It’s a
humdinger of a task: next year’s Young Lotus team will have just 24-hours to
crack a real-world brief for Google – and the winning concept will go on to be
implemented for real!
The next
Young Lotus workshop takes place during ADFEST 2019 and will be hosted by
MullenLowe for the first time ever. It will be an incredible opportunity to
learn from MullenLowe’s top creative leaders, including Vincent Digonnet, Young
Lotus Chairman for 2019.
Digonnet
stepped into the role as MullenLowe Group’s Asia Pacific CEO just over one year
ago. It’s a huge role overseeing all markets in the Asia Pacific, so we took
the opportunity to find out more about his vision for the network.
Why did MullenLowe agree to host the Young Lotus Workshop at ADFEST 2010?
The biggest
challenge the advertising industry faces is that it simply isn’t evolving fast
enough. Especially here in Asia. The pace of change when it comes to consumers
is incredibly rapid – we recognise this as a Group and have been on our own
transformation journey. At the heart of our strategy is the need to
continuously evolve our approaches in order to keep pace.
As a
result, I’ve seen first-hand how challenging it can be to modify the behaviour
and culture of an organisation. I believe the biggest change in our industry
overall will come through this new generation of passionate, creative and
adaptable digital natives.
A mentoring
programme like ADFEST’s Young Lotus then becomes critical. It helps nurture the
industry leaders of the future and give them a solid grounding of the various
approaches and strategies I believe are required to drive modern communications
forward.
What do you hope young creatives will learn from the experience?
Our
intention is to demonstrate to our young creatives that they need to be aware
of and exposed to ideas and capabilities outside of their own core disciplines.
“T-shaped” individuals are the future of organisations like ours, with a wider
appreciation, understanding and skillset than the typical ad agency of today.
That includes areas such as data science, experience design and technology –
that when applied in the right way along with creativity, offers solutions
where it matters most for our clients. Namely, delivering against business
objectives. This is central to our approach at MullenLowe Group and is an
appetite we look for in everyone who joins us.
Without
giving too much away, I can also say that we believe the best learning occurs
through real-world experiences. So we’ll be working with Google to present the
teams with a real-world client challenge. It will need to be solved using a
breadth of different disciplines, with the winning concept going through to
implementation.
Since you joined MullenLowe in 2017, you’ve redefined MullenLowe Profero’s offering and restructured MullenLowe Group’s offer in China, Japan and Greater Mekong. What’s your “big picture” vision for MullenLowe APAC?
I believe
Asia’s time has come to lead the rest of the world in terms of business
transformation. Asian markets are being driven by an increasingly tech-savvy,
mobile-first population and will set the pace that our industry will need to
evolve and adapt to.
Also, the
models, tools and frameworks to date that are taken as best practice and
conventional wisdom in Asia are actually devised in the US or Europe – from
design principles, the way interfaces are modelled to the technology platforms
themselves. And yet a market like China is in a constant state of invention, no
longer imitation, meaning that a lot of these ways of thinking are outdated
before they are even pressure tested.
The big
picture for MullenLowe Group APAC therefore is to become the spearhead for our
global organization, leading transformation of our skill sets as well as our
organization in Asia for other markets to follow.
Your role covers everywhere from China to Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam. Which markets are strongest? Where will you focus your attention in 2019?
Hyperbundling
for us at MullenLowe Group means the development of centres of excellence in
order to drive specialised skillsets for each market, which will have an impact
far beyond their own geography. With this structure, each market has a
critically important role to play in the overall growth of our APAC operation.
Different markets = different talents, diverse ways of thinking and new ways of
doing.
Hyperbundling
only works if each market is aligned to share their capabilities and skillsets
with each other. So my focus in 2019 will be further building on the foundation
of collaboration and knowledge sharing within the Group in order to help each
market to grow and evolve, not just as an individual entity, but as a
collective whole.
MullenLowe acquired salt in 2017. What are your plans for growing the network’s PR capability?
Why I am
excited about MullenLowe salt’s contribution is that it brings far more than
traditional public relations to MullenLowe Group’s capabilities. Their heritage
is in strategic communications, where they have specialized
in working with purpose-driven brands such as Unilever. They have added
content creation alongside PR and also have deep expertise in growing areas
such as employee engagement and sustainability, which I believe are key
elements when it comes to helping companies do more than just talk, but think
and act differently. This is critical to building the brands of the future.
Consumers
now expect brands to be sustainable in their business practices and
accountable for their actions, and employees are attracted to and want to
work for companies that embrace transparency in the way they do business.
This sentiment shift is picking up significant momentum in Asia, which
means the demand for purpose-driven communications is increasingly rapidly
– this makes it a key opportunity for not just MullenLowe salt’s growth over
2019 but for our wider group and our client’s too.
You took a break from ad land to become a tech entrepreneur in China. What did you take away from this experience?
The most
important lesson that I took from my experience in China is that technology
changes all the time, and you can’t hang your hat on one single piece of
technology, or you’ll simply die.
When I
first began working in China, I remember being astounded by how advanced the
Chinese technology ecosystem was becoming in terms of social commerce. I knew
that one day they would be leading the world. So far, this has proven true, and
we’re seeing Chinese technology companies like Alibaba, WeChat and Baidu
leaving Western companies scrambling to catch up.
You’ve described Asia as a “powerhouse of innovation”, particularly China. In what ways is Asia ahead when it comes to innovative thinking?
It’s a
different way to think about innovation. In mature markets, innovation often
seems to equate to shiny new toys without necessarily much purpose. What
Tencent showed with WeChat, their ‘super-app’ is that you can provide an
all-in-one solution that is an answer to everyday life – a life tool.
Pragmatism and solving problems is at the heart of it all.
There is
also no legacy technology-wise to deal with in Asia, and you have a fast
growing and technology savvy middle class – with an innate agility and much
faster technology adoption rate.
Conversely,
the mature European and US markets already invested in CRM, logistics and other
tech systems years ago. So although ahead of the curve back then, they’re
finding it much more challenging to evolve to meet the constantly-changing
behaviours of today’s consumers with so much infrastructure weighing them down.
Asia can
leapfrog ahead, and that is exactly why Asia is so inspiring in my view. It’s
the fastest, most agile region in the world. So when you’re in the business of
digital transformation, it’s the best place to be.
What’s your proudest achievement, professional or otherwise?
In a time
of constant change and disruption, I would say that my proudest achievement is
to be still married to the same person after 40 years, and to have raised three
children with her who are happy in their lives and in their careers, are fit
for a world which is fast becoming a global village, speak more than three languages, live all
over the world, and now have multi-cultural families of their own – making
family reunions feel like a mini-United Nations.