Oliver Beeston: The Impact of Combining Technology and Creativity

Oliver Beeston or better known as Ollie, executive creative director and creative partner at independent agency REUNION, brings an utterly unique level of creativity to the industry.

Ollie blends his previous experience in agency land with his learnings from his time being a creative lead for the metaverse into his new position at REUNION. The approach is already providing results for REUNION’s most recent campaign for Red Balloon, and the seamless integration of AI imagery. 

During his time as creative lead at the metaverse, he learnt a myriad of skills involving the links of virtual reality, mixed reality, and designed specifically for the Oculus Quest Pro that was launched at Meta Connect 2022. 

Ollie tells LBB’s Casey Martin why human insight is the most vital advantage we have within the industry. 

LBB> Firstly, as a child were you the creative one scribbling in margins or were you moreof a strategic child with a well organized plan?

Ollie> Absolutely the former, in fact I’d draw on anything I could get my hands on. In the end I was a fairly average student in most subjects apart from art, where I was dux. I went to university to study classical drawing and printmaking, majoring in lithography. It seemed like a good idea to do what I enjoyed.

LBB> Going from agency land to the metaverse would have been a massive leap, what did you learn during your time as the APAC metaverse creative lead?

Ollie> The idea of the metaverse has copped a lot of flak in the last couple of years, likely because most people expected it to be here within just a few months when really it’s at least 10-15 years away. People also tend to think of it as a single virtual experience or product which is probably a result of Meta’s focus on its Horizon Worlds platform. In reality the metaverse is just the next phase of the mobile internet - what comes after the mobile phone, and how do we experience what the internet will become? 

If you’ve ever used Alexa to add milk to your shopping list, if you’ve ever used turn-by-turn navigation in Google Maps, if you’ve ever used IKEA’s app to see if a piece of virtual furniture fits in your living room then you’ve experienced the metaverse. Not glamorous, but these experiences all rely on blurring the lines between the virtual and physical worlds.

Each phase of the internet had its own primary experience. Web 1.0 was a one-way street, no ‘write’ capability, thus no interactivity and it was experienced through desktop computers. Web 2.0 gave us read/write capability, thus interactivity, internet banking, social media, the Harlem Shake and trolling people in the comments. Today we primarily experience it via mobile. 

The next phase of the web, what we call Web 3.0 or decentralised web, is being built on the Blockchain, so we’re seeing early uses of this with the trials and tribulations of Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and smart contracts. 

The big question is how we will all experience this next phase. Sure we’ll still use smartphones, but something else will inevitably come along. Right now there is a very disparate group of nascent technologies that give us the opportunity to realise ideas in totally new ways today. 

Existing open-source technologies like WebXR, Pixel streaming via Unity and Unreal Engine, real time 3D capture technologies like NERFs & Gaussian Splats allow us to increasingly enable interactivity in ways which feel at once frictionless and kind of magical. It’s the sum of all of these experiences that we’ll eventually call the metaverse. It’s not a place but more like a state of affairs. 

In terms of thinking about creativity, we’ve all moved from viewers to doers, and we’re now experiencing content, not just watching it. Really there’s no such thing as an ‘audience’ anymore, just participants. 

With this in mind we need to rethink creativity in the metaverse. We need new ways of storytelling. Just as the rise in short form, mobile first video has moved us from linear to nonlinear story arcs, from 16:9 to 9:16 we need to rethink what interactivity does to our ideas? 

How do you write a narrative for an experience where people can start where they want, choose the order of how they participate and ultimately drive the results of the idea? The three guiding principles for guiding creative thinking in the metaverse are what are called the three ‘C’s : 

Co-presence - The ability to participate in a shared experience virtually with someone who isn’t physically there

Continuity - The ability to take experiences and assets wherever you go, regardless off platform or app

Co-creation - The ability to build and influence these experiences together 

LBB> What are your thoughts on combining creativity and technology? Do you believe that they both serve to enhance each other?

Ollie> The short answer is that technology should always serve the creative. The long answer is that technology can be a misleading term. As creatives we’re taught to think in the context of boxes to tick - TV, radio, print, OOH, Digital display, but these are all essentially technologies. However social media isn’t a technology, it’s a behaviour. When you start thinking about your work in that way it opens up a whole world of opportunities. 

I originally moved to Facebook to learn how to make work for tiny screens. What I actually learned is to put the smartphone to one side and start with thinking about what people are doing, online or offline. 

I think of social media as “what becomes of an idea when you put it into the hands of your audience”. How does the idea live or die by their participation? How does interaction fuel the idea? When you take this perspective you begin to understand the social aspect of ideas like Skinny Mobile’s “Phone it in”, “Best Job in the World”, or even “Live AID”, an idea that lived in culture well before the advent of mobile phones or Instagram, but was incredibly interactive. 

Essentially there’s no point to employing tech for tech’s sake. You need to be facilitating behaviour. 

LBB> What skills did you take from agency land into the metaverse and vice versa, what skills have you taken back to the world of advertising?

Ollie> The one thing that will never change is the need for a true human insight, a truth that people can grab onto and relate to, that’s what I took to Meta and all of my best work relied on it. You can’t start with a small screen and work outwards, you need to start with being human and work backwards. 

The biggest takeaway from Meta was a bigger consideration around behaviour I mentioned above. What are people already doing offline or online that you can tap into? How can you even be useful to them? If you can develop an idea which exists at the intersection of existing behaviour then you don’t need to make other ads to drive anyone anywhere. 

We spend most of our time developing disruptive campaigns which ask people to undertake unlikely journeys to find our work. When we get it right we give people a reason to want to be part of it and end up with things like Nike “Chalkbot” or even the Bunnings Sausage Sizzle. 

LBB> When it comes to traditional forms of advertising, TVC’s, print, radio etc… which one brings you the most joy?

Ollie> I think from a craft perspective there’s something special about film, the process from ideation to production and the sheer diversity of collaboration is really enjoyable.

LBB> What are your thoughts on using AI to enhance a TVC or print/social campaign? And how can creatives use AI to their advantage?

Ollie > At REUNION we’re open to any and all tools at our disposal to develop and execute ideas. AI is just another tool in that suite. Our recent campaign for Redballoon used generative AI in part to help develop a series of images which captured the feeling of an unforgettable experience both in the moment and in memory. From a logistical standpoint, AI was the single biggest factor in developing a campaign that would have otherwise been impossible for the budget. 

Aside from execution, one of the most promising applications for AI is how it can compliment the ideation and inspiration process. I know of several creatives who now regularly include generative AI in their workflow when brainstorming visual elements like thematic influences, abstract design elements, textures, packing, storyboards, character and environmental design. 

LBB> Virtual production is something that is still very new within the production sphere. We are slowly seeing more and more LED light stages being used for TVC’s, do you think this will continue to be a trend or has this begun to die out now that AI is the topic on everyone’s lips?

Ollie> We recently used Virtual Production to capture Redballoon’s entire suite of Christmas film assets and found it gave us a level of control and flexibility that would have otherwise been impossible with traditional film. 

Virtual Production is set to upend our whole industry, with AI only supercharging the trend. The number of LED stages are exploding locally with the likes of SteelBridge in Brisbane and NantStudios in Melbourne being the most prominent, but in reality the creative potential of Virtual Production is enormous even without the physical aspect of it.  

Consider the release of Unreal Engine 5 last year and the fact that Epic has now established an entire division specialising in developing virtual automotive content that is indistinguishable from traditional footage. Likewise agencies like Impossible Objects and Hidden Switch out of the States have been using VP to blur the lines between ad content and interactive experience for some time now. 

I believe we’re entering an era where rather than develop a ‘matching luggage’ suite of different assets for different formats, we can now use VP to create a single virtual project which can be applied to different media in a truly integrated way across film, social, digital OOH, web, owned assets and interactive activations. 

Imagine an automotive ad where the colour, trim style of the vehicle changes on BVOD in response to how the audience interacts with it on mobile. Perhaps the outfits, styles and colours across a major fashion campaign change minute by minute based on how their social audience is interacting with it. Or a tourism campaign in digital OOH might always show the same scene, but match the time of day and weather to real time data from FIJI or Hawaii. 

LBB> On a recent episode of Glow Up on Netflix, we saw designs created in order to match the runway looks for the Metaverse Fashion Week. Do you think this blur between reality and the digital world is something we're going to see more of as time progresses?

Ollie > I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this. Effectively you’re talking about digital twinning, something we usually see employed when trying to predict the behavior of a physical object or process. 

The promise of the Metaverse and the technology that underpins it is that the nature of digital ownership and identity will be expanded. So if I create or buy something virtual, I can then take that virtual item, experience or asset across platforms no matter where I go. It’s a bit like buying a film on Apple and then seeing it show up on Netflix. That openness should incentivize people to participate more in the digital economy.

The other aspect to this is that with the Blockchain we now have a secure ledger which enables us to manage digital ownership in a way we couldn’t before. So not only can we apply unique real world skills to virtual experiences, but we can retain ownership of what we create in that space. 

I’d say we’re already in the era where advertising is adapting to this trend. Brands like Nike, Coca~Cola, Gucci and Disney have all developed virtual versions of physical goods. Likewise, Australian digital artists like Mikaela Stafford & Helena Dong have been blazing the trail for creators in working with brands like Mecca, Coachella and Dior. 

My perspective on this is that not everything will need to be replicated for a digital platform, in fact the fundamental rule for brands is not to replicate your real world presence, but to replicate your real-world promise. 

LBB> Finally, if you had to describe your job to someone outside of the industry, what would you say?

Ollie> Our agency, REUNION, helps solve business and communications challenges in a connected way using creativity. My personal role is to manage and curate the overall creative output of the agency.