"Once You've Been Through Enough, You Can Find a Way to Stay in Control" | Creatives Speak

So I don't think there is any such thing as a "mistake." Everything helps you move forward.

"Only things that are imaginative, original and fresh will make you interesting." Bill Bernbach, hailed as a giant in the history of advertising, produced no shortage of classics, among them "A diamond is forever." He believed that an idea that fails to communicate is no different from having no idea at all.

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

Wan Weida, a Chinese Canadian who goes by Victor Manggunio, has spent 21 years in advertising. His first job in the business was at Leo Burnett Hong Kong; besides the big agencies, he has also run his own studio and worked as a director. A few years later he came back to Leo Burnett, where he is now chief creative officer for China.

He likes to play with 3D. Here is how he describes his own life: 3D print. Film, photography, write scripts, drawing, enjoy time with his dogs.

An ad Victor Manggunio made for UA Cinemas in Hong Kong

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

Victor Manggunio: This may be a bit of a cliché, but Obama. Before he became president, plenty of people thought he had no chance. He had his own views, his own ability, his own personality, and he had beliefs — that is what I admire most about him.

I don't know whether he was a very good president; I know he got a lot done. Obama understood that the world can't stay this conservative forever. The presidents before him always ran the job in one direction, very buttoned-up about PR and about talking to the outside world. He was the first to change the mode of communication: Twitter, bringing in opinion leaders online. He understood that the next generation doesn't care about television or newspapers, and not only about the news — he had to reach into the social side of things. That's why I admire him. He thinks ahead, and his methods are modern.

Q: What is the last thing that frightened you?

Victor Manggunio: I'm afraid of losing the things and the people that matter to me. That is the only thing that frightens me. I'm not afraid of failing, of doing something wrong, of a business going under. None of that scares me. It only makes me doubt myself and be careful.

Q: What do you think people commonly misunderstand about this industry?

Victor Manggunio: I think it's a little different every decade. When I first got in, everybody thought advertising was a glamorous business — shooting things with celebrities, flying around, looking impressive. Now I think it has turned into a race for awards, which people find impressive instead. A lot of people come into the business saying, I want to make fun stuff, I want to get promoted fast. That's the misunderstanding now. I've noticed that many award winners aren't much good at making real advertising. They can only make award work.

As for people outside the business, many genuinely don't know what advertising is. Branding especially is hard to grasp. When you see a print ad or a TV commercial you get the rough idea, but branding runs much deeper, and a lot of people don't see why it has to be that deep.

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

Victor Manggunio: Look forward with no fear; look back with no regret.

Q: Have you ever made work you were pleased with at the time but that embarrasses you now?

Victor Manggunio: No. The way I see it, I remember immediately that the styling and the direction were right for that moment. There's an English saying: looking back is always 20/20 vision. When you look back you can find all sorts of problems, because looking back is easy. So I don't blame my earlier self.

When I look at a lot of my old work now, I don't think it's advanced, but I don't find it ugly either, and I don't ask myself, why did I do it that way. I think it wasn't bad for its time.

Q: How do you picture your consumers?

Victor Manggunio: I think my consumers are honest. They don't want anything from me. Getting their attention is my job. They aren't sitting around asking, what ads are on today? My consumers are busy, with their own problems and their own lives. They don't need anything from me or from my brand. What I have to do for my clients is catch their attention.

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

Victor Manggunio: I wonder if it sounds bad to say nobody. When I was young I loved Graham Fink, who is now chief creative officer of Ogilvy China (the same post Manggunio now holds at Leo Burnett). When I came into the business I wanted to be a maker like him. He didn't only think about television, print and copy; he thought about everything and tried everything, and he was a superb photographer too. He could do all of it, and he had real imagination. I didn't want to be only a good copywriter or a good director. I wanted to be good at communication, at all of it.

But after twenty years in this business, I want to be the best leader I can be. Someone who can give other people inspiration, answers, vision, direction. I don't want to become any particular person.

Q: So when you see a really outstanding leader, do you ever think, "I wish I were like him"?

Victor Manggunio: Yes, but that doesn't mean I want to be like him. It means he has good ideas. Being creative means being able to tell good from bad, and perhaps taking something in, with humility. Among my peers there are people I think do things very well — someone who is especially good at training people, say — but I don't think, I want to be just like him. I look at what he's doing, and at how I could do the same.

That may sound arrogant, but it isn't. I learn from everyone. If I can, I don't want to become any one person. I want to take in the best part of everyone.

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

Victor Manggunio: Everywhere. I'm not exaggerating — everywhere, and especially the places nobody looks. This is something I often teach younger people. Say you need reference material: if everyone looks for it the same way, everyone finds the same things. So if you ask me where I get new knowledge, there's no harm in looking where everybody knows to look, but you should always hunt for sources nobody has found, and look at what nobody else is looking at.

On one project, for instance, we needed an illustration style. Most people would google "illustration style" and end up on portfolio sites. I'd go to deviantART, a forum where anyone can post their own work. You can search across all kinds of artists there. They may be less polished, but they're different.

If what you mean is new knowledge, news and so on, I make a point of reading several sources. The way the press does it: you don't see one source and call it true, you cross-check several and do as much homework as you can. That's the right way, and I don't think enough people do it now, especially in our business.

Q: If you weren't doing this, what might you be doing instead?

Victor Manggunio: Making films, or writing scripts, or climbing mountains and looking for new places, or building things — machines, say.

Q: What talent would you most like to have?

Victor Manggunio: Singing or dancing, just for fun. I wish I were a better writer, a better art director, a better painter. If I could pick only one, probably singing. I don't know why. I just think singing is wonderful. You need nothing else, only a voice.

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

Victor Manggunio: I was always thinking about now. What do I do now, what do I do between now and six months from now — very short stretches. Next step, next step, next step.

It never crossed my mind that at 45 I'd be the boss, or that I'd start my own company. Back then I was always thinking about the next project I wanted to do. I never daydreamed. The one exception was that I wanted to get into shooting film, to do more of that.

Q: What did you want to shoot then?

Victor Manggunio: Movies. The genre didn't matter. When I was 22 the technology wasn't what it is now; buying a camera to shoot with was an odd thing to do, and there were a lot of limits. If I could have been a director then, shooting big productions, shooting science fiction, that would have been ideal. But I was realistic: do what you can do now, then move on.

Q: What do you think feeds creativity most? What kills it most?

Victor Manggunio: The only way to stay creative is to stay hungry, stay curious. I think a lot of people believe that if they do something wrong there will be bad consequences, but there won't. Take VR: I was interested in it, and I was making VR-related things two years before VR got hot. How do you know it will get hot? You put a lot of time in. It looks complicated. 3D printing is the same — hard work. You don't understand it, it eats your time... If you're always afraid of that, you'll never make progress. For me, even if it doesn't work out, so what? You've learned something. You've learned why it didn't work, and next time you see something like it, you'll know why it won't.

In fact there are no "mistakes." Everything helps you move forward. So if you ask me, I'd say: stay curious, don't be afraid of wasting time. And the way to kill creativity is to stop being curious.

Q: In what moments or situations do you feel you've fallen behind?

Victor Manggunio: When I lose interest in everything and stop discovering things, or when I think I know it all. "Falling behind" is an interesting thing. I think everyone falls behind at some point, and doesn't notice. But I'm not too worried, as long as I keep going and like what I do.

Q: So has there been a moment when you thought, "ah, I've fallen behind"?

Victor Manggunio: Yes. I don't understand what young people like to wear now, for instance. That doesn't mean I've fallen behind as a creative director; it means part of my taste has. Sometimes I'm talking with younger people and they'll say, we don't use that word anymore.

Q: In advertising today, what do you understand least?

Victor Manggunio: Nothing. I still feel I keep up with new things; nothing really surprises me. I may need some time to work out why a particular thing works, and most of the time it comes down to the way people talk, the way they write, the style, or where the thing came from. But nothing genuinely baffles me.

Q: Is there anything you can't make sense of?

Victor Manggunio: Of course. From the day I got into this until now, there's always something that makes everyone say, wow, that's strange, how did that happen. Something always blows up and is especially odd. I don't think that's because I'm old. There will always be things that are hard to understand, for no clear reason. But I think I've been through enough by now to find a way to stay in control.

The most recent case was Pen Pineapple Apple Pen (a Japanese song you can't get out of your head).

Q: What do you think is most enviable about this industry?

Victor Manggunio: For a while I thought advertising had stalled. As I said, a lot of people were chasing awards and wanted to make a name for themselves — very self-centered. On the whole I thought the industry was too focused on selling. Sell, sell, sell, just help the client sell things.

Lately I've found the industry getting better. Some people treat it as a platform for winning awards, but whatever the motive behind it, we are now communicating in many areas — social equality, the environment, sustainability — and doing some good. Whatever people's aims are, this industry can now make a difference that matters.

Before, if you made an interesting ad people would call you clever, but the ad itself had no effect. Now an ad can make people think: hold on, why do I see it that way, why do people in this industry think women aren't as good as men, why hasn't gender equality arrived yet? That's why I've always loved this business. It can have an effect, for better or worse, and that is powerful.

Q: Why do you love 3D printing so much? What has it given you, in inspiration or insight?

Victor Manggunio: It lets me explore my own creativity, and do things I couldn't do before. Making something up in your head and then making it real. Before 3D printing you couldn't make certain very finely detailed things. You needed a lot of money, or a craft or a skill you'd learned that is very hard to master, and a lot of space, before you could pull it off.

Now anyone can have a 3D printer at home, and then anything is possible. Say you want to design a cup that fits all your pens: you can make something that suits your needs better, a little different from the ordinary product. You'd never have had the thought before, because you didn't know it was possible to make. Now you no longer have the excuse of "I can't." And 3D printing keeps getting better — more materials to work with, better work you can make. I'm looking forward to that.

It has given me more ways to sell my ideas, to test whether an idea can be made real. It opened a road for me to try things, to play, to explore something new — a road that wasn't there before.

Q: If you shot a film with your dogs as the leads, what would it be?

Victor Manggunio: Destroying the world...

The two of them are very funny. I think that when nobody's home they talk to each other, they have personalities, they work out ways to get out of the house, eat more food, or break things.

Q: What was it like running your own company, Noodle Films, in Hong Kong, and directing your own work?

Victor Manggunio: Very different from now. Back then I was the boss and made a lot of the decisions myself, and the two kinds of company point in different directions. Mine was a small studio; I went out and shot advertising stories. Here I'm in the office teaching the people who work for me, talking to clients, coming up with ideas. It's the start of making an ad and the back end of it — how you make an idea real once you have it. The two are two ends of the same road.

Q: Which technology now in development do you think will have the biggest effect on advertising?

Victor Manggunio: Livestreaming. It may not be as sexy as VR, which everyone wants to try, but if we're talking about what will really matter, I think it's livestreaming. It has changed the way people communicate. I don't know how big it will get in China, but I sense it's the next important thing.

Some people will use it very well. The technology is good, and plenty of platforms support it, which means it has a big opening. Things that change how people communicate always end up mattering a lot. With 3D printing or VR you still have to go out and make something new. With livestreaming you only download an app, and the platforms are already there, so it will have a bigger effect on the market.