China Special: Andrew Lok

Selling soda and chips might not nourish Andrew Lok’s poetic soul, but it certainly keeps a roof over Civilization, the indie Shanghai shop he co-founded in 2012. The self-dubbed ‘Loksmith’ says that an infinite creative network, a brand-first approach and a willingness to make fast, cheap, bountiful content is the only way to keep up in an industry that’s moving at the speed of light

“No one buys it, no one reads it, but it’s something I like to do,” says Andrew Lok, co-founder and creative head of local Shanghai-based agency Civilization. He’s not talking about ad campaigns, mind, but poetry. Having recently published his anthology I Am A Tourist (with a foreword by none other than Sir John Hegarty, a hero of Lok’s), he admits it’s a “dying craft – but something I encourage all copywriters to do, because it teaches you to be succinct and descriptive.” Born and raised in Singapore to Chinese parents, Lok has always been into wordcraft – he even came up with his own nickname, the Loksmith – but a career in advertising wasn’t always on the cards. 

Instead, his first job was as a news reporter for United Press International, on the political and economics beat. Six months in, his frank approach got him into trouble with the powers-that-be, and he decided he’d rather be creating news than writing about it. “Singapore’s a pretty regulated media environment, you can’t say exactly what you want to. Eventually I thought, forget it.”

At that time, Lok had “never really realised there was such a thing as advertising” until one day, flipping through an issue of Communication Arts, he spotted one of the iconic Norwegian Cruise Line ads written by Steve Simpson and Steve Luker [former creatives at Goodby Silverstein & Partners]. “It was beautiful copy. It made me think ‘God, is this advertising?’” he recalls. After sending 50 CVs to Singapore agencies, he was finally offered a copywriting job at Bozell, where he spent the next three years. Stints followed at DDB, Batey and TBWA (he was fired “for strange reasons”), before he moved to Hong Kong, freelancing at Ogilvy and DDB.

Moving back to a bigger pond

Lok’s big break came in 2004 when he was appointed ECD of Ogilvy Guangzhou, a transition he describes as “a bit of a culture shock… I just thought of myself as a writer, I’d never really led a team.” Seeking guidance in his new role, he asked his two creative directors what one thing he should do in the next 12 months to benefit the agency. “They quoted a Chinese proverb, ‘Yi shen zuo ze,’ which means ‘Lead by example.’ And they were absolutely right.” Within a year, Lok had led the agency to new heights. He was asked to repeat the feat in Singapore, with Ogilvy boutique David. But after two years of “big thinking in a big market”, Lok felt he’d outgrown the country of his birth. “I’m not saying Singapore was limited… but this was the pre-internet era. We were shooting maybe a film a year. Last year at Civilization we did more than a hundred films. A hundred films! Based on pure experience and learning alone, you’re going to get good at it.”

Keen to return to a bigger pond, Lok’s next move was to Ogilvy Beijing, followed by four years as executive creative director of BBDO Shanghai, during which time he worked across “pretty much every major account” including Gillette, Pepsi and the 2010-2012 Flavours Of Life campaign for Wrigley’s Extra chewing gum. Shot by Hong Kong director David Tsui, the three-year-long micro-movie series followed two lovers on an epic journey across China’s changing landscape, with each vignette inspired by a sour, sweet, bitter or spicy taste. Although overlooked at international creative awards, the campaign’s huge popularity saw it top Chinese consumer polls for two years in a row.

In 2012, with online and social innovations shaking up industry norms and his fortieth birthday looming, Lok decided it was time for a change. “There was the whole digital disruption thing, all the agencies were struggling to deal with it. I thought ‘I’ve got to do something. Maybe there’s room for indie shops, maybe I can go out and do something on my own.’” After six months’ gardening leave in South America, Lok returned to Shanghai to launch Civilization together with co-founder Alex Xie. They soon gained their first major client, PepsiCo, and in less than three years have added Jack Daniel’s, domestic beer brand Sedrin, Levi’s, Stolichnaya and New Balance to the roster. “Soda, chips and beer!” jokes Lok when summing up the agency’s core business. But while the FMCG market might not seem like the richest breeding ground for creativity, or poetic inspiration, it’s spawned two of Civilization’s more innovative campaigns. Earlier this year, as part of Pepsi’s long-running New Year campaign, Bring Happiness Home, the agency created China’s first crowd-sourced brand movie in collaboration with Meipai, the domestic equivalent of video-sharing site Vine. “We got several Chinese celebrities to post 10-second videos of their New Year preparations on their Meipai accounts, inviting the public to join them,” Lok explains. By scanning a QR code on cans of Pepsi, users could upload clips of their journeys home and family reunions via a special Meipai/Pepsi platform. Of the 20 million submissions received, 5,000 of the best were picked and edited together into a short film that was broadcast across China and in New York’s Times Square.

12 guys in a dark room

What made the campaign remarkable was not technological innovation, but the way it leveraged an existing platform: Meipai was inundated with requests from brands seeking similar hook-ups. Collaboration, says Lok, is the lesson to learn: “You can’t compete with these digital platforms. You have to rope them into the campaign and get them to think ‘This agency is doing something different.’ It’s not challenging the ecosystem, it’s working with something we already have.”

A second Chinese New Year campaign, this time for Sedrin, used a different platform in an equally innovative way. Sedrin bought all the media on south China’s high-speed trains (the most popular means of getting home for the holiday), serving free beer and effectively turning them into cinemas for Civilization’s comic yet touching branded short on friendship and brotherhood – shot by Civilisation, since the production companies were booked solid in the run-up to Chinese New Year. “It stood out, not just because it was a great bit of film, but because of the media buy in the trains, truly a captive audience,” says Lok. “And with free beer on a six-hour journey, what’s not to love?”        

The public might love them, but these types of campaigns, so specific to the Chinese market, have gone largely unrecognised at international creative awards – despite the region’s ever-growing haul of Lions and Pencils in more traditional fields such as print. Lok blames the “outdated” and rigid judging categories, which make it hard to package potential entries. It’s made him feel “very conflicted” about award shows in general: “I can’t say they’re irrelevant, that they’re not good for the industry, but I’m not going to make work based on what 12 guys in a dark room are going to say yes to.” 

Awards aside, Lok says the general standard of creativity in China is getting better, though only in certain channels. “The quality of TVCs hasn’t really improved in the last two years, but on the flipside the creative on digital platforms is fantastic,” says Lok. He points to clients’ increasing willingness to take risks in an effort to keep up with China’s digital behemoths, Tencent and Alibaba. “Clients ask ‘How can we make the consumer pick up on this?’” says Lok. “The answer is you can’t! You throw content out there, you make sure it’s true to your brand’s tone, and you hope it sticks.” In Lok’s opinion, “cheaper stuff, lower budget, but more of it – ten times more” is exactly what Chinese agencies need to be doing.

Recently, Civilization has taken a more entertainment-based approach that capitalises on the thriving domestic film industry, from product placement to marketing campaigns built around movies and spin-off viral content. However, Lok prefers to avoid labels such as ‘entertainment agency’ or ‘digital agency’ (preferring the term ‘an agency for the digital world’). Unlike many independent shops who offer a very specific skillset and ethos, Civilization’s vision is rather more fluid, for reasons that are partly pragmatic – “When every single cent is funded by yours truly, you think: let’s get something to feed the agency, let’s put a roof over our heads” – but mainly based on a recognition that flexibility is key. “Planting a flag and saying ‘We do this and only this’ is a very silly way of approaching advertising right now, when things are changing at the speed of light. We’re all work producers, you’re supposed to do a bit of everything, and if not, you better know someone who does,” says Lok.

Sorting this shit out with the client

In practice, the agency employs an ‘infinite creative department’, drawing on a curated network of out-of-house illustrators, designers, directors, singer-songwriters and tech specialists. In China, where everyone is a brand unto themselves, Lok sees it as the only way to work: “The whole notion of ‘owned’ creative is nonsense now.” At times, this approach has seen Lok rolling up his own sleeves and getting stuck in; he’s currently directing around a quarter of the agency’s projects. 

For now, the company comprises just 50 people, and Lok doesn’t plan to grow it much more, citing the many benefits of keeping things small-scale, such as the ability to choose one’s clients to a certain extent. It also offers the kind of true collaboration that larger traditional agencies can only dream of. “You hardly ever see a creative in the room [with clients] any more. Here, you actually become part of [the client’s] team and vice versa. Clients just want to cut out all the crap, sit down with you at the table, work on the concept together and sort this shit out,” Lok concludes. More pragmatically than poetically put, but for the Loksmith and Civilization, it might just be the key to success.