Raw Asian pervasive creativity launches in Cannes

David Mayo, President, Ogilvy & Mather ASEAN and Kunal Sinha, Regional Cultural Insights Director, Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific today, in Cannes, launched their new book collaboration – Raw: Pervasive Creativity in Asia.

More than two years in the making, this book looks at everyday ingenuity and creativity in Asia and through a mixture of striking photography and real-life examples demonstrates the diversity, the creative spirit and the can-do attitude that lives on the streets of Asia.

Award-winning lifestyle photographer Steffen Billhardt and his father, noted documentary photographer, Thomas Billhardt took more than 30,000 images from the streets of Asian cities in China, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and India during the development of the book.

“Asia is a melting pot of diverse cultures. Everywhere you turn, you are graced by patterns, colours and aesthetic inspiration that drives creativity,” said Tony Fernandes, Group Chief Executive Officer, Air Asia. “There are endless opportunities out there for businesses at every spectrum of the economy and something to be sold to everyone. It just takes the understanding of a culture and a market’s economy to unleash the potential for creativity. This book goes into the depths of the streets of Asia to help you understand that.”

Raw demonstrates that creativity is a business necessity in the challenging and crowded environs of Asian cities where people are struggling to get ahead through tenacity, creativity and imagination.

“Raw comes at a time which follows the acknowledgement that creativity is an essential ingredient of modern business,” said Mayo. “The book actually shows you how to place and deploy creativity to maximum business effect – that’s new.”

Sinha added: “There’s much conversation these days about creativity that’s enabled by technology. But that can’t happen without people possessing a native ingenuity – which has been employed for many generations in Asia to solve problems and for economic development. Raw delves into the roots of that ingenuity.”