5 Minutes with Dan Pankraz

The world is a sports playground, and Dan Pankraz has the right strokes and moves to catch the opportunities that come his way. He’s always known he has a penchant for creative problem solving, and it is this innate talent and love of mental gymnastics that have seen him thrive as a creative strategist for over 20 years in the advertising industry. 

Currently strategy partner at The Works, Dan weaves his way through the ever-changing media landscape, and adapts his thinking to suit different market categories and consumer mindsets. “I love the dynamism of it all, but most importantly, I love the feeling you get when you work with teams to crack a truly inspiring idea that changes behaviour,” says Dan.

A sports and fitness buff, Dan’s passion provided a serendipitous introduction to advertising when he ended up playing tennis with David Jones, then CEO of Euro RSCG in Sydney, who went on to run Havas Worldwide and now leads The BrandTech Group. 

“He was rebuilding the Sydney agency then, and when he found out I was interested in advertising, he offered me a junior planner position to help out on pitches and support Matt Donovan who was the head of strategy at the time. Basically, tennis got me in and I’ve never left. I was lucky I started my career working under two legends whom I still respect and admire immensely today,” says Dan.

Tennis got him in, and a gritty tenacity for learning from the advertising school of hard knocks kept him there. Dan learnt from creative legends such as David Nobay at Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, William Gelner at BBH New York, Grant Hunter at iris and Jason Williams at Leo Burnett Australia. 

“They taught me to really lean into the ‘creative’ part of strategy and not be scared to bake in a strong creative idea into the strategic thinking. A lot of briefs don’t make any strategic or creative leap that genuinely reframes or reimagines the problem or opportunity in a new way. When you’re able to do this as a creative strategist, you’re really adding value to the creative development process,” says Dan.

Dan is inspired by “people creating meaningful change in the community around big issues such as mental health and climate change”, and it is his dream to play a bigger role in that space in the future. Says Dan, “I’m really passionate about social impact work, and I’d love to build a social impact brand from the ground up by leveraging my skills.” 

And being the avid sportsman that he is, his newly discovered passion for indoor rowing (fuelled by his winning the second place in the Australian competition) has furthered his ambition to compete in the global arena.  

LBB> For the past few months at The Works, what have been your key focus areas in driving brand, CX, communications, innovation and technology?

Dan> I’ve loved immersing myself into a new strong culture at The Works where people really do come first. I’ve been focused on really ensuring we’re aligning culturally led brand thinking with our obsession on understanding and building consumer journeys. I think the new world of brand experience is all about creating positive brand friction moments, rather than removing everything, which is what most CX does. 

I’m working hard with our team to ensure our CX thinking has incredible brand and creativity baked in rather than just delivering optimised journeys. From a technology perspective I'm learning a lot from the tech legends and design guys at Frog who are part of our group and working out exactly how we come together effectively for our clients. We’ve got a few exciting projects in the works, pardon the pun – watch this space. 

LBB> Strategy is the major intersection through which all other disciplines drive through. What is your process/methodology in aligning them strategically? What are the ‘black holes’ you have identified in typical approaches that need to be addressed?

Dan> I think the industry has over-engineered itself process-wise in many ways over the past decade in the quest for optimal efficiency. Great ideas and innovation need space, diversity of thought and time to incubate. Clearly, strategy plays the primary role in defining the human problem and setting a strategic direction to solve the problem. However, now more than ever, strategy needs to work hand in glove with creative to genuinely shape the ideas and getting the work ‘format fit’. The need for super strong connections strategy during ideation and implementation is now more important than ever, and  I spend a lot of time ensuring the connections strategy is purpose built for the creative platform. 

The ‘black holes’ are and always will be when strategists don’t pay attention to the full ‘experience of a brand’ across the journey. It’s in these brand micro moments where magic and memorability happens, but also when there can be the biggest disconnect between the brand story and the behaviour of the brand in culture. Strategists need to obsess over this. The other big black hole is tech understanding and the role it plays in the creative strategy space, not just in implementing a solution. I feel the martech world is a huge black hole for most creative agencies that need to be addressed if we’re going to be able to add genuine value to any conversations about digitally led brand transformation.

LB> The Works has this mantra: “It takes guts to create work truly worthy of consumers attention”. What does this mean to you and how does it shape your approach towards a client brief?

Dan> It’s all about courage, bravery, being bold. We have to earn the consumers’ attention and they deserve ideas which truly connect with their dreams, fears, challenges and misperceptions. Strategically, it really means going deep from an empathy point of view and sweating the “human” problem we’re solving. 

Often, we take a client brief and problem at face value, but now more than ever, it’s critical to put our “insight mind into overdrive” to try and uncover a revelation about their behaviour or belief. It comes back to having that challenging and curious mindset to keep asking “why” over and over until you get somewhere evocative and interesting. I always challenge myself and my planning team to show me the unexpected; a new fresh take on a problem. Being right often means being ignored; being interesting always gets a reaction.

LBB> Having had experience in some of the top global agencies, what’s your take on how each of them have contributed to your collective approach and outlook towards strategy? 

Dan> I have been lucky enough to work at incredible agencies such as Leo Burnett Australia, AKQA London, BBH New York, Iris Worldwide, Havas New York and Saatchi & Saatchi Australia, and I’ve learnt different things from each. Agencies such as BBH have a very liberal approach to strategic problem solving; less tools and more up to the rigour and personal approach of the individual. Others such as Leo Burnett have their own strategic approach based on their brand ethos, ie. “human kind”. 

A few of the learnings I’ve taken with me:

• Obsess over culture – Always be on the lookout for ebbs and flows and opportunities for your brand to play a meaningful role in culture, whether it’s subverting it, responding to it, or contributing to it. I love it when brands play on the fringes and set the trajectory for how we think. 
  
• Lead, don’t follow – I used to spend a lot of time mapping the competitor landscape as a junior planner and when I worked on Nike, I got it drilled into me: “we’re always on offence; we don’t care what everyone else is doing; we set the pace”.  “Zig when others zag” was part of the BBH DNA and that’s always stayed with me. I’ve always chased the unexpected route and tried to help step brands genuinely step out of their category confines.
  
• Avoid Google planning; get out there – Too much Google planning goes on these days. We’ve got to get back to basics and explore and reconnect with real ethnographic research to understand “why” and not just the “what”. I did my first ethno study in 2000 on New Zealand Natural ice cream and I’m still hanging out with consumers in their habitat today. As planners, we’ve got to stay curious, stay humble, and stay passionate. 
  

LBB> How is it similar/different to what you are applying to The Works?

Dan> Every agency is different and has its own way, and the last thing I want to do is try and bring my way from another agency and try and force fit it into The Works. We’re finding our own rhythm and our proposition around helping brands “be significant” means that we need to obsess over culture and what connects with people in the attention-deficit economy. 

LBB> What’s your goal for The Works?

Dan> To make us the most feared and revered creative shop in Australia by 2024.