Five minutes with Marcel Wijnen

Marcel Wijnen, new creative director of Sydney-Based creative agency Hulsbosch, speaks to Transform magazine about the role innovation and digitalisation play in future projects the agency will take on, the difference between design in Europe, Asia and Australia, and the main challenges the creative industries face in the upcoming year.

What are your main goals as new creative director of Hulsbosch?

That’s simple – just do some awesome work! But I think when you go to an agency like Hulsbosch, with a legacy for creating such iconic Australian brands (you can’t get more iconic than Woolworths and Qantas), there’s both a privilege and a responsibility. Ultimately you look to do your best work, to use all your previous experience and find those next big opportunities to create something really special and lasting. The idea of contributing to Hulsbosch’s ‘story’, and to contribute to the Australian brand landscape is quite a nice perspective and an exciting prospect. Of course, this is not a solo job – the real goal is to assemble the best brand design team in Australia, and I think I’m well on the way there with our two new additions to the team. 

On a more personal and arguably selfish note, you can never stop learning as a designer. I’m always looking to learn from the people I work with, everyone from clients to colleagues from all facets of the business – to be a better designer, a better leader, and a better person – and what a privileged opportunity to spend time with someone like Hans and learn from his vast experience.

How does design in Europe and Asia differ from the one you experience in Australia?

From my experience, the key difference between these two complex and diverse regions, is how they view design. In Europe, design often is the experience. Design is seen like an institution; it is taken very seriously and appreciated purely on its own merits. It is respected and invested in at all levels from government to business to consumer. Aesthetics and function are revered like a source of life to both creators and consumers of design. 

Asia tends to have a very different perspective on design. Being made up largely of emerging markets that are newly transformed and modernised (with Japan being the obvious outlier), brand and design agencies are still a relative new phenomenon and do not carry the same institutional burden and preset expectations that come with that. The same is true for clients marketing. But I don’t see this as a negative, I actually see it as a liberating dimension. In Asia, design plays much more of a ‘vehicle’ role - rather than a ‘destination’. A big factor is that as these markets are emerging, brands like Tmall in China have moved straight to hyper digital experiences, using a web of super rich content to entertain and engages consumers right at the point of purchase – a powerful notion of fusing brand-tertainment with ecommerce.

 I think Australia’s approach and perspective on design is still largely following the UK and Northern Europe where both creators and consumers of design prefer things simpler and to the point, with a nice spice of wit and beauty. In Australia, we then like to overlay this with a slice of our egalitarianism and a sense of rawness. Australians tend to consume their design not-so-seriously – they like design to function first, and secondly put a little smile on your face. But I think we really have to look towards North Asia for design influence over the next 5-10 years, partly because of our growing population from Asian origins seeking what’s familiar to them, but mostly because of their highly sophisticated brand experiences (and expectations) they bring with them.

What are the main challenges the creative industries face in the next year and how can they be overcome?

We will all be challenged with less time physically together. By nature, creative teams work best when everyone is together in the same physical space bouncing ideas off each other. In my opinion, this is the only way you create that unique culture that can bring out the magical ideas, time after time. No amount of Zoom or Teams calls can replace this. It’s the same working with clients; to really understand the challenges they face, to understand their vision for their businesses and brands, to understand their perspective on their industry and their purpose, you need to spend time with them. But 2020 has changed that, and 2021 will really challenge that. Maybe not forever, but at least for the foreseeable near future, even if agencies are fully back in the office like we at Hulsbosch are (hopefully Australia won’t have any more setbacks that changes this), many clients will continue to work remotely, and travel will also continue to be a limited at best. Great communications will be the baseline – but finding new ways to build and keep client trust will be the real currency for success.

What role will innovation and digitalisation play in the projects Hulsbosch will take on?

I think they’ll both play a heightened role coming out of 2020. It doesn’t matter which way you look at it, 2020 has made us all more isolated, whether through actual lockdowns, or through the inability to cross local or international borders, or just the general reduction in physical experiences, both social and work. Either way, we are experiencing our world more and more through screens. Brands need to really understand that the implications of this is not just a shifting channel emphasis, but a more fundamental change in how brands are experienced. Yes, digitalisation will definitely play a greater role, but the real shift will be compensating for the lack of real analogue experiences and making these digital touch points feel more human.

Innovation is directly linked to this. More than ever, brands need to craft highly differentiated experiences that actually deliver on both functionality and engagement. But consumers of brands want this to come from a place of truth. Working with clients to firstly craft a truly meaningful purpose will be a must, but more importantly, innovating new ways to relook at their experience universes, and finding fresh and interesting proof-experiences to drive this purpose home is the key challenge for 2021.