The Four Key Takeaways from MAD STARS 2023

AI is not on the way – it’s here.

dob Studio Inc. CEO Jewook Oh will tell you that a KPOP artist who died in 2013 released a new song in 2022 that “made 7 million people cry with amazing performances”. How? AI, of course.

A virtual YouTuber who changes her face every year has become one of South Korea's leading ambassadors thanks to the groundbreaking work of dob Studios. dob’s ‘Virtual Human’ is changing the way we work, how we market, and how we communicate with audiences by live-mapping human faces in real-time.

Out of Home (OOH) advertising is arguably the oldest form of advertising, so you could be forgiven for not seeing its second coming on the horizon. But that is the exact assertion of the World Out of Home president Tom Goddard, who pointed the Mad Stars attendees to some recent examples of innovation and digitisation in the OOH landscape.

The reason for this? Simple messaging stands out. Now, global OOH spending is on the rise.

“The global OOH spend is about $36.2 billion annually,” Tom said, “with the largest region being APAC, at $16.2 billion.”

Social media campaigns and activations are also amplifying the effect of OOH campaigns.

“This amplification is now actually being costed into the value of OOH campaigns,” Tom said.

For Artwell Nwaila, head of creative for Google, Sub-Saharan Africa, marketers are using data all wrong. In a captivating presentation about leveraging data to amplify creativity in advertising, Artwell called on creatives to replace demographic-driven campaigns with intent-driven campaigns.

“When we are just doing creative for the sake of creative, we lose out on driving impact in a world where clients are struggling,” Artwell said.

Citing a recent poll, Artwell said that 81% of marketers feel their leadership is driving pressure on ROI, before continuing onto the point that the use of data at different stages in the creative process (which he outlined as briefing, development, retention, and post-campaign), is being misdirected by a focus on demographic data.

“Demographic information is almost useless,” Artwell said. “Don’t use data to blindly inform, use it to illuminate.”

The advertising landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years with the rise of data-driven decision-making, but many organisations still view data and creativity as separate entities in the advertising process.

By using data to enhance the creative process by providing insights into audience preferences, behaviours, and trends, creativity can bring data to life by weaving it into compelling stories that resonate with audiences. 

Understanding this symbiotic relationship is critical for driving success in today's advertising landscape.

While every marketing event has a keynote about the future, Fabio Seidl, the director of global creative development at Meta, said to the audience at Busan that our future is entirely up to us.

The future of business, creativity, and innovation generates curiosity but also anxiety. Fabio’s solution: simplify the future by working collectively to make creativity, emerging technology, platforms, and storytelling accessible and exciting to everybody.

Fabio’s blueprint for the future hinges around five points:

To him, there are three futures; the chosen, the uncontrollable, and the planned. And despite technological disruptions, the future is still in our hands.

“The higher the supply of AI,” Fabio said, “the higher the demand for human intelligence will be.”