Australia's biggest admen admit tech has replaced ideas, game changed

By AdNews | 3 June 2014
 
GPY&R's Ben Coulson: It's the way it changes the game.

Some of the biggest hitters in Australian advertising have come clean. As the worlds of technology and advertising collide like a particle in the Large Hadron Collider, the idea has been usurped. Being first is key. Changing the game through technology and bolting any old shit onto it is the future of advertising, according to Ant Keogh, Clemenger Melbourne ECD.

“It doesn't matter what it is being first in, but being first wins the day, because people talk about firsts,” added M&C Saatchi's top creative Ben Welsh.

Publicis Mojo ECD Grant Rutherford agreed. “Technology is not so much overriding the idea, it is the idea”, he said, with JWT Melbourne ECD Richard Muntz crystallising the shift towards hyperviralised platforms. “If you nano'd nano technology, that is what it's all about now.”

Keogh said the pace at which advertising was changing was akin to Einstein's theory of relativity. “It's like if you are on a moving bus, moving at the speed of light, then you have to be, like, ahead of the bus now. Waiting to catch the bus.”

Ben Coulson, creative chief at GPY&R, came clean with the truth that many have long suspected.

“You really have to make the consumer jump through a lot of hoops these days. Put some barriers and hurdles between the consumer and the brand and obviously with the convergence of all these merging technologies, it is very very hard to find the exact right spot to put an idea. So sometimes we actually don't any more. No-one can tell of course. They are too busy running around the city with their phones out looking for our hidden message.”

The creative masterminds were speaking ahead of a conference put together by data-driven advertising body, ADMA. In a bid to bring creative people and marketers to the heart of the digerati's layer, the association tasked Cummins & Partners to make an ad.

But the agency went further. It created The World’s First Crowd Sourced 3D Printed QR Code, Live Streamed Via Go Pro To A Smart Phone Or Tablet Device, Drone Delivery Ticket System Project.

You can watch the case study below. Adam Ferrier thinks it will light up the corpus callosum on both sides of the human brain to deliver “ultra engagement”, and while ADMA didn't understand it, they thought that sounded good.

All the top creatives agree it is a game changer.

Cut the bullshit and refocus on creativity is the message. And go to Creative Fuel, on 28 July at the MCA, Sydney.

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