Zahra Shahtahmasebi: Thanks for making the time to speak with me! Emotion was the foundation of the talk that you just gave. How can marketers in Aotearoa really lean into that, especially if it feels scary to them?<\/p>\n
John Mescall: You just need to do it. There\u2019s no secret. We do forget to centre the question: \u2018What do we want people to feel?\u2019<\/p>\n
We forget the very simple logic that people act on feelings. We want to believe we\u2019re more rational than we are. When you start talking about feelings, people are like \u2018oh they\u2019re just feelings\u2019. But they\u2019re everything; people go to war based on feelings.<\/p>\n
ZS: How do you think we got into this situation where logic presides over feelings?<\/p>\n
JM: Because we are taught from a very early age to not feel, but to think. The whole education system is based on knowledge and from a very early age, we come to accept that the path to success is knowing more. Feelings don\u2019t seem like a serious pursuit.<\/p>\n
ZS: One of the things that struck me about the Dumb Ways to Die campaign is that Melbourne Metro came and said, \u2018No other safety campaign has ever worked before\u2019. Do you think sometimes success is only born out of that kind of desperation?<\/p>\n
JM: Absolutely. Creativity is always a last resort for anyone because people are scared of it. It\u2019s not anyone\u2019s first instinct. Logic is always first. And that\u2019s why I say extreme pragmatism is an amazing starting point for great creativity. Because when it has to work, like if your life depends on something working, you will do anything. There is nothing too crazy if you believe it will work.<\/p>\n
When you look at brands with a long history of really great marketing, creativity is their first port of call. But look, you can\u2019t always be creative, we don\u2019t have the time to do that. The reality is that we have to do a lot of work where it just keeps the engine running. That\u2019s fine. We need to have multiple speeds. When you\u2019re sustaining and building a brand, there\u2019s a time to break patterns and a time to follow them.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Dumb-ways-to-die-screengrab-1.png\")
Dumb Ways to Die was a 2012 public safety campaign, created Metro Trains in Melbourne.ZS: For the marketers out there who have a client who\u2019s not at that stage of being on board with an idea, what is their way forward?<\/p>\n
JM: Your job is to not push an idea on someone. Your job is to say, look, the reason we\u2019re bringing you this is because if we do this, this is what we believe will happen. It\u2019s not just, \u2018Hey, say yes to this because it\u2019s different\u2019.<\/p>\n
No one can expect anyone to take a leap of faith or to be \u2018brave\u2019. If we\u2019re asking someone to be brave, we\u2019ve failed at actually showing what this idea is designed to do for people.<\/p>\n
ZS: We\u2019ve heard a lot about AI [at Digital Day Out] and what it can do, including the way it\u2019s being used in campaigns. But it\u2019s also making people turn away. Do you have any thoughts about what the next stage is in the cycle? Are people going to be looking for less polished content?<\/p>\n
JM: I always thought the backlash would happen but I\u2019m amazed at how quickly it has. AI is the first technology where it\u2019s exciting but where there\u2019s also been instant rejection. Normally we just rush headlong into it and we\u2019re excited, then later we realise, \u2018Shit, maybe we should have thought about that\u2019. Social media is an obvious one.<\/p>\n
There are clear owners of AI and it\u2019s not us, it\u2019s a handful of people. And no one wants something that is being forced upon them, especially when some of the smaller players in AI are running ads saying, \u2018Hey, get rid of your stupid, inefficient, lazy human workforce and replace it with us\u2019.<\/p>\n
I do not use AI to do anything that I believe I am good at. It weakens me if I do that. I\u2019ll use it where I have blind spots or I just don\u2019t like doing the thing. Don\u2019t use technology to do what you\u2019re already doing more quickly and cheaper. Use it to do things you weren\u2019t able to do before. That\u2019s what people want.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/John-Mescall-HS-1-837x1024.png\")
John Mescall is based in New York and joined Dentsu in 2025. ZS: You talked about how there has to be a new baseline of excellence. Do you have any ideas around what that will look like?<\/p>\n
JM: It\u2019ll happen organically. This room today is full of very professional marketers who have budgets and as they start to see people, like tiny little competitors and companies with no budget making work that traditionally they thought only they could make, that penny will drop. They will feel the floor rising. And then they will think, \u2018Shit, okay, we\u2019re all doing the same thing now. We\u2019ve got to raise our own ceiling\u2019.<\/p>\n
Then, what\u2019s left now? Maybe being more creative, finding a new way to do things.<\/p>\n
ZS: One of the last things you said was around how there are no rules anymore. And that was really about the industry, right?<\/p>\n
JM: It\u2019s dissolving because rules are based on what\u2019s gone before. And I think what\u2019s gone before is to a degree largely irrelevant. The question I always want people to ask is: what have I always wanted to do but couldn\u2019t? If you centre your professional life as a marketer around that, you will do the most innovative, interesting, useful marketing of anyone because it forces you then to seek technologies and solutions that didn\u2019t exist last week or last year. You\u2019re creating a new path for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Above: Dentsu global creative partner John Mescall came over from New York to speak at Digital Day Out.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[211388,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-548672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-dentsu","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548672","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=548672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}