#carolyndailey

In the sixth of a series of interviews with inspiring female leaders, Wolff Olins’ global COO, Sairah Ashman, interviews Carolyn Dailey.

Carolyn is one of the most influential figures in the creative industries, currently founder and CEO of The Dailey Partnership, the strategy and branding boutique for the creative industries, and previously MD of Time Warner International in London. Wired Magazine recently named Carolyn one of the top 10 women Digital Powerbrokers.

What are the biggest shifts influencing your business?

It’s undoubtedly technology and how it’s making creativity and the creative process a real-time two-way conversation. It’s transforming how we interact with creative talent too. Making everything more direct, more mobile and more visual. It’s allowing us all to move from a monologue to a dialogue. Through technology creative people can reach new audiences, express themselves in new ways and create new products. With audiences reacting and responding directly.

Technology is also lowering the barriers to entry for all of the creative industries – For example a talented filmmaker can make a fantastic film for very little money and distribute it themselves - this focuses competition on talent rather than on who can afford access to expensive infrastructure. It’s a really exciting time to be creating and making things.

Lastly, technology is breaking down silos in creativity - so people in fashion are starting to work more with people in TV, or with digital media or in design. There’s an enormous amount of crossover and interesting collaborations taking place as a result.  Just look at fashion icon Burberry work with film and at Zaha Hadid, whom we think of as an architect, but who is now designing shoes, furniture and jewellery with other creatives. And then there is fashion designer Jonathan Saunders being asked by museum curators to stage his fashion week catwalk show at the Tate Modern.

What are the key growth accelerators for your business over the next 12 months?

The wonderful things that tech has enabled mean that my clients - creative people and companies who are all innovators - can now do entirely new and different things.

Established creative forces are starting to do brand new things – like moving well-loved literary characters across the worlds of digital, film and television and vice versa and often simultaneously - and newcomers are emerging who previously couldn’t have. And these two groups have an effect on each other, they’re starting to cross-pollinate in a serious way.  This means we’re beginning to understand there is currency in creativity, connection, and cross-pollination and it is driving huge growth in the business of creativity.

Aside from my own business I am also very involved in a number of social enterprises and, in that context, I see people measuring value in new ways, such as social impact where money is not the only currency. New models are emerging that are about more than that and altering our traditional definitions of value and that is accelerating growth greatly in the social enterprise space.

What role do you see brand playing in helping achieve your goals?

Brand has always been the most valuable asset – it can literally transform a business, as I was lucky enough to learn first-hand working with HBO. Brand is now more important than it has ever been. Content is brand and it helps you make choices more clearly and easily in a world that is non-stop. We’re overwhelmed with so much information that the most important thing is to be distinct, to be known and to own whatever space you operate in.

There used to be a broadcast mentality in branding. The approach was, ‘we’ll just find a couple of consumer insights, build this thing called a brand and then find a way to promote and sell it’. But now creating a brand has become much more of a dialogue or a conversation and what is interesting is that that conversation is starting to influence the product and ideas – shaping them in real time as they move along.

So brand is increasingly about the influential distinctive voice – both online and offline.  In terms of having one and also letting others freely influence by becoming your co-creators and ambassadors.

What or who inspired you in the early years of your career?

Family was my early foundation – instilling hard work, shooting for the best and living your values.  Then no question about it, the person who inspired me most in my early career was Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. 

At the time I’d never met anyone quite like him - the ultimate visionary and imaginer of new things and new ways of doing things. He was absolutely fearless and that was the most inspiring thing. He found out the most he could about something and then went with instinct. I don’t think he’s ever done a focus group. Ever. He just imagines things and then makes them happen.

In a small way that is what we were asked to do while launching CNN in Europe back in the 90’s – pursue the big ideas like bringing more freedom of information to more people and then figure out how to deliver the things that would make that happen, from dealing with government decision makers who’d never heard of satellites to finding out the cheapest place to buy office supplies! That time taught me to always look at things in a non-traditional way and find new ways to deliver.

What advice would you pass on to others just starting out?

It sounds really simple, but figure out what you’re really good at and do more of it. Experiment and be really open to doing whatever it takes to learn everything you can. The happy coincidence is that that what you’re good at is usually the thing that you really love. So decide what things you love, and then think very open-mindedly about the jobs you can pursue that will let you put the things you love doing into practice.

  Sairah Ashman is global COO of Wolff Olins.