Page 28 - AdNews Magazine Jan-Feb 2021

Investigation
people, not just professionals, become more creative because of the pandemic which forced them into the boredom of lockdowns. One thing this lead to is a rise in domestic travel, something that brands are picking up on and using in their campaigns.
“I'm actually really excited about people traveling around Australia because it’s been low down on the bucket list,” he says.
“People are going to be forced to experience what an amazing country we actually live in. And that's going to broaden people's minds and give them that essence of living life.
“There’s a lot of creativity going into building vans, travel- ling throughout Australia, and doing things they’d always wanted to do, such as writing, playing music and all these amazing things. So I think that will broaden people's minds, and people are going to have a little bit more work-life balancing going on.
“People are putting more time into that part of their brain which frees up creativity.”
For most people, creativity has been used to solve the problem of boredom in lockdown, from creating TikTok challenges, binging Netflix, or picking up a new hobby. For the creative industry, Deloitte’s Lawson says now is the time for it to get its “act together” and help solve the big- ger issues once the pandemic is over.
“Creativity provided the spark that ignited the industrial revolu- tion that’s now changing the cli- mate, and it continues to help sati- ate our constant hunger for new things,” he says.
“So it really was creativity that got us into this mess so it sure as hell better get us out of it. We just need to apply creativity in more interest- ing and purposeful ways. I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, history’s great- est commercial creative, developed both the wheellock; a mechanical method to ignite gunpowder, which facilitated the widespread use of personal guns, and, the Mona Lisa.
“We’re clearly not da Vinci, but I think you get the point. We all have the capacity for both, and we just need to point creativ- ity in the right direction. And now is the time to do it.”
“The Black Death directly led to
the Renaissance. So right now, I’m really hoping for a re-Renaissance.”
Deloitte Digital’s chief creative officer and partner Matt Lawson
Advertising agencies already recognise this need to use creativity beyond traditional advertising. For example, many had to help shift a business’ activities to online, the only place they could reach their consumers, almost overnight. WhiteGrey developed a virtual open day for Western Sydney University after it was unable to hold its usual phys- ical event. The online event featured more than 30 concurrent lives- treams, more than 100 moderators, and 2000 chat conversations with more participants from the previous year’s on-campus event.
Australia’s big holding companies, like businesses around the world, assumed the worst when the extent of the pandemic become clear. Almost immediately, agencies cut staff hours and pay, and redundancies were rolled out. However, almost a year after the pan- demic first began, there are signs Australia has performed better than expected. For example, Interpublic Group posted net revenue of US$1.95 billion for the third quarter in 2020, beating analyst expec- tations. WPP Australia and New Zealand also committed to returning the majority of the salary sacrifices made by staff during the pan- demic after the company reported stronger earnings for the September quarter.
Tesoriero had already been seeing an increase in activity from brands late last year as they recovered from the lockdowns — his team grew from 65 to 100 throughout the year after a couple of key business wins. But he says the real action starts this year.
“Our January is a pretty exciting time for us,” he tells AdNews.