MullenLowe’s Leigh
Reyes says this year’s Young Lotus teams are going to receive a humdinger of a
brief when they arrive in Pattaya in March.
MullenLowe Group is
leading the Young Lotus program for the first time – a two-and-a-half-day
workshop for ambitious young creative teams from the Asia Pacific and Middle
East, which runs during ADFEST 2019. Teams will receive a real brief for a real
client – with just 24 hours to meet the deadline.
Reyes is generously
taking time away from her role as President and Chief Creative Officer at
MullenLowe Philippines to lead a team of mentors from MullenLowe Group offices.
MullenLowe is hosting the Young Lotus Workshop at ADFEST 2019 and you’re playing a big role in shaping the workshop. What made you want to get involved?
There’s nothing like
teaching others as a way to keep learning. The Young Lotus workshop is a great
opportunity to hang out with a rich, diverse community of talented people, who
I hope will continue to grow within the advertising industry to make a
difference in the world. At MullenLowe, we believe that hyperbundling is our
force multiplier. Whenever we pull together deep skillsets across a
diverse spread of disciplines and channels, we produce sharper thinking and
better results.
Is it true Young Lotus teams will receive an actual brief from Google? What do you hope young creatives will learn from the experience of tackling a real-world client brief?
This generation of
young creatives has most likely been tackling real-world client briefs since
school. The hustle is real.
What makes this
experience exceptional is the chance to work on a brief from a client known for
ubiquitous innovation. Because creative solutions aren’t necessarily limited to
communications, this will be a crash course in the underpinnings of a
future-ready career: data-driven creativity, user-experience design, and an
analytical approach to strategy.
Was there a transformative, lightbulb moment in your own career when you realised you weren’t so bad at advertising?
Rather than a
lightbulb moment, I’d describe my career as headlights in the dark – they
illuminate the road enough to make it to the next milestone.
When the Creative
Guild inducted me into the Hall of Fame in 2015, I gave a really long
acceptance speech, which I'll summarize: Let others shine. Learn by failing
(flearn). Get angry. Never let a good idea die, and to paraphrase Mumford &
Sons, “where you invest your time is
where you invest your life.” Advertising takes up a lot of our waking (and
sleeping!) hours. None of us is likely to regret not having worked overtime
just one more hour.
What are your creative goals for MullenLowe Philippines in 2019?
We’re building a new
product that creatively leverages hyperbundling, called the MullenLowe Influence Academy. Influencer
marketing is on a growth trajectory, and influencers increasingly need a
learning platform. The Academy will pack the hyperbundled expertise of
MullenLowe across branding, client management, marketing, digital and social
strategy, content creation, and most recently, public relations into a
made-for-influencers curriculum.
I’d also like to
continue embedding data-driven creativity into our work culture to deliver more
brave, authentic, culturally-resonant ideas for our clients.
MullenLowe acquired ARC Public Relations in May to create MullenLowe MARC. How has the acquisition impacted the agency’s creative process?
There’s a huge
difference between having a PR-friendly idea and having an actual PR practice.
PR isn’t merely a way to earn attention for an idea, but a strategic
consideration from the start of the planning process. We’re already pretty
agile as a team. Our first meetings for big client briefs have business,
planning, social, digital, creative, and PR in attendance, and we’re finding
this leads to more creative and ambitious work.
You share your illustrations with 17K+ followers on Instagram. When did your obsession with illustrating (and Fountain Pens) begin? Why did you first begin sharing your sketches on Instagram, and what do you enjoy about this process?
Instagram began as an
extension of my blog. I’ve been blogging since 2003, mostly about pens, and
sometimes about work – I even still have my old posts from 2008 about judging
at ADFEST. Instagram seemed both prettier and quicker than blogging. Today, I
consider it my internet home.
Being active on
Instagram is part of an ongoing exploration into how things work and what makes
them work better. I’m able to better articulate Instagram-centric campaigns to
clients now that I understand the insights as a user. That's also why I'm on
Discord and Twitch. I often tell people to become their own guinea pigs.
As for fountain pens
and paper – everyone needs an antidote to retina displays and keyboards.
You’ve given talks recently about the maker movement, and ingenuity. Can you share a little of what you know about both?
Maker Faire is my
source of inspiration. I first attended one in New York in 2013, and now I try
to go back every year.
In the advertising and
marketing space, we’re used to separating ideas from production, the thought
from the making, the head from the hand, the art from the copy, the front end
from the back end. Now, we’re now seeing
a change from the incoming batch of creators. They make what they think. They
produce their ideas, they shoot, write, illustrate, edit, score, tag, publish,
boost, optimize, monetize. Every creator can be an algorithmically-assisted
agency of one. And that’s what I consider the maker mindset – if you can think
it, you can find a way to build it.
What’s your proudest achievement, professional or otherwise?
My proudest achievement
is raising my son.
As a self-confessed lover of most things geeky, what was your favorite (or least favorite) tech discovery of 2018?
It would have to be
Google Night Sight on the Pixel 3. Night Sight uses machine learning, so you
get close to the right colours even in extremely low light. Secondly, my
Mercury Intelligent Heated jacket from Ministry of Supply. It’s the first
jacket I’ve ever owned that comes with an app and a built-in battery pack.
