KEY POINTS:
Colleagues say adman Keith Smith is treated like a celebrity when he boards any Cathay Pacific aircraft heading back to his base in Hong Kong.
With responsibility for TBWA Group around the world (outside the United States) the international president of one of the world's biggest advertising networks spends a lot of time in the air.
"He is listed among the airline's Top 10 frequent fliers," says David Walden who heads the network's New Zealand agency TBWA\Whybin."
The ad industry is prone to depicting its leaders as experts or "gurus".
But on a recent stopover in Auckland - one of the TBWA's furthest flung outposts - the man in the upper rungs of the global advertising world was remarkably down to earth.
"Keith is pretty much constantly on the move," says Walden who oversees an ad portfolio including perennial favourite - the Goldstein ads for ASB Bank.
Internationally the New Zealand operation - working with TBWA in Europe - has developed a high profile in promoting the All Blacks through its ties to Adidas.
And Smith - who has been with TBWA for 18 years - says the network retains a "continental flair".
Its headquarters are in New York - it was linked to the US giant Chiat Day. TBWA was initially born out of mergers of French ad agencies and Smith says for that reason it has an "intellectual approach" to advertising.
Smith inhabits this top post at a time of upheavals in the advertising world. Consumers are being rapidly dispersed into fragmenting media.
And Asian markets - especially China - have become magnets to ad agencies that are desperate to reach this rapidly increasing consumer market.
Smith says that like media themselves advertising agencies are having to adapt to the revolutionary new environment - with no clear signs of where it will end.
Advertising agencies are facing a fundamental restructuring. "Even 10 or 12 years ago the structure was relatively simple, he says.
"Now almost everything is media - and the strategy for reaching audiences - once outsourced to other firms is being brought in-house," he said.
The advertising industry is built on slogans and in TBWA's case the trend is given the moniker Media Arts - but other agencies are doing the same.
"The advertising rebirth means new media opportunities where almost anything is potentially media."
The change is most clear in digital media - a sector that was once distinct from the rest of a creative agency - and which is now being incorporated into the day-to-day decisions on campaigns.
"There is a huge spread in how we are spending. Once there were three to four media choices - with a major brand you used to start with a television commercial.
"Now you start with an idea and look for many different ways you can exploit it - often that conversation starts with how you exploit it digitally."
But there was a move to new approaches such as organising events - which are their own forms of media.
An example was a recent TBWA advertising promotion for the French railway firm SCNF, whose high-speed TGF broke a time record for travel between Paris and Strasbourg. Then TBWA put the train in the boat and floated it down the river. "It is as exciting as it has been for 40 years," said Smith. "Media is back where it belongs."
Smith graduated in 1972 before working with agencies around London. In the 1980s he was with Holmes Knight Ritchie/WRG where he was when it was sold to TBWA. He set up a Pan-European office for TBWA and the regional network in Asia/Pacific including developing the Indian and Chinese ad markets. Smith says the Indian bureaucracy meant it has been slower than China as had the ad industry. "India was not seen as sexy as China - though I think it is now."
Smith sees New Zealand being able to sell creative expertise to markets like China - especially in helping to develop creativity for digital advertising.
With the Free Trade Agreement and New Zealand advertisers looking at accessing Chinese consumers, Smith says most of the bulk of creative work will be based in China.
"It needs to be because of the cultural sensibilities," he said.
An ad campaign for Toyota - showing Chinese dragons bowing in submission to the Japanese car - showed how a non-Chinese creative could misread the Chinese market where there are sensitivities over their relationship with Japan.
He sees the success of the Apple brand - which is part of the TBWA stable - as indicating the way ahead for global advertising.
"Apple it is very consistent with technology and brand and presentation. But to me Apple is not an American brand - it is a Californian brand - at the cutting edge."
When Holmes Knight Ritchie was bought by TBWA it launched Smith's career with the network. Traditionally the ad industry has grown in this way, with people forming independent agencies which were then bought up by global networks like TBWA, part of the big multinational company Omnicom. WPP, Publicis and Interpublic Group are the other giants in the industry.
"I hope that approach - breaking away into independents - always does exist _ advertising should be an entrepreneurial business and the moment you try to stifle it the more you run into problems - as an industry we should not be corporatised."
The shake-down in media - and the fact that nobody knows how it will end up - dominates the changes in the ad industry.
But so too does the system for ad agencies been paid for their work. The industry developed from a commission structure - where they got a cut of the spend on media and has moved to more of a fee-based structure.
"How do you judge the value of 12 people sitting around a table for 12 hours and they don't come up with the solution, but they make progress in solving a problem."
Like other ad agencies TBWA is keen on the emerging trend for ad agencies to be paid for their work by receiving a cut of the sales. Clearly the ad agency would be careful to pick a brand - lest they hitch their wagon to a slow brand.
"But we love that idea and we would like to do more - it is the way of the future," he said.
KEITH SMITH
International president TBWA Worldwide.
Graduated from Durham University in 1970, BA in Politics/Law and obtained a Masters degree in Business Studies in 1972.
Lives: Hong Kong and Paris
Age: "Late fifties"
Married with three teenage children.
