Micah Walker on Why Caring Too Much Still Wins

Curious when you say we want to build different, it's hard to really understand what that means.

There's been a bit of an evolution of what a creative is, right? And, you know, we talked to Nick Lauren, he talks about inventive versus expressive creative people.

And I think the definition of like an art director and a copywriter may be a bit antiquated today, but can you tell us about how you built the company different and how you think, how you think about creatives broadly in our industry?

Well, I, I mean, I think there are skill sets and it is true that I think historically people were kind of either by design or by definition separated to go, well, you are correct and you're right.

And I do agree that sometimes that feels rather antiquated in the way that we work.

But my prerequisite for people that they're I think everybody will tell you they want to make great work.

So first of all, the thing that's really important is just to go, are we talking to people that are capable of it? So, uh, whether you call that portfolio, whether you call that body of work, do you believe, uh, you are hiring people that are capable of better things? I think then it's my job bears job.

to create the culture and the environment and the scenarios whereby that better work is possible.

And so mostly what I look for, and again, when I say Bayer's structure was a little different, the first part was how do we have a different value exchange? Well, what are we having conversations about? About servicing a business or about being your creative partner? And then really just trying to find a way to get paid differently than that that wasn't based on head hours and wasn't based on time.

Because I believe as soon as you do that, effectively you are everything else, no matter what you call yourself and no matter how you talk about yourself.

So those were the things we tried to do from the start that were different to have conversations based around that as a consequence of wanting to operate that way.

And if you want to find people that have a track record of doing interesting things, then you tend to be more senior.

But I listen, the thing that's most important to me is, is that we find people that care really hard.

And I think, uh, and there are lots of different reasons for that, but, um, You know, I think even as someone who's often told in jobs he had in the past that I cared too much or that I cared too hard about things, I wanted to be in an environment where therefore I wanted to create an environment where caring too hard was actually the thing that valued most.

So, you know, people that care when you're not there and really kind of take it upon themselves to go that extra mile to work, that extra bit hard to really kind of push the ideas and the thinking.

Those are the kind of people we're looking for and have always been looking for, and I think have been lucky enough at Baird to find and bring in as a part of the team.

So that's true, whether it's on Telstra or whether it's on Bankwest or other clients.

Maybe the other thing that makes Bear a little bit unique is that because we operate that way, we do tend to take on fewer clients.

So instead of splitting 5% or 11% of some role across various pieces of business, we wanted to... build partnerships where we could be quite involved.

And so we do tend to take on fewer clients.

We do charge a premium.

We think in the end that value equation is much more beneficial, healthy, and conducive to making better work.