AdFest 2016: 10 questions with Richard Yu, Direct Lotus jury president and CCO at ADK Taiwan

Next month, Richard Yu will travel from Taipei to Thailand to lead the Direct Lotus jury panel at AdFest 2016.

Yu (pictured) became one of the youngest Executive Creative Directors to ever be appointed in Taiwan when he joined Bates Asia 2006, later moving to ADK.

He has led both ADK and Bates to win Agency of the Year for seven consecutive years from 2008 to 2014 at various creative rankings such as The Gunn Report and Campaign Brief Asia.

You were one of the youngest ECDs ever appointed in Taiwan. Was it hard achieving success so young?

I remember in 2006, Henry Chu, Managing Director of Bates Taiwan, called 34-year-old me up, offering me their ECD position. Before this, I had been CD of JWT only for two and a half years. So I said to him: “Are you sure you are dialing the right number? Haha”.

Henry said: “I actually don’t know you in person but many people whom I consulted have recommended you. Being young is not a problem at all.”

Therefore, my ECD career started from there when a brave MD chose to trust me. But my success belongs to every creative team member who has ever believed in me and supported me.  

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned in your career, and who taught it to you?

“After all those years, people wouldn’t really remember who had arguments with whom but most likely they would remember who had done a piece of particular great work at a particular time!”

I was very lucky that a very experienced talented creative senior had said this to me when I first entered this industry. One thing for sure is that you don’t need to cause any conflicts with people in order to create a masterpiece, but you must be always ready to defend your ideas and have the courage to get breakthroughs.      

Can you tell us a bit about the creative culture in Taiwan?

Have you ever been to Taiwan? Taiwan is small but with great freedom. Taiwan’s advertising industry flourished years ago and perhaps that’s why audiences nowadays have a strong preference for “adverts that don’t look like adverts”, which means they don’t like straightforward product information but prefer emotional appeal rather than rational appeal.

So then a unique Taiwan creative style with mild emotion and rhythm emerged. It is usually presented in a form of short films and people absolutely like it. This kind of innovation demonstrates the implicit, understated focus on humanity that is a special characteristic of Taiwanese culture.

Why did you accept AdFest’s invitation to oversee the Direct Lotus jury? What makes AdFest unique to other festivals?

I happened to have the honor to do a speech at the same event with Jimmy Lam (AdFest President) in Taiwan at the end of last year. During the tea break Jimmy came to me and asked if I would like to take the challenge to be the Jury President of Direct Lotus.

This is absolutely a huge honor and surprise for me so I took this job without a second thought. As you know, AdFest has always been the most important creative awards that focus on Asian culture. AdFesthas a remarkable scale of Asian judges and exclusive awards categories (such as Lotus Roots) that represent its very unique character. Me and my company with its whole network are all paying huge respect to this award.

What do you think of the theme of AdFest 2016: “Creative Intelligence”? 

Creative technology and intelligence is a theme with great insight, which focuses on practice. Nowadays, the word “big data” has been widely misused while the other word “new technology” is springing out to replace the old. It is wasting time to discuss if the traditional media is still alive or not, I’d rather spend time on focusing using “intelligence” to create a brand new creative method for communication. A great idea that would touch people’s heart is always the most crucial thing.

Is there a secret to creating work that makes people think: “Wow! Why didn’t I come up with this idea before?” What’s your secret to success?

There’s no secret really but you can always keep training yourself to get used to ask people or yourself “why not have a try”? Your mind would then become much more open so that it is more likely you could come up with “unusual” ideas.

Is there any other way you could have more successful ideas?

Of course, welcome to our session “The Secret Ingredient” at March 17th 14:30, ADK at AdFest, haha.

What is your proudest achievement?

To let all our team members, when asked, tell people confidently with no hesitation that he/she works here! 

Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever had lunch with?

My 8-year-old son!

If you didn’t work in advertising, you’d be…?

A comedian I guess

Can you tell us one secret about yourself?

I actually fear making presentations to people I am not familiar with! My team members don’t believe this as we have done countless major or minor presentations of all kinds but they have never noticed my feelings. But you know this is actually the reason why I said: “You must be always ready to defend your ideas and have the courage to get breakthroughs”.      

Yu’s and ADK Tokyo’s Fumitaka Takano’s session ‘The Secret Ingredient’ is on Thursday 17th March, 2:30pm at AdFest 2016. Adfest runs from March 16th to 19th in Pattaya, Thailand. Check out the program here.