Prioritise ideas that move people, Cheil Global CCO Malcolm Poynton tells AdWeek Asia
Here’s something for the weekend. An obsession with technology has hijacked the advertising industry and risks turning advertising creativity into just another commodity, Malcolm Poynton, Global Chief Creative Officer at Cheil Worldwide told delegates at AdWeek Asia.
In his talk, Poynton readily conceded that the title of his presentation – ‘The Future of Agencies is Analog’ – might strike some as odd given the extent to which the agency network and its Barbarian Group and PengTai offices, especially, work with ‘deep technology’. Yet the time has come for the ad industry to reassess its approach to technology – an approach which is fast becoming an obsession.
“I think we’ve got it all upside down when we go to conferences that just talk about technology and our industry is described as being on ‘a march towards automation’,” he observed. “Because inevitably, technology becomes commoditised. It happens to all technologies over a period of time and the same thing will happen to advertising if we turn ourselves into a technology industry.”
Citing growing interest in programmatic and real-time advertising, Poynton made a plea for more creative ideas that move people. Clients and creatives should better value “in-time” ads where stronger creative is produced in “human-time”, he said.
“I love technology and we do amazingly creative things with it for our clients. But if we jump into the world of technology instead of ideas we too will get commoditised and I find that a scary thought. It’s not half as exciting as refocusing around the power of ideas after all, ideas create value for both brands and agencies,” Poynton added.
“It’s in our hands to define the industry. The future of (advertising) is not what a leader of a holding company defines it to be today or tomorrow, but what clients and people in the creative industry that is advertising define it.”