Tham Khai Meng Defines Titanium

Tham Khai Meng, worldwide chief creative officer, Ogilvy & Mather, might be the perfect choice for the Titanium & Integrated jury chair. Not only does he embody its border- and barrier-breaking ideals as a truly global creative – educated in London and with experience from Singapore to New York – he also, as he tells Tim Cumming, actually has some idea about what the category means…

“I was a jury member in 2009, and every morning – without fail – there would be an argument about the definition of Titanium & Integrated. I think even the most ardent Cannes fan isn’t entirely sure what this category is for.” These are the words of Ogilvy & Mather worldwide chief creative officer, Tham Khai Meng. Despite his somewhat conflicted past with the category, he’s daring to return to the Titanium & Integrated jury this year… only this time he’ll be its chair.

Cruel and unusual jury duty

Khai last spoke with shots before Cannes 2012, as he prepared to preside over the Film and Press jury – which turned out to be something of a marathon. “I looked at more than 10,000 pieces of work in the course of that week,” he says ruefully. “Six thousand pieces of print and four thousand pieces of film. This is crazy – this is something that I believe is outlawed under the Geneva Convention… So, when I woke up in hospital, I suggested they split the jury in two.”

The Titanium & Integrated workload may be far less onerous, but there’s still the matter of defining exactly what it is. “In 2002 they came up with the idea of this new category that didn’t fit anywhere else,” says Khai, “for breakthrough ideas that are provocative and point to a new direction in the industry.” The first Grand Prix winner, in 2003, was BMW The Hire, a collection of eight shorts shot by some of the hottest directors of the decade.

“It was a great piece of work, and a game changer for the industry,” says Khai. “So you could say that T&I is for breakthrough work that changes the creative landscape. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what breakthrough work will emerge in 2017.”

Rewarding rebels and welcoming Trojan Horses

While Khai’s focus is firmly on the future, it’s worth noting his past. He is, after all, one of the industry’s high-flyers. Born in Singapore, educated in the UK and now working worldwide, he is the epitome of the borderless creative. In London he studied at Central St Martins, followed by the Royal College of Art.

After a stint at Leo Burnett in London and Chicago, he moved east and headed up the Singapore Airlines account for Batey before joining Ogilvy & Mather in 2000 as regional creative director and co-chairman of O&M’s Asia Pacific network, where he was named Campaign Brief Asia’s Creative Director of the Year seven times in a row.

Under his steerage, Ogilvy Asia went on to win awards and Grands Prix from every major show, including Cannes, D&AD and the Clios. Next, Khai brought his concept of “pervasive creativity” to New York in 2009, becoming worldwide CCO, which means he oversees the work of the entire O&M global network of more than 500 offices. Last year, he and O&M made history by winning Network of the Year at Cannes for the fifth year in a row.

He’s a jury veteran at the festival, with stints on Press and Outdoor in 2003, Press in 2007 and Titanium & Integrated in 2009. His return to chair the last this year puts him at the heart of what may be the most innovative and surprising content to enter this year’s competition.

“You are judging the newest of the new, so you don’t have very much of a rear view mirror to look in,” Khai says. Nor is there any clear pattern to follow because, by definition, innovation goes against the grain. “Anything that goes against the pattern will be in the zone,” he says, “and will be in the right category.

So although technology and platforms are constantly changing, with Titanium & Integrated we should celebrate revolutionary thinking, not revolutionary technology. It doesn’t award tech. It awards breakthrough ideas.” He laughs. “And the breakthrough idea is the Trojan Horse that storms the citadel and takes over the town.”

 Get more creative bang for a brave client’s buck

To illustrate that point, he names names. “REI’s #OptOutside – their Black Friday stunt. It’s the biggest shopping day in the US and they shut down their stores, gave their employees the day off and urged them and their customers to stay outdoors. It’s genius, a brilliant idea, totally counter-intuitive for retail, and spot on for an outdoor company. It’s ballsy.

You just had to admire its sheer audacity. It created a great conversation. So that’s a great example of something that’s integrated, a real breakthrough.”

Then there is VisitSweden’s The Swedish Number – in which +46 771 793 336 became the nation’s very own telephone number, connecting callers from around the world with random, untrained and unscripted Swedes who had signed up as telephonic ambassadors – whether they were having a bad day or not.

“Just a phone number. There’s nothing revolutionary about the technology there, right? It showed how the most commonplace artefact in the world can be used in a completely new way – and the pioneering creative spirit is very much alive. All you need is a great idea.”

And, of course, a brand to believe in it and invest money. “You can have all the great ideas but if you can’t sell them that’s it, they stay in the bottom drawer,” agrees Khai. “And it goes to show you still need a lot of courage and belief from clients. Now, more than ever, brands have got to be courageous to be creative. Because it’s effective. If the work is highly creative, such as The Campaign for Real Beauty from Dove, in the end it works out a lot cheaper. You get more bang for your buck. Because it lasts forever, and it pays back ten times more, a hundred times more.”

Make advertising great again

However, Titanium & Integrated’s initial focus was on new tech and attendant platforms – and they’re still a concern for the industry. The infinite playground of VR, MR and AR is just a headset away, while the internet of things is occupying your fridge space and AI looms, eyeing up all our jobs. But the creative industries, suggests Khai, might be spared. “Creativity, as we all know, is emotion, vulnerability, soul and heart. AI doesn’t have this yet. Until a robot learns to suffer, to cry or love, or – dare I say it – give birth or even fear death, until a robot knows that and feels that, then I think we are quite safe.”

Ironically, the portrait of Khai accompanying this article was created by a blend of AI and human emotion. IBM’s Watson AI system analysed his personality, then used representative emojis as pixels to create Khai’s physical and emotional likeness.

While Khai heads up a truly global business, handling brands whose borders are porous, like IBM, Unilever and American Express, recent events in world politics suggest a reversal from the globalisation of recent decades, back to a more insular and territorial world view.

“It may make things trickier,” Khai says, referring to the rise of Trump, Brexit and populist politics, “but our job is to come up with great ideas. That is the same as it has always been. In fact, it’s needed now more than ever. History shows that no one ever built a wall big enough to stop an idea, right? So great ideas know no boundaries. They jump walls and borders. And at the heart of them you always find great human stories. That will not change.”