Paruj Daorai is Executive Creative Director of Leo Burnett Thailand. We asked him to explain the secret sauce in Thai advertising, and his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities in the evolving creative landscape.

 
At Leo Burnett, you work on many international brands. How important is it for you to infuse Thai cultural insights into these campaigns?
 
You have to. You have to do ads specifically catered to the Thai audience. At Leo Burnett, people are at the heart of every campaign. We don’t look at them as consumers, but as human beings. So that brings in a whole different dimension. Understanding purchase behavior is only understanding a fraction of their lives. You need to also understand that they’re mothers, sisters and daughters, too. You need to take all that into perspective.

 
Thailand is famous for heartwarming ads that resonate well with the Asian audience. What’s in the water that you Thai creatives are drinking?
 
Thais are drama-addicts. They may look like introverts but with friends and families, they are very expressive. We embrace emotions and are very expressive. Most of us grew up watching soap dramas. We tend to blow a lot of things out of proportion and that has translated well into our ads.

 
How has the industry changed over the years?
 
Marketers focus too much on video content these days, flooding the world with videos competing for attention. Brands also seem to equate “digital” to viral clips, or think that getting 10 million views is a measure of a successful campaign. It’s such a questionable measure because those views do not necessarily result in sales or conversations about the brand.

 
Do you have any advice for budding young creatives?
 
Creatives really need to get involved with planning and strategising early on. You can’t focus too much on execution. The creativity should come from the way you look at the problem. Clients come to us because they have a problem that needs solving and without properly understanding this, you can’t be expected to come up with a good solution. A lot of young creatives don’t put much thought into this. They really need to stop being “tortured artists”. And they really need to learn to be more outspoken so they’re able to communicate their ideas well. 

 
- Haniza Ramli