Stapleton describes the book as a love letter to the industry, a collection of some of his best blogs \u2013 and a way that creatives could arm themselves, metaphorically speaking.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love creatives. I think they\u2019re the most magical, unicorn-like people, and they often get a rough deal. No one really appreciates them until they\u2019re in trouble \u2013 then they get the phone call.\u201d<\/p>\n
Damon Stapleton is one of New Zealand’s most respected advertising creatives, whose work extends across the globe. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham<\/p>\n
Stapleton, the Australia-New Zealand chief creative officer of Accenture-owned Droga5, has worked across multiple countries and agencies in a decorated career, collecting dozens of awards and an honour board of some of the globe\u2019s top brands, including BMW, Toyota, Nissan, Heineken, Visa, Cadbury, McDonald\u2019s and Adidas.<\/p>\n
Last month, he was at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an acceleration happening,\u201d Stapleton told Media Insider of seismic changes in the advertising industry. \u201cThe next five years will probably see more change than there has been in the last 50.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stapleton has been attending Cannes for some 20 years, and this year he served as a judge. He says while change has been underway for some years, this year\u2019s festival felt markedly different.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like the Palais is where it\u2019s still creative,\u201d he says, referring to Cannes\u2019 famous awards venue.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I would say the rest of Cannes is now technology.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a young man, you could actually go onto the beaches, but now every single beach is either Spotify or LinkedIn or Facebook or Google.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say there\u2019s a definite shift in terms of what is advertising, what\u2019s advertising going to become? And how do these two forces of technology and creativity work together?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spotify Beach zone during this year’s Cannes Lions festival in France. Photo \/ Getty <\/p>\n
The festival has increasingly become the venue for technology companies, data platforms, ad agencies, clients \u2013 \u201cthere are definitely more clients\u201d \u2013 consultants and others, many of whom have competing visions of the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are literally hundreds of people saying they\u2019ve got the answer,\u201d Stapleton said. \u201cMaybe five are snake-oil salesmen, and five do have the answer, but it\u2019s hard to tell who\u2019s who.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody\u2019s got things that they\u2019re trying, and then I think there\u2019s also a lot of conversations about how these things all join up. There are a lot more conversations now about platforms and creating stuff to be put across multiple touch points \u2013 it\u2019s not necessarily about creativity; it\u2019s more about organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI\u2019s influence on advertising<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly, artificial intelligence was a hot topic.<\/p>\n
Stapleton\u2019s own view is clear: AI will become another tool rather than a replacement for creativity.<\/p>\n
A Snapchat installation during the Cannes Lions Festival in Cannes in 2025. Big brands are increasingly courting social media stars, who descended on a major annual festival in France to pitch themselves to advertisers. Photo \/ The New York Times<\/p>\n
He draws a parallel with Photoshop\u2019s arrival in the 1990s. \u201cWhen Photoshop came out, staff members lined up outside the director\u2019s office to say Photoshop was cheating,\u201d he said. \u201cNow every single person in the world uses it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stapleton believes AI\u2019s biggest effect will be on the value of judgment. If everyone can generate images, videos and copy instantly, competitive advantage shifts from production to selecting the right ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the real question becomes about how it becomes people-centred, and what I mean by that is, you\u2019re going to have to have taste.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019ve got a million Picassos, then they don\u2019t have that much value. Being discerning and having taste when everybody can make these things is going to be important.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a certain amount of AI dread in the industry, but I think creatives just naturally start using new tools … and figure out what works.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s going to have AI, so it\u2019s not going to be this sort of wonder drug. Everyone\u2019s going to have it, so then it\u2019s \u2018what else do you do \u2013 what other magic tricks have you got?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
There was plenty of magic at Cannes.<\/p>\n
Stapleton, who was judging the craft category, awarded the Grand Prix award to De\u2019Longhi for its campaign in which it transformed five of its fully functional coffee machines into handcrafted miniature caf\u00e9s \u2013 to educate people that they could get the quality of coffee-shop coffee at home. A set designer from the Wes Anderson movies \u2013 including The Grand Budapest Hotel \u2013 helped create the mini coffee shops.<\/p>\n
The five De’Longhi coffee machines that were transformed into handcrafted miniature caf\u00e9s for its award-winning advertising campaign.<\/p>\n
Another big winner was a campaign for Wis\u0142a Krak\u00f3w, a struggling Polish football club, which came up with a unique campaign to get fans back through their gates.<\/p>\n
Its \u2018Lucky Fan Index\u2019 analysed more than 220,000 fan profiles against 63 home matches. \u201cEach fan received their own personal \u2018luck\u2019 score via a web application,\u201d reports agency WPP. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf they attended a match with a last-minute winning goal, their index went up. If they were present for a string of missed opportunities, it went down. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis data was then activated commercially. The luckiest fans were rewarded with VIP box upgrades, while the unluckiest received discounts on \u2018luckier\u2019 merchandise.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lucky Fan Index campaign at a Polish football club saw crowd attendances increase dramatically.<\/p>\n
Stapleton says: \u201cThey actually monetised luck. That\u2019s a great example of how creativity and technology or data can come together to create something fresh and new.\u201d<\/p>\n
While there were now some specific AI categories at Cannes, not many of the entries were awarded, says Stapleton. Judges had to determine whether they created something genuinely new or significantly better than what already existed.<\/p>\n
Stapleton acknowledges that some tasks within agencies will inevitably become automated. But he argues we have to zoom out from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is an advertising agency going to be in five years?\u201d he asked. \u201cThat\u2019s a much bigger question.\u201d<\/p>\n
In New Zealand in recent years \u2013 and especially as global holding companies have retrenched \u2013 we have witnessed the rise of independent agencies.<\/p>\n
Experienced talent has left larger holding companies to help launch or be a part of smaller, more agile businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cScale is an interesting conversation. For example, if content is now infinite \u2013 you can make infinite amounts of content \u2013 I think being nimble has real value. Being able to plug into, for example, in-house capability … there\u2019s a lot of value in being smaller.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trend has also been fuelled by significant job losses across major global advertising networks. While some creatives have successfully launched new ventures, Stapleton believes the human cost shouldn\u2019t be ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you talk about a holding company getting rid of 12,000 people, that\u2019s pretty extreme at a human level,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At the same time, he sees another major force emerging: the rise of creators. Accenture, for example, has just acquired Whalor in the US.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rise of creators is going to be one of the big trends going forward,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Damon Stapleton’s book title has its origins in what his grandfather, a Battle of Britain pilot, used to say to him.<\/p>\n
Yet despite all the technological disruption, Stapleton\u2019s central focus remains firmly rooted in creativity. Inspired by leaders such as David Droga, he believes the industry\u2019s future lies in making creativity more influential, not less.<\/p>\n
\u201cCreativity needs a seat at the board table,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
That means moving beyond advertising campaigns into product development, customer experience and business strategy itself.<\/p>\n
For New Zealand, Stapleton remains optimistic. He says the country still possesses exceptional creative talent and continues to produce work that competes on the world stage.<\/p>\n
The Australian Lamb advertising campaign.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s certainly illustrated in his own portfolio of work, from across the globe – including a campaign for the exiled The Zimbabwean newspaper, using real and practically useless over-inflated trillion-dollar notes under the Robert Mugabe regime; an Australian lamb campaign to drive up the country\u2019s \u2018Happiness List\u2019; and, in New Zealand, the Benee Bagels campaign for ASB and Youthline.<\/p>\n
ASB and Youthline’s Benee Bagels campaign involved a song to help relieve anxiety symptoms.<\/p>\n
Back to Stapleton\u2019s book, and that love letter to creatives.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes some pretty thick skin and a large amount of perseverance to be a creative in a world of critics, who never make mistakes because they never make anything,\u201d Stapleton wrote in his introduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere curators simply take other people\u2019s ideas and package them and expect to be adored.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s remember these are very low-risk endeavours. All they did was comment or explain. They wait for the blank piece of paper to be filled.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo here is to the explorers, the risk takers and the originators.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand\u2019s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stapleton describes the book as a love letter to the industry, a collection of some of his best…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1032,365,95,27245,41216,138,12974,33118,74857,10408,82110,262255,77629,1342,3273,2454,46323,2936,13620,19133,1073,130,3025,111,139,1536,69,1118,90,4517,9831,312,262254,131,1361,223,4504,42913,6123,1533,1530,2963],"class_list":["post-531426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-advertising","tag-ai","tag-and","tag-beyond","tag-bigger","tag-business","tag-change","tag-creative","tag-creatives","tag-creativity","tag-damon","tag-dread","tag-existential","tag-five","tag-future","tag-industry","tag-influential","tag-insider","tag-leading","tag-looking","tag-media","tag-more","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-past","tag-question","tag-says","tag-stapleton","tag-than","tag-that","tag-the","tag-theres","tag-undergo","tag-while","tag-will","tag-years","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}