Isobar’s chief creative officer Tim Doherty talks about ‘Let’s stop spinning in Circles’ at AD STARS

Isobar’s Chief Creative Officer, Tim Doherty, spoke at AD STARS in Korea on Friday, telling the audience that he thinks most clients and agencies are still too media focused.

“Advertising is becoming like a tax on the poor. If you have any money you’re paying for things like Netflix and Amazon Prime – the rich are paying to avoid advertising, so we need to make things that people want to see or interact with.

“The old way is to just put your message where people are looking. But in future our opportunity to interrupt people is going to get smaller.

“Of course we’ll still do advertising in future, but what we create will be qualitatively different to what we do today, we can’t just interrupt.”

He shared a few tips on how to succeed in a “post-advertising” age

Technology is never the hero. Our job is to make real human connections.

Doherty (pictured let) is a big fan of ‘The Swedish Number’, which was well awarded at Cannes this year. It’s a campaign for the Swedish Tourist Association where people all over the world could phone a Swede to ask them about their country and have a chat.

“There is a substantial technology component to this campaign, but the technology is largely invisible. They didn’t create an ad, they created an interactive experience that delivered moments of human connection. It is hugely ambitious work,” he says.

Come up with shareable ideas

Next, he showed a campaign by Isobar China called ‘Limited Confessions’ for Cornetto. The agency realised young love is just like ice cream – you have to seize the moment and enjoy it while it lasts – so they created a way for young lovers to confess their love over ice cream.

“Marketers spend so much money making things that are not fun to share. This campaign was very shareable, and it has done really well for the client,” says Doherty.

See products as content

Isobar Brazil developed a ‘safe key’ for Fiat to stop drinking and driving. Drivers need to blow on the key to activate the car, which won’t start if they’ve had too much to drink.

“Seeing products as content is a different way of thinking about our job as creatives. It’s limitless what we can do,” says Doherty.

Of course, all this requires a different way of thinking about our job as agencies.

“One of the things that’s got to change is we can’t go to our clients with 100-page slide Power Point decks like two armies preparing for war. We’re going to need to be much more nimble and collaborative. And we’re going to need multi-disciplinary creative teams.”

* Tim Doherty spoke at AD STARS 2016 on Friday, 26th August in Busan, South Korea.