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Creative Debates: Agencies only talk about innovation

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This year, Creativepool is back at Spikes Asia; the region's oldest and most prestigious festival of creativity, which has now grown into a glorious three-day celebration of inspiration and creative achievement and an unrivalled platform from which major and upcoming player alike can network and exchange ideas. Part of the esteemed Lions Festivals group, and taking place in the bustling business centre of Singapore, the festival kicked off on Wednesday, September 21, with more than 1,800 delegates descending on an intensive programme of seminars and talks, which will culminate in the Spikes Asia Awards evening tonight, September 23. The award's drew a record 5,132 entries from 23 countries this year, so 98 industry experts have been roped in to sort the great from the outstanding!

We managed to catch up with a few of these experts, and trade a few words with them as part of our continuing Creative Debates series, fresh from its lauded success in Cannes. Our second Spikes debate, in collaboration with jones knowles ritchie, breaches the incendiary topic; “Agencies Only Talk About Innovation.” Speaking FOR the motion was Radhe Vaswani, the Managing Director for MullenLowe Profero in south-east Asia, ‪Joeri Schilders, Innovation Consultant at Propellorfish and Marc Curtis, the Head of TMW Labs at TMW Unlimited. AGAINST the motion, we had Grant Hunter, the regional ECD for iris Worldwide, Tara Hirebet, the Head of Asian Consumer Intelligence and Analysis for Asian Word, and Ferdi Wieling, the Vice President/ECD at Critical Mass APAC. As ever, our own Michael Tomes, Founder of Creativepool, moderated the debate.

Innovation has to be in the DNA. A mindset in the way you operate as an agency” Radhe Vaswani

Radhe kicked off proceedings by declaring that innovation is not only elusive, but that it's a term used far too loosely in the modern world, and went on to discuss how agencies are too focused on sorting a clients problems and not focused enough on the human problems. Grant then took the reigns, and began by declaring that, as iris declares itself as a “Global innovation network,” he'd be something of a hypocrite to stand for the motion. He then discussed his agency's own innovative “Nursery” innovation incubator, and declared that we should be looking not at innovation as a buzzword, but should instead be looking for meaningful innovation. 

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For innovation to really work it needs to lie at the core of the organisation” Ferdi Wieling

Joeri was up next, thanking Grant for giving him some hope for the future of innovation, but said he voted to agree with the notion, because a lot of agencies love to have the “Innovation” title, but tend to confuse it with creativity. He also added how agencies now tend to hire from within, which creates an “Inbred family,” that doesn't necessarily facilitate an innovative, forward-thinking atmosphere.

Tara, meanwhile, initially predicted that she was going to be on the other side of the debate, but found that she had more points to make against the motion. She feels that agencies are capable of innovation, but that their business models and the cultures being created simply don't allow for it. She also argued that these agencies might outwardly look like they are putting a lot of stock into innovation, but they are not physically putting the investment into it, even though they do have the means and the creative energy to do it.

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Creative people by their nature are driven to innovate and look at old problems with fresh eyes” Grant Hunter

After Tara's impassioned speech, Marc, who was unsure whether two minutes was really enough (though that's kind of the point Mark!), first remarked how listening to his fellow debaters reminded him of the William Gibson quote; “The future is here, it's just not very evenly distributed.” He argues that, whilst innovation does involve working with startups and utilising new technology, that's only a small part of the picture, and not enough larger agencies appear to be understanding this, and are, instead, too resistant to change.

Finally, Ferdi pulls “A little bit of a 180,” and argues that innovation is not only about the multi-billion dollar ideas, and that change doesn't necessarily have to be about the big headline changes, but can also be about the smaller improvements. He also argues that there is little inherit value in the seed of an idea alone unless it's given the room (and more importantly, investment) to grow. Michael then finally leads the team in an open discussion regarding why innovation is such a big topic in 2016.

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If innovation is about finding news ways of doing things then agencies, I think, are failing” Marc Curtis

It's another thrilling debate that is only the tip of the iceberg, with plenty more to come from Creativepool at this year's Spikes Asia. You can see and hear our first Spikes debate, “Awards Are Just For Egos,” and we have also conducted a fresh set of our famed Black Cab Interviews.

All debates can also be downloaded via our iTunes podcasts.

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Creative Debates act as a tonic to the endless one-way talks that plague our sector. The debates tackle some of the most pressing and difficult questions and topics being faced by our industry. Modelled on the debates that everyone was put through during their time in school. The idea behind Creative Debates is to take a topic and 2 teams, then set up a debate covering both sides of the argument. The aim is to give a broader understanding of the topic for not only the participants, but Creativepool members and the creative industry as a whole. The debates are, as ever, lent an extra level of physicality immediacy by the “Yes” and “No” voting paddles.

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