Ted Royer has travelled a lot. In his 20-year marketing career, the chief creative officer of independent ad network Droga5 has worked in Singapore, Argentina, Australia and finally New York City.
How has marketing changed in that time? Marketing is no longer just about messages, it’s also about opinions, Royer tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“It’s not enough to say the cream filling in your cookie is really good,” he says. “That brand … has to have a point of view on the world. That’s something that we stress all the time with brands.”
In its tenth anniversary year, Drog5 offers brands services from print to user experience and counts Google, Chase and Unicef as clients. It has been named Agency of the Year nine times and one of Advertising Age’s Agency A-list honorees for six years. William Morris Endeavor invested in 2013.
So how does Royer, who has won more One Show Pencil awards than any other rookie creative, execute on the point-of-view imperative?
“We start our creative process by going to a brand or client and straight-out asking: ‘Why does your brand exist in the world?’,” he explains.
“No-one owes you anything – brands die every single day. Why should your brand be considered, why should it live in conversations on your Facebook wall? How can a brand earn its way there?
“It’s like a cocktail party – do you have something interesting to say when you walk up to a group of people?”
This video is part of a Beet.TV series titled “Unlocking the Creative and Connect Potential of Video” which is sponsored by Facebook. For more videos from the series, visit this page. You can also find the series on Facebook’s media page.
