Tom Eslinger, Saatchi & Saatchi’s worldwide interactive creative director, spearheads the agency’s global interactive capability, splitting his time largely between New Zealand and Southern California with both a worldwide focus across network clients for interactive creative, strategy and operations, and a Los Angeles orientation with respect to client Toyota USA to develop interactive and mobile initiatives and programs. The North Dakota native has been a creative director of interactive for Saatchi & Saatchi since joining its Wellington, N.Z., shop in 1998. He now has a role on the worldwide creative board of Saatchi & Saatchi to drive market share and consumer involvement through web, e-commerce, mobile, games, rich media, viral and all emerging media. This year he serves as president of the Cyber Lions jury, marking what will be his third tour of judging for the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He first was a Cyber Lions jury member in ’02. Last year, he was on the Titanium Lions jury. Eslinger also knows Cannes from the winner’s circle perspective, having seen his agency take Gold in ’06 for online and mobile innovation on the strength of its Rubbish Film Festival work. Over the years his endeavors have been recognized at assorted competitions such as the D&AD, the One Show, Clio, the Effies and the New York and London International Festivals, among other shows. His creativity spans a variety of sectors including telecommunications and online, automotive, professional sports, consumer banking, beverages, apparel, military, retirement, film and entertainment, museums and art, and disabilities. When not on duty, he can be found either Down Under or in Los Angeles haunting local comedy clubs and snowfields, in the latter with a snowboard under his arm.
SHOOT: What attracted you to the role of Cyber Lions president?
Eslinger: Being the jury president is a huge honor for me. When I began working in advertising I always just wanted to go to Cannes one day. Now I’ve been on three juries in five years. I am humbled that I have been asked to serve again.
SHOOT: What are your expectations, if any, relative to the competition?
Eslinger: I want to challenge the jury to look beyond the technology and find the best, most game-changing ideas amongst the thousands of entries. I want to have a focus on finding those ideas that marry interactivity with smart innovative technology to make real, deep connections with the audience. I want to concentrate on finding the great ideas that are really changing our business–it should be a great jury!
SHOOT: How does your experience as a Titanium Lions jury member in 2006 color those expectations?
Eslinger: I got a really clear sense of what is state of the industry and what is state of the art. I know that the jury will be an impressive bunch of people. I want to help guide the jury to challenge every entry and hold it up to the Cannes Lions standard, to make sure that we set the standard high for the other juries, as well as juries that come after us.
SHOOT: What did you bring to Saatchi from last year’s Titanium jury experience?
Eslinger: I learned about presentation of ideas and that crafting the entries is very important. I worked with teams around the network passing on what I learned from being a judge–it is like idea-examination grad school. Hopefully we will not only see great ideas but they will be gift wrapped as well.
SHOOT: What do you hope to get or gain from your lead role and involvement in this year’s Cyber Lions?
Eslinger: Getting to meet lots of smart, inspiring people and stealing them over to Saatchi & Saatchi would be good! Seriously, though, I hope that I can help set some benchmarks for what we consider to be great work. I hope that we inspire and challenge people with our choices. I hope that some hot young creative types look at what we’ve selected as the best work and decide that they want to kick ass and make something 10 times better.
SHOOT: Presumably the work you will see at Cannes will give you a broad-based perspective on the state of interactive/new media fare. But catching you prior to that experience, we’d like to get your sense of the creative state of the industry presently.
Eslinger: There is some amazing work happening. I’m especially excited about mobile technology and ideas coming out of Japan and Korea. More agencies are involving interactive folks closer to the beginning of the work, rather than tacking it on at the end. More big brands are centering campaigns off ideas that live on screens other than televisions. Brands are becoming networks of content, and the creatives and clients that “get it” are at the front of what will be a really exciting time over the next five years.
SHOOT: What projects have lit your creative fire at Saatchi? And what work or endeavors at Saatchi do you point to with both pride and a sense of accomplishment?
Eslinger: Our partnerships with Contagious Magazine and Hyperfactory for strategic and mobile insights and ideas have inspired some great work across the network. Contagious develops bespoke reports/white papers for us, specifically for Toyota and Procter & Gamble at the moment. The research and consultation on these brands has triggered ideas in social networking, mobile, gaming and activation of non-traditional media via mobile and web.
Hyperfactory works across five offices, with mobile strategy/creative embedded within the agency’s creative and media teams (Shanghai, Auckland, New York, Los Angeles, Southeast Asia). Projects have been done for Folger’s and Toyota; one won a MMA Award recently for mobile innovation for Toyota Yaris.
More and more clients are coming to us for interactive work as we expand our in-house expertise. We’ve established six new interactive teams this year around the world, hired some amazing talent and have started creating big ideas for our big clients.
We won Gold at Cannes and Gold Effies and Best in Show for Rubbish Film Festival in N.Z. in the last 12 months–rewarding ideas for being creative and effective is high up there. We’re starting some really cool imaging projects with mobile phones which I hope show up at Cannes next year!
SHOOT: What’s highest on your Saatchi agenda?
Eslinger: Inspire our clients and teams around the network, being persistent about change, growing both our clients’ businesses and our own. We want to fill the world’s screens with Lovemarks. (Lovemarks, a philosophy espoused in a book authored by Saatchi’s worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts, is about creating brands that people love through ideas which create deep, intimate relationships between brands and their audience. Visit www.lovemarks.com for more info.)
And inspiring more good people to come to Saatchi & Saatchi, roll up their sleeves and be part of reinventing our network from the inside out.
