Ninart Lui
Director of Communications
Interesting.org

Making its debut in Singapore, Click by Creative Review undoubtedly drew the attention and curiosity of many in the industry with its promise of a stellar lineup and a solid showcase of the most influential digital campaigns and biggest industry award winners from recent years from the Asia Pacific region. Representing the region were speakers and panelists from China, Singapore, Tokyo and Australia, with the notable exception of creative powerhouses such as India and Bangkok. The cast of Asia-Pac creative superstars was padded out with global participants mostly from London and the lone Swede, most of whom admitted this particular Asian visit was an exception in their routine schedule.

With a nod of acknowledgment to its host country, Click kicked off with hotshot Singaporean creative Benjy Choo, founder of Kilo Studio, one of the top interactive agencies locally. His presentation involved a chronological recount which took the audience through the formative years of digital technology in Singapore, through its current stage of teenhood where clients are increasingly savvy and interactive is slowly finding its foothold in the media landscape. Interestingly, Benjy pointed out that unlike certain other countries in Asia, mobile does not have as strong a foothold in Singapore – and offered up the reason that people don’t sit in transit as much locally.

The future always proves to be the weakest link in any presentation, as who really has a crystal ball? Benjy sidestepped this issue by throwing up questions of whether the Web 2.0 phenomenon was actually stifling visual creativity instead of encouraging it, and also took a closer look at whether that much social media was necessary. He flirted again with the notion of mobile internet in Singapore, and summed up with a challenge to the convention of “interactive” as we know it.

The other native Asian speaker of the day hailed from Drill Japan. Morihiro Harano gave a brief introduction on how Drill Inc aspired to be the world’s first innovative agency, in which problems were solved in a neutral way. In the world of advertising,while it was used to think that communications was larger in scope as opposed to the ad, now it has been accepted that innovation has the broadest scope of all. Drawing from examples such as the EPOS Fashion card and Vicca World Tour campaigns, Morihiro showed us how successful programs in Japan could remain effortlessly simple and elegant. The work showed an organic, seamless interconnection between the real world and virtual world which was extremely refreshing to see, especially since it’s not very often one is able to experience such campaigns outside of Japan.

China was an oft-brought up subject, with more than one presentor speaking on certain issues with dealing with the Chinese market. Profero’s Daryl Arnold gave a fascinating presentation on the agency’s new foundation for creative thinking which married the best of both digital and people – Factory. As a standalone space housed within the ground floor of Profero’s Shanghai office, Factory comprises of a restaurant, event space, recording studio, digital studio and retail space. Its goal is to bring together upcoming young talent to inspire cultural-specific ideas, and a big part of the process is to get these people to collaborate in different, unique ways to establish new definitions of creativity.

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Young creatives are selected through a process to come together and collaborate with one another, with the help of Factory’s resources and expertise in commercializing the results (Daryl talked briefly about Factory being a natural evolution of commercial survival). However, the project is still at its infant stages with young Chinese talent being seemingly underwhelmed by the enormous potential and opportunities Factory can provide for them. For example, one young musician given the opportunity to work with Quincy Jones one evening just chose not to turn up, preferring to have dinner with her friends instead. The younger generation in China also suffer from a huge sense of entitlement, stemming from the one child per family policy, and which leads to a voracious appetite for attention and a subsequent lack of motivation and drive.

The peculiarities of the China market was also explored from a different angle by Mindshare’s Mateo Eaton, responsible for the Unilever China campaign featuring Ugly Betty. In his much anticipated presentation, Mateo talked about how making content work can be very country specific. The appeal of Ugly Betty that Univelever latched on to was the empowerment of “ugly” girls around the world. Ugly Betty in China was something the target audience could readily relate to, and even this had to be a heavily collaborative effort between the clients, partners and agencies in order for it to succeed.

In the Chinese version of Ugly Betty, the show was set in an ad agency instead of a fashion magazine, and this helped to introduce the presence of Dove as one of the clients won by the agency within the tv series. We were shown a short video clip on “ugly” Chinese girls taking the stage to dance up a storm, while two Chinese men, namely suit and client, watch on approvingly.The content was a little surreal to one with a media appetite more slanted to the West, but it serves to demonstrate exactly how powerful the efficiency of content in the context of TV and digital can prove – especially in a traditionally more conversative media market like China.

Asia again took centerstage during the very interesting panel discussion “East vs West”, with a panel which included Dirk Eschanbacher fromTribal DDB, Mark Seeger, OgilvyOne Worldwide, and AKQA’s Johan Vakidis, amongst others. Patrick had asked the question whether expat creatives in Asian countries had felt resentment towards the expat community from local ad industries. Surprisingly – or perhaps not – the reply was that this was a non-issue, as going by the 1000 Top Creatives Hotlist, 95% are Asian, and even amongst the top 20 there resides only 2 expat creatives, thereby dispelling this myth.

However, while there are large Asian brands looking to promote within a global aspect, there will always be the problem of places like China where at times, a lack of education and exposure to global influence might work against it in terms of creating a sophisticated market and industry. The common consensus was that the Asian industry presently lacks a certan bravery and edge, with Japan being the exception, leading the pack by a huge gap. What’s ironic, it seems, is that progress in Asia is so significant right now that it hampers creativity.

The general consensus was that Asian industries lack bravery and edge, but that this will change very rapidly.There remains certain important lessons that the Asian region can teach the creative world in general. Perhaps the most striking lesson of all remains the overall energy and rush to do things fast and make change happen and there is a general sense of doing something in a social communications context. Asia is also leap years ahead in adoption of innovation, and in general consumers are more open to adopting new ways of doing something. There is the constant desire to change without the baggage of too much heritage which most countries in the West fall prey to.
The session rounded up with a a slightly controversial solution to a common problem – “creating reusable ideas” – resonating the most amongst the speakers and audience, where Asian budgets are more often than not nowhere as generous as they are in the West. A practical compromise would therefore be to create ideas that can be continued and built upon year after year, which is the perfect solution for a modest budget.

One of the most pressing problems creatives face today irrespective of geographical location also obtained an airing during the conference. “Getting the Client to Get It” was a heated panel discussion involving Benjy, Mateo, Creative Review Editor Patrick Burgoyne, Poke London’s Nicolas Roope and Tom Sacchi of Unit 9. Tom professed surprise that agencies still had to sell to clients today, where most of the time the risk profile of doing digital is that the agency already has an idea of what the visuals would be like, but this fails to get through to the clients. Such technology usually has to be built first before the client can understand how the reality would appear. Unit 9’s solution to this is to draw up schematics and animations to guide clients every step of the way, which is similar to Benjy’s approach where he has the luxury of having a technical team, where he and his team can quickly put together a mockup to demonstrate to their clients. However, even this requires the initial “leap of faith” in believing in the success of final work, which some clients might not be willing to take. “People think digital is quick and cheap,” says Tom. “It’s neither.”

However, the common consensus is really in understanding the clients’ business thoroughly before customising their campaigns. A greater degree of trust and faith is required before a client will be committed to buying digital work. For example, Nic explained that they were able to do bigger and better campaigns for Orange after investing a great deal of time and effort in building up that relationship of trust and confidence.

It was also pointed out that clients need to realise that interactive is actually the most quantifiable of all media, as a common complaint is that clients are too stuck on direction translation to sales figures where a passive audience is guaranteed. For digital, however, the audience needs to be drawn to the medium first, meaning, even if agencies engage in PR and other promotional methods, viewership is not “guaranteed” the same way a traditional TV or press spot can. Yet, once that barrier is past, interactive figures can actually be measured across demographics and mediums to qualify exactly who is watching what.

Education appears to be the key to overcoming such obstacles – when clients are ignorant or kept in the dark on new and existing forms of advertising or communication, they will always be hesitant to invest in these mediums, instead preferring ones they know and trust. However, one must always bear in mind that the client, too, is mostly right when it comes to what they want in a campaign – after all, it is their money being spent. For Benjy, clients sometimes come with preconceived notions of what they already expect, and then it is up to his team to negotiate a “meeting of minds” somewhere in the middle, and hopefully in the best case scenario also serve to educate clients to push the envelope a little further.

Over-reliance in the latest trends is generally frowned upon by the panellists as well, as while the latest bling might make an agency look current and flashy, clients sometimes struggle to take this seriously. It is therefore incumbent in agencies to give companies the tools to sell very simply to internal people who might only be exposed to a narrow viewpoint, for e.g., they might only be concerned about how the share prices fluctuate and nothing else. It is fundamental to an agency’s business to value customers and take their views seriously, and when the need arises, to educate them. This is very commonly not a market issue. One therefore needs to develop a process for trying to understand the clients’ needs versus the audience’s needs, especially when the two don’t marry.

As succinctly put by Nic, you need to summarise the brief, and then rebuff the brief – ensuring it is all backed up with research, of course.

Attendees of the inaugural Click Singapore were able to participate in various discussions including one on the state of education in the creative industry, which included Hyper Island’s Mattias Hansson and also Sudeep Gohil from Droga5 Sydney, and finally one on the future for digital agencies which also included Iris Nation’s Richard Bleasdale. Most of the panellists also gave individual presentations which were well received by all present.

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