Stephen de Wolf believes the Australian and New Zealand advertising market needs to stop using small budgets as an excuse for selling in, and making, small ideas, and instead reclaim its reputation as a world-leader for commercial creativity.
While the year has been marred by shrinking marketing budgets, declining ad spend, and a cost of living crisis crunching consumers, BMF’s newly-minted chief creative officer doesn’t believe those factors explain the drop in creative standard that has seen Australia fall out of the Cannes top 10.
“Budgets as an excuse? No,” he tells LBB in his first interview since starting in the new role in August. “We’ve never had the budgets the rest of the world have had. We’ve always had to do more with less.
“We need to be harder on what great actually is. I think we’re very quick to feel good about ourselves here. If we’re all doing truly great work, all ships rise, but we need to be honest about what that bar is.”