AdAsia 2011: “Come up with ideas that can be advertised and not advertising ideas”: Bob O’Leary

Bob O’Leary, head, global marketing, consumer, Citi, moderated a chat with Mainardo De Nardis, chief executive officer, OMD Worldwide and Kelly Clark, worldwide chief executive officer, Maxus, in the second session of day two at AdAsia 2011. The theme for the trio was media uncertainty.

O’Leary said, “945 million people in Asia will be online by the year end and by 2015, the number is supposed to reach 1.5 billion. We are currently seeing an increase of 150 million users per year in the mobile phone department”.

He spoke about the importance of crowd sourcing and gave the example of Citibank’s execution of the same. He said, “Through crowd sourcing, Citibank got to know where to build their ATMs.”

One piece of advice he gave people at the conference was, “Come up with ideas that can be advertised and not advertising ideas.”

Clark spoke about how Maxus looks to retain talent. He said, “People need to be kept motivated, excited and challenge to continue working in a firm. Let the employees push for change, as that will be highly rewarding for the firm as well. Also, give people rewards for work. Don’t only give them big bucks, give them things like tablets and iPhones to keep them going”.

On the topic, De Nardis said, “More than attracting new talent, we need to retain the existing talent. The most important thing with existing talent, is training. We must keep training talent.”