Alejandro di Trolio, executive creative director at Cheil Madrid and European chairman, Cheil Worldwide, is one of the industry’s trailblazers in the fusion of digital creativity and innovation. During his career, di Trolio has brought his creative thinking to some of the world’s most famous brands, Samsung, IKEA, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Amazon, Volkswagen, Domino´s Pizza, and Red Bull, in diverse markets across Latin America and Europe. He currently leads the creative efforts of a dozen countries at Cheil.
As a judge for MAD STARS, Di Trolio brings to the jury room extensive experience in international advertising juries. His understanding of what makes a good judge, as well as the challenges of judging, are second to none. Di Trolio is also a YOUNG STARS judge and mentor, underpinned by his belief that the survival of advertising depends on its ability to attract and nurture the next generation of talent.
di Trolio shares the work that describes Cheil’s approach to advertising creativity and the key to the industry’s future wellbeing.
Your creative work tends to get around, or solve, real life problems, as opposed to brand’s problems, in innovative ways. What is the thinking behind this?
Alejandro di Trolio: The Samsung work is part of a huge project, technology with purpose. At Cheil, we are trying to solve with technology all the barriers that divide society. We started in Spain as a pilot, and it’s working very well. I think that this is a logical approach because at the end of the day we have the technology, we have the devices, and we have the knowledge because we are part of Samsung. So this is one of the objectives that we have, that we use the current devices that Samsung has in the market to transform them with algorithms into something new, something that can help people that need it. When we started thinking about the idea, we first thought about the person, and when we thought about the person we said, “Okay, everybody has a device, how we can help them to have a better life through it, and also how can we contribute to the to the brand, because it will encourage people to use or buy its products. This approach is purpose with sales.
Will you give me the thinking behind some of that work?
Alejandro di Trolio: The Art of Hack is a really great piece because it’s part of something that is not purpose. It’s part of sales. This came from a typical brief that you’re going receive in every agency around the world, to sell TVs. But we wanted to make something different. We didn’t want to say this is the most incredible TV, and this is the discount that you can have. We wanted to try to connect with people to interact with lowering the price because we didn’t want to lose the value of the product. So we created this punky advertising to try to generate interest in people. And it was really cool because we make jokes about art, about artists and about the elevated prices of TVs. We enabled Samsung to say to its customers, “I know that this is expensive, but I can help you make this cut in price to make your new TV affordable.”
The Battle Inside is a project that is not from Samsung. But it’s one that I love. I think that this is the most complicated idea that we have done in the five years that I have spent at Cheil because we wanted to find an NGO client that would try something not typical. This was our number one challenge and we had to connect all the dots in nine months. And at the end, everything went well and the client we found was really happy even though it was not the usual campaign that an NGO is used to do, but the idea was so persuasive. Everybody was saying that video games are terrible for young people, but instead of saying like old people, “Oh, this is bad for you,” we said instead, “Why we don’t change the game. We’ll let players kill in the game as they are used to, but they’re going to kill the cancer.” The game is still active. It’s like you learn something, not because somebody told you; you learn something here because you are living and you are experiencing this transformation.
Tallk was the first project that we made at Cheil under my creative direction. What was powerful was that we put the focus of the campaign into the most popular devices in Spain, a phone and a tablet. We said, “Everybody has a tablet from five years old until 99 so we can do something with that.” Then we chose ALS for our campaign idea. We said, “Okay, these people can’t move any muscles in the terminal stages, but they can move their eyes because they are connected to the brain, not to muscle. So we have a camera, we can create an algorithm that scans your iris and detect the move of your of your eyes.” And we used this to create a connection with the iris, enabling people to use a keyword to make words. We were even able to connect the functionality with WhatsApp. And it could be used not only to communicate with people but also with smart work connected with technology by Bluetooth – a TV or an air conditioner, for example. This part was really huge. I think it was the most advanced innovation that we made at the time. And even though three companies have products that use eye recognition for ASL people, they charge for the device. We use the tablets people already have. Ours is universal and free.
You had a four-year stint working just on Samsung at Cheil. How important is a stable relationship with a client in getting strong work through?
Alejandro di Trolio: I think that it is really necessary to create something meaningful, because the client has to believe really hard in the in the ideas and the purpose, in the same way that the creatives do. The problem has traditionally been that we have the idea but the client has the approvals, he has the brand. We have made the client’s power a good power because the client is involved in the entire process. It’s not like other agencies that create a product or a campaign and then the client signs. We work with the client right from the beginning until the end. The client is involved in every step, and this is the difference because the client makes sure that all the things that have to happen, happen.
Here are two more of di Trolio’s innovative work for Samsung:
What do you see as the greatest challenges to the advertising industry as a whole right now, and where are the best opportunities?
Alejandro di Trolio: I don’t want to say artificial intelligence, like so many people do. I think it is young people. The young generation isn’t finding a connection with advertising as a career. They can’t connect with the environment that we created. They don’t feel represented as leaders of creativity, and they feel that there is not a well-paid job, that they put in a lot of hours and the result is not rewarding. So, this has to change if we want to connect with the young generation. I also think that nobody is talking about this, but it is the most important topic, because if we don’t have new generation that change everything that we changed 20 years ago, advertising is dead.
It’s your first time judging at an APAC awards show. What stood out for you?
Alejandro di Trolio: MAD STARS is a really amazing festival. I am having the opportunity to see another continent, another culture’s creativity and ideas that, in my case, are totally new. All of us need to see this and see it clearly, especially in the judging room. We don’t need to come with a western perception. It is especially important important when we think about an idea before us that we are at a table with different nationalities, viewing an Asian campaign or maybe an African campaign. We have to say, OK, this is completely new. This is a new rule. And then we break the kind of bias that we have with all its misperceptions. And I think that MAD STARS is really powerful because we have Western work competing side by side with Asian work and we have to the opportunity to connect with feedback and see different points of view. That is magical, awesome.
