By Dan Brain, Co-Founder MAD//Fest
The Northern Line, near £10 pints and the South Circular at rush hour aside, there’s a lot to love about London.
Ok, Harlesden ain’t great, but all four corners have something different to offer. You really don’t have to go far to see and feel London’s creative culture and entrepreneurial spirit.
In my 20s, I cut my teeth in media and made friends from all over the world. In my 30s, I started a family and a business in London. In my 40s, I sold the business I co-founded to London-headquartered Ingenuity. I’m grateful for the personal and professional opportunities I’ve had in London.
MAD//Fest continues to thrive in its spiritual home of Shoreditch, pulling the punters back year-after-year with its trademark mix of inspiring content, human connection, and Adform’s salt beef bagels (you can thank Phil Acton for those beauties!).
And although Farage & co may have tried their darndest to harm London’s global credentials, brand London’s roar rings loud and proud. The city feels uniquely diverse, vibrant and inclusive – quite an achievement for a small, wet and cold island bobbing around in the north Atlantic.
But, if you’re on this side of the pond, do you really need to have one foot in London to be taken seriously?
Learnings from MAD experiments
Over the last month, it’s been fascinating to bring MAD//Fest and MAD//Masters to Manchester and Amsterdam.
One of the cool things about running events is that you get to explore a city’s DNA, usually as an outsider. This felt a bit different. As the son of a mad professor from Eccles and a formidable Dutch woman, exploring the culture of Manchester and Amsterdam was a bit like going on Who Do You Think You Are?
I didn’t discover royal links or create classic television like Danny Dyer, but I did find two thriving cities that match MAD//Fest’s mantra of doing things differently.
Manchester and Amsterdam both have canals, industrial heritage and, in my book, a sense of collectivism and understatement.
They’re distinctive places with a strong sense of identity and ‘way of doing things’. But people don’t seem to shout quite as much about how brilliant they are as Londoners do, even on LinkedIn.
Without wishing to sound like a colonial anthropologist, I loved the experience of building events where you get to see cultural nuances in full flow.
Manchester’s Northern Soul
In February, MAD//North made a strong return to Manchester as 4,300 brands and agencies descended on Aviva Studios to hear the likes of Gary Neville, Maisie Adam and Jonathan Warburton get stuck into our theme, ‘Northern Soul’.
Manchester is rightly proud of its brands, heritage and culture. The city consistently punches above its weight in creativity, music, culture, media, sport, technology and innovation. Co-op, JD, Boohoo, THG, AO, Represent, Adanola, and more – Manchester’s crop of famous and diverse brands keeps growing, fuelled by its pioneering entrepreneurs.
Both network and independent agencies in the city are driving innovative work for UK and international clients, pushing creativity to new heights, taking a lead on AI, and injecting some northern wit into campaigns, a la Jet2. The networks aren’t just service centres, they’re actively hunting new business – and giving London agencies a run for their money.
Sure, Manchester’s traffic stinks and Jeremy Clarkson prefers it to London, but you can’t have everything.
A recurring theme at MAD//North was that Manchester is commercially viable and an ideal place to work. Maybe we’re at least beginning to crush the nonsensical notion that you need to rent an overpriced, shoebox-sized shit hole of a flat in less than salubrious bit of town (Harlesden, above a kebab shop, £1500 pcm, you get the vibe) and work 12 hour days in the office to earn your stripes (been there, done that, got the t-shirt).
One of the most provocative sessions – ‘Fuck the South’ – came from the indomitable Vicki Maguire, who ironically left her home on the sunny North Kent coast to join us in Manchester for MAD//North.
Preaching to the choir on the main stage at MAD//North, Vicki thinks the epicentre of creativity has shifted north.
As someone with a slightly weird attraction to the less obvious and outliers, I can relate to Vicki’s view that the most interesting stuff happens on the margins and outside the conventional confines of creative endeavour. Why? Because necessity drives creativity. And if you’re a bit odd, you might as well stand out.
For Vicki, London’s loss is Manchester’s gain: “It (London) has lost its standing on the creative stage. It’s been so insular for so long that brands, clients, and culture have started to look around and we haven’t got that cachet anymore.”
Vicki’s session reminded me of Ogilvy’s idea of ‘borderless creativity’ – where the breakdown of geographical boundaries leads to collaboration, creativity and innovation. Maybe London and Manchester would both benefit from presenting themselves as two cities united, using their respective strengths to collaborate effectively and accelerate growth – something we desperately need as a country.
What happens when you take Rory Sutherland to Amsterdam?
In late March, we made our Dutch debut, bringing behavioural science fanatics Rory Sutherland and Richard Shotton to the land of canals, urban chic and incessant cycling (there’s more bikes than people – 1.2m vs. 900k at the last count).
We were in town for a special MAD//Masters live event, kindly hosted by ethical chocolate disruptors Tony’s Chocolonely at their funky HQ perched above the wharves of the River Amstel (presumably the only major river to have a beer brand named after it).
Adidas, Unilever, Heineken, P&G, WPP, DEPT, Wieden & Kennedy, TBWA – you’ll see the logos of many famous brands and top shops above office doors in Amsterdam.
I was repeatedly told that “We do things a bit differently here”. Dutch natives and expats alike reported a strong sense of collectivism, perhaps running even deeper than the Northerner’s cultural code.
The Dutch are open – and take it to an extreme with a notable lack of curtains.
They work hard, they eat lunch together, they cycle home when the working day is done (I’m yet to find anything quite like Soho for post-work drinks, for better or worse).
People are encouraged to produce exceptional work, but you don’t blow your own trumpet. Some people I spoke to find this frustrating, others saw it as a positive thing, enabling collective benefits rather than individual peacocking.
Attendees said “we don’t have anything like this” for after-work entertainment, presumably enjoying Rory Sutherland’s roasting of Schiphol airport.
Interestingly, many agency folk reported winning a lot of business from central Europe, especially Germany. Although the Dutch market is relatively small, its convenient location makes it an ideal hub, pulling clients from across Northern and Central Europe.
Around the city, amongst all the buzz of the bikes, trams and boozed-up Brits behaving badly, you can feel an undercurrent of contemporary urban chic. People genuinely seem to enjoy life here.
And just like Manchester has Liverpool and Leeds as neighbours, it’s worth remembering that just 30 mins away on one of those cool double-decker trains lies my mother’s home town of Rotterdam – a creative, contemporary and pretty gritty port city.
Rotterdam is full of quirky design, experimental construction and funky creative and digital agencies.
The no-nonsense, sleeves rolled up ‘Roffa’ ethic of Rotterdam reminds me a bit of Manchester’s busy bees – although football geeks, historians and ardent Mackems might point to the shipbuilding heritage of the north east and Rotterdam, which is reflected in the shared red and white stripes of Sunderland and Feyenoord.
Rotterdam is a reminder of the subtle cultural differences and potential commercial opportunities that exist in neighbouring cities, even in a country the size of the Netherlands.
Cultural differences exist. So what?
So Manchester’s on the up and the Dutch do things differently – but what’s the point of this post?
We’re at our best when we look out of our bubble. Whether you’re in creative, media or sales, taking the time to understand cultural differences is where the magic happens.
London has the reputation of a multicultural city and global city. Yet our London-centric industry fails to think outside of Zone 1 with alarming frequency. You can see it on ads, in copy (guilty as charged) and what people say on-stage at events, which made Vicki’s content even more refreshing.
A carbon copy of MAD//Fest London wouldn’t work in Manchester or Amsterdam, even though the event industry loves a lift and shift geo-clone (it’s cheaper).
But there are universal elements that will translate, like the need for human connection and the advantage of building distinctive brands. My job is to distil the essence of the MAD brand, combine it with a local flavour, and build something that meets unmet needs within a specific market.
Cultural nuances exist. There are no hard and fast rules. There are plenty of exceptions. You have to get comfortable with ambiguity. There’s no point trying to appeal to everyone.
But if you take the time to understand a culture and the nuances of a market, you’re more likely to develop products and brands that resonate with that community.
And in a world of soulless AI-driven sameness, cost-efficiencies, and diminished sense of human connection, being distinctive and giving people what they want might just be the edge you need.
