China Special: Fred Raillard

In just three years, Fred Raillard, co-founder, co-CEO and co-CCO of Fred & Farid, has turned a small Shanghai shop into one of China’s top agencies, creating the coveted Spring Gala spot and attracting big clients like Tencent. He explains how a hip-hop-style sampling approach is driving China’s digital creativity and why speed is both an asset and a challenge for the country

Entering the Shanghai offices of international digital agency Fred & Farid, housed in a former opium warehouse on the banks of the Huangpu river, it’s impossible not to linger by the floor-to-ceiling windows, gawping at the stunning views. Barges and tourist ferries chug purposefully by; across the water, the skyscrapers of Pudong soar heavenwards, their tops lost in dense smog. For Fred Raillard, co-founder and co-CCO of Fred & Farid Group, it was the same vista which convinced him, in 2012, to make a permanent move to China. “The boats were so packed with their cargo that they were only just above the level of the water… There was a sense of profitability, of pushing it to the limit. I really felt the power of the dragon in that moment.”

Three years later, under the joint stewardship of creative director Feng Huang, Fred & Farid Shanghai (F & F Shanghai) has apparently done a Daenerys Targaryen and tamed the Chinese dragon. Awarded Spikes Asia’s Independent Agency of the Year 2014, the Shanghai office now brings in 33 per cent of the group’s global revenue and boasts a client portfolio of major Chinese brands alongside international heavyweights Porsche, L’Oréal and Pernod Ricard.

Looking around, there’s no doubting the agency’s digital credentials. One wall is covered in screens displaying Western and Chinese social media feeds, from Twitter and Facebook to WeChat and Weibo. Round-the-clock global connectivity is a given: the office is linked 24/7 to Fred & Farid’s other locations via video screens and a ‘super high-speed’ internet connection. Raillard himself is as wired as his surroundings, constantly flicking between desktop and mobile screens, occasionally spritzing himself with cologne and chatting animatedly in a mish-mash of English, French and Mandarin.

It turns out there’s quite a bit to chat about. We start with the agency’s expansion plans: March saw the opening of an outpost in the capital and Shenzhen ‘may’ be on the cards now that Tencent, the tech giant behind China’s foremost digital platform, WeChat, has become a client. Both offices will be satellites to Shanghai because “it’s hard to build one really strong creative office, you can’t spread your energy,” according to Raillard.

Beijing’s launch was driven by client CCTV, the state broadcasting corporation, for whom F&F Shanghai created this year’s Spring Festival Gala PSA My Name. A single, two-minute spot broadcast midway through China’s ‘Super Bowl’ and seen by around a billion viewers across the world, it’s the Holy Grail of advertising in China. The pitch is fiercely contested by agencies, with over 100 scripts reportedly submitted this year. F&F Shanghai were “honoured and lucky to win” with their story of eight names, strung together by the tagline ‘Never forget where you come from’.

Raillard explains that, while many Chinese surnames are common, first names are unique creations, often incredibly poetic and personal ones. One character featured in the film is named after a bridge between China and North Korea, which his father crossed to fight a war from which he never returned: “So every name has a story, and those names combined are the story of China.” Like millions of other emotional viewers, Raillard cried when he watched the spot on TV, but for very different reasons. “It represented a real ‘before’ and ‘after’ for the agency. It was a feeling of ok, now we’re in China.”

Putting the cart before the horse

My Name was certainly a game-changer when it came to local brands’ perceptions of the agency as just another foreign interloper: “It sent a message that we are China-proofed, that we fight for China.” Since February, F&F Shanghai has won 10 domestic companies, including the “symbolically huge” signing of Tencent. But the agency’s commitment to raising the creative bar means they’re just as quick to wave goodbye to over-demanding, yuan-pinching clients with opposing visions. “It’s the responsibility of agencies to select clients who want to do good work, and let go of those who don’t,” says Raillard firmly.    

The strategy seems to be working so far, if awards performance is any indication. Last year’s Rear Horsepower, a poster campaign for Porsche, featured vintage-style illustrations that quite literally put the cart before the horse – a clever metaphor for the 911’s rear-engine design – and trotted off with countless gongs at Cannes.

While creative output is improving, Raillard insists there’s still a long way to go when it comes to traditional media: “Bad quality, no ideas… It’s going to be super-hard to catch up with the level of expectation and sophistication. It will take a long time.” Digital creativity, on the other hand, has advanced so quickly as to overshoot Western standards. “China is five years ahead of the rest of the world in social media, so we often don’t know how to enter what we do digitally in international festivals. Sometimes there’s not even a category.”

Raillard puts the explosion in digital creativity down to three things: speed, scale – “in a population of 1.4 billion people, even a micro-niche project will find a huge community” – and, interestingly, the infamous lack of intellectual property protection. Rather than blindly copying, says Raillard, the Chinese approach is to improve on the original, a practice he likens to hip-hop. “Everyone is sampling everyone else. You take whatever works and add stuff. Look at WeChat: it’s just an aggregation of technologies.”

Made in China for the digital age

The willingness of major digital platforms to offer brands more than mere advertising space is another factor. “You can really collaborate with them to do something amazing,” says Raillard, “and that’s quite unique to the Chinese digital landscape.”  Fashion Street View, a mobile app campaign developed for Chinese fashion label Me&City, which launched during Shanghai Fashion Week in April this year. Working with Tencent Maps (China’s equivalent to Google Maps), F&F Shanghai “brought the catwalk to the streets” by re-shooting public spaces and replacing passers-by with models wearing outfits that could be bought directly from the app.

Pioneering campaigns such as Fashion Street View have led to what Raillard calls the “reverse movement”. Once upon a time, international brands recycled successful Western campaigns for the Chinese market: now the boot is on the other foot. “First the brief is to implement central strategy; very soon [the client] realises that’s not effective in China, so they let us do our own thing; a few months later, the team visits us in Shanghai, realises our digital strategy is way in advance, and goes back and implements it in the West.”

A case in point is Mother’s Mother’s Day, an interactive campaign for French skincare brand Avène, which celebrated multiple generations of mothers via a viral video, encouraging people to submit their own family photos. After its huge success in China, the campaign is being transplanted to Europe.

More haste, more speed

Considering the broader lessons that can be learned from China’s approach, Raillard references the famous project management triangle. “In the West, we prioritise quality, whereas in China it’s price and speed. We always criticise China’s output from our perspective: ‘Oh, it’s bad quality.’ But in the modern world, speed has a value. And I think we need to start appreciating that.”

For example, take the timeframe for F&F Shanghai’s latest campaign for Didi Dache (a taxi-hailing app). From meeting the client to launching a national-scale digital activation on social media and a micro-site, the entire process took just one week. “Agencies are making miracles here… But speed is both China’s biggest asset and the biggest challenge.”

With that, our interview time is up. Walking to reception, a young employee almost knocks me over as he whizzes past on one of the agency’s communal skateboards. I make a quip about health and safety in the office; Raillard responds with a bemused Gallic shrug. An acknowledgement that – notwithstanding its dangers – breakneck speed, both online and offline, is the only way forward in China’s brave new digital world.