"I Envy Woody Allen — He Will Never Try to Please the Majority" | Creatives Speak

Probably every creative envies the way Woody Allen lives.

"Only the imaginative, the original and the fresh will make you interesting." Bill Bernbach, called a giant in the history of advertising, made plenty of classics — "A diamond is forever," for one. In his view, an idea that fails to communicate is no different from no idea at all.

QDaily's Agency Daily column will be running a series of interviews with advertising creatives, to see how each of them understands the industry, understands people, understands the world. Recommendations and self-nominations are welcome.

Liu Yang, born in 1977, is vice president of Leo Digital, chief executive of Hupo Communication, and an associate professor at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.

He founded Hupo Communication in 2005; Leo Digital acquired it in 2014. In 2016 he was invited to judge the Mobile category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

Q: When people tell you that you look like Ekin Cheng, how do you answer? Have your looks ever brought you anything you didn't expect?

Liu Yang: I've worn this hair for more than a decade. Sometimes I put on an act — "No, no, no, not at all." Or I say modestly, "Grow your hair out like this and you'd look like him too," and feel rather pleased with my own wit. When the mood is lively I'll say, "In the trade they call me Ekin the Second." Last year, at an advertising forum, we invited Ekin Cheng himself and the two of us spoke on the same stage.

So far my looks haven't brought me anything unexpected, though I'm still hoping. They may earn a few points on first impression, and they can start a conversation. After that you're competing on ideas.

Q: When you were 22, how did you picture your future self?

Liu Yang: My generation was brought up to be fairly simple, without many preconceptions. Every step followed our parents' plan: go to university, take a master's, move to Beijing, hold a steady job — ideally at a university — make associate professor, and then earn a bit of money so the family could live better.

I didn't really do anything different; I lived inside my parents' imagination. I was just lucky enough to land in an industry where you survive on creativity. But the truth is that many people of my generation have led lives with little creativity or independence in them.

Q: Why did you leave the university in 2005 to go into advertising? How has your view of the industry changed since then?

Liu Yang: I felt you couldn't teach this trade out of a textbook every day. You had to stand on the front line and work with brands. So I tried it. It's hard to put the word "entrepreneurship" on myself — I just wanted to do something, slowly. There was no finished plan, no table-thumping vow about who I was going to beat.

I knew nothing about advertising then. I was groping in the dark, simply doing the work. In 2005 the industry was still traditional: content spread by riding on the influence of media, and that was how you changed what people thought and bought. Now it is the other way round.

Once the internet arrived, being connected stopped being the point. What matters now is using creativity to make the link between people, and between brands and people, mean something — and in the end to let all of that settle into brand value.

Q: Has anything stayed the same?

Liu Yang: Testing which things are useful to the industry and to what clients need — and not ruling in advance on what should and shouldn't be done. There are still new possibilities every day; the work keeps growing, keeps taking in new things. In one sense advertising is a traditional industry too, and it should learn more from how internet companies operate.

Q: How does creative work differ from management? Which do you prefer?

Liu Yang: When the company was small it turned on my own ability and pull — that's how creatives do it. Once it grows you need methods, and you need to balance things.

The biggest change management makes in a creative is a better sense of the whole and a stronger sense of responsibility. It is a way of growing up. Where I sit now, at the executive level of a group, I can attempt things nobody in the industry has tried, and use the industry's resources and capital to make them real.

It's hard to say which I like. Both are part of your life, and I'd rather balance them and keep both. Even now there are a few pieces each year that I make myself. Look at it over a longer stretch: when you turn round at the end, what do you want left? I want good work, and a good effect on the trade.

Q: You opened a bar in Shanghai and a hotpot restaurant in Beijing. Is that an interest, or something else? Do you enjoy selling food or selling ideas more?

Liu Yang: It's how a child feels about a toy. They're two things I like, and I relax when I go there. That's all. They're part of life, like a man who loves cars and buys a lot of cars, or a man who collects lighters and goes on collecting. If we're talking about professions, I have only two: teacher and creative.

Q: If you weren't in this business, what might you be doing now?

Liu Yang: There's nothing I'll regret to the grave for not having done. While I do advertising I'm doing plenty of other things as well, so I don't see it as a question of subtracting advertising.

Everyone builds the next thing on the experience and resources they already have. Nobody tears it all down and starts again — some people just tell the story more dramatically. We have plenty of chances to do other things, because this industry is broad rather than narrow.

Later on I'd like to do work aimed straight at consumers, instead of serving a client who then reaches consumers. The industry will probably give agencies more chances like that. There may be extensions too — making films, for instance, which also speaks straight to the audience.

Q: Who in this industry would you most like to be?

Liu Yang: It's hard to say I'd copy any one person; there are many remarkable people here. On different points you catch yourself measuring yourself against people with influence.

When it comes to what the company should and shouldn't do, I ask myself what the two founders of Wieden+Kennedy would do, or what David Droga would do.

Q: Have you made work that everyone talked about at the time but that later embarrassed even you?

Liu Yang: Last year we made two films for the Spring Festival Gala, 《门》(Door) and 《红》(Red). About 30 agencies pitched, and we were the only one to win two.

Making Red was exciting, and we put a great deal into it — 14 scenes shot, and I followed the whole thing from start to finish. When it aired I found that only half of what we shot was left; the rest had become a cut of old footage. I understand why the client made the changes, but afterwards it was awkward to discuss the piece with anyone, and it left me a little unhappy.

Q: What is the most enviable thing about this industry?

Liu Yang: It is a creative industry, and what it creates is an emotional tie. The link creativity makes between a brand and a product becomes a part of that brand's value that can't be rubbed out. As a display of creativity, that is fascinating.

It is also broad. Many people want to act because they get to try different lives and different roles; advertising is the same.

Q: Who is the last person you saw who made you envious?

Liu Yang: A string of answers flashes up at first — myself, maybe, or my child. But I recently saw a film that changed all of it: Woody Allen's new picture Café Society.

Every creative must envy where he stands: outside the system, yet able to keep his honors inside it. His rule is never to please the majority, and to make films the way he likes them. To this day he goes to a hotel at a fixed hour every week to play the clarinet, and he has done it all his life. It is complete detachment, and all the more so at his age.

Q: What do you think enriches creativity most? And what kills it most?

Liu Yang: What kills creativity most is what my generation calls shared public values. Back then it was moving to a big city and holding a good, steady job; now it is going public and raising money, the so-called mark of final success. That makes creativity vanish.

What enriches it is Woody Allen's way: go back to your own particular voice, go back to the ordinary frame of mind about where you belong, and face the work in front of you.

Q: What do people commonly misunderstand about this business?

Liu Yang: It is certainly a tiring business, but plenty of businesses are tiring. People look at actors and see the glamour, yet actors are worn out too, with no regular hours. What gets seen of advertising is mostly the exhaustion. In fact we also have satisfaction and moments of pride; it is not all overtime and a life ground away to nothing.

Advertising used to be a genuinely enviable trade. Anyone who has to squeeze the most out of a job by sheer effort runs into the same thing.

Q: What was the last thing that frightened you?

Liu Yang: Noticing that both my tolerance for drink and my memory are going, and wondering whether I should change a few habits.

Q: When do you feel you've fallen behind the times?

Liu Yang: Every day. Especially now, when the whole environment we communicate in is moving so fast. Scrolling through Moments and finding a great deal I don't know is already the normal state.

I let myself fall behind on the hot stuff — whatever is being churned up each day, who is quarrelling with whom, who is exposing whom, what has happened in someone's family. It's fine not to know; there's no need to be the sharpest person in that crowd. Professionally, you have to read more and keep up.

Q: Where do you get new knowledge and new points of view?

Liu Yang: First, look at the best work by the best people in the industry. You must always do that.

Second, find things outside the industry to look at — art, poetry, literature, film. It's like running a company: don't pen yourself in anywhere, stay open and curious.

Third, talk to the people around you. Why did you choose this particular thing? I have that question on my lips constantly, and the answers are always a surprise. Take why someone buys a given brand of phone: there's no top or bottom of a ladder of taste, and everyone has a reason.

Q: How do you picture your consumer?

Liu Yang: Never picture the consumer as someone like yourself. The consumer is a living person with an independent mind. The place they live in, the air they breathe, the food they eat — all of it has a deep bearing on which way they lean. You have to be curious about the reasons behind their choices before you find the key to the problem. The attitude of "if it moved even me, it can't fail to move them" is not professional work.

Q: What do you find hardest to understand about advertising today?

Liu Yang: Come back to brand value. The most basic thing in this business is to shape, form and accumulate a brand's value. You should know that on day one. Yet often people put the root aside and work on the branch — something that looks novel, that plenty of people watched, but that never settles into brand value.

Q: If you had to give yourself a slogan, what would it be?

Liu Yang: A piece I've loved lately is the Under Armour ad with Michael Phelps. There's a line in it, from David Droga's work: "What you do in the dark, that puts you in the light."

A Droga5 work: the Under Armour film Rule Yourself | From Tencent Video

Q: Which talent do you most wish you had?

Liu Yang: Managing myself. Knowing when to let my enthusiasm out rather than hold it down; wanting other things less, and keeping the most creative frame of mind.

It is far too hard, in fact. First, all those years of education press down on whatever makes you different, press down on imagination. Second, in the position I'm in now, there are a great many temptations.

Q: What advice would you give young people who want to get into advertising?

Liu Yang: In a business that needs inspiration and ideas to solve problems, work and life are hard to separate. Archimedes thought of something in the bath; Gu Cheng wrote before he was fully awake. Was that work or life? You'll notice that many good creatives hold several jobs at once and do all of them well, and knowing how to balance them is a kind of wisdom.

I hope people can have a life. An ad man without one will find it hard to create. You have to look squarely at everything happening now and take your nourishment from art, from culture, from everything new around you that is worth absorbing — and then solve the problem in the most efficient way you can.

If you love this business, enjoy it properly.

Cover image and in-article images courtesy of Hupo Communication