Emir Shafri finds inspiration in Sin City: Day 1

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Emir Shafri.jpgYoung & Rubicam Singapore’s Digital Lead Emir Shafri (pictured) was one of 100 young creatives at the recent London International Awards’ Creative LIAisons mentorship programme. Over the next four days Shafri will report insights from each day. Here’s his take on day one.

Sometimes, inspiration hits you at the strangest of places. Like right above the casino of hotel a mere 24-hour flight away. It was there that I felt like advertising’s slot machine handed me the jackpot, after having the privilege of joining 100 other young creatives at London International Awards’ Creative LIAisons mentorship programme over four days.

Day one felt like a winning streak, at Las Vegas of all places. Unlike some award festival seminars, where I felt like I’m being sold something all the time, it was a day full of great creative leaders just talking to a roomful of other creatives, sharing how they got to where they are. It was raw. It was inspiring. And every single talk made me rethink what I’m doing with my career and life.

In the spirit of “sharing is caring”, I thought I’d share some of the things I got out from each of the brilliant speakers.

Ralph van Dijk.jpgRalph on “NFC”

We started the day with a talk from Ralph Van Dijk, founder and CD of Eardrum. Ralph was also our programme moderator, which by itself was my first lesson for the day. Here’s an award-winning creative and radio legend with a company to run, who decided to take time off to spend with a bunch of advertising “kids” like myself. If I do make it big like the speakers one day, I hope to have a chance to mentor the next generation, like Ralph did.

Anyway, on to Ralph’s talk. Ralph shared with us the biggest trend to hit advertising: NFC. Not Near Field Communication, but “Nobody F*cking Cares”, with “nobody” being the consumers of course.

He shared some of his own experience on how to make them care. One of them was to inject “relevant cleverness”, which is something that is creatively clever and at the same time connects your consumer to your brand in a relevant way. He also shared how if you have more than one key message to say in your ad, you probably need many ads, because, well, NFC.

Pum Lefebure.jpgHow Pum Defined My New #Relationshipgoals

Pum Lefebure, Co-Founder/CCO of Design Army, was next. Pum gave a lot of great professional advice, such as on how to work on your weaknesses until they become your strengths. But the biggest reason this talk resonated with me was for a piece of advice that touched on both the professional and the personal.

Like Pum, who runs Design Army with her husband Jake Lefebure, I also work with my life partner. They’ve learned to be there for each other when either one of them needs support, but at the same time they know when to give each other space when it is needed. They also completely rock the whole work-life balance thing, with them bringing their daughter on shoots and giving her a corner to work in the office.

If there’s a power couple in the industry my partner and I would like to emulate, it would have to be Pum and Jake. #relationshipgoals

Chris Smith.jpgChris on Improv Comedy and Advertising

After a buffet lunch, it was back to the inspiration buffet with our next speaker, Chris Smith, Group CD of The Richards Group by day, and improv comedian by night. This man is a living, breathing example of how your passion in life can help you get better at your passion at work. Beyond getting a few laughs over “chocolate dick” and “where babies come from”, amongst other things, Chris’ talk on improv taught a lot on how I could get better at my work.

Consider the improv comedian, who unlike the stand-up comedian who prepares his material beforehand, has to think on his feet and take whatever the audience throws at him. From this, Chris learned how to say “Yes, and,” instead of “No, but,” whenever an idea was thrown at him by his partner or even his brain. I myself have been guilty of “editing” ideas during brainstorms, so I came out of Chris’ talk learning how to take and build on whatever is on the table, instead of giving in to the temptation to filter.

Another big takeaway was how like an improv audience, our clients want a good performance and are rooting for us to succeed. So we shouldn’t be treating them like they’re the enemy. Instead, just like an improv audience, we should give them a stake in the “show” by letting them collaboratively build the ideas with us. Besides, they’d feel more satisfied with the outcome if they felt like they were part of the team.

Ted Royer.jpgThe Ted Talk

Ted Royer, CCO of Droga5 (pictured left), gave us an impassioned speech about “our tribe”. He was referring to the 2% of people in the industry who really care about the work that they do, and want to be great at it. He believed that now ­- more than ever – our tribe needed believers who are willing to help make our industry great again.

What our tribe needs more of, according to Ted, is more empathy for the consumer, client and people we work with. We need to learn to understand whom we’re talking to, by looking outside the world of advertising and becoming more aware of the world they live in.

We also need to make a better attempt to understand not just the brands but also the people who run them. We can start by hanging out with our clients more, instead of leaving the relationship building to the account management team.

Finally, we need to learn to be empathetic to the people we work with. Vidal may have said, “It’s not enough to succeed; others must fail.” But I came out from the Ted talk believing that the best way to measure success isn’t by the amount of shiny trophies you win, but rather the by the people you’ve helped succeed along the way.

Amir Kassaei.jpgAmir on Not Dying

We ended the day with a wake up call courtesy of DDB’s Worldwide CCO Amir Kassaei (left). While a lot of industry seminars tend to focus on what will change, Amir strongly feels that we’re not talking enough about what won’t change. And that we should, or risk dying as an industry.

Instead of simply obsessing over the latest technology and how it’ll replace our jobs, Amir implored us to remember what has always been our reason for being: to solve real problems for brands in the real world in a relevant, innovative way. So instead of letting technology rule the idea, we should think of how we could apply technology, amongst other tools, to help us achieve this goal.

He also reminded us that winning awards doesn’t make you a great creative. It just makes you great at playing the awards game. Volkswagen’s Think Small was one of the ads that defined the Creative Revolution in the 1960s, and is still remembered as a legendary piece of work more than 50 years on. Yet, it did not win a single award. What it did win was both the respect of generations of advertising professionals, as well as the admiration of American people towards the Volkswagen brand. Something that Amir has been working tirelessly over the past month or so to win back.

So there you have it, folks. It’s just day one of Creative LIAisons. My body may have been exhausted from all that flying by the end of the day, but my mind’s already brimming with inspiration.

Stay tuned tomorrow for more of my learnings from Sin City.