Fifth Ring Creative Director Alan Stobie has been named a juror in the advertising category at this year's Drum Awards Festival, helping recognise the work pushing creativity and effectiveness forward across the industry.
Stobie heads creative for Fifth Ring across Europe, the Americas and Asia, building brand names for clients ranging from megayacht builders to energy majors to a manufacturer of electric lawnmowers. He also sat down with The Drum ahead of the Festival to talk about what separates advertising that gets noticed from advertising that gets ignored.
His starting point is guidelines. Too many brands, especially large and long-established ones, treat them as law and hold creative to such a strict line that the work stops getting noticed at all. "The clue is in the word: GUIDElines," he said. "They can be limiting, so push them. Often the best thing about rules is knowing how to break them." His advice to brands chasing attention is just as blunt: "Be brave. Humans only notice something that disrupts a pattern. Take it as far as you can. You can always dial it down, but never up."
Asked where he'd invest in 2026, Stobie skipped platforms and channels and named a process change instead: brief creatives early. Ideas don't arrive on schedule, and a brief needs room to sit with a team before a deadline forces the decision. It's why he sees creativity itself as advertising's most overlooked problem. "There's a big difference between speed and value," he said.
On AI, he draws a firm line. Let it handle the admin, and it might offer a way in. It should never do the thinking. "It's just lazy and will probably deliver exactly what you'd think of first and chuck in the bin." For Stobie, the sparks that make advertising memorable come from human experience, not computing power. "Calculators don't make us all mathematicians."
The Drum Awards Festival celebrates work that pushes design, creativity and effectiveness forward across disciplines. Entries close on 3 September.