Telly Wong, IW Group’s senior VP and chief content officer, is using Web3 to help some of the Interpublic Group of Cos. agency’s biggest clients, including McDonald’s, bolster their reach with multicultural audiences.
Special Report: Web3 Marketing Trailblazers
How IW Group’s Telly Wong is helping brands reach multicultural audiences via Web3
Wong is among Ad Age’s Web3 Marketing Trailblazers 2023
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Telly Wong.
Credit:
Courtesy Telly Wong
Wong educated himself on Web3 when the pandemic hit in 2020 after uncovering an insight that multicultural audiences were 50% more interested in using Web3 than white audiences.
He has spent the past two years crafting metaverse campaigns for McDonald’s for Lunar New Year. The 2023 campaign included an AI-powered TV commercial—one of the first broadcast uses of neural radiance field (NeRF) technology, which generates 3D representations from 2D images by using advanced machine learning.
For Brown-Forman’s Korbel California Champagne, Wong created a charity campaign celebrating Latinas in tech that raised awareness about the Latina wage gap. It featured NFT portraits of leading Hispanic female executives at tech giants including Meta and Amazon, designed by Web3 artist Lucia Diaz.
“We’re looking to broaden our tactics and build in Web3 where it makes sense in understanding consumers—their habits, insights, trends,” Wong said. “That’s how we’ve approached all of our Web3 projects—consumer-first. Not the technology first.”
Wong also helped IW establish a metaverse office and become one of the first multicultural agencies to have an official presence on the blockchain.
What piece of technology could you absolutely not live without?
My LED lamp. I’m in a room most of the day. I work from home four days a week and it’s just nice to kind of change up the feel of the place.
What’s your favorite blog, TikTok account, podcast or any must-follows in your media diet?
I’m a big fan of [TikTok creator and competitive eater] Matt Stonie. I find him very relaxing to watch.
What is the biggest technical leap you’ve had to adjust to in your career and how did you do it?
Social media was the biggest one because I originally started out in public relations, and when social media emerged, it was like, where does this fall? Is this advertising? Marketing? PR? It’s really like, how do you apply all these new things to what you’re doing to stay relevant? But also have it work for you and not just be some new, shiny thing that you just throw in. How do you integrate all these new things? Obviously, we’re seeing that with Web3 now.
