"Banking on Creativity": Interview with Jason Romeyko

m&k: Jason Romeyko, You are one of the most successful creative directors of your generation. Why did you return to Publicis?

Jason Romeyko: First of all, Publicis Groupe 2024 is very different from "my time". I spent 23 years at Saatchi & Saatchi, which was and still is an independent network within the overall company - of course, the formal affiliation came about at the beginning of the new millennium, but we were still a long way from "The Power of One". Now, in 2024, Publicis is "united" - a "supergroup" of global talents, across numerous disciplines and regions, with different brands. That's why the whole thing feels less like a return and more like a new beginning. Under Alex Haldemann's leadership in Switzerland, something very innovative and fresh has emerged, but humanity has not fallen by the wayside. I very much appreciate how he, Switzerland CFO Edgar [Magyar, editor's note.] and the entire team do that.

So you didn't join out of nostalgia.

No. At Serviceplan - the last stop in my career - I led a German agency to international creative excellence. Now I wanted to get back to building brands and culture ... and of course I had UBS on my mind because I had been following the Credit Suisse takeover. Then everything fell into place: I met Alex Haldemann, John McDonald [Group CMO at UBS, editor's note]. and Winfried Daun [Group Head Brand, Creative and Innovation at UBS, editor's note].I took a closer look at what was happening at the bank - and thought: "Wow, that's really exciting!" (laughs)

Where did you start your work for UBS?

We are fortunate to be able to work with the fantastic claim "Banking is our Craft". UBS elevates banking to a "craft" in the best sense of the word because the institution has 160 years of experience, 100,000 experts worldwide and a great clientele. It connects people, cultivates relationships and relies on technology and innovation.

Many things can thrive on such fertile ground. We can create "above-the-line communication" that reaches people; that shows them what we are capable of - and at the same time report on the successes of our customers.

In a second step - as soon as people understand what UBS does, how good the bank is - we strive for communicative excellence. We want to create advertising that transcends the financial bubble! Of course, we need the right colleagues for this: Filipa Mauricio, for example, our Creative Director, who brings an unerring sense of style to campaign artwork. Or Jonas Poehlmann [Managing Director at TeamUBS of Publicis Groupe, editor's note]who masterfully orchestrates organizational details and structural subtleties.

You seem enthusiastic when you talk about your plans.

I am too! I'm really looking forward to making the UBS brand known far beyond the world of financial services. The biggest challenge and the greatest conceivable success would be to make the bank the institution with the most creative awards in its segment ... to develop a "pull effect", arouse interest and then show other agencies or - at some point - my successors in TeamUBS: "You can also talk about banks like this." If that works, it would be fantastic.

Speaking of which, you have just added new elements to the UBS campaign that you are leading. Would you like to tell us something about it?

We went live with the audiovisual work "Crafted for You", which shows the successes of international UBS clients in four stories. You can see what ambitions they have and how the bank's experts help them to realize these ambitions. We wanted to evoke a "premium feeling" around the brand, which is why we collaborated with cinematographer Eduard Grau - he is known for his work on Tom Ford's "A Single Man" or Pedro Almodóvar's "A Room Next Door", which was recently awarded a Golden Lion in Venice. Normally, Edu Grau hardly does any advertising, so he took a certain risk ... as did we (laughs) - But the colleagues from Radical Media balanced this out perfectly with their experience. The atmosphere on set between the client, agency, director and production company was phenomenal. I would say you can see that when you watch "Crafted for You".

I am very grateful to our partners at UBS - especially the aforementioned John McDonald and Winfried Daun, but also Cici Steinmetz - for giving us the trust, the constructive input and the tools to capture "Banking is our Craft" on film.

In your career, you have won more than 700 awards for your creative work. When you think back, which award makes you proud to this day; which work do you remember most fondly?

When you win awards for creative ideas at festivals, the prizes actually belong to the agency, the clients and the team - they never belong to a single person. And to be honest, awards aren't that important to me. I always think: "We're only as good as our next idea". Although, of course, official recognition helps younger colleagues in particular to get noticed in the market ... which makes me happy for them.

However, if you explicitly ask me to look back in time, I would say that on a professional level, "Life is for Sharing" for Deutsche Telekom is one of the most significant pieces of work I have had the pleasure of working on. At this point, my best regards to Hans-Christian Schwingen [Head of the Deutsche Telekom brand until 2020, editor's note].because we did this project together. "Life is for Sharing" was revolutionary in many ways, created on the eve of the omnipresence of social media - in addition to Hans-Christian and myself, Kate Stanner's [Global Chief Creative Officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, editor's note]., Paul Silburn [former copywriter at Saatchi & Saatchi, editor's note]. and James Griffiths [Global Client Lead at Team UBS of Publicis Groupe Switzerland, editor's note].with whom I am now able to work again. A great time and a result that will stand the test of time.

You are talking about a professional level - what about the personal dimension?

On a personal level, the work on the Vangardist "HIV Magazine" means the most to me. It's a magazine that we printed with the blood of an HIV-positive man and that is now on display at the MoMa in New York City - it has become a piece of contemporary history, a piece of culture.

I was also in the lounge at Zurich Airport the other day and saw that BMW still uses the name "Bayerische Motorenwerke", based on a campaign that I managed at Serviceplan back then. That made me incredibly happy. We "elevated" the brand by writing out the abbreviation again - and thus emphasizing what the brand stands for. It's wonderful that this continues to work in one of the most fiercely competitive premium markets.

To describe your methodology, you have coined terms such as "Uber-Creativity" and "Explosive Creativity". What do these terms mean - and how are they reflected in the work that you and your team do every day?

When I developed the term "Uber-Creativity", I had just become the global creative director of Serviceplan International. The agency had offices all over the world, the "Houses of Communication", and there was media, creation, design, et cetera everywhere. But there was no real sense of solidarity across departmental or even national borders. Some colleagues had the feeling that they were only managing, but not contributing to the creative vision of the company. I saw - and still see - things fundamentally differently. Bob Isherwood, the Australian advertising icon, once said: "A good idea can come from anywhere." And I take my cue from that.

So for "Uber-Creativity" this means...?

...that everyone who works in an agency contributes to the creative product. Even colleagues in the finance department or at reception. Everyone is part of a collective quest for innovation - when I think about it, the effort for "Uber-Creativity" is what I now see realized in the Publicis "Power of One" (laughs).

And "Explosive Creativity"?

I can tell you an anecdote about this: in 2004, when I was Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi in Moscow, we were asked to pitch for the global Campari account. In Russia, I didn't have the creative resources to handle such a task. So I brought together colleagues from different countries and cultures in Rome and we brainstormed for three days - in what we called a "tribe". Incidentally, the "tribe" concept still exists today and Publicis continues to practice it.

How does the "Tribe" concept work?

You get a briefing, and after twenty minutes people have to come back with their initial reactions. Then you go into a second round for forty minutes, people come back with new ideas, present; another forty minutes, present; another forty minutes, present. At the end of the first day, you have about eighty to one hundred ideas - and you start to recognize different motifs, commonalities and topoi.

"Explosive Creativity" condenses the creative process from several months into just a few days. The search is not for perfection, but for "diamonds in the rough". Everyone is allowed to say everything, no one has time for "overthinking". In normal everyday life, ideas are often "overthought", categorized as "good-bad-good-bad". When you work with "Explosive Creativity" in the "Tribe", things happen in quick succession - and instead of "good-bad", you suddenly ask yourself: "What if...?" You overcome barriers that you previously had in your head and crazy, but often quite brilliant things happen.

Since we are talking about variations of creativity: Are we still working with "big ideas" enough in our industry? Or have we lost our courage - and data is more or less the only thing that counts?

You know, data is everything and data is nothing. It always depends on what you do with it. We used to get consumer insights in briefings that were generated through research with rather artificial focus groups. Today, thanks to digitalization, we can see people's behaviour in real time - and without the filter of social bias that you always have to think about with focus groups. This behavioral data allows us to delve very deeply into certain processes and makes programmatic advertising et cetera possible in the first place. But for excellent creativity, for leading ideas, the "small details" are not enough. We have to go to a higher level. In the end, it all comes down to interaction and balance, as always.

What actually inspires you?

I travel a lot - both professionally and privately. I've always been an "observer" - the type of person who stands away from the crowd and looks at what others are doing. I look at how people interact with each other. I think about what a person's day was like, or when I see a stranger on the street, I like to imagine what they looked like as a child, what their dreams were. This helps me to remain empathetic.

What is the best way to develop your own creativity?

When I want to think - really think - I go for a run. It's my source of energy and mental clarity. I work best in the early morning, so I get up at five o'clock when my head is not yet "fogged" by the messages of the day; I lace up my running shoes - and sit down at my desk after a round of exercise. This is also how I connect with my subconscious and get ideas that I might not otherwise get.

I also read a lot - five publications in different languages, every morning. And I have fantastic friends and a wonderful family with whom I can talk - sometimes about very mundane topics. And then I suddenly have an inspiration. You know, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that sometimes the best ideas are born out of simplicity.