TBWA\Zurich: Meeting of the giants

When Michael Conrad meets Jean-Marie Dru, the knowledge of more than 70 years of advertising comes together. While the former founded TBWA Frankfurt together with Walter Lürzer in 1972, made Leo Burnett the "Global Agency Network" worldwide in 2000 and today heads the Berlin School of Creative Leadership, the latter started his career in 1971 at Dupuy Compton (now Saatchi & Saatchi), became CEO of Young & Rubicam in Paris in 1979, co-founded the BDDP Group in 1984 and became President of TBWA\Worldwide in 1998, where he is still Chairman of the Board today.

However, the exciting thing about this evening was not so much the careers of the two gentlemen, but rather their views on the creative industries in connection with major innovations in business and research. Jean-Marie Dru, who founded the disruption methodology in the 1980s and recently published his sixth book on the subject, reported on episodes from the network.

As an example, he mentioned the current and successful case involving the Nissan GTR. After Deadmau5, producer of electronic music, was not allowed to customize his Ferrari 458 Spider, TBWA quickly put an even faster Nissan GTR in front of his door and let the fans make suggestions for the design. Deadmau5 was thrilled and the campaign quickly reached millions of users via social media, positioning the Nissan GTR as a likeable and younger alternative to a Ferrari almost overnight.

TBWA has not only protected the term disruption as a trademark, but is currently also successfully implementing the methodology with its clients in everyday life with Disruption Live, as detailed in a press release. At the end of the Disruption Talk #2, Jean-Marie Dru was available to answer questions and signed his new book "The Way to New" for the participants.