Asian Pacific Creative in the New Millennium
May 17|2004

Larry Ong, Exeecutive Creative Director at Ogilvy Shangai gave an ammmmmazing presentation on the future and present of the Asian advertising industry, or as Larry calls it, The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.

Here is what I learnt:

China is the fastest growing advertising marketing in the world.

The market is worth a staggering 12 billion dollars.

Last year it grew by 19.44%.

In China lone, 870,000 people work in the advertising industry and if add the support industry like media buyers and industry suppliers you end up with a 2,000,000 figure, which is the same number of soldiers in the armies of the European Union.

Client-agency relationships last around 18 months over there and 58% of clients ask agencies to give them a “killing idea”.

The print work was excellent. Very clever work, and as usual for the region, very visual and simple. Same with the TV. The big lesson from Asia? I think it is to find solutions close to the culture. Every ad I saw seemed to spin off from heavy cultural influence, whether it was a joke, trend, or fad, the Asians seemed to find an award winning idea in anything.