5 Minutes with… Adrian Tso
When your day job includes spearheading strategy innovation, challenging industry norms, and championing cultural immersion, it pays to be unconventional.
And unconventional is exactly what Adrian Tso is. His path from political science to agency life has sculpted a unique approach to brand strategy.
Now the head of strategy at DDB Hong Kong, Adrian draws parallels between understanding governments and deciphering consumer behaviour.
Adrian offers wisdom to emerging strategists, urging them to blend practical learning with critical observation to navigate the dynamic landscape of advertising and branding.
LBB> Your educational background includes a BA in political science. How has this shaped your approach to brand strategy, especially in the context of working internationally?
Adrian> Political science gave me a glimpse of how to make sense of the world, though the same can probably be said about a variety of subjects.
A large part of political science is a breakdown of the state of the world through the lens of history. How different events have transpired, leading to decisions and policies, conflicts and alliances, that in turn shape the world as we know it. Essentially, it connects the dots that are not necessarily immediately apparent.
And while this has absolutely nothing to do with selling hamburgers, marketing and brand strategy is also about understanding motivations and anticipating response, connecting dots beyond the obvious. Just that instead of governments, it’s brands; instead of constituents, it’s consumers. Insights and strategies are more or less the same, just the variables change.
That aside, one can also argue that endlessly reading the translated rhetoric of French, Russian, and Greek philosophers throughout history did shove a writing style suited for pitch strategies and brand manifestos down my throat.
LBB> Your journey includes working at Brand Union and Nanoleaf. What prompted your transition from a well-established agency to a more niche, innovative brand like Nanoleaf?
Adrian> Working at an agency / consultancy has its perks – exposure to diverse industries, opportunity to work with high-level decision makers early on, the promise of tackling different problems with every project, etc. However, you are forever an advisor. You will always be contributing to someone else’s vision, and never seeing yours come to life.
At the time, both to my curiosity and hubris, I wanted to experience what it would be like to hold all the cards. To direct a brand and see it through. So, the decision was really to venture into the client side of the business and see what it was like. The opportunity with Nanoleaf was perfect at the time, because in addition to what I was looking for, working at a start-up was a bucket list item that I’d rather scratch off earlier in my career, while I was still young.
This ended up being perhaps the most impactful decision I have made in my career. Going from checking the 4Cs boxes as a senior strategist at an agency, to overnight, taking a much fuller view of a business, from R&D to product distribution, opened my mind up substantially and accelerated my growth tremendously. Furthermore, as working at a start-up would go, wearing multiple hats and getting hands-on with functions that extended beyond drawing up PowerPoint slides also gave me greater appreciation and empathy for the different disciplines that go into operating a brand, and a better idea of how these different roles can work better in concert.
In the end, it became clear to me that my journey on the agency side was far from over, as there was still much for me to learn. And as much as I appreciated the grit of working at a start-up, I never managed to get over the trial by fire, MVP mentality, and missed the pristine and polished output from a resource rich environment. Ironically, it would seem that agencies had by then also adopted a ‘leaner, meaner, faster’ approach to work.
LBB> As the group strategy director and now head of strategy at DDB Group Hong Kong, what changes or innovations have you introduced to the strategy department to adapt to industry changes?
Adrian> I think the bigger questions are ‘what hasn’t changed?’ and ‘what shouldn’t change?’.
Marketing and advertising are about understanding and influencing culture and behaviour, and for that reason, we’d like to think that we have our fingers on the pulse. However, the problem is rarely the knowledge gap in ‘being in the know’. Rather, the problem that bothers me most, is stopping there – stopping at ‘being in the know’.
Agencies and clients can no longer afford to tap into subcultures, emerging categories, or budding communities, just because they are ‘in the know’. We must go deeper. We must immerse. We must understand these cultures and communities better.
Perhaps I am a bit more sensitive about this because I am both a Web3 degen and a gamer in my private life. Both these spaces have been growing, and brands have been looking for ways in, as they should. But as offensive as it is to say, simply making an NFT collection, or ‘leveraging esports’ is neither an idea, nor is it a strategy. You’ve identified a space, and that is good. But don’t stop there. Get into it. Immerse in those communities, understand them. Let’s not relegate these opportunities to an industry publication PR headline, when the opportunity to do something different and inspiring is at your fingertips.
Which brings me to the question ‘what shouldn’t change?’. Due diligence shouldn’t change. Understanding consumer behaviour shouldn’t change. As an industry, we used to walk around supermarkets and observe people. We used to try the products we wanted to market. What happened? Why aren’t we playing the games, or hopping onto the Discord channels? ‘Kids like Roblox’ is not a consumer behaviour. At best it’s a channel observation. What they do inside the game, how they interact with one another, would be a start. ‘An NFT sold for $2M’, is not a consumer insight. It’s an opportunity, now do your fucking homework.
LBB> Finally, with over a decade of experience in brand strategy, what advice would you give to emerging strategists looking to make a mark in the dynamic field of advertising and branding?
Adrian> The first thing is to participate in discussions, experiment with ideas, and beyond your assigned responsibilities, observe and absorb as much as you possibly can.
I subscribe to the idea of learning through doing. However, I also recognize that you can only learn so much through doing. They say practice makes perfect, which is true, but perfection as in refinement, which doesn’t expand the scope.
For developing strategists, you have your careers to refine your craft. However, the scope of your craft comes from your breadth of exposure. So do the work you are assigned. Do your research, fill your frameworks, participate in brainstorms and discussions, but don’t stop there – reflect on the feedback, and observe the output.
Why were you asked to follow-up or dig deeper on one part of your research and not the rest? Why was a different idea pursued from the brainstorm? Or better yet, why was yours? And then how was that idea pitched? Why is one presentation built on data, and another built on storytelling?
The second thing is to observe and absorb as much as you possibly can, and then forget it all.
Everyone has to start somewhere. So, gather your favourite collection of quotes, frameworks, deck structures, and case studies. They will serve you well as your arsenal of springboards. However, as you develop, learn to forget them. Understand the purpose they serve, dissect how they were designed, and as quickly as you learned them, forget them. Because as easy as it is to fill in a framework, a frame is literally a box. And you can see the irony of using it in an industry that encourages you to think outside of the box.
Starter tools, theories, frameworks, are good because they are blinders. They keep you from being unnecessarily distracted, from over thinking. But once you understand the underlying principles, don’t let them keep you from seeing the bigger picture, or from exploring a wider world. So, quote Steve Jobs, but don’t let what he said stop you from thinking more differently. Start with a campaign plan, but don’t let that stop you from re-examining the customer journey in a different way.
The creative industry is meant to inspire new thinking, new behaviours, and new cultures. Tools, theories, and quotes are meant to capture wisdom from the past to get you started but were never meant to be doctrines to keep you from forging ahead.
