Vietnam is recovering from The Big C-19. The bustle is back. The streets are alive. But inside the walls of global advertising agencies, Vietnam’s creatives are feeling the effects of a world on the brink of economic downturn.

“It’s very hard for my team right now,” says copywriter Hoang Pham, who moved to Ho Chi Minh City from Hanoi five years ago to pursue a career in advertising.

“A lot of our work is conceptual but every client in Ho Chi Minh City is bracing themselves. They’re not going for creativity, disruptive or impactful stuff right now.”

Hoang says he’s been receiving briefs from clients who want to ‘play it safe with the tried and true of advertising’ and performance-based messaging.

“There’s currently a trend where marketers are allocating more budget to sales messaging on mass media and allocating less budgets for conceptual creatives.

"Lately we’ve been trying to find ways to come back down to earth but we’re still trying to have fun with it.”

Hoang says that it’s already very common for brands in Vietnam to stick to a formula of ‘hard sell messaging with very strong call to actions’.

“One of the problems with Vietnamese marketers is that they try to put too much into one [advertising] asset. They think that they’ve paid for the creative, they’ve paid for the ad space, so they may as well fill it with as much as possible,” says Hoang.

Add the shouty advertising messaging from Vietnam’s brands to the country’s natural ubiquitous buzz and there’s an opportunity in there somewhere for brands to stand out.

“White noise for the Vietnamese is motorbikes. Even the white noise is full of noises. So less is more in advertising. What would stand out is if you did an ad with nothing on it,” says Hoang.

Whether the market is speeding up or slowing down, or if brands are becoming more daring or playing it safe, one thing is a constant in advertising: consumer insight.

The moment you have a good insight, you almost have the creative.

“If you have a good insight that hits the spot, that's enough. If you need to find better insights, dig deeper. You need to understand the people that are using the brand and the product,” he says.

Global brands getting it right in Vietnam.

According to Hoang, there are a handful of global brands in the Vietnam market with notable creative campaigns.

Foreign brands such as Netflix, Durex, Baemin and Orion have ‘caught the attention of Vietnamese audiences’ with strong insight at the heart of their creativity.

“Netflix is doing a great job at connecting with the Vietnamese audience and everything Durex does is witty, minimal and clever.”

Topics such as sex are still sensitive in a traditional country such as Vietnam. But Hoang says Durex creates always-on social media campaigns that are sexually liberating for Vietnamese audiences. They dare to show people doing sexual stuff that others won’t do.

Baemin is a Korean ride-hailing brand that created a great image when entering a market.

Hoang says Baemin does four things well in Vietnam:

1. Baemin is consistent with its brand personality.

It's rebellious, funky, cute and sweet in everything it does across advertising, merchandise and social media).

2. It uses local insight to blend into Vietnamese culture.

Its launch messaging was “Baemin nong gion” or “Hot Baemin is here,” which is a crafty play on the common phrase shouted by bread sellers up and down the country: “Banh mi nong gion” or “hot banh mi is here”.

3. Baemin has a strong localization strategy.

It customises different outdoor billboards with messaging tailored to the districts in Ho Chi Minh City.

4. Baemin dares to be simple.

Its says less in a market where brands try to say too much.

The South Korean confectionary company Orion is also getting its advertising and marketing right in Vietnam, says Hoang.

“Orion has a YouTube channel for entertainment… they only do editorial content and they actually have a following,” he says.

“A lot of brands do content on the side but rarely focus on it… Few brands dare to spend all that money entertaining people instead of just pushing their products.”