John Hunt is an award-winning playwright, author, and Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA. He presented his new book “The Art of the Idea” in a presidents lecture at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. Prior the festive event he had a personal conversation with Michael Conrad. Join the insightful conversation.

(Part One)

(Part Two)

Hunt was born in Zambia and educated in England and South Africa, he was the Creative Founding Partner of TBWA Hunt Lascaris.

 TBWA Hunt Lascaris has now grown to be South Africa’s premier advertising agency – named Agency of the Year six times in the last seven years. 
In 1993 John was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela’s first ANC election campaign. Three years later, he joined the South African Advertising Hall of Fame – the first working creative to be so honored, and in 1997 he received the Financial Mail’s Long Term Achievement Award.

TBWA has been named by Adweek magazine as the “Global Advertising Agency Network of the Year” in both 2007 and again for 2009. Led by CEO (and Berlin School Board of Governors member) Jean-Marie Dru, the full-service agency has more than 250 offices in 77 countries. Some of its major clients include Adidas, Absolut Vodka, Apple, Henkel, Mars, Nissan, and Sony PlayStation.

Check out reviews of the book on adage.com and mad-blog.com.

More background, click here.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Guillaume Pannaud, who heads TBWA Paris, has named Philippe Simonet vice-president of the agency, alongside Anne Vincent. Here he uses the occasion to explain his vision of the integration of the Web at the heart of communications agencies.

Le Figaro: Why did you make a digital specialist your right hand man?

Guillaume Pannaud: It springs from the absolute and essential metamorphosis of our industry. Philippe Simonet is one of the pioneers of the digital sector, yet this is the first time in France that a talent from that area has joined the management team of a large agency. It’s an upheaval – there will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. Fifty years ago, agencies were trying to integrate television into their offering; today it’s the turn of the Web. This process must be carried out at every level of the agency – and not via external growth or complex agreements. In that respect, two different visions are confronting one another in the market.

You’re subscribing to a logic that has already been adopted by TBWA at a global level.

GP: Branches of the group worldwide have recruited digital specialists and that has borne fruit, as TBWA now handles the interactive accounts of Pepsi, Visa and Adidas internationally.

Why not create a separate digital entity, like TBWA Interactive was before?

GP: That agency was founded within our marketing services arm, Tequila, two years ago. But today interactive must be anchored in a permanent and strategic manner at the heart of agencies. As for production tools, they can be externalized or outsourced – as is the case with regular audiovisual production – or indeed integrated. These are tactical or secondary choices that will be driven by the evolution the market. But TBWA certainly doesn’t want to get involved in a digital agency acquisition spree. That results in a juxtaposition of businesses and, inevitably, in the departure of talented people. On the contrary, TBWA wants to integrate them.

How do you explain the scarcity of digital talents in such a vibrant sector?

GP: You can count on the fingers of one hand the pure digital agencies whose breadth and savoir-faire are compatible with our mission as brand advisers. Their managers are sought-after by the entire market, because there’s such a huge need for them. And the talent battle has only just begun, because it’s not the production tools that count – they’re available to everyone – but the genuine advertising talents who are capable of responding to the new challenges of communication.

Read the full interview in Le Figaro or click HERE.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Every year ABSOLUT creates a limited edition winter bottle skin. This year, ABSOLUT and TBWA\Chiat\Day New York decided to do a “rock edition,” by creating a leather-studded skin. They then contacted infamous rock and roll photographer Danny Clinch. They asked him to document the band Wolfmother for two days in LA as they recorded their new album, performed at the Natural History Museum, and partied on the penthouse roof of the notorious Roosevelt Hotel. Over the course of the two days, Danny captured hundreds of photos and film, which were then turned into outdoor, print and online ads.

Many of the photos became part of a traveling photo exhibit, which took place in Stockholm and Belgium. Then, TBWA\Berlin took the idea and created an outdoor photo exhibit, featuring the images in billboard size on the walls of buildings throughout Munich, Cologne and Hamburg. They even provided a site map and audio tour. A perfect example of the art of Media Arts.

Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA\ Worldwide delivered today a speech at the TBWA Creative Academy at this years Golden Drum Festival in Portoroz (Slovenia). Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:

“Disruption has been invented in the mid 80’s. So you could ask: is it still relevant in the current decade? And is it still effective in the middle of the digital revolution?”

“The answer is without any doubt YES, but I will make two observations:

In the last 15 years, the focus of the methodology has moved progressively from convention to vision. Adidas believes that impossible is not a fact, but an opinion. Visa encourages to go and do things, in spite of the tough environment we are in. Nissan explains that “everything they touch, they try to shift”. Pepsi revitalizes the Pepsi generation theme by reminding us that “every generation refreshes the world”. And Absolut makes us discover what would be a perfect world, the world of Absolut.”

“As a summary of this first point concerning Vision, I would say that in this turbulent world, the role of Disruption has pivoted. Today it is more about creating a rallying point for a company or brand, a focal point, and this despite the increasing tribulations of the market – or rather, because of them. We need to create a reference point that we can constantly look back to, whatever unexpected directions the market may have taken us in.”

“The second observation I would like to make about the status of Disruption today is coming from the fact that we are living in a totally new world. In the digital world, we don’t talk to targets anymore, not even to consumers, we talk to audiences. Audiences who are not captive anymore. Audiences who judge brands on everything they do, on all the initiatives they take. Today more than ever, “actions speak louder than words”.

So the way a brand engages the audience in this new media world is key for its success. Therefore Disruption which is about brand belief must be augmented with another discipline, a discipline about brand behaviour. We call it Media Arts.

It starts by repatriating part of the media thinking into the agency. We can no longer think of media as just a means for brands to talk at consumers, but rather as all the places, spaces and experiences where people live their lives. It is time for advertising agencies not to be media neutral anymore, but to be media passionate.

It’s also time to understand that each and every touch point between audiences and a brand must be creative. And this whatever these touch points are: the packaging, the retail presence, the content of the website, the PR programs, the CRM initiatives etc. And we called this Media Arts because we believe each point of contact must tell the brand’s story, gracefully, artfully.

The problem is no longer just to ensure the coherence between the different elements of a brand’s communication, which some continue to refer to as 360°. But rather, to feed a constant conversation with our audiences, 365 days a year. From 360° to 365…”

“Brands are judged in the way they act and in all the initiatives they take. That’s why Media Arts is so important.”

“In a nutshell, Disruption is about brand belief, whereas Media Arts is about brand behaviour.”

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

Jean-Marie Dru (Chairman TBWA Worldwide) will join the TBWA Creative Academy at this year’s Golden Drum Festival. In his speech “DISRUPTION in a disrupted world” he will reflect on one of the toughest periods in the history of the advertising business and offer his thoughts on creativity and how brands should behave in the future.

Bestselling author and the inventor of Disruption – a way of unlocking the hidden potential of brands – Dru is a passionate believer in the power of big ideas. In his speech he will explain why brands now have an even greater need for smart and innovative thinking. And he’ll offer insights into how that thinking has helped mega-brands such as Absolut, Apple, Pedigree and Adidas.

With Disruption, Jean-Marie Dru gave TBWA an idea that has consistently set the agency apart from its competition. Both Advertising Age and Adweek magazines named TBWA Global Agency of the Year in 2008. And Fast Company magazine placed TBWA 24th on its 2009 list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.

Disruption is both a mind-set and a methodology that TBWA uses every day to create the ideas that enable its clients to present brands in entirely new ways. It drives success by collaboratively, collectively and systematically interrogating and challenging the conventional thinking.

October 7, 2008; 10:30 a.m., Kodak Hall (Grand Hotel Bernardin, Portoroz SLO)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

With the first significant campaign in Germany since the company’s take over by Pernod Ricard, ABSOLUT VODKA is re-focussing on it‘s creative DNA. The world‘s largest photo exhibition in Cologne, Hamburg and Munich gives the audience of the brand a unique interpretation of the creative collaboration between rock photographer Danny Clinch and the rock band Wolfmother: IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD YOU‘RE WITH THE BAND.

Lichtstrasse in Cologne

In an interview with German trade-magazine HORIZONT Christian Seel, Marketing Manager for ABSOLUT in Germany, commented on the decision to rethink the former media mix, especially the departure from TV: „All other premium vodka brands are on TV, but we wanted to differentiate ourselves through creative thinking and behavior.“ He continues, „We are not convinced to be able to connect with our audience on TV. We want to be more efficient.“

The exhibition won’t happen in print ads or on traditional OOH poster-sites. Rather, the stars of the show are multiple 2,500 square-feet XXL posters on display throughout the selected cities, in the open space and not in a closed of museum. Flyers distributed in bars and restaurants point the audience to the exhibition, and iPhone users can listen to a mobile audio guide directly on their phone, including original comments by the photographers. All others can download an audio guide direct from the ABSOLUT website, to which an interactive banner campaign directs additional fans.

If you cannot travel to Cologne, Hamburg or Munich, make sure you check it out on the web.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

This is the 200th post on mad-blog.com. Congratulations and a big hand to all those who have contributed so far. Over 20,000 absolute unique visitors from 134 countries joined us, spending an average of 2:59 minutes on the blog. Over 4,550 people have subscribed to our rss feed. Thanks for all the interest and support.

This is the perfect opportunity to share the most read stories celebrating Media Arts and Disruption. Enjoy and pass them on:

(1) The audience is always right. (by Michael Zorn)

(2) Some brands don‘t like change. Change doesn’t much care. (by Michael Zorn)

(3) Cannes Lions 2009: Who will be the big winners? (by Rob Schwartz)

(4) Disruption is liberation. (by Sven H. Becker)

(5) Let‘s do things we think we cannot do. (by John Hunt)

(6) Change: What business can learn from politics 2.0. (by Frank Striefler)

(7) The age of media arts. (by Lee Clow)

(8) The Zimbabwean Trillion Dollar Campaign. (by Gavin Heron)

(9) Act like lovers do. (by Stefan Schmidt)

(10) adidas Originals: Connection with the original tribe. (by Moritz Kiechle)

(11) Images travel but disruptive ideas thrive. (by Perry Valkenburg)

(12)  The beauty of big. (by Jean-Marie Dru)

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

A group of artists comes together in locations around the world to create art pieces that spell out the philosophy of Absolut Vodka. See something different in an ABSOLUT WORLD.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.