INSIGHT: DDB opts for new creative approach in China

The hire of Victor Ng as ECD of DDB Shanghai raised more than a few eyebrows in the industry. Here was the award-winning creative head for Southeast Asia at Euro RSCG Singapore taking what on paper at least appeared to be a more junior role under Michael Dee, chief creative officer for DDB China. But that view would be seriously underestimating the ambition of both Ng and the creative team at DDB China.

For Ng, China represents a major new challenge for a creative who had previously worked at Leo Burnett in Singapore and at Mother in London. “China is a rapidly developing market,” he says. “There are a lot of invisible walls that can be overcome and broken down. We have to challenge conventions. That’s why it’s so great to work with an agency that has such an integrated creative culture.”

Similarly, for DDB, fresh from its success as Campaign Asia-Pacific’s agency of the year for China - and with Dee also named China creative of the year - the hire shows an agency not content to rest on its 2010 successes.

Ng will, along with Dee and Tribal DDB China ECD Chris Jones, form what DDB is calling a “collaborative and innovative” creative triumverate, which will sit in the Shanghai office, with the three creatives forming a single integrated offering.“I don’t think we’re the best at the moment. I think we still need to evolve,” says Dee. “This is why I need Chris as a digital expert and Victor who has a great creative background. The three of us need to think first and foremost what is the best solution for our clients and what is the most innovative solution for this or that brief.”

Dee’s view is echoed by Jones, who argues that the new team is putting aside the baggage of the past. “I don’t sit in the Tribal creative team. I sit in the room next to Victor. The three of us should be sitting in one room, but our offices are too small. Maybe we will knock the walls down. At the moment it’s like a game of ping-pong - we bounce ideas off each other. We get the basis of an idea and then it explodes.”

But in putting Ng alongside Jones - who arrived in China from Tribal DDB Amsterdam - and Dee, is DDB not running a risk in putting three very different and competing creative personalities in the same office, in practice working across each other’s clients and ideas? Although he is the most senior member of the team as chief creative officer, Dee insists there is no hierarchy within the team. “It’s more a case of three heads being better than one.”

Jones agrees: “DDB doesn’t seem to hire assholes,” he laughs. “We want to respect each other for what we bring. It’s a partnership and we don’t want to compete against each other. The only competition we have is to see who can have the best idea.”

For Ng as well, the core creative function is the thrust. “What we have with the three of us is that an idea can come from anywhere - an account person a strategist, a planner. We are trying to create a culture that celebrates ideas and passion.”

The new set-up may also be a challenge for clients, unused to being confronted by three creatives all working on a single brief.

“When clients sit in the room when we make a creative presentation, their minds are going everywhere,” says Ng. “But they are surprised and delighted.”

Jones points out that the dramatic shift in what creativity means for a client has gone a long way in helping sell DDB China’s new offering. “I’ve been working in digital for 15 years now and I’ve never been more excited. Now it’s a case of change; you’ve got to be really on the ball. Victor is as much a digital native as I am. We can have these conversations that I couldn’t have 10 years ago with traditional and creative people.”

This article was originally published in the May 2011 issue of Campaign Asia-Pacific.