The Ad Industry in 2017: New Players, New Tech… and an end to Stealing Creativity?

Lulo Calió, ECD, FCB Buenos Aires

What excited me most in 2016 was the paradigm shift in our expertise. We do not compete exclusively among ourselves anymore. New players have been playing a leading role – even ordinary people in their homes. With improvisation, spontaneity, audacity and with no investment support, they can achieve excellent goals through their messages. I think 2017 is going to be a year of consolidation of this growing change. We must be attentive to this new open door, showing no fear and doing what we’ve been doing for centuries: selling ideas.

Mikael Nemeschansky, Creative Director, hasan&partners, Helsinki

There are a lot of emerging technologies that will change the way brands interact and engage with consumers. Everybody’s talking about Bots, AI and Machine Learning and it’s easy to see why this is interesting for marketeers. The Next Rembrandt in Cannes showed us the potential of combining machine learning and storytelling, but I think we can push AI and Machine Learning even further and and create even more value to individuals. On the other hand, VR and AR is growing huge and we will see even more creative ways to combine this storytelling into companies’ business. 

‘Blockchain’ is a buzzword on everybody’s lips, but we haven’t yet realised how big of a change it will be. Blockchains will disrupt ad networks and change the revenue streams. Basically, we will see a huge amount of new breed services and don’t need a third party any more. This will result in even more trust to the hands of the brands and brands will need to think about their values (ethically) in a totally new way.

Bruno Lambertini, CEO, Circus

At Circus, we don’t believe in the traditional agency model – and I think it’s in for a shake up this year. This was one of our goals that we had many years ago when we were planning the foundation of our agency.

Circus was founded as a ‘big tent’ to welcome ‘freaks’ and misfits that didn´t ‘fit’ at traditional workplaces. We created a unique eco-system that helps team members integrate their personal development into their professional growth, to unleash their full potential and create ground-breaking ideas. We are a multicultural, fully integrated digital agency that partners with its clients to develop high-impact ideas, strategies and content that win in the attention economy.

As a micro-network that operates under the ‘one single office’ concept, most of our projects or always on relationships are handled by multidisciplinary teams from various offices being led by the ‘owner’ of the project. This is an important note, since there are many questions related to the ‘presenting office’, it’s key to keep in mind that we believe in collaborative processes and having the best talent available for the success of the relationships. 

We are to be the agency that best understands consumers living in the digital / connected world and best understands how to leverage big data and high impact creativity to reach them with the right message, at the right place, at the right moment. In our perspective this is the model that will be able to survive – not only the next 12 months, but further – because it’s intrinsically adapted to change with the constant and abrupt changes of this new era.

Darryl Mascarenhas, Executive Creative Director, Spontaneous

The continued growth of emerging VR platforms is also a talking point for 2017. The core question for brands is one of actual value – does investing in content creation for these isolated viewing experiences translate into a quantifiable ROI or are these platforms just shiny new tech like 3D televisions? 

AR technology has also made strides in contributing to the changing media landscape where people can interact with messaging and content, driving the experience they want rather than viewing things passively. 

MR platforms like Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens could also become legitimate channels for brands to publish content on. These mediums purport to actualise futuristic ways of blending the world of atoms with the world of bits. 

In production of content, the advancement of camera sensor technology is allowing video to be captured at much higher resolutions – 4K, 6K and 8K. Post-production pipelines will be forced into an infrastructure upgrade to handle larger streams of data and processing. 

Gilles Boisselet, CSO & Creative Partner, UNIT9

Everyone in the industry needs to pay for creativity instead of stealing it through fake partnerships and triple bids. Creativity is what brands buy; it's what drives us, and it's our beacon of light. We need to nurture it and develop it. This one pillar should be our common thread, our relationship to each other and, somehow, our currency.