home //
  • wtf? //
  • drinks //
  • Junior Jobs //
    • interviews // whips // Follow us on Twitter Subscribe to RSS

    Feb 01, 12

    The Interview Series // 50

    Coming up with the ideas is only one part of what we do. Selling, presenting and most importantly – winning business is the other. But that’s the shit they just don’t teach you in class. So we decided it was time we learnt a thing or two about it and chatted to Andrew Foote – founding partner and creative director at AJF Partnership (http://ajfpartnership NULL.com NULL.au). He knows a thing or two about hand shakers – he started AJF from scratch with two other lads (who, weirdly enough, all have the same initials) almost 7 years ago. They are one of the largest independent agencies in Oz. Couldn’t really be further from where he started — as a little junior copywriter in (r)Adelaide.

     

    Junior: Ok Andrew – Can we call you Footey? Tell us, how did you get into advertising?

    Footey: I was studying law at university, and realised the only thing I’d learned was that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I’d never really thought about a career in advertising, because quite frankly it hadn’t occurred to me. (Truth be known I was probably spending too much time on the golf course to think about any career at all.) But I got to talking to a couple of mates in the ad business who suggested I give it a go, firstly by doing AWARD School. One of those mates was Adam Francis, who was an art director at the Adelaide start-up Killey & Withy, which was to become KWP! Anyway, I finished my law degree, then did okay in AWARD School, and by this time Adam had moved to Clemenger Adelaide and was in need of a writer. Fortunately, Clems gave me a crack. That was over 18 years ago, and Adam and I still work together to this day.

    Jr: 18 years! That’s longer than some marriages. At what point did you consider starting your own agency?

    AF: Just to give you the career context, I went from being a writer at Clemenger Adelaide to a senior writer and creative director at Clemenger Harvie/CHE, then to Y&R Melbourne as a senior writer under James McGrath, then to joint creative director at Y&R Adelaide. We had an interesting 18 months or so at Y&R Adelaide. When Adam and I, together with MD David Hallett arrived, the place was struggling badly despite having an agency full of great, talented people. We worked incredibly hard, did some good work, turned things around, and then… lost Mitsubishi, our biggest client. The decision was made in Japan, and was totally out of our hands. Y&R made the decision to shut the agency, so we initially decided to start our own shop in Adelaide, which we did, although it proved to be a false start for AJF Partnership. At around the same time, CHE asked us to return as joint executive CDs, and for one reason or another this seemed like the best option at the time, particularly as it allowed us to return to Melbourne. But after ten months at CHE we realised that we really would like to have a bash at it ourselves, so we left, and we did.

    Jr: It’s obviously paid off now, but what were some of the initial challenges you first faced? Obviously it didn’t take long to pick a name?

    AF: Winning clients, obviously. Ever tried cold-calling anyone? It’s pretty daunting. We had to decide who we were going to call, who would actually do the calling, what they’d say, and then how we’d present if they were interested in hearing from us. What was our point of difference? What could we offer that other agencies couldn’t? Fortunately, our approach must have worked – in six years we’ve gone from three to sixty five staff in Melbourne, and have our Sydney office up and running with around a dozen staff. As for the name, crazily enough we did think about other options. Fortunately we resisted, and AJF Partnership it was. The fact that the three founding partners have exactly the same initials has been a pretty good icebreaker.

    Jr: There’s a lot of factors in play when it comes to a winning new business pitch, but what advice would you give young creatives when one lands on their desk?

    AF: I don’t think young creatives should treat a pitch brief differently to any other. Simply put, answer the brief in a creative, engaging way. More often than not, you need to find a big brand thought that can be easily demonstrated across a whole range of media. You might find that the CD pushes you down a certain path, and may not always go for what you consider to be your ‘coolest’ or most creative ideas. But as you say, there are a lot of factors in play in a pitch, so there are a lot of strategic decisions being made that you may not fully appreciate. Clients pitch for a lot of reasons, but there are generally very specific things they are looking for in an agency, and it’s the CD’s job to make sure the work delivers on those. One thing I’d say is that it’s important to get up to speed with the client’s business, their category and their target audiences very quickly. Any agency that demonstrates a good understanding of these things will be off to a good start.

    Jr: Selling ideas – whether it be a pitch or a presentation is the second part of what we do. Can you tell us a few things we can do to get our ideas made?

    AF: As a junior, I think the best thing you can do is to make sure your ideas answer the brief, and can be achieved on time and on budget. You may not be presenting the work yourself, so you’ll often have to leave the selling to others, be they account management or senior creative people. But you can make the sale somewhat easier by developing a bulletproof creative rationale, explaining why the idea is right for the brief and why it will do the job it needs to. If appropriate, include plenty of reference so that the client can really picture what you’re trying to achieve. But don’t despair if work doesn’t get sold. Chances are, you’re working on smaller briefs at this stage, and although you’d no doubt like the agency to fight tooth and nail for your idea, in the bigger scheme of the client relationship it may not make a lot of sense to push too hard for a smaller job. It’s a ‘lose the battle to win the war’ situation. In any case, if your idea’s good enough it’ll still stand out in your folio, and CDs will understand the reasons why it didn’t get made.

    Jr: Speaking of folios – What do you consider when judging the strength of an idea?

    AF: Does it answer the brief, and will it work its arse off. In other words, will it get the people we want to do what we want them to? That’s what all great advertising does. Of course, there are many ways to achieve this – that’s where the creative bit comes in, and that’s what we’re paid to do.

    Jr: And what do you look for when hiring a potential creative?

    AF: For a start, we’ve got an unwritten no-dickhead policy. You spend a lot of time with people at work, so I’d rather enjoy their company than not. We look for people with honesty, integrity and a good work ethic. We look for people who can create campaigns, not just one-off ads. We look for people with a certain level of maturity so that they can work autonomously. And we look for people who create brilliant work that is designed to sell stuff, not just make their reel and folio look good.

    Jr: As a copywriter, what process do you go through when writing headlines?

    AF: I sit down with a pad and a pen. I scribble words on a page. If I kind of like a thought, I’ll draw a box that’s the shape of the ad and write the headline in it. Sometimes I pull out a thesaurus, just to look for other ways into what I’m trying to say. I keep referring back to the brief. Maybe flick through an annual, visit the client’s website, stare out the window – all the usual stuff. It has to be quiet – I can’t write with music on or people talking around me. I really enjoy the process. I don’t delete or chuck out anything either, because a lot of thoughts that you don’t end up using for that particular headline can make great bits of copy, or lines for digital pieces, or become other ideas altogether.

    Jr: Lastly, what’s the best piece advice that was given to you when you were a junior?

    AF: Here’s a good one for writers: buy a stopwatch. Whenever you’re writing for TV or radio, read your scripts out loud, at a leisurely pace, and time yourself. This will help you to stop over-writing, and prevent much stress in the recording studio.

    There are all sorts of those little things that you pick up along the way, but I can’t recall any single profound pieces of advice that I’ve lived by. I guess I’ve always just observed everything and everyone, and reached my own conclusions about what I thought were the right and wrong ways to do things. I’m still doing it today.

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: ADVERTISING, AJF PARTNERSHIP, ANDREW FOOTE, THE INTERVIEW SERIES

    Sep 28, 11

    The Interview Series // 49

    Doom! Gloom! Boo! Like us, you probably don’t really consider what might happen in an economic downturn to us creative gen-y folk. We’re invincible, right? Well sadly no one is, kids. And when we met with Aussie expat Heath Rudduck – Chief Creative Officer of Campbell Mithun (http://www NULL.campbell-mithun NULL.com/) in Minneapolis, we found out just who survives those dark days… Among other stuff. Don’t worry, this ain’t no ’7.30 Report’. We’re sure Heath’s zeal for digital thinking will have you digital dreaming.

     

    Jr: So Heath, start at the beginning.

    Heath Rudduck: I started as an art director at Y&R. But originally my background was in architecture. I’d lived in the UK and the US before I took my gig at Y&R and I was just amazed in ‘91 or whatever it was why we really weren’t using desktop publishing, and why people weren’t using these new-fangled Macintosh systems to produce stuff. In the UK in architecture practices, we were using desktop publishing for all of our documents and promotional work – and I thought that advertising could use some of that technology. I’ve got a thing for gadgets anyway, so wanted to work out what this whole desktop publishing thing was about and this ‘internets’ thing. Back then, If you knew what an @ symbol was, you were a bloody genius. Anyway, long story short, I basically teamed up with a couple of the guys in the office to try it out, and we toyed around with making a website for Jeans Plus. It’s so funny to think that in 1994 we were even considering doing something like that. We were teaching ourselves the most basic of HTML and learning the fine art of image compression, whilst still doing traditional print and TV stuff for Mobil, Beaurepaires and Myer ads.

    Jr: That’d be a pretty sweet blast from the past – seeing that website. We still get a kick out of the original Space Jam website. (http://www2 NULL.warnerbros NULL.com/spacejam/movie/jam NULL.htm)

    H: We put it online, and of course no one was likely to see it, because no one was online. It took ages to upload stuff on the damned dial up modems and the office had no connection online. It’s amazing to think of that now. We really just wanted to know what we could do and how it would work. It was pretty basic. Soon after I was asked if I was interested in a gig at CHE, which was still really joined at the hip with Clems. Clemenger had a few things brewing in the online world so I jumped on board. We had a ball. Glenn Williams asked me one afternoon if I was interested in teaming up with a Danish bloke to explore more of the online stuff. I knew a little bit about this interweb business so I started working within Clemenger to start Clemenger Interactive – where we built sites for Libra, Mercedes and RACV. It was great fun and all very new. We were using a lot of Macromedia Director – that was a drag – heavy load times and all. And Flash was still called Future Splash for goodness sake. But it would change everything.

     

    Jr: Did you notice a big difference moving from Melbourne five years ago, to Digitas in Boston?

    H: Yes, firstly the scale. I had 240 creative staff over three offices when I arrived. That was just mind boggling. Wrangling a smaller creative team has enough ups and downs. But that many staff, plus $160 million bucks worth of business  and three offices is a real bloody challenge. There was a lot of ‘this is how we do it, this is how we like to do it, this is how we’ve always done it’ going on, and it was the true definition of drinking from a fire hose. At that scale, there’s politics galore and you spend a lot of your time trying to create a sanctuary for your teams to do great creative. But the real challenge came with some massive reductions in spending by some clients. Especially GM. The auto industry got caned. Tens and tens of millions of dollars vanished overnight. And of course that really affected my team. We had layoffs everywhere in the US. It was a pretty dark time, and quite depressing. At one point, round two, we were putting people on the skids at Christmas. I hate that part of our business.

    Jr: Who survives those dark days? Or is it just pot luck?

    H: It was a no brainer that you kept hybrids. You get people that I call T shaped, people that had a core skill set and were obviously good at what they did, but they could spread and be accountable for work in a spectrum of their skillset. So for example, art directors that had a strong design bent and digital understanding were invaluable. And there were plenty of people who still saw themselves as “TV” or “Print” creatives. I hadn’t seen that in Australia for years.  You need people who will step up and own work, and who aren’t afraid to share an idea around. That was another really important thing – people who weren’t precious about sharing an idea and making it a team effort, or jumping on board an idea that had already left the station, helping to make it better. I’ve been spending some time with the President of MCAD here in Minneapolis lately, and their course structure is reflecting this way of thinking.

    Jr: It does seem that digital ideas, and the process, is a lot more collaborative than the traditional art director/copywriter process.

    H: It really is, but I think what you will find is happening – and I’m certainly pushing this where I am now – is that it needs higher process, it needs to be open source, it needs to be collaborative, no matter what the brief.  This is a challenge, because you need to own things, but also have to be able to share. It’s a balance. What’s interesting is that some of the big schools in the US are really working this open source model into their curriculum. Like I said, MCAD seem to have an awesome grip of it. Basically, what they’re doing, is engineering incredible projects. Real world projects that, e.g, a water saving device that they’re working with a community, lets say in Tibet, and working to make some sort of community based program that needs to be invented, marketed, conceptualized, produced and finally released to the world. Those projects can take five to seven years, but if you are doing a three year course and you come in half way through that project, you’re not starting fresh. You’re coming in half way. It’s just like life. If you join a business, there’s already work in progress. It’s getting people to embrace the moving train and just get on board to make it better. But still feeling they’re part of the village that makes the ultimate product. It’s interesting that a lot of us have been encouraged over the years to be selfish in the way we look at our work. Ultimately you’ve got to build a book of the things you have conceptualized and worked on over the years. But the reality is that a lot of what you are doing is really coming from a team, and you need a director, a programmer, a UX person, and all these other people to make it happen. I think it’s Kevin Roberts that said ideas are like assholes, everyone’s got one – it’s what happens with the idea and how it comes to life that really counts. There’s a business at the end of it that also needs to benefit from your ideas. I’m seeing a lot of that thinking change within agencies in the US. Everyone is trimming back, and we’re bringing hybrid type people in. I’ve got people who aren’t traditional art directors but by god can they produce a beautiful piece of work. Man, there’s an awesome guy named Manny Bernardez I discovered at Nike. I plucked him out and he really helped change the shape of our work.  He can design, shoot, edit and wield After Effects like a champ.  He helped produce a really nice little piece for United Way for us recently.

     

    Jr: For people who read Junior who are coming through the ranks and doing uni courses, do you think the skill set of a creative is going to change vastly?

    H: I think I’ve seen it changing already. Some schools seem to be catching up faster than others. RMIT seem to be on top of it. I’ve done a lot of work with Miami Ad School over the years, and they’ve really changed their shape too. They’re producing these hybrid students who come out and have a real firm grasp on the fact that you are in the business of creativity. That’s very different from even ten years ago.

    Jr: So are you imagining that your art director would even have skills in motion, filming, etc?

    H: Yep, and they don’t necessarily have to be able to produce a hard core coded flash thing or know how to shoot the perfect shot – just to have a grip on how it all goes together. Look at the classic Art Director/Writer team, I’ve got a diagram I share with my team, that shows it’s not so long ago that it was just the Copywriter. Then the Art Director was let out of the studio, then planners came in, and if you look at the cast of people that it now takes to produce a piece of work, it’s as long as your arm. If you look at the skill set of each discipline, in a spectrum, there is so much crossover. Design, art direction, user experience, where does it start and stop? Planning and user experience — a user experience person is hard-core information architect at one end, but neuroscientist at the other. Planning is neuroscience at one end, and hard-core statistics and insights on the other. It’s a bloody awesome time. Then I look at companies like Ideo, they’re inventing business ideas. I really honestly believe that agencies moving forward need to be so bound so tightly into what their clients do, that they’re delivering business concepts based on human insights as much as they are marketing pieces. I clearly wasn’t around then, but that’s kind of how it used to happen. In 1935,  Ray Mithun said that “everything talks”. His belief was that every single little thing, around a product or a service, has to have a tone, a manner, and deliver a service that reflects the underlying message. His belief was to get in deep. So deep, that you’re delivering business solutions, not just ads. We should be inventing stuff to take it to our clients. Constantly. And I reckon the appetite for new thinking is growing.

    We’ve got this social based idea for Mayo Clinic, that directly reflects their wonderful collaborative nature. It’s called Mayo Connect and it facilitates the connection of people with particular concerns or ailments, with qualified experts who have dealt with the same affliction. It helps people share their concerns and approach their issue with more confidence and support. To me this is awesome, that we can have an effect on someone’s life, as advertisers.

    Jr: It feels like that the best work, the stuff that consumers really pay attention to, are those kind of ideas these days. That’s where the bar is these days for advertisers. You’ve worked here in Melbourne, and now you’ve been working in the US for the last five years. Do you think those business changing ideas are more common in the US than in Melbourne? Do you think we are catching up still to that thinking?

    H: Depends in what category I think. I think I often see more courageous thinking outside of the US. But volume and access to technology here is enabling people to experiment. I am starting to see clients start to stick their necks out a little more.

    Jr: But obviously the US has the scale.

    H: Like I said, scale helps, and it has the dollars. Reduced significantly, but it has the volume. Volume means you can take a bit more risk. But they’re also more risk adverse so you need to eat the elephant a bite at a time.

    Jr: We hear things move a bit more slowly over there.

    H: There’s a lot of layers in businesses here. Loads of titles and politics. We tend to be a bit more ballsy in Australia.  But let’s be honest, there’s a hell of a lot that’s the same. I think wanting to give things a go is in our DNA though. I’ll say things like “let’s just try it”, make something, take it to the client and see. There’s been a reluctance to do that. It’s like people have been emasculated. What we’re doing in our agency now is dedicating time to test the water. Make stuff and take it. Doing the real Aussie thing of barbed wire, string and sticky tape to make something and take it to see if they like it. If a client sees that it can be done, and you can demonstrate it to them, even if it’s fake, they’ll go for it.

    Jr: Do you think that’s an important part of selling it?

    H: I really think so. This entrepreneurial R&D mentality – you have to do it. Unless you can make it look like it can be done, they won’t go for it. Telling a story around things too – this is the one thing I’ve really noticed younger students from good schools are really able to do. The VCU students for example. It’s an awesome school. I’m seeing a lot of them really have a grip of how a brand lives in the middle of these fragmented media elements and how it might harness each one of these things to operate. I’m a huge believer that everything is kind of spherical.  You’ve got this sphere, and depending on which place, which person, what time of day, and what device, you could be having a completely different story and conversation with them. Understanding that – this is why planning has become vital to what we do. And the big brands, like the Targets of the world – these guys are hiring neuroscientists into their teams to get deep down into human behavior. Agencies need to get almost under the next layer of skin of people.

    Jr: Especially in the digital sense with all these layers, it’s a very different level of communication than just passing a billboard.

    H: The thing I think is happening very quickly in the US is the separation between digital and traditional is disappearing. The reason why I was so interested in this gig I have now is that they’ve merged the two businesses. They’ve pulled the two hemispheres of the brain together. They’re forcing osmosis within the business. I saw a quote the other day that basically said, if you can’t accept where digital is at, that these digital media elements are here to stay, then you may as well retire. I’ve been banging on about this for years, I really honestly believe that it’s finally having a big influence. All the big campaigns that are cutting through the award shows have digital components. But I love the other stuff too – it’s finding the balance.

     

    Jr: Here in Australia we have AWARD school, which has been around for years, kids at the end come out with a folio of essentially print ads. Which is great for showing  a CD quickly how you think. From your end, in terms of hiring, what do you think kids these days should put in their books?

    H: It’s still about the ideas. It has to be. The difference is now that ideas can be massive. Big campaigns, really genius little snippits, little snacks. I’d want to see a spread of those. It’s fine to have a bunch of print, but the reality is that the cost of developing a print ad and the lead times – a lot of clients have vastly reduced budgets.  I’m in the final stages of editing a TV spot that had it’s budget cut after the ad was shot. So we are releasing the spot online now. We’ve got to work out how to be smarter and more effective in these tricky financial times. Every year – faster, cheaper, smarter. Sheeesh.  I’d want to see a book that has a real spread of beautiful traditional ideas, because then I can get a grip of your art direction and writing because I still think that beautifully art directed and deliciously crafted words are a great demonstration of your visual and cerebral mindset, and being a thinker. Then I want to see that idea off the chain – a big organising idea, an umbrella thought, that’s campaigned out in different ways. The finance pressure that I’m under as a creative director means I can’t hire a one trick pony. It doesn’t mean you have to be able to code HTML, but you have to have a grip on every medium and what is possible.

    Jr: Have people come around to the thinking that small is good? Especially in the online space, it seems like everyone is still of the mentality that the big campaign is what goes.

    H: My writing partner Reid Holmes and I were chatting about this stuff today. We’ve had the “BIG” idea expectations for years. But a big idea can start very small now. A few years ago when the primary elections were on in the US – one of my team came to me and asked, if there was all this noise around Primary Elections, and we had Holiday Inn Express as a client and ‘It’s a smart choice’  (that’s their positioning) – wouldn’t politicians be smarter if they stayed there? We built a simple comparison site, showing how much smarter they would be if they had have stayed in Holiday Inn Express. It cost 98K, and in the first two week got 85 million free media impressions. You can’t buy that media. I think on the first broadcast on Fox News in the morning it was mentioned 17 times. That was awesome. All  from a smart little thought. That stuff is super smart.

    I’ve seen projects where someone has walked into the office and said, did you know that there are going to be two million 3D glasses handed out at the super bowl, and then someone else says well why don’t we do this.. and then it finds a head of steam. Bingo. It’s this collaboration that makes what we do gold. Our director of technology, Sean O’Brien, is a total legend. He’s basically a super smart hacker brain working in advertising. He’s got that experimental-entrepreneurial brain. That type of spirit really needs to be let off the chain.

    The beauty now is it’s all so accessible. For years the digital teams played classic technical tricks, keeping it under the cloaks and then, tada! By keeping it collaborative, we’re growing things quicker and better than before, and doing it more often. It’s truly a great time to be doing what we do.

    Tags: ADVERTISING, CAMPBELL MITHUN, HEATH RUDDUCK, THE INTERVIEW SERIES

    Aug 10, 11

    The Interview Series // 48

    Adam Morris has the best beard we’ve ever seen. No shit. Look at it. It’s bushy awesomeness distracted us constantly throughout our early morning interview. And it’s distracting us again now from getting to Adam’s important bits. See, Adam is founder of Monsieur (http://monsieur NULL.com NULL.au/) – a newly formed digital shop in Melbourne. He preaches a smart, useful and beautiful approach to digital. And we reckon his opinion is worth hitting publish on – seeing as he’s worked on all things digital since nineties. And… He has a beard. But seriously, we got pretty deep into www’s in this one – so scroll away and then go make something useful and pretty and make us proud.

     

    Junior: Ok Adam, let’s go back, way back…

    Adam Morris: I started out typesetting magazines and designing for print. I worked with a small ad agency in Queensland through that role and ended up teaching their art directors HTML after hours. I’d taught myself HTML and was also studying Multimedia at university at the time. And then I became mates with those guys, and one of them moved to London, got a job in an agency there, and then got me one too in the web design department. This was in 1999/2000. It was a really interesting time as it was right at the height of the dot com bubble. Because of that, I got into roles that I wasn’t really qualified to do. Which was great. It’s the best way to learn. I had a couple of web design jobs in ad agencies and digital shops in London and Edinburgh before I came back home.

    Jr: Sounds like a great time to be cutting your teeth…

    A: Yeah, I did that for five years or so, and then I moved back to the Gold Coast. I worked as a traditional art director for six months, and then I opened up my own little design agency that did web stuff, for a year and a half. I had some decent clients. I had Billabong – which is about all you can have on the Gold Coast, right? So I did that, fluked some work from Monster.com via the ‘States, so I did sites for them. It was weird how that came about. It was about that time that CSS website design became really big. There was all those CSS design websites, putting up a new site/page every day. That whole web 2.0 aesthetic. A very weird time.

    Jr: Did you find you more creative in your own business than in agency land?

    A: No, not really. Probably less. Back then it was more about doing what you could with the technology. I always had a love for typography, grid systems and modernist design, so that always drove a lot of what I was doing so it was truly a design mind-set. But working in a big agency and collaborating with people with really diverse skill-sets really opened my eyes to ideas and real creative thinking. Working with copywriters, planners and UX folk really opened up a whole new world for me. That is what I consider to be a more meaningful form of ‘being creative’ anyway – solving problems through communications AND interaction design, rather than communicating in a more abstract sense through aesthetics, design and composition.

    Jr: More recently you worked at DT Digital, and Cornwell Design in Creative Director and Director of Digital roles. Do you find yourself on the tools still – do you still code and do all that nerdy stuff?

    A: I love it. I miss it. Towards the end of DT, as I had two roles there, CD of DTDigital and also Digital CD at Ogilvy, it was really full on so I never had any time to do stuff. I was across nearly every job in both agencies. It’s hard to adjust to. You go from spending every day of your life creating things, and then all of a sudden you find yourself in a place where you are coordinating stuff and going to a lot more meetings, managing staff and working more closely with clients.

    Jr: Do you think having a technical background is really advantageous in working in digital adland?

    A: Definitely. If there is someone in your agency who you can kind of draw upon then that’s always helpful. I think the work that I consider to be the most interesting work in the world is brought out of tapping into emerging behaviour that is based around technology – that kind of innovation hits the sweet spot almost. I’m trying to think of a good example. Everyone uses Nike+ as the example, but just an awareness of how people start to use technology to augment real life situations. Like how people are starting to pair technology with real-life behavior before other brands do. Nike jumped on really quickly when they noticed people were listening to their iPods while they were running, then going and making that experience more awesome. It’s all about timing, so now they own that behavior. Nike watched what their customer’s were doing, took a leap of faith and now pretty much ‘own’ music-plus-running. No other brand can touch it now. If you’re first to market it means everything.

    Jr: Creatives coming out of AWARD school and the like come from the classic art director copywriter way of working. What kind of skills and thinking do people need coming through now that will give them a real edge?

    A: I definitely think you need an awareness of digital and behavioral trends—it sort of seems like graduates don’t understand media very well. I don’t think anyone ever speaks to them about the challenges of different media. Why what you are doing needs to change or be different depending on how people are interacting or absorbing the message and what context they’re in. I don’t think that there is enough focus on the people at the other end of advertising. I think that’s the biggest thing that agencies are moving from dealing with now – shifting from thinking about perception to thinking more about behaviour. I think media has totally dictated that. Now creativity is always dictated by the medium that it’s made for. TV and radio in particular are always about bringing something down to its essence, reducing complex stuff to a very simple message that needs to be communicated in a 15 or 30 second spot. Finite media. Digital is different because it’s infinite media. And it requires complexity and depth. Layers of stuff. It’s not about reducing something down to a really simple message; it’s about doing something of value that people can explore.

    Jr: Sometimes it’s hard pitching that kind of thinking to people without that level of understanding… They want to know “what’s the ad in it?”

    A: It’s blatantly obvious that that doesn’t work in life. Take a banner ad for instance, where we think we’ve done really well if it has a .5% click-through rate. That’s crazy and insane. That’s where the bar is set and it’s incredible. Agencies continue to spend most of their digital budget on banner advertising, which is totally ineffective. It blows my mind. I just think banner ads are inherently stupid. It’s taking that interruptive concise, here’s our message, and putting it into a medium where it’s totally irrelevant. 99.5% of the time what you are putting there is a pain in the ass to people. It’s stopping them doing something that they are trying to do – trying to read a news article, etc.

    Jr: Like page takeovers. Those things must make media companies so much fucking money.

    A: That’s why it keeps on going, because there’s so much money in it. Brands don’t really have the confidence to put money elsewhere because it’s risky. At least you know what you’re going to get with a banner ad. But it’s genuinely really easy to double or triple the effectiveness of what you are doing if you try doing something a little bit different. We need to take marketers out of their comfort zone more. It’s not too hard to do the maths and model a per-interaction cost… Try this, spend this much money, just have a crack at it. It’s generally 10 times more effective, sometimes 20 or 40 is you sit down and compare it to display ads.

    Jr: We read post about thinking small (http://garethkay NULL.typepad NULL.com/brand_new/2011/05/think-small NULL.html). Very interesting, and very true for these times, don’t you think?

    A: I think it’s very right. You look at the stuff that Burger King do, online, which is up there with the best stuff that is happening. They must do a couple of hundred campaigns a year. Whopper sacrifice, that kind of stuff. It’s relatively small, but effective. They probably do a lot of stuff that fails and you never hear about it, but that’s kinda the point. “Tiny bets” as Gareth Kay puts it.

    Jr: Do you reckon we will see the death of banner ads any time soon?

    A: Probably, but not for a couple of years. Just because it’s still low risk and marketing directors are probably more comfortable with that as their success metric. Which is sad, but then again that’s a massive opportunity for us all to do better stuff.

    Jr: What would you say to the junior working in an ad agency, that 80% of their job is doing shitty banners, but they want to do better stuff? What do you think the opportunities are for someone in that position?

    A: If you have to do them, you’ve got to do them as well as you can. If I was a junior having to do that kind of stuff I’d be coming up with other things and trying to slip it under the CD’s nose, and saying, well, what if we did this, and what if we did that, and being more aware of what is happening. Being more aware of how people are using the internet. Again, Whopper sacrifice is the perfect example of that. Being aware that there is this cultural phenomenon happening on Facebook. Simple. Being aware of that kind of stuff, and being aware of it early, and first. Identifying it first. A lot of that stuff is planner territory. So talk to planners as much as you can. Ask them what problems they’re trying to solve for the agency’s clients, get as much insight as you can out of them.

    Jr: It seems like everyone is a digital strategist these days, which I suppose a good digital creative has to be in a way.

    A: Being aware of that stuff is really important. And it’s also pretty interesting I reckon. Maybe I’m a bit weird but I find all that stuff, how people’s behaviour is changing as a result of digital becoming the dominant media, is pretty exciting. So much change happening all the time.

    Jr: A copywriter was telling us the other day how when he started in advertising ten years ago, he and his art director had to share a computer, and they didn’t have office email. If that was ten years ago, imagine what it could be like in another ten years. If they didn’t have email back then and they were sharing a big chunky iMac, what will it be in ten years? We might not even go into an office…

    A: I reckon it will probably end up being more like a Hollywood movie industry where you have floating creative directors who just recruit teams of freelance talent for particular jobs. Horses for courses.

    Jr: A highly mobile crew. Indeed. A bit like yourself and your new business really. What sort of stuff are you going to do?

    A: Mostly digital based service stuff, like branded utilities. That’s what I want to be doing. I refuse to do banner ads. Just out of principle. I’m really interested in the role of digital in enhancing or augmenting existing behaviour — so just incrementally improving things or making something more fun.

    Jr: That’s it isn’t it. That’s the key. Make people’s lives easier, or more fun. Lastly, what do you think most people get wrong in doing digital?

    A: Using clicks or impressions as a success metric. It’s part of the banner ad problem we were talking about. All the focus is on pushing people somewhere or getting them to click on something, with little or no thought about what happens at the other end. And if they are thinking about what goes on at the other end they’re making assumptions about behavior that are unfounded. That people will like something or use something that they just straight-up won’t. Like microsites for frozen peas or Facebook pages for insurance. You know, just adding to the massive pile of digital ghost towns.

    Also posted in ADVERTISING, DESIGN | Tags: ADAM MORRIS, CORNWELL, DTDIGITAL, MONSIEUR

    Jun 22, 11

    The Interview Series // 47

    Tony. He hangs out with rock stars (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=EmF4v8AoKv0&feature=related), wins a shit load of awards, and I’m sure gets mocked for being a little bit ‘Special’. Ha! Oh, we’re so clever. A talented Art Director by trade, Tony is the ECD of one of NZ’s top ad agencies (http://www NULL.specialgroup NULL.co NULL.nz/), and is kicking goals left right and center in the creative scene — the world over. We don’t quite know where he fitted in a beer or three with us in the midst of all that, but we managed to ask him a few questions while we could.

    Junior: Where did it all begin, take us back to the start?

    Tony: That should only take a minute; Design school Auckland, I got bored of just design, and started doing advertising halfway through the course, much to the confusion of my tutors. I got a job here (Auckland) at a company that no longer exists called DMB&B. I did an ad, which got a bunch of attention. Went to London, had fun for seven and a half years, spent mainly in bars. Then went to Amsterdam for two and a half years working on Volvo across Europe. Then I came back to New Zealand as the Creative Director for Generator for about two years, resigned when it was sold, started Special. Three years later, we are here.

    Jr: What is your best tip for juniors starting their creative career?

    T: Well besides the obvious things that you can’t control… (an older man interrupts our conversation. He looks similar to a actor off a 70′s cop show)

    Older man that looks like a 70′s cop: (slightly slurred and angry tone) I thought leaving my drink and my glasses would be enough to reserve my seat while I was gone.

    T: So are you saying that you want your seat back?

    Jr: We can move if you want?

    Older man that looks like a 70′s cop: I’ll move inside.

    T: Besides things you can’t control like being really, really good or being really lucky. I’d say be positive and really enthusiastic and basically keep coming up with ideas. Don’t stop or go home early, don’t think that this idea is good enough or that will do. You’ve got to keep going. The other thing is you have to make yourself indispensable. Be hungry for everything. Everything is an opportunity — even if it is just a brief for a banner, you can still try to do something really good for it.

     

    Jr: What is the trick to winning 8 Gold Axis awards, The Best in Show Axis, a Grand Prix at Cannes, which ranked Special as the 8th best Independent Agency in the world — then come back to New Zealand to win National Business Review Agency of the Year, Fairfax Independent Agency of the Year, as well as taking home USD $10,000 for the Grand Prix at Adstars — all in 2010?

    T: Don’t sleep? Ha. I think a lot of that stuff was achieved through being ambitious. Not thinking you can or can’t do things. So I think it is really about thinking ‘why couldn’t we do this?’, or ‘why couldn’t you try and do that?’. With the Iggy thing I think there was a bit of luck in pulling that campaign off, timing and everything else worked really well, but the main thing about it was ambition – believing ‘sure we can sell this’, ‘sure we can get Iggy’, ‘sure it will work.’ The other thing about it is we started Special to do things our own way, and to do things better, and as soon as you say that — you put yourself out there. You put your neck on the chopping block. There is no hiding; people know it’s your agency and your work — you can’t blame anyone else. So you have to try really hard to avoid screwing up in public in a big way. Which means working every weekend and working every night, very late.

    Jr: Was it fun hanging out with Iggy Pop?

    T: Yep, he is very cool. He was pretty focused. We met him by the roof top pool at our hotel in Miami, and besides taking his shirt of in the first two minutes, he was very focused on the orchestration of it. He really looked at the different people and had already worked out in his own mind the structure of the song. He was really pleased with how the ad was received, and how much acclaim it got worldwide. We had dinner with his manager, who is a really nice Scottish guy, when Iggy was playing at the Big Day Out this year. He told us over dinner that Iggy kept talking about this Grand Prix and how much he really liked it etc, so we ended up giving it to him backstage at the Big Day Out. We thought we’d had enough use out of it so he may as well have it. He was chuffed.

    Jr: How do you live a balanced life?

    T: 3 of the 4 partners at Special have young kids, so we normally finish up at 5:30pm or 6pm and go home to bath time and all the rest of it. I know it doesn’t sound that rock and roll. Then we turn the laptops on again about 9:30pm. You have to work very quickly and be very focused. You can’t muck around. Then the big trick is to put down the iPhone the rest of the time you’re at home. Otherwise it is too much of a distraction.

    Jr: What floats your boat when you are looking through a junior’s book?

    T: I would say, actually, not ads that look like classic award winning press ads, or ads that look like they are created for Luerzers Archive. I guess I want to see ideas that are a little broader or a little bit different, as opposed to just big visual and little logo. I want to see ideas that are more engaging and involving, just interesting, different stuff really. Because what you are really looking for is how someone thinks.

    Jr: How much digital should we have in our book?

    T: Digital is so important. Almost everything thing you do now has a digital component to it. Good uses, or misuses of digital are great to have in your book. Often the trick is to make technology really simple. Don’t be put off if you haven’t actually made anything digital – it’s the simple, engaging ideas people will be looking for. But yeah – pack your book full of digital thinking.

    Jr: What’s your best/worst junior story?

    T: Nah, they’re all pretty boring really. Look, starting out is tough. Everyone knows that, you’ve got to work your socks off and hopefully you can get a chance to create some good stuff. You’ve also got to look for opportunities, not wait for them to be handed to you.

    Jr: If you could do your creative career again what would you do differently?

    T: Shit, I don’t know. Work at better agencies, work under better Creative Directors. I really think it is all about working with better people. It is one of the key things. It makes it more enjoyable. You respect their opinion more. If you work in agencies that want to do good work rather than agencies that want to do things for other reasons you will have a better time.

    Jr: Do you think you need to be at a great agency to do great work?

    T: No, but it definitely helps. By a huge amount, but no, that is not essential, but it helps a heck of a lot.

     

    Jr: What keeps you inspired?

    T: I guess all creatives like the excitement of ideas. They like seeing things come to life and getting out there in the world and seeing how the public react to it. I also think creatives are highly competitive so that always keeps you motivated. I think also personal pride and fear of embarrassment keep you motivated. You don’t want to do stuff that people don’t like. Even though there is nothing wrong with doing work that polarizes, there is nothing wrong with doing work that a bunch of people don’t like as long — as the right people react the right way to it, in other words, as long as it creates the right results. Was that an answer?

    Jr: Yeah, that was good. What is your best/worst moment in advertising?

    T: Well one of the best moments was winning our first bit of business for Special. I think that was good, basically because it says you’re up, you’re away.

    The worst moment in advertising? Shit, that is a tough one, there have been lots of tough moments. I guess the worst moment is when you see an idea that you believed was going to be great, turn out not as good as it could be, for whatever reason. You kinda die a little bit inside, so yeah that is kinda the worst bit for me.

    Jr: Do you have time to do other creative stuff apart from advertising – have you got a side project?

    T: I used to have a few. But now I have young children, and Special. Both are really consuming.

    Jr: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

    T: That’s a good question. I’d be a bit old by then. That’s a tough one, I don’t really have a smart enough answer for that one, sorry!

     

    Jr: How does the NZ/Australian junior creative scene stack up to the rest of the world?

    T: I think New Zealand has had a really good history in Young Guns and young teams doing really well in award shows. I think NZ punches above it’s weight creatively, as we said at Axis last year, per capita NZ had more Cannes Lions than anywhere else in the world. Also, New Zealand junior creatives seem to be quite broad and flexible thinkers, which I think really helps.

    Jr: How do you get ideas?

    T: I think it is about distilling the business problem down and down, until you can get it into a malleable size in terms of focusing on what we really are trying to do here. Once you strip away all the layers of the brief, you get to what you are really trying to achieve. Then once you’ve got that in your mind, then you can generally work out interesting ways of bringing that to life. But I think it is about keeping things simple, that doesn’t mean you can’t be spectacular. But it is getting right down to that thing you want to say, and then doing something extraordinary with it. And throw in a rockstar, it always helps.

    Interview by: Jono Kemps

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: ADVERTISING, AUCKLAND, SPECIAL, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, TONY BRADBOURNE

    May 11, 11

    The Interview Series // 46

    Chances are you’ve done AWARD School if you’re working, or wanting work in an advertising agency in Australia or NZ. For those of you not in the know — AWARD School isn’t a place that you end up learning how to craft trophies and useless dust collecting items to hang in your agency reception. It’s an industry-led 16 week part-time crash course in ideas — figuring out how to make the shiz that wins the awards in the first place. Usually the cream of the crop, i.e the top ten, land themselves a gig. Sounds awesome, right? Especially if you’ve placed 1-10. We wanted to do an interview for the fifty-odd others in the course that find themselves a few grand poorer and unsure what to do next. We spoke to Ben O’Brien — this CD and partner of Kastner & Partners (http://kastnerandpartners NULL.com) in Sydney used to run the Award School show. We met up with him for a liquid-lunch in Pyrmont and we got his thoughts on the matter.

     

    Junior: The best place to start is probably the beginning. Where did you start off in advertising? Actually, we read somewhere you started in fashion, is that right?

    Ben O’Brien: That’s very true, yes. Out of uni my first career was fashion design. I was working while I was at uni at R.M. Williams, and went out to the factory a couple of times. I thought the process seemed pretty easy. I pulled apart a whole bunch of my favourite jeans on the dining room table at home, and worked out the patterns. And I started manufacturing jeans. I made 2000 pairs of these jeans, and they sold pretty well. Made another 2000, then another 2000, and ended up with three stores in Adelaide.

    Jr: What was your label called?

    B: It was called ‘Bullet Proof Jeans’. People would ask if they were really bullet proof, and I’d say ‘Put them on, and I’ll get a gun and we’ll find out.’ And it was a good business, made some money, and I had a lot of fun doing it. You reach a point where you either invest a lot of money into it and take it to the next level, and you have to make a decision about whether you are going to go down that track or not. At the time I had some friends who were working in a design agency down the street, and I used to go there for drinks on a Friday afternoon. And they’d have these beautifully designed brochures, but terrible spelling mistakes. I used to get out a red pen and go through all the mistakes, and they started paying me for it with beers. I found it more interesting than the fashion thing. So, I just made a decision one Friday afternoon – am I going to keep going with fashion, or get into some form of copywriting? Even as a proofreader, maybe. I didn’t understand what the jobs were in advertising.

    Jr: And so you’d always been good at English?

    B: Yeah, I did English and philosophy at Uni. There wasn’t a huge calling for professional philosophers, so there wasn’t a future there. But advertising seemed to be fun. They were designing, I was proofreading, making a couple of dollars, and I thought I should make a go of it. So I put together a folio of what I thought was advertising, but it turned out to be a very bad portfolio. Somehow I got in the door of KWP! in Adelaide where Andrew Killey and Pete Withy very kindly said that I could work there for free. That was really good of them. So I sat in there and worked for free for a few months, and put together some ads. In the end they backpaid me to when I started and produced a few of the ads that I’d made, and that was my start in advertising. So I took the portfolio that I’d built up there over six months to Clemenger where Pete Watt interviewed me and gave me a job at Clemenger on a very small salary. I ended up working there for a couple of years with some guys, Jack Davies and Simon Briscoe. They decided to move up to Sydney, and when they arrived they rang me up and said man, you gotta get over here. This town has a lot of things happening and it’s a really cool place. So I rang around, made a bunch of interviews, snuck out of work for a week and came and met every creative director in Sydney and eventually ended up getting a job at Foster, Nunn, Loveder. Which unfortunately doesn’t exist anymore. But it was a great agency at the time. They were a tiny place but doing Volkswagen and Sony, which were amazing accounts. I got out a whole bunch of ads, and it was a really good start.

    Jr: Did you find it hard to move from Adelaide over to Sydney, with the different kinds of work you were doing back home?

    B: Not really. I learned some very valuable things at KWP! They had an account at the time called Sip & Save, which is a chain of bottle shops in Adelaide. Sip & Save had an ad in the paper every week. Every week they’d get a brief, which was a special, e.g a carton of beer for x dollars, and it would relate generally to one or two of their stores. It might be by the beach, in the mountains, in the city, etc. They were simple briefs, but you didn’t have much to work with. You’d have the picture of the bottle, or the carton of beer. What they’d built up was a personality of the brand, which was a quirky, larrikin kind of style. My job was basically writing headlines. I’d write hundreds of headlines a week – I’d fill up my floor with little boxes with headlines, and I got incredibly good at drawing a carton of beer, and a bottle of wine. I can still pull that out whenever I’m required to draw a bottle of wine! That was an incredibly good foundation for understanding the personality of a brand, but through words. The art of writing a really good headline is a little bit lost. I think that you couldn’t have had a better start in advertising than being forced to write a million headlines. The ad had to be off to the paper on a Friday afternoon, and every Thursday in the middle of the day Pete would walk into my office and I’d have thousands of headlines spread over the floor. He’d kick out of the way the ones he didn’t like, and then hopefully we’d end up with two or three that he did, which we’d present to the client. And then they’d choose one, we’d lay it up, and then we’d start the process all over again. It’s just an amazing thing that is a little bit lost now. Simple ideas, presented in a really simple way.

    Jr: Sounds like a great start. How many months did you do that for?

    B: Six months. Hundreds and hundreds of headlines.

    Jr: Do you remember any of them?

    B: Well, if I tell you one, people will say ‘that’s a shit headline’! But there was a carton of beer, which was $19.99. And it was 1999. So the headline was ‘Party like it’s $19.99’. You know what I mean, just a classic matter of going bang, that’s a solid headline with personality. It was 1999, so we are going back in time a fair way!

    Jr: It’s so hard to find junior writers, who can actually write…

    B: Exactly. Unfortunately there was no AWARD School when I was in Adelaide and I started off, so there was no option. I just kind of had to fight my own way. AWARD School is an incredibly great door opener. I have run AWARD School in the past, and I’m a huge fan of it. It’s a really fantastic way for people to get a foot in the door who have no other way in. Say you are a bus driver out west, for example, you are interested in creativity and advertising, but where do you start. That in a way is the purpose of AWARD School. A lot of people give it a hard time because it’s not digital enough, or focused enough. That’s not really the point of it. The point of it is to give people a way into the industry. And I don’t think that it’s just for advertising creatives. A powerful idea is powerful whether it’s a script for a movie, a product, etc. If you understand the power of a simple creative idea you can use that in your industry. People do it one or two times, just because it focuses you on what you want to do, and maybe it’s a good way to decide not to do advertising too. It’s hardcore pressure in AWARD School. I think it’s a very valuable course.

    Jr: First folios are always very convoluted. Too many ideas on every page. And it’s a really valuable thing to teach people who have a talent for visuals or words to hone their ideas.

    B: I think the question of, “Are you a writer or are you an art director”, and people who get to the end of AWARD school and still can’t decide – that is a very bizarre thing. There’s a very separate set of skills for those two jobs. Some people come in and like pictures, and think therefore they should be an art director. You actually have to have skills for these jobs. As a writer, you have to have an interest in words. It’s a skill built up over many years. I don’t think it has to be taught, but you have to have an interest in reading. And know how to use punctuation, and grammar. I had a Brazilian guy once who came out from Brazil and was working in our office, but English was a second language. I couldn’t give him any writing tasks because he literally couldn’t write. His ideas were good, but the writing wasn’t. I can’t proof read everything and be on top of everything all the time – so it makes you unemployable in a small agency. And the same thing goes for Art Directors – there are some Photoshop skills and InDesign skills that you pretty much have to have. The days of over the shoulder art director are over. I think it’s a shame because there are some very talented people who don’t have the Mac skills, but in a small agency like ours, it would be very difficult to employ someone who didn’t have them.

    Jr: You’re essentially employing two people – a studio operator, and an art director.

    B: Exactly, and at the moment I can’t afford to employ two people.

    Jr: Totally. Hey, do you want another drink?

    B: Sure.

    Jr: (Leaves to get more drinks..)

    B: (to the recording device (http://www NULL.old-picture NULL.com/american-history-1900-1930s/pictures/Listening-Recording-Device NULL.jpg)): You better make me sound smart. Or else. (laughs)

    Jr: (Returns with two beers.) The folio that you end up with out of AWARD School is very ideas based. If you were going to give advice to a young wannabe copywriter, in terms of the folios that you see these days, how best do you think that they can demonstrate that they can actually write? Do you still think you should still have one long copy ad to show that you can write?

    B: I think that your portfolio defines what you want to do. Looking at folios, you can’t help but pigeon hole people depending on how their folio is. For that reason, I think that if you want to sell yourself as an ideas machine, then your portfolio should be full of ideas. If you want to sell yourself as a graphic designer, then it should be full of graphic design ideas. If you want to sell yourself as a brochure writer, then your portfolio is full of brochures. And it’s very important that you get that balance right of what it is that you want to do in your job. I think that if you want to work at a big, good agency, and you want to work in the creative department, then your folio should be full of good ideas. I don’t care if they are visual or written ideas, but as long as they are single minded, on brief, clever ideas, that is what I’m attracted to. I think that there are aspects of the job that anyone can do, but the ideas is the really hard part. If you can come up with ideas then you’re valuable. If you can write as well, then you’re even more valuable. If you can art direct too, then you’re even more so. The ideas are the important bit. For me it’s important to demonstrate that you can write, but I think that you can go overboard. I can usually tell if people can write just by reading a couple of paragraphs and talking to them. If they can communicate well, then that’s enough for me. I wouldn’t fill up my portfolio with philosophy essays from uni or anything like that. You can easily pigeonhole yourself by overloading your folio with writing rather than ideas.

    Jr: So ideas are king.

    B: Absolutely. They are the most important thing in advertising. And in business. I like to look at the work that we do from a business perspective as to how powerful it is rather than some hard to pinpoint ideas sense. It has to relate to business. Which is something that I learnt when running AWARD School. We got to listen to twelve speakers – and I was really fascinated by David Nobay’s speech, who was so focused on the business side of what he was doing that I think it brought some perspective, even for me, and I’ve been in the game for a while. It made me think. I think a lot of creatives lose sight of the business perspective of what we do.

    Jr: It seems like a good idea – to understand the business side of the business you work in.

    B: Yeah, I have an interest in business. I like to think I have an interest in the business of our clients. Rather than get too worried about my peers and what other people in the industry think about our creative work, I’m interested in what my clients think and how the creative work is affecting their business.

    Jr: And it’s their money we’re spending after all.

    B: Yes. When I was associate CD at JWT, I was working on Kellogg’s, which is a business driven marketing company – they understand that marketing is the most important part of their business, because they’re still selling Cornflakes, and their products aren’t really changing. So what changes? Only the marketing. And the marketing affects their business directly so they can measure it in every possible way. Having the creative director in their business really interested in their sales figures, which is literally the business — that opened them up and we became friends on a business level. As a result we had valuable conversations about how really good creative work can effect their business, and we ended up in a really good place, rather than using an ‘us and them’ approach.

    Jr: So basically, you think taking that interest helped you to sell in better work?

    B: Totally. I’m very proud of the work that we did on Kellogg’s in the two years that I was there. It was super creative, and it sold a shitload of cereal basically. I think that was a really good relationship. I think a lot of creatives forget that we are in business, we aren’t artists.

     

    Jr: At what stage in your career did you aspire to take the next step and become creative director? Did you actively try or did you sort of fall into it?

    B: I always wanted to be a creative director from the first minute I started.

    Jr: It’s funny because some people really don’t want it.

    B: I’ve always enjoyed the process of helping people make great ideas. Even if they aren’t my ideas.

    Jr: Obviously – you did AWARD School teaching.

    B: Yes, and I give a lecture twice a year as part of AdSchool on creativity. I really enjoy tutoring AWARD School for three reasons. 1) The most important is that it keeps me on my toes. It’s just too good of a reminder that a whole lot of people want my job, and I need to keep my act together. I’ve got to stay on the edge, and up to date. The second is to look for people, up and coming talent, and the third reason is just a general interest in helping people get good ideas somewhere. You can get as much enjoyment out of that as you can from your own idea. I really do like helping people fulfill their ideas.

    Jr: You learn a lot as well?

    B: Definitely. I love it when there’s a completely unusual way of tackling a problem that I hadn’t thought of. I find it inspiring. Sometimes I find it quite sobering, humiliating almost. But it makes me better. Maybe I’m doing it for selfish reasons almost, because I think it helps me in the process.

    Jr: We read somewhere that you learn a lot putting into words what we do in terms of thinking and creating better ideas, that if you can sort of channel that into a sentence and teach others it will make you a better creative.

    B: I think the difference between a creative department and AWARD School is that you don’t have to tell your creative department why you don’t like something. You can just say nah, nah, nah, yes, but in AWARD School, that’s not valuable. You have to be able to give people a decent explanation as to why it’s not a good idea or why it is a good idea, and that makes you think about it. I think you reach a point where you know instinctively whether it’s a good idea or not, but to put that in words is quite valuable and you do that every Thursday night. So yeah, I think that there is a value to that as well and that helps you talk to your clients, too, and describe to them why your ideas are good, and why they will have an impact.

     

    Jr: So, Kastner & Partners – you’ve got offices all around the world. Crazy.

    B: It’s what they call a boutique multinational. It’s independent, owned by one guy.

    Jr: So there’s not so many partners.

    B: Nope, there’s Mr Kastner, and there’s two partners here in Sydney. We run it like it’s our own business. So whilst we have obviously the international connections and that’s helpful, we run our own clients here in Australia completely separately. Our second biggest account is Centro Shopping Centres. That’s driving us to grow, which is leading us to pitch for more things, and the agency is steadily growing. And that’s a really exciting phase for Kastner & Partners at the moment, and we’re hiring a lot of people.

    Jr: You’re going to get lots of emails.

    B: I want lots of emails. We tend to do a lot of our hiring through social networking — Facebook and Twitter, are the main ways that we find our staff. We’ve doubled in the last ten months or so, and want to do it again this year. It is an exciting process so I’ve learnt a lot about the business of advertising. I’ve worked at a lot of places; JWT, DDB, Y&R, and in big agencies business comes in, business goes out, and in the creative department you work and do the best you can. But now I realise that with my own business it’s hard to get new clients, and people are expensive, there are costs, and I’m understanding a lot more about our business and making that work as well as the creative work, and trying to do that whilst building an agency, this is really valuable stuff that you wouldn’t learn in the positions that I’ve had. It’s been a steep learning curve over the last year.

    Jr: In the position you are in now your eyes have been opened to what is ‘behind the curtain’ of the ad business? What advice would you pass back down the chain to us juniors?

    B: I think that having seen all the business, still the most important thing in advertising is ideas. Simple, great, ideas. And you’ll be able to sell a simple great idea to anybody, but you have to have those ideas. What I’ve noticed over the last few years is younger people coming into advertising have a bit of an attitude of, ‘Well I finished AWARD School, now, where is my job?’ And that’s wrong. Out of that huge group there is a certain number of people who have a really great work ethic, and those people do still exist but there seem to be fewer of them around. If you can make yourself irreplaceable, invaluable, then you have got a really great career in advertising. But that takes a lot of hard work. I think a lot of people are really slack and they aren’t putting in the time or the effort that it takes to make yourself valuable. The valuable people will do really well, and the people that don’t will get left behind. Hard work is really important. Those that strive for a better idea, there’s always a better idea in any situation, and the people that take the time and put in the effort to get to that better idea will do well. And the people that don’t will end up working in a… I don’t want to say this because I used to work in the business, but a bottle shop.

    Jr: Sip & Save.

    B: They’ll end up working in Sip & Save. And not writing their ads.

     

    Jr: Did you get lots of mentoring at KWP! back in those days?

    B: Some of the things that I now say to my AWARD School students are the things that they told me back then. I think that a classic quote that my first creative director said something very important to me that I’ve told a lot of people.. ‘When you start out in advertising, you have a lot of good ideas, you just don’t know which ones they are’. And I think that that is absolutely true, and that’s why in AWARD school I formalised the pens and paper rule only, because I think people waste too much time mac-ing up shit ideas when they should be pressing on to find great ideas.

    Jr: And they’re precious about them.

    B: Exactly. Whereas the people that write down a hundred ideas, there’s got to be something good in there rather than spending a whole week mac-ing up your one idea. I think if you can find someone that you trust who can help you work out which ideas are the good ideas – whether it’s your AWARD School tutor or whether it’s a CD is critical in our business, because it’s not always what you think. There have been ads that I thought was the best one and I’ve presented it and the CD has asked for more. My CD at Foster, Nunn, Loveder picked out an ad that was my first awarded ad for Volkswagen, and it probably wasn’t the one that I would have picked.

    Jr: AWARD School, wow, this is like a big ad for AWARD School! So I have one more question about it – obviously it’s started up again for this year. What advice do you give for people who don’t finish in the top ten, but are still mustard keen to get out there. They’ve got a folio of stuff, but they didn’t make it to the top ten. What would you say they should do?

    B: I also was lucky enough to organise LaunchPad at DDB and start up The Deep End at JWT. I have spent a lot of time talking to people who have come in who didn’t finish in the top ten in AWARD school. I think that I’ve given internships to people who came much lower. Obviously life is going to be easier for those that came in the top ten. There’s no creative director going out of their way to hire the person who came 80th. They start at the top of the list, and work their way down. I think that it’s certainly not the time for anyone to give up. When you finish AWARD school it’s the beginning of your career. You don’t put down your pad and pen, and give up. There are a lot of people who only just “get it” late in the AWARD School process. Some of them come back and do AWARD School again. Others get it, go back, and reevaluate their portfolio. I think your folio should be constantly updated. It’s not about a number, it’s not about where you are in a list, it’s about your ideas, your passion, and your work ethic. A person that came in the top ten that’s really slack, over a person who came 80th who is really passionate, has good ideas, and is willing to be directed, and willing to improve their book – I think that person is probably more valuable. Don’t give up.

    Jr: I like it. It’s good.

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: ADVERTISING, AWARD SCHOOL, BEN O'BRIEN, KASTNER AND PARTNERS, KWP!

    Apr 28, 11

    The Interview Series // 45

    Some time ago we received an email from Mick DiMaria (http://www NULL.mickdimaria NULL.com), Creative Director at 72andSunny (http://www NULL.72andsunny NULL.com), offering to help out in any way, shape or form our website which he had just stumbled across. We were stoked. 72andSunny not only has one of the greatest agency names on the planet, they also do some of the best work. Kenny Powers for K-Swiss Tubes (http://www NULL.72andsunny NULL.com/#/work/k_swiss/k_swiss_tubes/) anyone? Brilliant. Anyway, we were keen to chat to Mick about his rise to the top from humble CP+B Intern in the early nineties. More specifically we wanted to know about the Paris video… No not that Paris video – this one (http://www NULL.mickdimaria NULL.com/MickDiMariaParis NULL.html). Then Mick suggested a Twitterview! Genius we said. High-fives all round. And here we are.

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: 72andSunny, JrTwitterView, Mick DiMaria

    Apr 14, 11

    The Interview Series // 44 agIdeas Special

    What a head-shot! Pardon the pun! But seriously – get this – before Adam Hunt started his career in advertising, he had 80% of his brain removed. No shit! We only found out after we finished our interview, so you’ll have to see him speak at agIdeas (http://agideas NULL.com NULL.au) (seamless plug (http://www NULL.agideas NULL.net/agideas-2011/sponsors)) to find out the full story. Without giving too much away before he speaks as part of the International Design Forum (http://www NULL.agideas NULL.net/index NULL.php?nodeId=19), Adam has had quite the career. Working in various countries, winning awards, making t-shirts (http://www NULL.goatboy NULL.com NULL.au/), and pissing off the head-honchos at the ABC (http://www NULL.smh NULL.com NULL.au/national/discrimination-gruen-ad-ban-sparks-online-debate-20090514-b415 NULL.html). These days however, Adam is a creative gun for hire and runs Mamasan (http://www NULL.mamasan NULL.com NULL.au/), an asian themed bar in Sydney! In his agIdeas bio Adam is quoted as saying he “thinks that most advertising is ‘brainfuckingly boring’, so he’s currently taking a break.” We kind of agree – so we thought we’d ask Adam how we can do better.

     

    Junior: Ok Adam, from the top, how did you get into advertising?

    Adam Hunt: Pretty much by accident and greed. A mate told me I could triple my salary if I moved from being a Magazine Art Director to an Advertising Art Director.

    Jr: Wow. We wish we could triple our salary! Was it a difficult transition?

    A: No. It was liberating. In editorial, words rule. In advertising (I believe) pictures rule. You’ve got to grab peoples attention visually & then reward that attention immediately. Also in advertising you work in a creative team – which can be either bliss or a bastard – depending on your teammate. I was blessed to work for 5 years in 4 countries with Ben Nott (founding partner/CD of Droga5 (http://droga5 NULL.com)). We’re like best mates & brothers. They call creative partnerships marriages, so we even had a wedding photo taken. I was the bride, because back then I had bigger hair than Bon Jovi (http://www NULL.celebrityviplounge NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/jon_bon_jovi NULL.jpg).

    Jr: At what point did you start writing ads and start calling yourself a Copywriter as well as an Art Director?

    A: Ben used to say that he’d draw the words and I’d write the pictures. That’s pretty Zen, but accurate.

    Jr: Obviously to have both skills is a real plus.

    A: You can’t not have both skills – as they serve the delivery of ideas. (That’s if your ad has an idea in it, of course.)

    Jr: You’ve worked all around the world, do you think overseas experience is a key ingredient to a successful career?

    A: It’s essential. Working in advertising in Australia is like being a soccer player in Australia – you dream of running out onto Old Trafford & playing for Manchester United. I managed to score a gig at Saatchi & Saatchi in London, which was Mecca for creatives.

    Jr: What has been the highlight of your career to date?

    A: Travelling the world & meeting incredibly inspiring people – all because of the creative process when you say: “what if…” and then you scribble something on a piece of paper and see if it makes you laugh. By doing that I managed to meet people like Sir Edmund Hillary, Dennis Hopper, Salman Rushdie, Paul Arden, Cicciolina, Malcom McClaren, Damien Hirst, Bradley Trevor Grieve & Andrew Denton. These people are like an energy source that you can tap into and draw adrenaline from.

    Jr: In your career, you’ve done a fair few things (http://www NULL.goatboy NULL.com NULL.au/) outside ad-land, and these days you own Mamasan (http://www NULL.mamasan NULL.com NULL.au/) – do you think it’s important to be creative outside of being a creative?

    A: Of course – advertising creatives who live with their heads in D&AD Annuals may as well have their head up their arse. Inspiration comes from the world – and there’s a pretty big one happening out there beyond advertising.

    Jr: Do you think your advertising background and skill-set have helped you run Mamasan?

    A: I guess so – it’s all about managing an experience – what you see, hear, smell, eat, drink and feel. But by far the biggest help has been my beautiful Taiwanese/Japanese partner, who owned a restaurant that I hung out at between freelance gigs. Eventually we decided to sell it and open a bar together.

    Jr: What made you decide to take a break from advertising?

    A: Survival. I couldn’t get a job after the scandal of my ad (http://www NULL.smh NULL.com NULL.au/national/discrimination-gruen-ad-ban-sparks-online-debate-20090514-b415 NULL.html) on The Gruen Transfer. I soon realized that I’d have to tone my creative instincts down to land a corporate gig, as I was perceived as “too risky”. So I thought I’d try something else instead. In over 20 years in advertising I spent a lot of time in bars – I guess you could say that advertising has driven me to drink! Nobody takes risks any more – which is why advertising is so incredibly fucking boring. Pendulums always swing one way or another – at the moment the pendulum is well and truly in the court of the bland scientists who believe that people buy things for rational reasons, and that research can measure the effectiveness of an idea. They don’t and it can’t.

    Jr: We think the work coming out of ad-land can be pretty uninspiring. And here we are either knocking on doors to get into an agency, or spending every waking moment in one. How can we all do better work do you think?

    A: You can’t do great work without a great brief and a great client. The only time I’ve ever done anything regarded as any good is when these planets align. You need a brief that’s single minded and is based upon a simple insight about who you’re talking to. And you need a client who will take the risks required to go with something new and fresh. It’s a long time between drinks for those factors to occur – so you may as well come and have some at Mamasan’s bar. It’s made of 150 year old oak doors from China, and we have Asahi & Sapporo on tap. The food’s bloody amazing & there’s some cool shit on the walls. No ads though.

    Jr: Nice. We love a good segway.

    Adam is speaking at the agIdeas 2011 International Design Forum. 3 to 5 May. Tickets here. (http://www NULL.agideas NULL.net/purchase-tickets)

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: Adam Hunt, AGIDEAS

    Feb 24, 11

    The Interview Series // 43

    Brendan McKnight (http://twitter NULL.com/hellobrendan) is the fresh-faced editor of Desktop (http://www NULL.desktopmag NULL.com NULL.au/) magazine. At just 26, the magazine is almost older than him – but that hasn’t stopped him. Since stepping up from Online Editor, he pitched a new vision for the mag, which centred around a celebration of the ‘culture of design’. We’d tell you more of the juicy goss, but Brendan swore us to secrecy when we caught up with him amid the craziness of the unveiling of the first issue. Which, by the way, goes on sale next Wednesday. Fact: Brendan watched Press Gang (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Press_Gang) as a kid — so, for all you Lynda Day (http://www NULL.yoyo NULL.org/pressgang/images/slides/lynda NULL.gif) wannabe’s, Brendan’s gonna show you the way!

     

    Junior: Hey Brendan! What’s your background? Uni degree? Where was the house you grew up in — tell us all that stuff.

    Brendan: I grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne, and once year 12 had finished, I moved to the big smoke (West Footscray) and began a bachelor of Fine Arts/Media Arts at RMIT. There I dabbled with a bit of animation and video art, but mostly focused on installation and ‘non-linear’ work. My graduate project was called ‘Brendan McKnight’s Incredible Moving Image Wishing Machine’, which was this hectic coin-operated machine I built, inspired by those whacky contraptions the dad makes in ‘Honey! I Shrunk the Kids’. This was shown in a group exhibition I curated as part of the 2005 Melbourne Fringe Festival.

    Jr: Then what?

    B: After graduating I packed my bags and headed for Tanzania in East Africa where I helped to develop an arts curriculum in a secondary school, whilst also teaching English to classes of 50 beautifully spirited and eager students. I also managed to do some other fun things like climb Mt Kilimanjaro, white water raft down the Nile and go on a safari. Fast forward six months and I rocked up in London with no job, no contacts and about £500 to my name.

    Jr: Being poor sucks. What did you do to survive?

    After six months working in a call centre, I landed a gig as the creative assistant to the Chief Creative Officer (Tim Greenhalgh) of international design studio FITCH (http://www NULL.fitch NULL.com/), which at the time was still being headed up by Rodney Fitch (appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1990 for his ‘influence on the British Design Industry’). Whilst I wasn’t directly working for Rodney, I did work very closely with him throughout my stay at FITCH.

    Jr: We googled Rodders, he sure does have a lot of little letters after his name. What was it like to work closely with such an industry great?

    B: It was pretty fantastic, although in hindsight I probably took it a bit for granted and perhaps should have utilised his knowledge more. Hearing Rodney speak, even just around the office was quite inspiring, he was quite old school and traditional, but a very clever thinker. At that time the recession was starting to hit, but it was almost just another day for him as he had been through a few before. Rodney obviously came from a time when there were no computers and thus his mentality was never about technology — and always very concept, consumer and ideas based. The evolution of design education was also something he heavily believed in – he was Governor of the University of the Arts London from 1989 to 2007.

    You can read a little more about my initial struggle to find a job here (http://www NULL.desktopmag NULL.com NULL.au/blogs/londons-calling/).

    I left FITCH after a year to do a cycle trip across Germany, and when back in London started sourcing and taking on a whole bunch of freelance writing work. I’d always been interested in writing as a kid, but it all kicked off again about then. I put my name out there and tried to get as much work as I could, and ended up writing for a range of blogs and magazines including Dazed, Vanity Fair and also writing on-and-off for thecoolhunter.net (http://thecoolhunter NULL.net) for about three years. Although most of these were unpaid, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without them, and I scored some incredible travel experiences along the way. I have a pretty mean snow globe collection to prove it.

     

    Jr: It seems writing for publications for free is a bit of a rite of passage for all young writers. But knowing when to draw the line is also important. At what point did you stop doing freebies?

    B: Yes I absolutely agree that it is important to draw the line, but it’s always going to be difficult deciding just where that line should be drawn. It sounds easy (it’s not), but I suppose you need to weigh it all up; is what you are getting in return (freebies, exposure, experience etc) worth the amount of time you are putting in – or are you just being taken for a ride? For me, I had a full time job on the side, so the money wasn’t a massive issue, and the writing work I was doing was something I enjoyed. The perks were pretty great, as was the experience and the exposure. I had never studied journalism or writing, so it was all one big learning curve for me.

    Jr: You’re 26. You must have grown up watching Press Gang (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=E-uOKWWYl1I). Did you ever watch it and think you’d be an editor of a publication like Lynda Day?

    B: Ahh, the good ol’ Junior Gazette. The Press Gang wikipedia page describes Lynda as ‘brittle, very fierce, no empathy and very cruel to the people around her’. I hope my colleagues do not see any comparison! Actually growing up, all during uni and even up until very recently, I wasn’t at all sure about which career path I would take. I had a strong interest and good eye for art and design, but did not want to be a designer. I loved writing and research and was a bit of a culture junkie, but was uncertain as to how my skill set would all fit into place.

    Jr: Tell us how you started out at Desktop and about your journey to become editor of the entire mag?

    B: After working for a year with the trends and insights team at Nokia Design in Soho, I’d clocked up four years of living overseas — and so decided to call it a day and head back to Melbourne. I arrived a few days before Christmas 2009 and really had no clue about what I wanted to do with my life and which direction I should take things in. I was scared again that even with all my experience in London I would end up working in a café or call centre. Searching through Seek one night, I was applying for any jobs that sounded vaguely interesting and came across a listing to be the online editor for Desktop, a magazine I remembered reading at uni. I applied for the job at 2am on the Monday morning, was called in for an interview on the Wednesday, and by the following Monday I was in the office starting my first day. I spent eight months working as the online editor and features writer, and in September was promoted to editor.

    Jr: Was editor always the goal? Why do you think they promoted you?

    B: I didn’t have the goal of editor in my immediate sight, as I thought I’d be in the online role for a while longer. However having said that, the editor role was of course the next natural progression. The previous editor (who had been there for 4 years) moved on, and so I applied for the editor position – it wasn’t a given that I would instantly be promoted to the role by default. The publishers were looking for someone who could give the title a revamp, I put together my vision, and they liked it.

     

    Jr: What advice do you have for those of us keen to progress up the foodchain?

    B: Work hard and prove yourself. In my online role I was already putting together about a quarter to a third of the magazine each month, so the publishers knew I was a hard worker, well organised and could look after the title. Try to take on some of the work of the role above yours, challenge yourself, be genuinely nice and interested in those above you and ask questions.

    Jr: What plans do you have for Desktop now that you’ve taken the reigns?

    B: The relaunched Desktop goes on sale next Wednesday, and it is a completely new offering. Over the past five months I’ve met up with countless designers as well as run a focus group and readers’ survey to try and get as much feedback as possible. The response was overwhelming and it was a challenging yet exciting time for me and my team to mould and shape the magazine into the new format that you will see on newsstand next week. From the design point of view, you can expect a much nicer looking magazine, perfect bound, uncoated stock, up to 100 pages (from 84) with a clean structured template. Editorial wise, the content is more sophisticated, inquisitive and rather than only showing finished works, the new Desktop is about ‘the culture of design’. The readers get to find out a bit more about the people behind the work, their backgrounds, ethos, mentors, inspirations and opinions. Plus we have some really great local and international designers and academics that will be writing for us throughout the year. On top of this, each issue has a pull-out poster, designed by a different designer/studio each month.

    Jr: For those of our readers who want to write for publications like Desktop, tell them what not to do. What mistakes do people commonly make that could ruin their chances?

    B: Instead of just sending your CV through with examples of your past writing, actually write an article suitable for that particular publication and pitch it to the editors, or at least pitch a list of bullet-points of articles/angles you think would suit the publication. Do your research and make sure the topics are ‘on brand’ and have not been covered before. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box a little bit. If the magazine has a strong online presence, then pitch some articles first to the online editor, as normally that is a great starting point. Most editors get hundreds of emails and press releases each day (I know I do), and they all start to blend in after a while. Be creative, stand out and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.

    Also posted in PUBLISHING, WRITING | Tags: BRENDAN MCKNIGHT, DESKTOP MAGAZINE, EDITOR

    Feb 10, 11

    The Interview Series // 42


    In all our 41 interviews we have never, not once, ever, done a junior interview with someone in Planning. Our friends who want to get into planning kept complaining. And complaining. And not getting jobs in planning. We felt like bad friends so we found Mark Pollard (http://www NULL.markpollard NULL.net/), Director of Strategy at McCann Sydney. Mark’s earlier years spent building websites give him bucket-loads of that digital savvy-ness — all the kind stuff you need to get yourself strategising the shit out of digital. He also wrote for Inpress magazine, and published his own zine Stealth (http://www NULL.stealthmag NULL.com). So it’s no surprise when he shed light on what it takes to get into Planning doing different things outside ad-land was at the top of the list. Enjoy y’all.

    Junior: Ok, let’s start at the beginning — what’s your background?

    Mark Pollard: I was at Uni doing a couple of degrees, and when I was 19 I started making websites. While I was finishing off one of the degrees, I started working at a digital agency. I was about 20 at the time, working on Levi’s first big website in Australia. I was teaching myself how to make my own websites, and I wrote for a lot of street press like Inpress and 3D World for five years, and did a lot of radio. Then I published my own magazine, Stealth (http://www NULL.stealthmag NULL.com). I was always involved with, or working full time with an agency at the same time. Tribal DDB in Sydney gave me 20-30 hours a week, and then allowed me to work on my magazine at nights. I did that throughout my mid twenties, and then moved more into digital production, project management, account management, information architecture – 300 page scoping documents, for e-commerce sites and online training sites – and, finally, planning.

    Jr: Wow.

    M: Yeah, it’s ok. I think that now, more than ever, you have to have the experience of an all-rounder. But then I decided to specialise. I was always interested in strategy. I played chess from a young age. I went over to Leo Burnett, just freelancing as a producer because I didn’t want to go full time, and ended up working with Todd Sampson – who offered me a full time job to go into strategy. It was a bit of an experiment: give a job to a person whose adult life had grown out of the Internet, add some planning skills and see what happens.

    Jr: Was the experiment a success? What did you learn there?

    Well, it’s been an interesting journey – one that continues. At Leo Burnett, the things that have stuck with me most are workshop techniques (brainstorming, problem identification) and, then, in my last year, working with Scott Davis from BMF, made me get much tighter with my thinking.

    Jr: Do you think many strategy planners around town have the skills you do, with digital as their background?

    M: I don’t know of many. I also think that any role with the word ‘digital’ in it will disappear in the next three to five years. You’ll have a more generalist strategy role, and then you’ll have specialists in different fields. Architects, online content creators and project managers who have specialist skills. Producers – in the general sense I’ve seen the word used in Australia – will start disappearing.

    Jr: So what you’re saying is digital will become the day-to-day?

    M: Well, it has to. But then, what’s digital? We’re really talking screens here, right? And, as screens become ubiquitous, ‘digital’ in advertising will need to be. The problem for me is that people use ‘digital’ to talk channel when it’s actually a cultural difference – inside the agency itself, how the agency interacts with clients and so on.

    Jr: Strategy seems like a hard area to break into as a junior. There’s not really an entry-level position…

    M: No, there’s not. And most Planning Directors will recruit people who they think have done interesting stuff outside of advertising as the entry level. There are plenty of interesting stories about geographers, magazine publishers, schoolteachers and lawyers moving into that space because there’s a risk that if you grow up in strategy it could be a little bit tricky. You need those real life adult experiences.

    Jr: If you had to give advice to young wannabe planners, what would you say?

    M: I always try to convince people that planning should be simpler than some people might let on, and it’s about understanding what the real problem is. Really honing in on insights – we’re talking about insights as being an unspoken human truth. A lot of people put into briefs a lot of insights, which aren’t really insightful at all.

    And then, trying to focus on lateral thought in two ways – one, in how you express words (it’s always the counter intuitive combination of words that makes things stand out); and, secondly, in non-advertising ideas. I think there will be an emerging pool of people who will focus on non-Award School type ideas, because I think our advertising industry is so based on words and pictures – and that’s a big part of creativity and people who are awesome at it are incredible – but there’s a whole world of thinking out there that you might solve a problem without doing any advertising. I think the planners that excite me are in that space as well.

    Jr: How closely do you work with the creative teams through the creative process?

    M: My preference is to work as close as possible, but a lot of creatives are great strategic thinkers as well. It always depends on who you are working with, and how much time is involved. Some people like playing by themselves. I try to stay as close as possible throughout but will dip in and out depending on the process and where it is.

    Jr: Being a strategist you must have a few thoughts on where our business is heading – so what do you think the future will bring?

    M: Our industry is competing with every other industry to get get smart people, and a lot of the other industries do a much better job at mentorship and training and bringing people through the ranks. Ad agencies are survival of the fittest.

    For me I think the future creative mind will be a combination of Edward de Bono and Steven Spielberg, meets Facebook and Google. It’ll cover all sorts of areas: understanding content and information and how people access it, how people interact with each other and things online and offline.

    Jr: Sounds like change is afoot — what do you think this means for juniors?

    M: I wonder for how long the Art Director/Copywriter paradigm will exist. I’m interested in people that are journalists, setting up street press magazines, comedians or those who have just written something. Because everyone is going to need an additional skill. If you can write and film something, bingo!

    For me it’s becoming less about advertising and more about content, utilities, communities. The business models need to adapt to allow for more of that – as do people new to the industry.

    Advice: stay curious, invest personal time in researching and reading as much as possible and stay nice to deal with.

    Mark has also supplied some recommended reading for those interested.
    How to do account planning – a simple approach (http://www NULL.markpollard NULL.net/how-to-do-account-planning-a-simple-approach/), Why strategists should make stuff (http://www NULL.markpollard NULL.net/why-strategists-should-make-stuff/) and 10 strategies for a strategist’s career – right now (http://www NULL.markpollard NULL.net/10-strategies-for-a-strategists-career-right-now/)

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: ADVERTISING, MARK POLLARD, MCCANN

    Jan 26, 11

    The Interview Series // 41

    Are you a Weights and Measures Inspector (http://wiki NULL.answers NULL.com/Q/What_do_Weights_and_Measures_inspectors_do) or something just as mundane? Do you dream of chucking it all (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=nZW8fzPujnc&feature=related) in and becoming a creative? Well, meet your new inspiration, Peter Cortez. Our boy Pete may have started his advertising career late, but he’s sure made up for lost time. Since going back to study at Miami Ad School at age thirty, he’s made some ads, worked with big brands, developed and launched two iPhone apps of his own and even started a New York lunch club (http://www NULL.tplc NULL.co/). Oh, did we mention he helped get the President of the US of A elected?  We thought we’d pick Pete’s brain about his ever-changing career path.

    Junior: Dude! How did you get into advertising, Pete?

    Peter: Before I worked in advertising I was an Optician for many years. I always felt I was a creative person, but I felt my career as an Optician wasn’t very creative. One day I went into a Barnes & Nobles bookstore on my lunch break and in the magazine section I saw a close up shot of a woman in a bikini and a small man with a lawn mower going down the right side of her bikini. I said what the hell is that? It was a Luerzer’s Archive magazine. I was hooked at first site seeing that cover. I bought the magazine and remember thinking, people get paid to do that? I want to do that! So I ending up changing careers and started over at 30 and went back to school. I went to the Miami Ad School.

    Jr: An Optician! Wow. It’s amazing how many people have come from vastly different careers to advertising. Do you think your life experience and time spent as an Optician aided you in your second career in anyway?

    P: I’d like to think my life experience has helped me as a creative. I think the one thing I took with me as an Optician to advertising was being a good listener. Listening to patients and clients is very similar. Being a creative is about craft and voice, craft being the technical skills. Voice is having something to say and bring in real life experiences.

    Jr: What was the ad that made you chuck it all in?

    P: The Luerzer’s Archive mag cover was an ad for Kookai (http://www NULL.coloribus NULL.com/adsarchive/prints/kookai-pret-a-porter-the-lawn-mower-1133455/).

    Jr: Coming into the industry late as an Art Director, how did you learn your craft, mac skills etc? Were you always a visual person?

    P: I had never used Photoshop before and was a bad illustrator. I went to the Miami ad school and started to learn on the fly. It was tough, my first quarter most of the kids already new Photoshop and Quark. I just dated myself… wait, I said Quark – wow remember Quark?!

    Jr: Totes. We learnt it in first semester uni and by the time we came back after semester break, they told us to forget everything we’d learnt and that we’d now be using some thing called InDesign. ‘Quark’ sounds cooler.

    P: Ha. I think being a visual person helped me when I started, because I at least had a sense of what I wanted to do. The hard part was I didn’t know how to make it, and I had to learn how to use the tools and the design rules.

    Jr: At SS+K (http://ssk NULL.com/) you worked on the Obama campaign – what was that like?

    P: Amazing! I feel so fortunate to have been a part of that campaign. Not for the work, though I love the work we did, but for what the cause was about.

    Jr: Getting a President elected seems like a big job. We wouldn’t know where to start. What was it like when you first got the brief?

    P: I can’t speak for the rest of the creative department at SS+K, but for me I was excited and freakin’ scared! The opportunity felt like a one of those moments in life that don’t come around everyday. Lucky for for us we worked for an amazing Creative Director, Marty Cooke, who instead of starting us off with a brief, gave us both of Barack’s books – ‘Dreams from my father‘ and ‘The audacity of hope‘. After we read the books, we were briefed.

    Jr: We’ve already chatted with your copywriter at the time, Daniel Bremmer as well as Scott Thomas who was responsible for the look of the campaign, so we won’t dwell too much on the subject. But, did ‘vote for change’ come from you and Daniel, or somewhere else?

    P: The Obama campaign thought of the name, and the site. Daniel and I came up with the idea for reasons and the the line “Don’t get mad. Get registered.” Everything fell out of that.

    Jr: You’ve had an amazing advertising career. At what point did you decide advertising wasn’t what you wanted to do anymore?

    P: In June 2010 I realised I really wanted to make iPhone apps. It was kind of a perfect storm for me. I was in the middle of building a app called Recco (http://myrecco NULL.com/) with two partners, and brands started coming to me to build apps for them. At the time advertising was not doing it for me. I felt like it was still stuck in this mode of ‘we make things, the public views them and we all form opinions about those things’. I felt like the way the world is today you need to create tools that people use, and if they find those tools useful they will like the brand. Content is still king, it just lives in a mobile device and not a television box anymore. People still listen to radio, and people will still watch television. Everyone will still surf the net, but the way the world is today people are on the go and they expect their mobile device to keep up with them. And smart phones have everything. There’s apps for everything!

    Jr: How did you get into the app business from there?

    P: In early 2009 I started making my first iPhone app, B-BOT (http://myb-bot NULL.com/). I partnered with Tristan Eaton who I met while working on the Obama campaign. Tristan is the creator of the Dunny and Munny for Kid Robot (http://www NULL.kidrobot NULL.com/). They are the two biggest platforms for vinyl toys out there. We created B-BOT together. If you’ve ever wanted to make a vinyl toy in tribute to yourself (or another), this application lets you do just that. There are over 4 trillion different B-BOT’s you can make. Yes, trillion. After I made B-BOT I was hooked. It’s hard to beat being the client and the creative at the same time.

    One of the many things I learned while making B-BOT was how much I enjoyed being a producer, and building a team who can make a project come to life. In advertising as creatives, we would give account service and clients our recommendations for directors, photographers, and illustrators. Sometimes they understood, and sometimes they would just flat disagree. When I started making apps, that changed. There is no difference from when I was a creative to a guy making apps — I always recommend who I think is best for the job. Unfortunately, the client often thinks they know more then you do. With apps, it’s so new that we are all learning as we go along, so clients have more trust.

    Jr: Where do you start when working on an app? What kind of creative process do you go through?

    The process is always the same for me.

    Phase one: What am I being asked to do? Do I agree with it? Why do I agree with it it?
    Phase two: How do I make it better?
    Phase three: How do I make it better?
    Phase four: How do I make it better?
    Phase five: How do I make it better?

    The idea is a great start, and not a place to finish. I think creatives hold too much weight in how good the idea is. To me it’s much more important to find out what are you going to do with an idea. And, what will it become?

    Jr: So once the idea and its functionality is nailed – what next? Is the process similar to designing a website? i.e. Design it, then someone cuts it up, etc?

    P: Exactly, just like a site. Designing, wire frames, and UX. If you are going to start coding you have to know what you want to do. I always say nothing matters until you hold an app on a device and can play with it. Before that it’s all theory, no matter how much thinking you have put into it. You have to be willing to beta test your app and be willing to change it to make it better, and not hold onto the exact idea you had in your mind.

    Jr: We just downloaded Recco (http://itunes NULL.apple NULL.com/us/app/recco/id406020418?mt=8) – an app for recommending restaurants to friends. It seems like it’s got a lot of potential to be big. But then, there’s so many apps that are great but never really take off. How do you become the next Foursquare or Instagram?

    P: I love talking about this question. I think the best way to try and become the next Foursquare or Instagram is to not try and be the next Foursquare or Instagram, and work hard at making a platform that people really enjoy using, and have a need for. One way of doing that is always working at making the product better. It should never end — your product is a living breathing thing that you need to pay attention to, and give attention to, all the time.

    Foursquare didn’t take off with a bang to start with. They didn’t have a lot of users for the first 8 months, but they kept making the product better, and offering a great service. They were ahead of the curve and the users caught up at some point with all the great press they were getting. Instagram did hit the ground running, but they’re always constantly updating, and fixing, and adding.

    J: What should someone do if we have an idea for an app, but they’re not sure how to get it off the ground. Should it be sold to a brand or a developer? Or should they just do it themselves and see where it leads?

    P: So many people think the idea is everything. Its NOT. It’s just the start of something. Find a way to make your idea into a reality — it’s all about making things and finding out what they can become. Find developers who will make your idea in exchange for equity, if you don’t have money. You can always pay for it yourself, I am a big believer in this one – that’s what I did with B-BOT. We found a developer who liked our idea and wanted to work with us. As far as selling an idea, it’s really tough to sell just an idea with out a proof of concept. But always try to find a way — persevere, if it’s an idea that’s got legs it’s worth it.

    Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: Apps, PETER CORTEZ, SS+K
    « Older posts          

    • Join the Mailing List

      Loading...Loading...
    • Next Event Junior Mixtape

    • Categories

      • ADVERTISING
      • ANIMATION
      • ARCHITECTURE
      • ART
      • ASK ESTHER
      • DEAR JUNIOR
      • DESIGN
      • DRINKS
      • FILM
      • JUNIOR SCHOOL
      • JUNIOR-JOBS
      • JUNIORtv
      • JUNIORVERSITY
      • MISCELLANEOUS
      • MIXTAPE
      • MUSIC
      • PHOTOGRAPHY
      • PLANNING
      • PUBLISHING
      • STUART'S BOOKSHELF
      • TELEVISION
      • THE INTERVIEW SERIES
      • Uncategorized
      • WHIP
      • WRITING

    • Archive

      • May 2012
      • April 2012
      • March 2012
      • February 2012
      • January 2012
      • December 2011
      • November 2011
      • October 2011
      • September 2011
      • August 2011
      • July 2011
      • June 2011
      • May 2011
      • April 2011
      • March 2011
      • February 2011
      • January 2011
      • December 2010
      • November 2010
      • October 2010
      • September 2010
      • August 2010
      • July 2010
      • June 2010
      • May 2010
      • April 2010
      • March 2010
      • February 2010
      • January 2010
      • December 2009
      • November 2009
      • October 2009
      • September 2009
      • August 2009
      • July 2009
      • June 2009
      • May 2009
      • April 2009
      • March 2009
      • February 2009
      • January 2009
      • December 2008
      • November 2008
      • October 2008