This interview was authored by Brittney Rigby at LBB Online. 

First published 05/08/2026

In a wide-ranging interview with LBB’s Brittney Rigby, Dentsu’s global creative partner weighs in on why agencies have a tough job selling uncertainty, the golden era of ‘Dumb Ways to Die’, and how learning to type 120 words a minute made him a writer

​John Mescall believes creatives have mastered making ads; the more interesting challenge is unearthing the biggest problem. Then, “your only job is to follow that problem wherever it takes you,” he told LBB on a trip home to Australia. “Don’t impose yourself on it.”

Technological advancements, especially AI, mean brands can do “anything,” Dentsu Creative's global creative partner said. That makes deciding what to do tougher than ever, especially as agencies grapple with selling an inherently uncertain product: creativity.

“When everyone involved, especially the client, understands that normal won't work, then you are free. It's not carte blanche to do something crazy, but you have to follow the problem and be incredibly pragmatic. And you follow the problem wherever it takes you. And if it's a very hard problem to solve, it's going to take you to crazy, unusual, non-traditional places, because it has to, because normal won't get the job done.”

He added, “To be honest, I think we sort of mastered ads years ago. They haven't gotten better. If you look at TV ads, films, or posters or print, you could argue they're worse today. We mastered them so long ago, it's not interesting anymore, you know?"

He urged creatives not to have “preconceived notions” about the shape of an idea, or attempt to foist “bottom-drawer executions” onto clients; work that starts from that place will never become an outlier that drives fame and fortune for a brand.

“We're one of those industries that has the biggest gap between our expectations for great work and what it is and the reality of most work,” he continued.

“We're well aware of the sort of work we'd all love to make, work that blows up in culture and is famous and sticks around for years and wins all the awards. And most of what we do doesn't achieve that.”

There’s no surefire way to spot when a project has a chance to achieve that -- the biggest brief isn’t necessarily the biggest opportunity.

“You never really know. It's never about the brief. I mean, anytime I've ever got a brief and I've thought, 'Oh my God, wow, this is mine to screw up,' I've probably screwed it up. It's almost the wrong attitude to take when you're working on something to try and do something great.”

John left Australia for New York in 2014 to become McCann’s global ECD and president of its creative council. Two years before he left, when he led McCann’s local creative department, he oversaw one of Australia’s most famous campaigns to this day. ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ rewrote the government and behaviour change rulebooks, and became the most-awarded campaign in Cannes Lions’ history, winning 28 Lions and five Grands Prix.

Asked whether that was a golden era in Australian advertising, or it’s tougher to make that kind of work now, he reflected, “the world has changed so much since I left. Nowhere is the same as it was.”

“There was a spirit in Australia of extreme optimism and ambition in the industry,” he recalled of the market a decade ago.

“But I know, globally, we've lost a little of that, full stop. It's not just an Australia thing. But when you leave a place, you stupidly expect it to remain in stasis until you come back.

“I don't think Australia is any different to anywhere else in the world. There's a little of, 'We're trying to do our best. There's these forces at play. We don't quite know exactly what they mean for us.' It's hard in that environment to be almost naively optimistic, which I think in advertising is always required. Delusional optimism.”

There is also less money flowing through creative agencies, and algorithmic marketing has made true creativity feel like a riskier play. Tech companies promise predictability.

“It's very hard to be an agency preaching uncertainty, because creativity is uncertainty. It's inefficient. It's dealing with people's emotional state,” John said.

“And when the people we're competing against for budget sell certainty ... it's a very seductive argument to go with certainty, which undermines our entire approach as an industry.”

In some ways, the rise of AI has helped, because alone, it isn’t a competitive advantage -- which emphasises the power and value of creativity. And so while it has led to a scramble to pursue AI at all costs -- “as soon as something new comes, we're all, 'Oh my god, this is it, everything else is dead and this is the future.' We're kind of stupid like that” -- it has also led to a trend towards the ‘analogue’, highly-crafted and longform work, and an out-of-home renaissance. “People miss mass media a lot.”

“To put anything out into the world that is going to do something, it takes all of us,” John said. “It's not just a great idea, it's not amazing execution or craft, or it's not a really novel way to show up in the world, ie media, it's all these things. You can't silo this stuff and you shouldn't even try. And that, to me, is the fun part.”

It is impossible for any exec to truly stay abreast of technology change. “That’d be a full time job.” What marketers should do instead is ask themselves and their partners, “What have we always wanted to do that we couldn’t?” Technology may well unlock an answer, but it shouldn’t be the starting point.

“That's the wrong way, because now you're just using it for the sake of using it. And that's kind of dumb. It's like the brands that were trying to make the first AI Christmas commercial. Why? Because the technology is new. Yeah, but why? Why do your customers want that? There's no answer to that, because they didn't, because you weren't following a problem.”

John joined dentsu almost a year ago, and has been struck by the gentler approach the Japanese holdco has to problem-solving. While many agencies want to centre the technology -- “we hacked the system” -- Dentsu Lab, the business’ innovation arm, wants tech to be “invisible”.

“There's no pressure on Dentsu Lab other than finding crazy new ways to warp technology in service of a human.”

During his trip to Australia and New Zealand, John presented a keynote at Auckland’s Digital Day Out conference, and delivered a lecture to advertising students at RMIT University in Melbourne. With AI increasingly replacing entry-level jobs, John is mulling how to create and protect entry-level opportunities.

He got into the industry with an economics degree and without a book. His first advertising job was working for a B2B agency to translate technical manuals written by engineers into “human speak. Now, obviously, AI could do that in five seconds.” Critically, he got touch typing lessons and can type 125 words per minute (the average typing speed in the US is 40 per minute; an average New York Times journalist types 80).

“I can write as fast as I can think,” John said. “It's an amazing unlock because you flow. I didn't realise how powerful that skill was going to be.

“When I'm thinking it, I can write it … the keyboard disappears.”

He urged creatives, especially those starting out, to focus on finding and honing their voice.

“AI is designed ultimately to replace us. That's the theory of it. It's going to make it so easy for us to use that it's not even a tool anymore. It's basically a version of us. It's not a tool. An editing software is a tool – you've got to practise that tool and learn how to use it for years. That's a tool. A hammer's a tool. You've got to hammer in 10,000 nails until you can really hammer one in properly. The promise of AI... it won't need you. It's philosophically not a tool.

“So people need to double down on their human advantages … Your value is to disrupt patterns, not follow them.”