Claire Davidson reports on day one of 2015 Shanghai London Advertising Forum

The Sweet Shop’s Claire Davidson (pictured centre) is on the ground at 2015 Shanghai London Advertising Forum. Here’s Claire’s highlights of the first day of seminars at the forum.

I’m in China this week to attend the 2015 Shanghai London Advertising Forum.  The aim of the forum is to bring together the best of the best from both the Chinese advertising world and London production, digital, interactive, post production and visual effects companies to discuss how we can all work best together and to continue to create great advertising.  The forum has been organized by the Advertising Producers Association (APA) and follows on from the successful inaugural conference in Shanghai in 2007.

• Yesterday’s presentations were held at the delightful Sigma Film Club in Huangpu.  As usual, I sat in on the proceedings throughout the day.

The first seminar I took in was with one of advertising’s luminaries, Graham Fink, Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy China.  Fink brought us “What I Have Learnt as ECD of China’s Biggest Agency”.  I’ve seen Fink speak many times prior, and today was just as insightful as past meetings.

The 10 major things that Fink has learnt include:

Everything that I knew was of no use to me whatsoever.

From leadership to the way you talk to people, Fink had to start from scratch when he moved to Shanghai from London.

China is f…..g big.

It’s HUGE.

Speed.

When Fink worked in London, he didn’t think he could work faster or harder.  Now he can do that work standing on his head in his sleep.

Guanxi.

You have to build relationships with people.  Unless you build these you aren’t going to go anywhere.

Be a Pioneer.

Do new work.  Break new ground.  Copyright also means ‘Copy It Right’.  Very true!

Ways of Seeing.

You need to look at things differently.  Ensure you understand cultural nuances.  Look at every part of the picture.

Crazy shit happens.

Just go with it.

The Government Can’t Tell the Difference Between Men and Women.

It’s a Beautiful Language.

The written characters all have wonderful stories behind them.

It’s the Greatest Place on Earth.

It’s the country of the future.

Fink strongly believes that Shanghai is the new New York.

Next up for me was Andy Orrick, Chief of Stuff at Rattling Stick, who brought us “The Power of Storytelling”.  Rattling Stick have offices in London and LA, and have 15 directors.  In this modern world everyone is trying to be all things to all people.  At Rattling Stick they focus first and foremost on the fundamentals, and tell strong stories with a big emotional heart.  It’s about fostering the ability to connect with their audience.

We looked at the film ‘My Own Private Idaho’, which brought back the feelings of my own adolescent crush on River Phoenix.  Ooh ahh…  The film presented an exotic world.  It was an escape route.  It was raw.  It was emotional.  It was powerful.  We mark our memories by the cultural artifacts of when we were younger.  These emotional hooks were memory markers.  Fast forward, and these relate to the businesses we find ourselves in today, and products and brands that mean things to people.  Entertain your audience.  Technologies come and go, but empathy remains.

Find good collaborators, who share your beliefs.  Create a team of thinkers and doers.  We don’t all have all of the smarts.  Have an open mind and an open heart.  Always innovate creatively and commercially.  Have an attitude.  Stay true to why you do what you do.  Humans are more than data.  Get lost once in a while.  Wrong turns teach.

Bill Bernbach told us “you can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen.  You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut.  Because if they don’t feel it nothing will happen”.

Steve Jobs also mentioned that “ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed.  There’s a tremendous amount of craftmanship between a great idea and a great product”.  And let’s remember what David Bowie has told us – “the moment you feel you are on safe ground, you’re dead”.  Speaking of adolescent crushes…

My friend Desmond Loh, Executive Producer of Stink Shanghai, next brought us “Making An Impact In China”.  Stink Shanghai is making impact through harmony.  Stink is a global production network with a focus on quality and smart production, whilst providing a home for creative talents.  With offices in Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, San Paulo, Paris, Moscow, London and Berlin, Stink aims to choose the right project and always take it to the next level.

Speed, budget and quality are all key factors to take into account when producing work in China.  Stink also takes their international experience and makes it relevant to the market.  Stink’s Shanghai based producers work closely with their western directors to ensure that they understand the local requirements, from casting to locations to cultural nuances.  It’s a collaboration between production house, agency and client.  Stinkdigital also focuses on interactive and technological solutions.

We looked at some of Stink’s work for Adidas, BMW, Levis, VW, Tiffany & Co., and Honda.

Up after lunch Steve Davies, Chief Executive of the Advertising Producers Association, told us 10 Things To Love About London.

The Soho Community

This community draws in talent from all around the world.

The Advertising Effectiveness Awards

These awards look scientifically at the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Trade Associations

These are so important to your business, such as the Advertising Producers Association (APA), the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISPA), and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

Contractual Foundations

The UK has a standard contract between production companies and advertising agencies.  Ooh, ahh… I dearly hope that comes into place here in China too.

Great Commercials

We looked at campaigns for Eurostar, Honda CR-V, Lurpack, Nike, The Sunday Times, Pot Noodles, Mulberry, and The Guardian.

John Hegarty’s Insights

“Advertising is 80% about the idea and 80% about the execution”.

Ground Breaking Interactive Work

Great Forums and Events

These include Adweek Europe as well as the APA Show.

World Class Visual Effects

Worldwide outlook

Simon Gosling, Global CEO at Happy Finish, next brought us “Virtual Reality Is Here”.  Like every area of our sector, Virtual Reality is changing just ever so quickly.  Happy Finish was comprised of 60 people two years ago, and they are now at 150 staff members, with shiny new offices in London, New York, Portland, India and China.  Happy Finish started out as a retouching agency eleven years ago.  They went from being a stills company to becoming a digital company with a focus on Augmented Reality (AR) and now Virtual Reality (VR).

Our attention today was drawn to the exciting and innovative advertising opportunities that AR and VR can bring to brands; be it via stills, motion visual effects, computer graphics, animation or interactive integration.  Our first case study was Google Expeditions. We looked at further examples for Mercedes, Skoda, Honeywell, Becker, Lamborghini and Google Cardboard.  It’s clear that AR and VR are as well enabling us to explore other areas other than advertising.

As Confucius said “tell me and I will forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand”.

I was up on the stage this afternoon as well delivering “Meeting the Challenges of Budget Pressures”, which is something lifelong Producers like me could write a book on.  I’m sure that Confucius could add to it as well.  Each script that rolls through door comes equipped with its own challenges, and that’s what we love – a challenge.  Often it’s budget-related, and this can manifest itself in any number of different ways.  But it can also be managed and solved in many different ways.

Producers are problem-solving masters, first and foremost.  If you hit us with your impossible scripts, we’ll come up with a solution and you will be dazzled.  It’s something as to how we’re wired.  It’s pretty rare that as Producers we start out on million dollar campaigns.  More likely, we’ve started way back in school, making movies with action figures that – well – will probably need to be stop motion, because nobody can get their hands on a video camera (remember – I’m thinking about the good old days before iPhones were invented).

We producers had to learn how to make this good stuff the hard way, without the luxury of throwing money at our problems.  We learned all the crafty and cunning tricks to get maximum production value for a miniscule – if not, non-existent – budget.  It’s character building stuff.

Agencies and clients shouldn’t think that you can scare us off with a small budget – if you love the script and if we love the script, we’ll do everything we possibly can to think of a way to make it happen.  And please don’t get me wrong either, we’ll take your medium- sized and large-sized and super-sized budgets too…

Before every creative in the room became all excited about teeny tiny budgets, and thought it would be a snap to spend almost no money and produce a brilliant creative campaign that will win the agency hundreds of international awards and bring fame, fortune, glory and excellent marketing results to their clients…. I did have them calm their enthusiasm.  Small budgets are generally not without very large headaches.

While the actual cause of the pain may vary – from talent to equipment to shoot logistics to post production – the severity of this headache can be excruciating.  As we all know, money has a way of putting a stop to that pain really quickly – the old ‘throw money at a problem and it will disappear’ thing.  Without that proper budget, there’s bound to be a bit of suffering, and there may need to be some sacrifices.  When faced with this problem, it falls to production companies like us at The Sweet Shop to pull out all the stops, show our smarts, be resourceful and cost effective, and help you win those shiny gold awards you so badly want for your cabinet.

Budget size remains a big challenge in this Advertising Warzone we all work in, and we’re getting better and better at adapting, as it’s a big time of change in general for us production companies.  You read it in every industry mag, and hear it laced through every other seminar on the festival trail, and we all sit up and listen because it’s probably the factor that affects our film production business the most at the moment.

The advertising world doesn’t revolve around TV anymore. (gasp!)

In today’s world, with so many new platforms, it’s survival of the fittest in the technology game – and remaining current and getting creative with production is the only way to stay at the top.  You’ve got to be adaptable, think of new solutions that can be tailored to any format, and produce superior, quality work within the broadest range of budgets – justifying the large budgets, defying the small ones.

So we producers – or problem solvers – now work easily in all of these production platforms, and whether it’s content for traditional TV, or cross platform, or integrated, or social, or a game, we’re still faced with the same issue – ever decreasing budgets for jobs that still demand the highest of production values.

Great material can be made for challenging budgets ‘if the script is written that enables it’.  Which means the billion dollar question is: how can an agency be sure that if it’s not inexpensive in terms of its content, your concept is so loveable, so adorable, so terribly creative and masterful and absolutely guaranteed to pick up so many Gold Lions that production companies will be falling all over each other for the chance to produce it, ou
t of the goodness of our hearts (rather than for a big chunk of cash)?   What is the magic formula?

Excellent question.   

I’m glad I’m not a Creative Director…

See you all tomorrow.

Claire Davidson, Managing Director & Executive Producer – ASIA + MENA @ The Sweet Shop, reporting for Campaign Brief Asia at the 2015 Shanghai London Advertising Forum.