Desire, idea & money in this mad, mad, ad world
Top counting the Lions the Indian contingent has bagged, the world’s best creatives are sharing their madness and passions - come, join the party.
By Ravi Balakrishnan & Shailesh Dobhal, TNN |
CANNES: It was the sort of roundtable discussion that could happen only at Cannes. Tony Granger, chief creative officer, Saatchi & Saatchi NY; Marcello Serpa, CEO and creative director, ALMAP BBDO, Sao Paulo and Erik Vervroegen, president and executive creative director, TBWA Paris, people who’ve spent more time on stage receiving trophies at the Cannes Lions than any other bunch of creatives, discussed issues ranging from how they got into advertising to what keeps them in it.
The session was moderated by Heidi Ehlers, founder, Black Bag. Granger, whose agency has just bagged yet another Grand Prix at Cannes this year in the press category for Tide, spoke nostalgically about how his childhood ambitions of becoming a rockstar crashed against a disturbing reality “When I was around 24, I thought I don’t know if I’m good enough. I had a recurring nightmare of playing Kumbaya in a restaurant corner.”
Both Granger and Vervroegen claim to be very goal-driven. Granger is the most systematic of the lot with a list of goals for one, five and 10-year timelines, which include an intense amount of detail. He’s motivated by reading them every morning and trying to clear them off his list.
Vervroegen is driven by the desire to be the best with the constant knowledge that there will always be someone better. Serpa claims he and his agency have been too busy to set any goals. But he confesses to being driven by the desire to make each ad better than its predecessor.
Money, incidentally, is not a motivator for either Serpa or Vervroegen. Serpa advises, “In the end it is all about the money, but that shouldn’t be the case in the beginning.” Vervroegen recommends that job changes should not be driven by financial prospects alone: “You should be sure your portfolio does not start dying since that’s worth a lot more than money.” Granger takes a slightly contrarian view: “It’s all about money! Clients come to us because they want to make more money. But it’s only the greatest idea possible which will make you earn.”
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Tuesday’s last seminar by Proximity BBDO was very entertaining with Mat Mildenhall, COO, Proximity Worldwide; Reza Ghaem-Maghami, director, Interactive, Proximity Paris and Eamon Clarkin, group planning director, Irish International Proximity, stomping on stage dressed in ludicrous costumes right out of a massively multiplayer online game, referring to themselves and each other with names redolent of online geekdom like Trojan Warrior and The Wise One. They revealed findings from an ethnographic and semiotic study of 4,000 people in 18 countries.Many of the denizens of virtual worlds are quite naturally there for wish fulfillment. The levels of immersion that these worlds generate can be gauged by the fact that people speak of places visited within them. Proximity argues that these aren’t a subset too weird to be marketed to.
To reach these people, brands ought to acknowledge the difference of their online persona. Proximity points to some unique branding and marketing opportunities that could emerge. For instance, Picassa’s red-eye reduction feature could be extended to sponsorship opportunities like shinier teeth in online pictures, courtesy a popular toothpaste brand or clearer skin via cream.
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