执行创意总监 | EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
韦柯广告 | WIEDEN+KENNEDY
PN11 SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

Finish this sentence: “Kids these days,…”

“In a recent research group, a group of kids were asked when they actually go online. There was no response. Just blank stares. After the session, one kid went to the researcher and told him, “I didn’t answer the question because it’s a weird question. I’m always online.” Kids these days write love letters with SMS instead of calligraphy. In my opinion, this is not necessarily a bad thing. This just means there are going to be some crazy ideas coming from them that could never have come from my generation. Actually, I am pretty excited to see this.”

How do you feel about non-advertising expressions of creativity in a portfolio? For example, photography or poetry?

“I never expect young people to show me print ads. Because this is not how they live. I want to see poems written in keyboard symbols. I want to see robots. A portfolio full of ads just tells me that the kid is very good at doing homework, but not necessarily a creative person in life.”

In general, how well do you think ad schools are preparing students for the business? What could they be doing better?

“Unfortunately, I haven’t met a lot of great advertising graduates in China so far. Most of the student portfolios I’ve seen have really nice crafted print ads done in a familiar format. But it doesn’t tell me who they are, what they like, or how they live as a creative person. This is crucial to me because if a person isn’t passionate about creativity, he/she will soon get tired of starting things from scratch everyday. And this is how an advertising creative lives.”

What single piece of advice would you give a young creative before he or she sits down with you at PN11?

“So if there was one single piece of advice I’d give, it’s to be honest with yourself. For two reasons. Only when you’re honest with yourself can you start expressing yourself. This is also when ideas that truly belong to you start coming out from you heart. Also, a good presentation is intrinsically a form of a good ad. There is always a truth behind every amazing ad.”

CREATIVE DIRECTOR
OGILVY & MATHER ADVERTISING, BEIJING
PN11 BEIJING HOST
__________________________

What single piece of advice would you give a young creative before he or she sits down with you at PN11?

“Get your book ready and make a deep impression in the first 5 minutes. Don’t show all your drawings from your kindergarten (which I am sure your parents are really proud of). Show only the best of the best you got. Remember you have only 15 minutes. Stop talking at 10 minutes; you want to hear some advice from the creative director too.”

How do you know when you’ve just seen the best idea you’ve ever seen?

“I get butterflies in my stomach and I wish I was the one who thought of it!”

How do you stay inspired and motivated yourself?

“Make sure you take a day break once a week. Rest, rejuvenate, do the things you enjoy outside work. I guarantee that you will live longer and it’s unlikely you will burn out.”

how do you feel about non-advertising expressions of creativity in a portfolio? for example, photography or poetry?

“These expressions are all part of story-telling. It gives a flavor what kind of stories one can create. ”

List three adjectives that describe the ultimate junior creative.

“great, story, teller.”

The secret to making great ads is…

“…use your common sense. ”

大中华区合伙人/创意主席 | CREATIVE CHAIRMAN / GREATER CHINA PARTNER
M&C SAATCHI AEIOU
PN11  SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

How many pieces should be in a portfolio? How many campaigns?

“3 campaigns and 5 singles.”

Finish this sentence: “If a kid isn’t/doesn’t _______, they are really going to have a tough time in this business.”

“learn how to listen”

Who was your biggest creative idol when you broke into the business? How did he or she influence you?

“Tom McElligot, one of the 3 founders of Fallon McElligot & Rice, now Fallon Worldwide. Tom once told an Inc.Magazine interviewer that his intention was to give clients the kind of advertising that “Makes the palms sweat a little or make you a bit nervous.” He added, “In my opinion at least, these are the only ads worth running.”

When reviewing a portfolio with a young creative, are you more of the type to look at the entire thing before making comments or asking questions, or do you prefer to chat and inquire throughout the process?

“Chat and inquire through the process.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or worse?

“Put only that one piece in your portfolio.”

How do you know when you’ve just seen the best idea you’ve ever seen?

“I wish that it’s my idea!”

天联广告大中华区执行创意总监 | EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR – GREATER CHINA

天联广告 | BBDO GREATER CHINA
PN11 SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

If you’ve been to Portfolio Night before, how would you describe it to a fellow CD who has never been?

“It is a win-win situation for both parties, because it is not just about mentoring the junior, but also about getting to know what’s in the minds of today’s youth in terms of brand, trend, technology and topic, etc.”

What is the stupidest thing somebody has done to get you to see them or their Work?

“Someone sent me an interesting DM to ask for an interview session, but didn’t leave behind any contact number or email.”

How many pieces should be in a portfolio? How many campaigns?

“As the students only have 15 minutes to present their work, I would recommend keeping it within 2 campaigns. That way they can have some time to hear what the creative director says about their work and to have a discussion.”

What’s the first thing a junior needs to know about working at your agency?

“Find out which brands my agency is handling, and what kind of work have we produced, to understand whether we are the right agency for him or her to join.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or worse?

“I would ask him/her whether that phenomenal piece was done before or after the mediocre work, followed by “what happened?”

Portfolio Night is as much about selling yourself as it is getting advice. Combine the two: what’s the best piece of advice you can give about selling yourself and your ideas?

“Use your ideas to sell yourself.”

COPYWRITER
SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

What are you hoping to experience at Portfolio Night 10?
“Meeting new people who have different background always makes me excited. Being a professional copywriter is difficult, but I believe that whoever is prepared for must have an open mind and be very passionate. For me, since I’m not living in china, and the only one attendee from Korea, it wasn’t easy decision to attend portfolio night Shanghai, but I believe that whether or not this event will give me a real job, it would broaden my sight, and will be a beneficial back ground for me. So I’m very excited to meet all the portfolio night people. See you soon!”

Can creativity be taught?
“Creativity is not weird, strange thinking. Creativity is learning way of seeing a world. If a creative doesn’t know how to see the world in various perspectives, she/he can’t read the insight, so that means they aren’t qualified as a creative, and creativity isn’t a thing that suddenly comes out. The person who thinks a lot, and tries to get information a lot, can make creative ideas with good quality. So, I think creativity can be taught, but it could be taught only for the person who has a “ready to learn” attitude, and are considerate.”

When did you realize you wanted to get into advertising?
“For me, ‘Life and work are exactly divided’ isn’t attractive at all.
As a copywriter, getting the best idea sometimes requires a lot of time and effort, but I’ve realized that i’m enjoying that process even though it is not always exciting. Also, trying to be copywriter makes my life more enjoyable. After I decided to be a copywriter, I tried to read more books, watch more movies, and tried to have diverse hobbies. It isn’t apart from my own life, and when I realized that, I decided being an copywriter is a thing that I have to accomplish..”

Name three adjectives that best describe you.
“Charming, passionate, open-minded.
I’m charming, passionate, and open-minded. I’m ready to meet diverse people, and ready to work in a very fast moving field. I don’t judge different ideas, and I’m not easily exhausted. May

 you want to meet me again! ”

中国区创意官 / CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER
 扬罗必凯 / Y&R CHINA
SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT

__________________________

What was the reaction you got, the advice you received the very first time you showed your own book?
“I was asked me how long it had taken to come up with one of the campaigns, and then finish the images. I said 3 months. I didn’t get the job.”

What the coolest thing somebody has done to get your attention (besides having an amazing portfolio)?
“There was a guy who was not in the creative department, yet passionately wanted to be a copywriter. I asked him where was his book and he said he didn’t have one. I said go create one then. So he took live briefs from the creative department every week and worked on them at night after work. And ‘every week’ he sent me a stack of ideas. He did this without fail for 6 months. I took him on.”

Finish this sentence: “Kids these days,…”
“Kids these days…shouldn’t rush to a mac to solve everything.”

List three adjectives that describe the ultimate junior creative.
“Hungry. Hungry. Hungry”

意总监 | CREATIVE DIRECTOR
天联广告 | BBDO BEIJING
BEIJING PARTICIPANT
__________________________

What are you hoping to experience at Portfolio Night?
“Some good choices.”

What single piece of advice would you give a young creative before he or she sits down with you at PN10?
“Remember, the creative directors care more about not who you will be after years but what you can do for them in days.”

Do you prefer to look at work in a digital format, such as on a laptop, a tablet or an iPad, or do you prefer a physical portfolio?
“Digital format, surely, low-carbon wise.”

In general, how well do you think ad schools are preparing students for the business? What could they be doing better?
“Forget all of the useless theories. Watch more, do more.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or ! worse?
“Donʼt put everything but just those you think good into your portfolio. We are not doing a 360 presentation. By the way, we sell 360 ideas to clients because they are good but not everything is included.”

执行创意总监 | EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
天联广告 | BBDO
SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

What’s the coolest thing somebody has done to get your attention (besides having an amazing portfolio)?
“Asking me to hire him for free, only pay him back after three months provided am satisfied with his performance.”

What is the stupidest thing somebody has done to get you to see them or their work?
“Sending me a nice direct mail with resume, but forgot to leave behind the mobile number nor email.”

Finish this sentence: “If a kid isn’t/doesn’t _______, they are really going to have a tough time in this business.”
“If a kid doesn’t know the reason why they want to enter advertising industry, they are really going to have a tough time in this business.”

When reviewing a portfolio with a young creative, are you more of the type to look at the entire thing before making comments or asking questions, or do you prefer to chat and inquire throughout the process?
“The first type—look at the entire book first, chat later.”

A top-notch portfolio is crucial, but how much does personality count towards making a hire?
“As crucial.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or worse?
“What happened?”

Portfolio Night is as much about selling yourself as it is getting advice. Combine the two: what’s the best piece of advice you can give about selling yourself and your ideas?
“Use your ideas to sell yourself.”

How do you know when you’ve just seen the best idea you’ve ever seen?
“When I hope the owner can credit my name by helping him to enlarge the logo 10% bigger.”

王康伦 | CONAN WANG

创意总监 | CREATIVE DIRECTOR
W+K上海 | WIEDEN+KENNEDY
SHANGHAI PARTICIPANT
__________________________

What are your biggest pet peeves about the work in most junior portfolios?
“Having work that they didn’t actually do. And I’ve seen a handful. Another pet peeve is putting in work that they admire. Come on, don’t be lame.”

How important is it for a portfolio to be highly polished?
“If there were 2 creatives interviewing for a job and they both had amazing ideas. I’d pick the more polished one over the other.”

What would get your attention more, a portfolio full of amazing ‘traditional’ work (print, poster, outdoor) or a portfolio of pretty good boundary stretching work (digital, interactive, wild new guerrilla or social media concepts etc.)?
“Good ideas are good ideas. It doesn’t matter as long as the ideas are good.”

How many pieces should be in a portfolio? How many campaigns?
“Quality over quantity. I was always taught that I will be judged by my weakest piece.”

What’s the first thing a junior needs to know about working at your agency?
“Get ready to work hard, experiment, listen, be vocal, and learn. Question why someone would care and give a shit about your idea.”

When reviewing a portfolio with a young creative, are you more of the type to look at the entire thing before making comments or asking questions, or do you prefer to chat and inquire throughout the process?
“I personally like to ask questions if I see something interesting. I like to know what people were thinking of when they came up with the idea and how they came up with the idea. If I don’t ask questions, then you’re in trouble.”

A top-notch portfolio is crucial, but how much does personality count towards making a hire?
“Of course the work is the most important, but no one likes assholes or prima donnas. It’s just too much drama. Focus on the work and lose the attitude.”

What would you say to a person with one phenomenal piece in their portfolio, but everything else in his or her book is mediocre or worse?
“Start over.”

________________

Portfolio Night: Did you always know you wanted to be in advertising, or what were your childhood career aspirations?

Graham: I very nearly joined the Navy. My dad was in the Navy, before he became a butler, so it really appealed to me. I was also interested in Music and Art, so eventually I went to Art School and a few years later someone told me about this career called “Advertising.” It sounded amazing.

Portfolio Night: Describe the moment you broke into the biz; did you fall in by happy coincidence or deliberately by choice?

Graham: Getting a job was almost impossible. After about 118 interviews, I went to the best agency in the world: Collett, Dickenson and Pearce. They were doing the most amazing work. My copywriter and I turned up to see the Creative Director, who liked our book but he said they didn’t take on students. They were looking for a more senior team with a lot more experience, he told us. The next day we returned, having dyed our hair white, painted wrinkles on our faces and clutching a couple of walking sticks. We said to the receptionist, “Tell the Creative Director that two old men have come to see him.” The story went round like wildfire, they all thought it was hilarious and the next day they hired us.

Portfolio Night: Talk about your early years in the industry. What were your favorite projects or campaigns? Are there any anecdotes that stand out in memory?

Graham: The advertising world then was full of great characters and stories. There was a lot of fun going on. I remember Tony Kaye started his directing career. He didn’t have money to set up fancy offices, so he famously walked around Soho clutching a layout pad. He called his production company “Wandering Jew.”  He took out ads in every national newspaper saying that he was the most important British film director since Alfred Hitchcock. Later, he took a plastic blow up E.T. doll (the Spielberg variety) everywhere he went, and occasionally sent E.T. off to production meetings on his own in a cab. Someone at the other end used to take him out of the cab and prop him up on a seat in the meeting.

It was a fun time but we also worked very hard. Only the very best work was bought by our Creative Directors and in those days, once that happened, the clients nearly always approved it. Well, we did also have Frank Lowe — possibly the greatest ever account man in the world– who could sell any piece of work.

Portfolio Night: Who is or was your biggest mentor?

Graham: I had a few, from Paul Arden to Tim Mellors, Tony Kaye, Neil Godfrey, Peter Saville, and the list goes on…

Portfolio Night: Tell me about your days at Paul Weiland. What coolest thing you worked on there?

Graham: Paul was a great ad man. He had written some of the best and funniest ads in British advertising and had directed half of them, too, following very much in the path of Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, The Commitments). Paul made some of the best and funniest commercials in the UK in the 80’s and 90’s, and gave me a lot of help in my early days directing.

I remember doing one spot for PPP, a private health insurance company. I wanted to shoot the whole commercial in X-ray, which was then impossible to do as a moving image. So I went to Heathrow airport and we put all these objects through the X-ray machine hundreds of times at every possible angle to create a database of images… the most unusual one being the skeleton of a man! Jon Hollis at Smoke and Mirrors (post house) then spent weeks putting the whole thing together to make it look as though it was all moving. We even created the effect of focus pulls. It was pretty incredible at the time and won a lot of awards.

Portfolio Night: Being the youngest ever President of D&AD is an incredible honor. What did this mean to you?

Graham: I was very proud to be voted in as President by my peers. I worked so hard not to let everyone down. One thing I introduced was the Art Direction category at D&AD, which is still going today. Another thing I did was to get a few famous names of people outside of advertising to sit on the juries. People like Damian Hirst on music videos (he had directed a few that year), Gilbert and George to judge illustration, and Will Self to sit on the copy jury. Some of the more conservative members of D&AD were outraged, but I didn’t really care. My point was that we all look to some of these people and their work for inspiration for our ideas. So why not include them?

The story became famous and made people outside the business aware of D&AD, and as a result, it raised all the sponsorship money we needed to keep going. In the end, Damian and the others decided not to do it, but I still think it was a good idea.

Portfolio Night: What inspired thefinktank? How does it live on today?

Graham: Thefinktank was, of course, based on my name as no one else could use it. I thought it was funny, especially as everyone used to take the piss out of my name when I was a kid. So it was kind of getting my own back. It was memorable though. It really only exists today as theartschool, which I am trying to do in China. This was an event we used to run every few months, where I invited anyone who wanted to come along for an afternoon of fun, talks, give out briefs and do book crits. We had some amazing speakers; I once got Gary Oldman to talk for three hours about his life and films, and also worked with Francis Ford Coppola. It was fantastic.

Portfolio Night: What are the highlights of your years at M&C Saatchi?

Graham: Building a great creative department and eventually becoming one of the most awarded agencies in London. To top it all off, the press ads I did for Dixons with Simon Dicketts topped the Gunn report in 2010 for most award print campaign in the world. Funny thing was that when I arrived at M&C, no one wanted to work on it!

[Show as slideshow]

Portfolio Night: What brought you to Ogilvy in China? What interested you about the market and opportunity there, and ultimately enticed you to leave London?

Graham: I was very happy at M&C Saatchi, but the phone rang one day and a headhunter told me about this job in Shanghai, overseeing 17 offices in China. It seemed a crazy idea at the time, and the fact I knew very little about place all appealed to me. I’m always telling people to get out of their comfort zone, so I decided to get out of mine. To date, I have no regrets.

Portfolio Night: Now that you are there, what are the most surprising things about the industry in China? What is the best thing about it?

Graham: I am surprised by how much the Chinese look up to Western brands. They have a big appeal. There are luxury brands stores in all the big cities, and Chinese people are prepared to pay extra money for them. This is interesting as local wages are not that high. A lot of shopping is done online, however, and people spend twice as much time there as they do in the USA.

I’m also surprised how rational most of the advertising is. Chinese consumers want to know what everything does and how it works, what’s in it for them and what not. But this is at the expense of perhaps more interesting, witty advertising with more emotional messages (although there recently seems to be a swing in that general direction).

But I believe that advertising is a means of educating people, too. Ogilvy has a very big reputation here, so I think we have a duty to put work out there that challenges people and makes them sit up and take notice. I’m always very aware that what we do has the power to change people’s behaviors, and thus change culture.

Portfolio Night: What are your goals for Ogilvy China in the next six months to a year?

Graham: I look after a number of offices here, but Shanghai and Beijing are the main focus right now. I’m making a lot of changes, especially in Shanghai, both to the restructuring of the agency and also around hiring new people. It’s about getting the right balance of expats and local talent. I want us to produce great work on famous brands, and work that will get people in China talking. Work like the CokeHands poster, which took a lot of seeking on my part, as I had to call every school in Hong Kong to find the young designer, Jonathan Mak, who designed CokeHands (he also created the Steve Jobs tribute design last fall).

Portfolio Night: Tell me a bit about the work and clients in China and your goals for both.

Graham: We have a great range of clients. Some are international, some are local. There are a lot of opportunities here to produce great work if we earn the trust from our clients. Local clients want highly creative work, but sometimes it’s a matter of helping them understand how to get it.

Advertising here is pretty new compared to the rest of the world. There is a different set of problems here. China being so vast is one of them. What works in the North of the country may not work in the South, East or West. The audience is less sophisticated. They tell me local clients are very tough, but I’ve seen equally tough clients in London. It’s a case of being patient and earning great working relationships with them. I’m optimistic that we can produce work that will trouble juries in Cannes in the next few years.

Portfolio Night: Across all disciplines, careers and specific jobs, what is the coolest project or campaign you ever worked on?

Graham: Sony Playstation. I produced a poster that was basically a microscopic shot of blood. If you looked closely at the image, you could see that the blood cells were in the shapes of circles, crosses, triangles and squares. It won a lot of awards. The best thing about it though was it was MY BLOOD. I went to the hospital and they took an armful of the red stuff, and I then retouched in the symbols. I always say I give blood for my work. In this case it was literally true.

Portfolio Night: What is the gadget you cannot live without?

Graham: My Lego watch.