Tres Colacion is one of the highly-awarded international creative leaders joining the MAD STARS jury this year, bringing his experience as a creative leader across four continents. Currently executive creative director at Droga5 New York, he was BBDO’s creative leader in New York on WhatsApp prior to that, leading teams in Brazil, the US, Germany and India. He has also been creative lead for Mars/Wrigley at Impact BBDO in Dubai and creative director at Grey Group in New York and Los Angeles.
MAD STARS is open for entries until June 16, with Early Bird pricing until May 9 and regular pricing until May 30. Find everything you need to know to enter here. It has selected its Preliminary and Final jury, with the Executive Jury still being finalised. View the juries here.
Tres shared with MAD STARS his insights about award-winning work, nurturing creativity and a navigating successful creative career.
MAD STARS: What will you be looking for in the work that you assess as a MAD STARS judge?
Tres Colacion: Work that makes me jealous, projects that get under your skin, leaving you thinking, “Why didn’t my team and I figure that out first?” And then there’s craft. Craft, for me, is the alchemy of care—where you pour every hour, every fight, every dollar into an idea that was just “good enough,” transforming it into something unforgettable. I recently had the privilege of working with David Fincher and experienced his method of interrogating every minute detail for the sake of the final product on screen. It’s relentless, exhausting even, but my god, does it make a difference.
MAD STARS: The theme of this year’s MAD STARS is “AI-vertising, AI Advertising Marketing Era”. What is your view of AI’s role in advertising? Are you using it? If so, how?
Tres Colacion: I’m not exactly a cutting-edge technophile—technology intrigues me, but I prefer old furniture, things that smell good and food. I won’t pretend I fully grasp AI in my head, I simply swap AI for computer. My take? AI is the next tool in our arsenal, set to boost efficiency and expand what we can do—just as computers did back in the day. But more isn’t automatically better; it all depends on who’s behind the wheel.
MAD STARS: Droga5 has a strong reputation for creativity. What three pieces of Droga5 work do you think stand out and why?
Tres Colacion:
- Still Free for Ecko
That piece broke my brain. Everything about it. I broke all the rules—and it’s the greatest of all time in my book.
- Band of Brands (Newcastle)
There was a lot of great Newcastle work, but for me Band of Brands was a cut above. It’s work that is subversive in a deeply populist way. It’s the kind of idea that compels you to cheer for it.
[The campaign aimed to reduce the substantial cost of running a commercial in the Super Bowl by crowd-funding. In exchange for a small contribution, any brand could have its logo and messaging featured in an actual Big Game spot.]
- Sydney Opera House – Play It Safe
This is my favorite thing I’ve seen in years. It’s the simplest, most timeless of ideas—a love letter—crafted to within a second of its life. Everything about it is perfectly wrong; it’s over four minutes long, the lyrics never turn positive, and Tim Minchin, is well, at his Tim Minchinist. My two-year old listens to this almost every morning, going absolutely mad for the crescendo; he gets it and what more could you ask than that?
MAD STARS: The advertising industry is forever fighting for creative [read: brave] work. What do you think are keys for getting work through the system?
Tres Colacion: I’ve made a lot of work that has died — just had something killed last week. So, I haven’t quite figured out the key to the system just yet. But here’s what I believe creatives need to hear when they inevitably find themselves in a situation where it isn’t going to work out: keep going. It hurts when you invest everything into a project, only to see it implode. In an industry where 99% of what you do evaporates unnoticed, you just keep pushing that boulder uphill. Creating “brave” work can feel absurd, even futile, until—suddenly—it’s not. Just keep going.
MAD STARS: What would you say to (advise) the next generation of creatives who want to make their mark? What is going to matter most in advertising’s future?
To the next generation, you gotta care. That doesn’t mean blindly drinking the Kool-Aid or licking the boot—those can only stifle. Your job is to observe, experiment, and dare to stand out—even if that means risking failure. For me, the secret is simple: care more about what you do than anyone else in the room. That care fuels conviction, trust, obsession, and passion—all the ingredients you need to not just create, but to reshape the future of advertising.
