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Named by Advertising Age as one of the 'Global Power 100' in 2002, (an honour he says he doesn't care for much) Gavin Heron, MD, TBWA Shanghai, can safely boast of being a seasoned global advertising professional, having worked with TBWA in South Africa, London, Hong Kong and now Shanghai. An expert in scenario planning, Heron began his relationship with TBWA in 1992 when he joined their Johannesburg office and was part of the historical transition that the country went through when it abolished apartheid. Nelson Mandela's ANC party was in fact a client of TBWA Johannesburg, an account Heron enjoyed working on immensely. In 1995, he was transferred to TBWA London as Senior International Planner for Chivas Regal. From 1997 to August 2002, Heron was based in Hong Kong where as Regional Planning Director, he was responsible for building TBWA's planning and Disruption expertise in the Asia Pacific. Heron was appointed CEO for TBWA's China operations in 2005. Disruption, TBWA's proprietary tool that seeks to change the conventional methods of advertising communication, is a subject very close to Heron's heart as Impact's Bindu Nair discovered in this conversation....
You have been working with TBWA for almost 13 years now. What is it about the relationship that makes it stick?
It's more like 14 years actually. I think TBWA has always been an agency that celebrates the individual. It's an agency that really appreciates people who may not fit into a specific model or role or things like that. So I've always been allowed to be who I am in the agency. I did change once, when I was in Johannesburg. I spent six months in another agency, which I absolutely hated. It was one of my worst experiences ever. And then I went back to TBWA. I think you need to do that sometimes just to be able to reflect back on why you really appreciated where you were in the first place and I had resigned in a fit of pique so… I was then transferred to London, then Hong Kong and then China. It's great that I have been able to stay in one company but work in a huge number of diverse markets. It has been a fantastic experience.
You were working at TBWA, London at the time that Trevor Beattie was there …
I think Trevor was sort of the spiritual soul of TBWA in London at that time. He had done the Wonderbra campaign, the Pretty Polly campaign. That was before the FCUK stuff and he was this amazing simple man, who you talked to and he would just be another bloke who was able to generate incredibly sophisticated yet simple ideas. Our only problem was that he had a strong Rooney accent and he never understood my strong South African accent so we used to look at each other. But he was a phenomenal talent and a great guy who went on to do even better things, I thought, later in his career. It will be interesting to see what he will be doing now in his new agency.
Which would say is the most interesting brand that you have worked on, to date?
The brands I am working on now are the most interesting. Chivas Regal in China has been an amazing phenomenon, since it has completely disrupted the way people view the whisky category in the sense that it is taking share away from beer. It is offering young people a more sophisticated drink. I think China will be, if not by the end of this year, then definitely by the end of next year, the single largest market for Chivas Regal in the world. For me, that's an amazing opportunity. Another thing about China is that you have the fantastic opportunity to work on brands that don't exist yet.
Would you say it's a market populated more by commodities than by brands? How much more difficult is it to market brands in a market like China?
I don't think it's a commodity market. I think China is very receptive to brands. Brands like Olay are huge and incredibly successful so there is a brand market in China and I think there has always been one. Chinese propaganda is not that much different from advertising. Even In the 30s, if one looks at (their) old cigarette ads and soap commercials and print ads, it was an advertised market. There is a commodity element to all markets.
The biggest challenge is that it's not your language so you have depend on other people to interpret behaviour for you. For me, that's always the bigger challenge. In the sense, that its a different culture anyway and not being able to have long conversations directly about behaviour and brands makes it more difficult.
How do you view the Chinese advertising industry?
The Chinese market is the third biggest advertising market in the world; it is very quickly going to be bigger than Japan. They say it will become bigger than America, but that's going to take a long time, I think. The market is incredibly buoyant. China is a battleground for all the world's leading brands. It's a battleground for the leading American and European brands and it's the only market in the world which actually has that. If you look at America, its essentially American brands with a few European brands and vice versa. Everybody has come to China and they are battling it out. From an advertising point of view, it is as competitive as London. Every single brand is there and we are having to compete against those brands as well. At TBWA Shanghai, we have had enormous success and have managed to get a great team of people together. At the beginning of 2003, we were only 40 people and now we are 110; we have almost trebled in size in 3 years and revenues have been commensurate with growth.
To read the entire story, buy a copy of Impact Advertising and Marketing magazine dated October 3-9