Four great creative minds took the stage this ADFEST to have Conversations That Reshape Creativity. They were host, Lucia Ongay, president & co-founder, Gerety Awards; Pannarai Juanroong, ECD, Ogilvy Bangkok; Anna Fawcett, CEO & EP, Filmgraphics Entertainment; and Shruthi Subramaniam, BBDO India. All women. Were those conversations full of important ideas? Yes. Did those conversations show that the old school male-dominated adland had been missing a trick? Yes. But let’s move on.
The session was built on Gerety’s belief that creativity doesn't happen in isolation. It happens in conversations. Conversations that challenge perspectives, bring new voices into the room and sometimes completely reshape the word we make.
It began with Ongay’s question, “Looking back at your careers, was there a moment when a single conversation completely changed how you approached creating work?”
Subramaniam said, “Mine came from my boss and it’s, ‘It doesn't have to always make sense’. An idea doesn't have to come from an obvious place. The starting point can be random and it doesn't have to make sense. But then it does, that's the joy and the process.”
Anna Fawcett added, “For me it was an experience. I was working with a client, who understood their brand, trusted the agency, and the agency trusted the production company to execute their idea. With that trust we had freedom to really do great work. From that moment, I realised that without trust, communication, and allowing people to do their jobs properly, you will never get great work.”
Here are some other useful take-outs from the session:
Q: In reality, great work often comes from messy discussions, debates, and collaboration. In your experience, what is it that actually makes creativity effective?
Sometimes it’s fighting for an idea but at the core its intuition, and when you have a group of people, it’s collective intuition. A great idea cuts through - it doesn't matter where it comes from, whether it makes you laugh, cry, or has empathy. Subramaniam noted, “For example, in jury rooms, all of us just feel when an idea works, when it clicks, or when it doesn't. I think that's what happens when you have experience and perspective in a room.” What doesn’t work is when work is too smart, when it forgets who it is talking too. Most important - keep it simple.
It’s important the brand understands its consumer. Work drowns into an ocean if the audience doesn’t come first in the content.
Q: What human qualities matter most in creativity?
Empathy - AI can never put itself in the shoes of a human. The freedom to make mistakes (and learning from them). Originality. Confidence in oneself. Human emotion - AI isn’t able to have that yet; AI can’t give us goosebumps. And emotional intelligence - we’ve all stopped reading, we need to stop scrolling and start reading again.
Also gut instinct. Juanroong commented, “You know right away if an idea will work, because you see the people in front of you, their eyes light up. And we do it when we’re judging. If the idea is good, of course we get an emotion bomb and we feel jealous. But, you know, we also feel something.”
Q: What kind of conversations should always stay human?
Especially for creatives, and even more for young creatives, the ideation - the 1st stage should stay human. Ideation is who we are, why we’re there. We see young creatives who grab for their iPads first thing when they get a brief, searching for ideas. HI first. That’s where the idea that gives you goosebumps will be. AI later, if you want to fine-tune and test. Humans need to keep having notions, want to have a brain, want to be able to make decisions. We cannot just rely on a machine to do all that, and creativity is so important to our being that we have to use ourselves to start. There was a point where AI showed you new ways of thinking and you thought, “Oh my God, wow, I never thought about that.” But now, you can see there's a pattern because it's churning up the same stuff that's out there. We can’t afford to have creativity, to have creative minds, lose its/their uniqueness.
Q: Where do you think our industry still plays it too safe?
At each and every pitch, every new business presentation. It’s the one place where we have nothing to lose. The one place where we can really push ourselves. It’s difficult because we live in such uncertain times; everybody's righted. And it's that fear factor that is affecting creative. You might offend someone. But we're too scared. We've come a long way from where advertising started. It was very expensive. And sometimes crossed lines. But given the freedom we can maybe be provocative, be funny, not try and second guess how the consumer is going to react – and be brilliant.
And using data, which is, in some cases, manipulated, to justify, giving a director a storyboard that tells exactly what seconds each thing has to fall on? That will never give you a great creative outcome. Trust the people in a campaign’s team to do their job. Give them the freedom to do it.
Q: What is the conversation between creatives, directors, and producers that changes the work for better?
Firstly, the conversation about what’s a good idea. Understand your client, what they stand for, what they need. If you write a script that's going to cost a $1m delay and the client’s only got $200,000, that is not a good idea. That is going to end in tears. Then everyone has to read the script, read the treatment, read the storyboards, ask questions – first. TQhen press go with everyone on the same page. Lastly, it comes back to trust. Because if “a committee” starts micromanaging and telling people what to do, mediocre is the most likely outcome. Know that trust comes when you build relationships with everyone in the ecosystem. I think that's where we're not putting in the work. That's where we're not being human. Get inside each other’s heads and know where everyone is coming from as a person.
Q: When you're developing creative work, how do you know if an idea will truly resonate emotionally rather than just look clever?
Be simple, especially for APAC. We have so many people, so many languages, so many cultures – even within countries. There's no need to make clever just the sake of it. A simple idea translates. Subramaniam added, “To find out if our work resonates with a larger audience, we share it right across the agency – from creative to HR and finance – not as BBDO professionals, but as themselves, as consumers. We get feedback, build on the ideas, and almost make it consumer proof - like it's ready for the world, because then it's authentic.
Q: What is the one conversation our industry needs to start having right now?
The one about AI - about where we should be using it and how we should be using it. And we should start talking about where we shouldn't choose AI. Young creatives shouldn’t use AI as their creative brains. But, not just them, we all need to restart thinking first. And we have to educate our clients as well because the most prevalent conversations about AI always have to do with money. It is not always cheaper. Then there’s the conversation that comes from caring and having an opinion. The one that goes, “I’ve found this fantastic new music company,” or “Let’s bring in this Indian director. I think they’d be great at this.” More of these, please.
Lastly, the industry has to have the conversation it doesn’t want to have about mentors. What's happening in agencies is that the people with experience are being fired because of money and ageism, and we're losing that wisdom because they have a lot of experience and we learn from experience.
