With Great Creativity Comes Great Return

Chairman of Cannes Lions Terry Savage visited Jakarta at the end of August and we had an opportunity to have a one on one chat with the man who is concerned but also excited about Indonesia’s future in the advertising world.

Terry was in town to talk about the Cannes Lions competition to a number of advertising professionals and encourage Indonesian agencies to look harder into their portfolios and submit far more work for consideration. In recent years Indonesia has consistently won awards at the event but in very small numbers and Savage thinks that it’s due to lack of confidence in the work that Indonesians have produced.

During the talk, he compared Indonesia’s achievements with that of Peru, a much smaller country and with far fewer advertising and creative agencies but with so many more achievements and awards. Savage thinks that opportunities exist for Indonesia’s creative minds to explore the various categories in the competition including the digital categories, not just the traditional print and broadcast.

In this interview, Savage reiterated on some of those points and shared his thoughts about creating work with the aim to win awards as opposed to work that aim to sell products. What it comes down to, according to Savage, is that creative professionals must be able convince the clients that more creative work will give a better return on investment than poor creative work and there is a mounting evidence to that position.

Savage also said that there is one key thing that Indonesian creative agencies must do to push the country’s potential in becoming a powerhouse in the creative industry. We’ll leave you to find out what it is by watching the video.