?” And my mate replied, “Well maybe I could”. Then the teacher said, “Well I haven’t, so can you do it better?"

There were a few of us who just got sucked in by the intensity and learned these design principles.

JGC If I go back to my early days I have to bring it back to my parents. I was fortunate that they worked in the industry. My mum worked with my dad, running the studio for him.  She was creative with everything. She loves to cook, she loves to decorate and she does all the stuff around the shoots – she organises and dresses sets. It was just one of those innately creative families which was great.

As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve been really fortunate to work with some really great bosses. Every so often you think you’ve found the top person, and then you work with someone even better and you realise there’s another level to climb and then another level to climb. I like to think that every time I’ve worked with someone I try to take something away or learn a new thing. You build yourself up and you keep evolving. Just as the industry keeps evolving at a rapid piece – when digital came in I thought that was the last and final evolution and lo and behold it just keeps changing. You have to learn to embrace that change.

What does creativity mean to you?

JW  I was rubbish at art at school and it took me having to do a foundation course and someone showing me how to draw. It makes you feel like a bit of a fraud because you’re not this great artist who’s trying to create art from your soul. Instead, you’ve got this thrill from solving a problem and coming up with a great little idea or fix whether it’s getting out of doing a layout on a graphic design course or whether it’s something bigger.

I wanted to be a graphic designer and so I started on a graphic design course and when I started getting my portfolio together every page had some kind of trick or gimmick to get me out of doing a layout. It became increasingly obvious to my tutor as it was to anyone else and I found out about the advertising course at Bucks where all they were interested in was the ideas. And that drew me there.

And it’s finding those ideas that have also driven me here. Now that it’s within culture you have to work even harder because you have to ask; "Why would anyone give a shit?" When you talk about DP World and the problems are just bigger and harder and scarier but also more satisfying when you crack them.

When I worked at Fallon, you worked with people who created these amazing films and content and it was all inspiring to see. But what I get really excited about is the idea behind it. I think what’s always intrigued me is wondering; "How the hell did they get to that?"

JGC I always struggle with that question because I feel that creativity is innate to everything I do. It just so happens that I managed to find a career into which I can channel that. I’m not just creative within the hours of nine to five. I paint. I love to cook. It comes across in everything I do.

That’s whether it’s problem-solving, when I’m painting or how I approach a video game. I think if you’re creative it’s at the core of how you approach life. We sometimes pigeonhole creativity as being reserved to the halls of the Tate or advertising award shows, but it can be in how you put your dinner together too.

I struggle with that because it’s really hard to answer. It’s just a part of me, it’s as much a part of me as the rest of my personality or my shiny bald head.

I’m also very competitive. It gets to the point where I took up the hobby of painting as its not competitive just to give myself some stress-free moments. And then I started entering painting competitions and challenging myself there. It got to the point where I was telling myself to chill out. But it's probably innate in all creatives to want to be better at whatever they’re creating. That competitive side goes hand-in-hand because you can’t be passionate without being competitive. You never find someone super-passionate but blasé about what they’ve made.

Does AI and mass content mean we’ve lost sense of what good creativity is?

JGC I think the democratisation of creativity is good but it’s become watered down in some sectors. For example, photography has become completely democratised – it’s everywhere. We’ve lost sight of the truly great photographers.

It's been devalued by the fact everyone can go on their iPhone and take loads of pictures. I’m not saying that’s bad but it’s then hard for us to recognise amazing photos when they do break through and maybe we’ve got less of an appetite for it because we’re so overwhelmed with everyone’s creativity.

The problem with AI in the short term is that we're still trying to figure out how best to work with it and that's the key. Every time new technology comes out, there's a level of apprehension, it’s just normal human nature, right? But, it's about finding out how not to become lesser. We need to ask how we can use it to find new limits, new levels of creativity, new levels of customisation, accessibility, whatever it may be, versus outsourcing to it instead.

That's what we're going to see from my perspective. The winners and losers in this industry, or in broader creativity, are the people that use it to find a new bar and set a new precedent, versus just doing what they’ve always done, but getting AI to do it.

JW I think it’s just created more stuff hasn’t it? Even though we’ve come here and we’re proud that we’re not creating 30-second ads or whatever, there’s a danger we could join that and create more stuff. When things are just a platform for stuff rather than a place where you can curate it starts to weigh you down.

Working hard to find that one thing in the tsunami of creativity comes down to relevance. It has to create some kind of connection. I think that what a lot of it doesn’t do is it doesn’t connect to you in the heart. That’s what truly creative people do. You can go around a gallery and be drawn somewhere and it might not be where everyone else is drawn to and that’s what amazing creativity is.

Clients are still quite wowed by [AI] at the moment. And as an agency, we're playing with it loads. What we're finding, and what we're trying to experiment with, is using it to mine human insights about culture and the odd stuff that might be harder to find. That's what we're trying to lead clients into – how technology can get us to stuff really quickly, and then how we can use our creativity. That's where it's exciting.

I went to a presentation a while ago where a tech guy said that he spent the last three years removing any mention of AI from any presentation, and now, if he hasn't got it in there, clients ask where it is. I think it goes back to how the digital world was received at first.

What makes you tick as a pair?

JGC James and I divide and conquer a little bit. I’m across Microsoft, Xbox, Unilever, of more of your CPG and consumer facing stuff. 

Within that, there's obviously quite a lot like Unilever. You say it as one, but it's a house of brands and there’s so much just within Unilever alone.  So it's a decent mix of brands, which is great. It's why we came to Edelman, the mixture of opportunities is great. At every other agency we've been, the best work is always the stuff that you put at the end of the deck.

The reason why we've been here so long is because you're not pitching the standard bus stop ad, or 32-second spot. It's about how to crack a business challenge, or how to break through into culture. Or how do we react to something that's happening in the news at the moment? You’re always on your toes a bit, but it's great.

JW  Although Jamie works more on the consumer side, I've worked on quite a lot of the corporate stuff. There’s a bloodymindedness about me when looking at clients like DP World, where you can see there are amazing opportunities in potentially changing the business and doing something, not just business transformation, but bigger than that like 'The Move to -15' and such satisfaction knowing it's a hard client and you have banged your head against a wall until something brilliant has come out and it's a far bigger story as well.

So that's what turns me on, this bloody-minded and awkward idea that there is some kind of gem that you can pull out.

What work are you most proud of in your career?

JW The piece of work I would go back to is the Go Compare campaign to Kill Gio while I was at Dare. We failed (although succeeded now) but we had this idea to graffiti 48 sheet posters of him. We managed to persuade them to buy almost 100 sites including a few around the CEOs house, as we thought that would make it more powerful.

We had them printed in Printworks and then I graffitied them myself with my left hand. The art director had been doing some beautiful work and he said "It's got to be you with your horrible handwriting". We left some blank with just the ad on but it did fool people. One of my mates who works in advertising sent it to me asking whether it was someone's graffiti or a real ad.

It was the fact that people went along with it that made me stop and think what was it that made it work? It wasn't the posters (they were really horrible and looked kind of embarrassing in my portfolio), it was the idea behind it.

What excites you about the industry now?

JGC The change in audience behaviour. We’ve gone from an area where it was just paid. Quite a few marketers and agencies are trying to wrap their heads around changes in behaviour, right? The fact that people are now watching Netflix instead of TV. They’re not picking up magazines in the same way they used to. Online banners are becoming harder to grab people’s attention with and the question becomes; How do you engage an audience that is becoming harder to reach? You can view it as the end of the world or you can see it as an exciting opportunity. And I think James and I and everyone in this building and company see it as an opportunity.

I’m not anti-paid. We do put paid on things and it’s great but more than ever, we have to be interesting and the key to that is we can’t just keep saying what the consumer wants to hear because they feel they’re being bombarded. We’ve got to pique their interest first and then talk about what we want to talk about.

JW The problems that we are using creativity to solve have changed. You used to be able to get attention but brands now need to act because saying isn’t enough anymore and I think that brings harder problems 

If you did a 32-second film and not many people watched it you knew it wasn’t great, but suddenly you’ve got to genuinely use your creativity and creative mind to bring an outcome that is much more than that and much more fascinating and exciting because you go from Haribo to Heineken. The fastest growing drink at Heineken is 00 but you can’t go against alcohol. And it’s not that kids aren’t drinking anymore because they’re vomiting in their parent's homes just like we all did. It’s interesting when you look at the culture of first dates because of the idea that you don’t know how you felt

Whereas we would have all drunk enough to give us confidence or whatever. I remember when I was first at an agency, my art director at the time was trying to work out what we were going to do on a Friday night, and this older copyright turned around and said; "I'm so glad I haven't got to do this. I'm just going home to my wife". Whereas we're thinking we had to go somewhere and get hammered and that’s changed – understanding something like that is fascinating and so different to the problems of a logistics company or a sweet brand.

What drew you to Edelman and what have you learnt?

JW I’ve massively gained from the PR side of the agency. I think I’ve learned more here than at any other agency. I learned loads going from an ad agency to a digital agency and then back to ads. Going from Fallon to Dare you learned different stuff. I remember that at most agencies you went and presented and if the client hated it people started saying; “Well do you know what, I don’t think it was all that”. Whereas Fallon came back and the team were asking what was wrong with the clients and who was trying to sell it. They had this belief in the work and I learned that.

But coming here, I learned language has been developed since we’ve been here. What attracted me was looking at the range of brands and thinking; "How can there be so many amazing brands in one place?"

Ten years ago my mates who worked in creative agencies were asking; “What are you doing? Why have you gone there?” A few of them thought it was Endemol and said it sounded good – I didn’t correct them. But it’s developed. It was hard to get creatives to come when we first started, now it’s very different.

JGC Getting headlines and having your stuff on breakfast television news is pretty addictive. When you really know that people care about what you’ve done and that you’re making a shift. There’s nothing better than when you’re in a pub and you hear someone talking about it and they’re not talking about it because you’re there, or you see news journalists talking about it and that’s a new level of success that I’d never experienced.

Compared to measuring things based on clickthrough, it’s a world apart. We have to realise that if we look at any DA&AD case study and how we measure success we ask; "Did it get coverage? Did it blow up on social? Did the public care about it?" Obviously, we want to drive sales and commerce but I think this is a new kind of result.

What does good creative leadership mean to you?

JW I once worked with a team who worked for an agency and the creative leader there always used to tell me stories about how he made them work the weekend and then go to The Ivy while they all sat in the agency waiting for who was going to be victorious. And he’d tell this story as though it was a good thing.

Maybe they admired that and that’s what they wanted but I think when you come here that doesn’t work. There are tons of people who have come in and tried that way but it hasn’t worked because the people in the rest of the agency aren’t what we’d call 'bag carriers'. They are people who have picked up the phone and persuaded journalists that something is interesting enough to write about and I think it’s steering a path through which you have the simplicity of keeping something beautiful intact, but you feel that you’re taking them with you.

Jamie’s done it with Unilever when he’s received a spec, not a brief, and somehow he’s got the rest of the agency whipped up about it. They’re on the phone for you. That’s a skill that takes different aspects of your personality and there are more voices here, but if you close them off then you cut down all those layers. They’re instantly thinking; "Why would anyone give a shit?' when they look at your work. And that’s what we’re trying to do here not just in this department but more broadly. I think that takes a different kind of leadership than sitting in your glass office telling people to "fuck off".

JGC We’re incredibly lucky to have Judie John [global chief creative officer] as a global leader. Back in the day, we had the luxury of time. You’d get feedback and it was either "Keep going" or "It isn’t there yet". You didn’t know what to do because you had weeks.

When you don’t have the luxury of weeks and you’re trying to move at the pace of news/at the pace of culture, then you do have to move quicker. It does require leadership, it does require creative directors to direct and be in the weeds and give better feedback, give stronger direction, be part of the team

I would say from Judy and all the way down, everybody rolls their sleeves up to get the work out of the door. People lead from the front by actually being part of the work and not just yelling from a glass office. One of the best ways to inspire and motivate a team is to make them feel that you’re pushing in the same direction and that you’re striving as hard to make the work great. That comes from the leadership down. That is something we see and have strived to emulate as well.

What are the biggest challenges for creative leaders?

JW It's keeping the hunger and that’s something we always work on and we always talk about it with this team

When I think about some of the ad agencies I’ve worked in I can remember hiding work from other creatives and sneaking it into the creative director, or standing by the printer so no one saw it come out. Whereas here there’s been an attitude that because you want things embedded in culture – it’s about layers of earned.

We’ve always had work where we’ve built on other people’s work because if you can build on another idea, and there’s a layer of innovation, maybe it will have better engagement and there will be deeper interest in it. This week someone came to us because they noticed people were taking the badges off their Teslas and replacing them with other things and we have a car brand here. It was a really lovely idea because they’ve got that hunger and interest in culture and fostering that is really important. It’s still competitive because you’ve got to get there first but it’s not about hiding it from everyone else.

JGC It’s very easy in the world we’re in now to add to the pile of content out there and trying to create content that drives action is where we’re at. If I take the work James did on DP World or the work we’ve done on Xbox or Dove, we are always looking to drive action or change or some sort of outcome. Sometimes for new people that is scary. Sometimes for creatives coming in that seems like a tall ask because we’ve been in the business of awareness, right? And actually, trying to create change is an extra ask that we’re putting on people. But I think in the end you reap dividends from it. If you get a more engaged audience you get a more engaged brand. You might drive sales, you might drive policy change. So, ultimately it’s creating work that drives action or impact and that’s a new muscle for a lot of creatives and people in the industry at large. 

If advertising was suddenly banned what would you do?

JGC I know what I’d like to do. I just don’t have the ability to do it. I’d like to be able to go and paint. It’s the most cliché thing to say but I’d also like to go and play golf.

For me the creativity in golf comes from trying to explain why I’m bad. Those would be the two things. I think Covid taught us the importance of being outside and everyone was looking for outside hobbies and for me golf happened to be the one.

I’d have to move to a shack in the countryside but at least it would be a shack on a golf course. The part that paid the living would probably be the painting or a different kind of creative outlet.

JW Keir Starmer would have to ban PR as well as advertising. I suppose, though, I’m fascinated about how CEOs become non execs and sit on boards but there isn’t an equivalent for creatives yet they approach things from a completely different viewpoint. I think I’d like to go into a completely different industry but use that creative muscle to solve other business problems. Hopefully, I could pay Jamie’s mortgage too.