Australian INfront

Barry recently returned to Australia, after six years of work for boutique creative agencies in New York, to join the advertising and marketing force at Ogilvy & Mather, Sydney as Strategy Director. Since his return Barry has been working on the Coca Cola portfolio of brands.

Barry has had extensive experience in creative management work. In New York he worked alongside David Droga and the team, as one of the founding members, to turn the two year old start up business Droga5 into Creativity Magazines US Agency of the Year 2007.

This journey provided him with the opportunity to collaborate on award winning campaigns for a number of iconic brands such as “The Million”- which won the NYC Educational initiative Cannes Titanium 2008, “The Tap Project” UNICEF - which won the Cannes Titanium 2007 and “Honeyshed.com” which won him the renowned Webby Award for Digital Innovation for online content destination.

He has also worked alongside David Droga and Publicis NY on iconic brand campaigns such as Coke, Nike, Diageo, Microsoft, Ecko, MTV, Pernod Ricard, BMW Canon, Sprint & Real Networks, which won him an esteemed EFFIE Award for Strategic Effectiveness.

Each of these experiences has combined to make Barry a leader in the creative marketing and advertising world.

Barry Mowszowski delivered a session jam packed with information that spanned the breadth of working in the digital realm, brand development, successful advertising campaigns and strategy development.  It was hard to keep up with a man that at the young age of 30, should have achieved so much in such a short space of time and is paid for what is obviously a quite brilliant mind.

Barry started his talk by discussing his approach to creative strategy: "as a strategist you begin a process with a blank page and it's about storytelling". He stated that being young, automatically gives a person such as himself the ability to approach brands from a unique perspective and automatically bring something to the table. When it comes to communicating a message about a specific brand, it is important to tell a story and to utilise the power of narrative.

His approach to his work was summed up by the statement "We are the the kids of a recession (you have to believe in yourself, because) - this is the time to get off your ass and make things happen". He discussed the fact that we live in a world surrounded by products and that using the web is about instant gratification. However, he provided an example of being in an Arial bookstore, a store that one can easily lose an hour in and leave without buying a single item. He shared a recent story about overhearing a couple discussing whether or not to buy a book and one half of the couple stating that it would be cheaper to purchase the book online, as opposed to spending the money in store. Barry, pointed out that going home and buying the book would provide the sucess of having purchased a cheaper product that would be delivered to the home of the buyer. However, he was troubled by the fact that the immediate sense of gratification of purchasing a product online does not come close to replicating the emotive experience of lingering in a book store for an hour while enjoying the physical sensation of being able to browse other books and navigate the store as one pleases.

Eliciting an emotional response from potential consumers was a core focus of Barry's talk. He provided the example of Rhapsody music who needed to figure out a way to attract customers. The response was to develop this campaign to get customers visting the site to listen to bonus tracks. Ultimately, the campaign was about eliciting an emotional response from fans who probably would have by-passed a visit to the Rhapsody site. As Barry stated "Music value is equal to the experience it makes you feel and it is the ultimate emotional experience".

Barry went on to describe a couple of other campaigns including Ecko (which received coverage from 17,000 news outlets), The Tap Project (which cost UNICEF $0 and Barry emphasised was the work he was most proud of in his career) and Bank of America.  The common element represented in each campaign was firstly, an innovative approach to a marketing campaign, but secondly and most importantly was focussing on eliciting an emotional response from the potential consumer.

Barry discussed Apple and their position in the market. He pointed out that Apple, spend 'more money on architecture than on the actual products'. Gadget envy and desire amongst fans of Apple products isn't based on a logical response to the technical proficiency of a product; it is purely based on being hooked on an emotional level.  The key to having consumers develop an attachment to a brand is to tap into their emotions.

With regards to brand development, Barry stated that it is fundamentally important to have clarity in your product and brand and that it is still possible to be commercial and have a creative soul. At the end of the day, it is not about the product, but about projecting aspirations.

Barry also provided some advice about working in the industry. He encourage participants to surround themselves by talented individuals or as he put it, "rub up against amazing people". Make yourself known and nurture those relationships and ask lots of questions.

Overall the session was overwhelmingly informative and it was hard to not be in awe of the Barry's work and his approach to working in this industry.