The Pink Glove campaign is one of the most important campaigns for me: Eugene Park

In a detailed conversation with IMPACT Magazine, Eugene Park, Global Creative Director, Cheil Worldwide talks about her novel visit to Cannes Lions, the major trends being observed in the ad space, and the growing role of technology in today’s time.

Furthermore, she places her bet on Kundal’s ’The Pink Glove’ campaign, which according to her, stirred a new set of conversations in Korea.

Excerpts:

As this is your first Cannes, please tell us how excited you are and what are you looking forward to the most?

I'm looking forward to all the inspiration from all of the worlds. I love to meet people from the creative world. Today is my second day here at Cannes, so I am still learning the ways. 

Which are the big campaigns that you are betting on at Cannes?

My ‘The Pink Glove’ campaign is one of the most important campaigns for me and our company because it talks about breast cancer in a very Korean way. Being a Korean and also an advertising professional for around 22 years, I never saw a breast cancer campaign here before. And that’s why it’s one of the most significant campaigns from Korea.

How important are awards for you?

When I was a junior copywriter, there was no time to spend on awards because real work is important from the company side. I recently got the chance to visit Adfest, which was my first visit to award shows, and I realised that there is an abundance of great ideas around the world. Depending on the country, there are different approaches that we take for various products and sectors. For example, Korean advertising is very warm; it’s more about the people. On the other hand, advertising in the US is more about positivity and laughs. There are different atmospheres and creative sources in different countries. And hence such creative festivals are super important, as they help us get inspired. 

A few years ago, we heard about how technology companies are a big threat to creative agencies. Then came the consultancies, and now we hear about AI. So, tell us about your experience with AI and what do you think of it as?

Different people have different opinions on this.  I think AI is an enabler. I was in a seminar with Deepak Chopra, where he mentioned that AI can be your own guru in the future. Previously, we needed a lot of time to get things done, but now we have a tool to get things done easily. Tasks such as editing photos on Photoshop required so much time earlier, now it’s just magical. AI will save us a lot of time.

Cheil has been known as Samsung’s agency for years, but you also have a big roster of clients outside of Samsung. As Cannes is about brave work, I want to know which are the clients other than Samsung that you find brave and would like to work with?

It’s an honour for me to work with Samsung and our other clients. One doesn’t get many chances to work with such big names that spend so much money on new products as well as on the content around it. But if you ask me about our bravest client, I think it would be Kundal. I spent over five years finding a client for ‘The Pink Glove’ campaign and met a few big beauty labels in Korea, but it wasn't picked up as we live in a conservative society. When I took this idea to other clients, most of the people in the meetings were males and couldn’t understand the seriousness of the issue. But when I met the team Kundal, there were four women in the meeting room. And right after listening to the idea, they gave it a nod. Their decision made this campaign possible, which eventually changed the conversation and now we are openly conversing about breast cancer. 

Unlike other agencies that have their headquarters in New York or Paris or London, Cheil is very differently placed. It's headquartered in Asia. While all the other network agencies are looking at Asia as the booming market, do you feel you are in a better position because it's your home market? Do you think location matters today in this Digital world?

I think location mattered when I was at a junior level, but everything has changed after COVID. Now, we can work from home, and Zoom meetings have become a new norm. Back in those days, it was super hard to study about other countries and their cultures and one had to go there. But the world is connected much closer than ever before, so the locations don’t matter now.