THE INTERVIEW SERIES – Junior - Celebrating life at the bottom

Dec 09, 10

The Interview Series // 40

Would you believe R/GA (http://rga NULL.com), digital agency of the decade, started in the late seventies as a production company? Founded by two brothers — they created the first integrated computer-assisted production process (oh Wikipedia, you make us sound so clever)! Translation: they revolutionised motion graphics and special effects. Heck! They did the opening titles for the original Superman (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=1qHDWdGPomw) and have Oscars on their wall. Flash-forward twenty-something years and they’ve shaken up the fundamentals of the digital agency — creating innovative digital solutions for clients, like the fandangled-ly cool Nike+ (http://nikerunning NULL.nike NULL.com/nikeos/p/nikeplus/en_AU/) utility.

This baseball cap-clad Aussie expat is Associate Creative Director. Paul started his career in Sydney as Production Assistant, before becoming a suit, before working his way into copywriting – all at the one agency. Then he decided it was time to ditch traditional and go digital. And where better to do that than New York City! During our recent trip to NYC, our chat to Paul in R/GA’s sunny front yard opened our eyes to the future of advertising.

Junior: Where did it all start for you? You’re a Sydney boy?

Paul Dery: I was actually born in Melbourne. I moved to Sydney when I was about 15, and then I started at M&C Saatchi as a Production Assistant. From there I made the switch to account service. Which was an excellent learning experience. All creatives should probably have a stint there, even if it is just a week. To understand what it’s like on their side of the fence, but to also understand how to sell stuff. What the client needs to hear and what helps them buy an idea. I then did AWARD School and then obviously moved into the world of Copywriting. It was a great apprenticeship though, coming through Production and Account Service. I’m very grateful for it.

Jr: Did you move over at M&C? Was that a challenge?

P: I did, it was tricky. I remember the first fight I had with a suit, and the whole department was laughing, because they were like ‘welcome’ to being a creative.

The transition was made easier as the beauty of creative work is that the proof is always in the pudding. The harder you work, and as long as your stuff keeps improving I think people quickly forget that you were the Production kid or the Account guy.

Jr: How did you do it? Did you just hound the Creative Director?

P: It’s a pretty simple rule – I think 9-5 you’re an account person, and 5-9 you’re a creative. I was really lucky. The Creative Director, Michael Andrews set me a task that every Monday he would give me a brief, and every Monday he would look at the work from the week before. We did that for six months. He said, ‘by then we’ll know. You’re either rubbish, or you’re good’. Don’t know if I was good, but six months later I had a book that was probably just good enough to get me my first job in the agency as a writer.

Jr: So you stayed there for a little while?

P: I was there for seven years in total. I did a stint for about a year in the Melbourne office too. It’s always had a history of doing good work. It was nice to have a bit of time at a smaller agency. Big and small agencies each have pros and cons and are very different places to work in, and they’re very different places to get work made. It’s good to understand both spectrums.

Jr: What stage did you decide you wanted to get a gig in New York?

P: A funny story actually, I won a green card in the green card lottery.

Jr: No way!

P: I saw a web banner promoting it. I think it’s the only banner I’ve ever clicked on. I then got an email from the US Government saying that I’d won, and I thought it was a Nigerian scam. Even as I was stepping off the plane into JFK I thought something would go wrong.

Jr: What happened when you got to New York? How did you end up at RGA?

P: R/GA is an amazing place. It’s 1000 people, for one, and it’s grown crazy fast. For me, it felt like the first place that could lead the transition the industry is going through. Advertising is changing every day, the beauty of R/GA is that you can write the future. Nobody fully understands what’s going to happen with advertising but we have a pretty good idea of how people are consuming and how they want to consume. That’s why I thought R/GA would be a great place to be. I came from a traditional background of writing TV and print ads. At this place, you’ve got to start again in terms of media. Creatively you still need the traditional idea grounded in a good truth, but if you’re not using the technology that’s being developed and on offer, then it’s totally unutilized.

Writers in traditional agencies who are writing great ads could probably be much more effective if they worked with the technology a bit harder. That’s why I joined R/GA because I thought bugger it, I’ve got to understand how this works or I could be an old dinosaur at an early age. So I jumped on board and for ages I turned up to meetings and had no idea what these people were saying. I just kept nodding. I think my favorite phrase was ‘Yup I think I saw that on TED’. It was my only get out of jail card line I could use!

Jr: How did you go about getting in if you came from such a traditional background?

P: I got really lucky. R/GA, obviously from a pure digital background were starting to broaden their horizons. So they were looking for traditional ad guys I guess. A lot of their clients were asking for video content that required a lot of script writing. It was the middle of a horrible recession, the middle of a freezing cold winter. Ignorance was bliss — I walked in and got extremely lucky.

Jr: You would have had some pretty good work under your belt coming from M&C though?

P: It was ok. I hadn’t had that many years as a copywriter. It was prolific, I worked across a lot of brands and had a lot of stuff made. Now looking back, with the account service background, whether it should have been made is another question!

Jr: Do you think that a creative would get more concepts made in Melbourne or Sydney than you would in New York?

P: I’d say there’s more of a delay in coming up with an idea and implementing it. Here at R/GA you’ve got a broad range of clients like Nike, Walmart & Mastercard. We tend to implement a lot of business changing ideas, and that takes time. Whether it’s a new platform, or a new customer service stream using Twitter, whatever it is, to turn a big client around isn’t a fast process.

Jr: That would be really cool, not just thinking in terms of ads, but also in terms of business.

P: I think that’s the enjoyable part about thinking digitally. I’m used to getting a brief where media is bought, they want TV and print, and your brain is trained to execute. Here, the media is open ended. The client want to sell something, and you’ve got to come up with a solution. It could be anything. Is it an online scavenger hunt? A Twitter contest? A Facebook Connect Video? It’s whatever you think people can consume the idea best. That was the hardest thing for my brain to get around as a creative. It’s hard enough to start with that blank page to come up with a script. It’s super hard to come up with a blank media environment.

Jr: They sound like pretty awesome briefs!

P: They’re pretty open but the planners still manage to get a lot in! Advertising is definitely going through some kind of change, I don’t know if it’s a revolution or evolution but you’re given your freedom when working with a strategy.

Jr: For those of us who are used to and have trained at traditional agencies, how does R/GA work in terms of skill sets?

P: R/GA is quite unique in regards to the fact that everyone is on an equal playing field. It combines design, copywriting, ID (interaction design), and the tech guys. There’s a suite of people all under the umbrella of creatives. Everyone has a chance to pitch an idea. Normally as a copywriter you are used to having a firmer say on ideas. Where here a great idea might come from a techie nerd guy who had this thought, and sure it doesn’t have an umbrella campaign line, but it’s an awesome use of technology that you can latch onto with a campaign. In terms of skill sets, it’s a really interesting place. R/GA came from a production and design background. When it went into an advertising realm it built websites. I think that’s why design is a strong lead at R/GA and heavily relied upon.

Jr: So you obviously don’t work in traditional two person teams anymore?

P: I don’t. There are teams, but they aren’t as common. I don’t have a partner. I kind of enjoy the freedom to roam across different accounts. You could be working with a traditional art director one minute, and then an iPhone app developer who had a good idea. It’s cool. It seems to work.

Jr: In terms of the junior kids back home in Melbourne putting their folios together, they might have scam ideas that have never run and they’re doing stuff for online/digital – is it the idea that is the most important and not to worry about the technology?

P: Absolutely. My first advice is to get a website, which most people have these days. But idea is still king, it’s not how fancy your site is. In fact, some of the best sites are just straight blogs of peoples work.
A digital book should always be like any book, idea centric. It can take us a year to implement a good idea online, so I don’t think people expect for your book to be 100% real. Hopefully the technological ideas you present can be made, but that’s less of a concern.

Jr: Sometimes it feels in Oz that if you have an idea, especially in terms of the digital stuff that you see around, they’re all variations of things that have already been done. It’s never a breakthrough original use of technology

P: I think we’re going to see the rise of the nerd in advertising. They have always been prevalent in good creativity. And they are the ones with the finger on the pulse of what’s new.

Jr: They’ve got us by the balls.

P: These guys eat and breathe new technology, and it’s so hard to keep on top of it unless you eat and breathe it too. I certainly try to do as much as I can, but these guys are a special breed. It’s great to find those guys and talk to them, because they’re the guys that are finding the new uses of technology. Something might just spark and you could end up with something that no one has ever seen before. And that’s the trick.

Jr: Where do you find inspiration other than the techie guys? It must be easy just to get sucked into the internet, and disappear into it for hours.

P: Part of the reason why I moved to New York is that it’s full of inspiration. It’s hard not to meet creative people who have other interests other than just advertising.

Jr: You definitely look offline?

P: I think so. I think that’s where the traditional background comes into play. You have other places to look for ideas, not just online. And often if you see it online it’s been done. Some guy beat you to it.

Jr: What’s the work culture like? Is it different?

P: It’s very different. We’re lucky; Australia has a great outlook on life as a people. We can always have a good laugh at ourselves. American work life is a bit stifled. Even in an ad agency in the USA there’s not the same shenanigans that you get up to back home. Which is probably a good thing, you probably get more work done!

Jr: Do you work harder here than you do at home?

P: What I found is that in America you have your role. And I think that because of the sheer number of people that if you’re good at your role, you stick to your role and you stay doing that. I think because of Australia’s size we’re all good at a lot of things. And that’s probably why Australians do pretty well when they go to America, we’ve had to wear a lot of hats. Although stereotypically not, we do have a great work ethic. Americans work hard, but I think Australians work efficiently hard. It’s a different culture, and I miss the days back home of mucking around having a good creative environment.

Jr: It must be hard when you’ve got 350 or so creatives in your department.

P: Yeah, but here at R/GA it’s a great environment to learn. It’s almost like a university campus, I find, because things change daily, and you’re always trying to learn from everyone around you. That’s where the atmosphere is different. It’s more of a learning environment as opposed to a working environment.

Jr: Do you think your account service hat is helping you in NY to sell in digital ideas to a client that might not necessarily get it?

P: I think a big difference between Australia and America is that the American client is very digitally savvy. They know what’s what. In terms of even just technically speaking, they know their stuff.

Jr: So you’re not presenting to your mum?

P: I wish! I’d get a lot more sold. She’s a big fan. Coming from account service I always said that I was a better seller than creative! It definitely helps. I used to see a lot of great creatives struggle to get their idea up, even if it was awesome, they just couldn’t make it buyable for the client. You’ve got to understand where your client is coming from. If you can help their career, they’ll inadvertently help yours. Selling is a huge part of it. Clients are consumers too. They need to be sold.

Jr: What’s the deal in the US, do creatives present?

P: It depends where you are, but yes, we still present to clients. At R/GA the producer will do the day to do client liaison. It was very foreign for me to see producers on the phone all day with clients, but that’s what happens. A thousand people strong and probably the best digital agency in the world, it’s hard to argue with the formula.

Jr: if you had to write a dummies guide, a couple of tips to digital thinking, could you think of anything off the top of your head? Have you learnt from any of your mistakes?

P: I wish I knew. I think the key thing would be that it has to be fun and entertaining. The beauty of digital is that it’s no longer broadcasting, it’s asking you to participate. So make it rewarding, or make it useful, or make it both.

Nike+ is a great example. It’s an application that gives me data on my run. So all of a sudden I couldn’t go for a run without Nike. It gave runners something really useful, and we call these, utilities. Utilities end up being a fine line between advertising and product development.

If you’re in a traditional agency, don’t fear – your skills are still more than ever needed. Everything still needs to be wrapped in a nice idea. A great bit of technology that isn’t will fail because no one will find it, thus use it.

I think for anyone wanting to move to NY for a job — do your work would be my advice. Getting a full time job in NY, is a full time job.

For eight hours a day I’d be making calls to six people who would give me six more people to see, and so on. It takes time. Do your research and give yourself enough time to have weeks where you get no leads. It took me six weeks, which I thought would be my absolute best-case scenario. I was lucky. But there were times during those six weeks where I doubted myself. One thing I will say that as Australians we often go to America and think, is my work good enough? Is it up to a global standard? And it absolutely is. The work we do back home is bloody great. And Australians do well in the states. My Chief Creative Officer, Nick Law (http://www NULL.rga NULL.com/about/featured/platforms-and-campaigns), is an Aussie boy from Newport, NSW. And he’s a rockstar over here. Best of all he’s still incredibly Aussie, which is great. If your work is great back home, you can guarantee that it’s great here. Make the most of getting stuff made. Not that it was overly easy in Australia, but make the most of it.

Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: ADVERTISING, DIGITAL, NEW YORK, PAUL DERY, R/GA

Nov 24, 10

The Interview Series // 39

Juniors, meet Sarah. We met her on a recent jaunt to New York City where she is the Executive Creative Director of JWT. If you were born circa 1985 like us, you missed out on probably the best years of working in advertising. But you might just remember seeing the ad that launched this Aussie expat’s career — Antz Pantz. 21 years on, with 10 of those years based in New York, we wanted to know how she made it through the eighties and nineties and got from Antz to the Big Apple, as well as the low down on working States-side.

Junior: Ok! From the top. What’s your story? Where did you start out?

Sarah Barclay: I started at JWT. I grew up in Sydney and went to the Sydney College of the Arts, which is now the Sydney University of Technology. I won one of ten scholarships for the Australian Federation of Advertising, and back then it was all about academic prowess rather than your book. There was this motley crew of ten of us, and we were placed at various agencies for 9 months — and I got placed at JWT Sydney. So I’ve actually come full circle ending up at JWT in New York. I was there for a couple of years and then went to Garland, Stewart and Roach, and then that merged with The Ball Partnership. Then Mara Marich (my copywriter) and I got offered a job at The Campaign Palace in Melbourne, so we moved there.

Jr: Was that in The Campaign Palace hey-day?

S: Oh yeah. Saatchi Sydney and the Palace were the top at that time. I was there for 5 years before going to Clem’s.

Jr: The Campaign Palace… We’ve heard some crazy stories. But there was some great work coming out of the agency then. What was it there that made the work, and agency, so great?

S: Ah, the eighties and early nineties. Good times. There was such a great, inspiring group of people there, and the agency had such a clear and passionate creative philosophy, which helped push and support us to keep doing out-of-the-box work. People like Scott Whybin, John Turnbull, James Woollett, Terry Durack (http://blogs NULL.smh NULL.com NULL.au/entertainment/tabletalk/terrydurack/) and Graeme Smith to name a few. Creatives didn’t have much client contact back then, we just concentrated on the work, and the account people had to sell or not come back. And there was such a sense of fun. I remember getting pretty bloody good at table tennis.

Jr: What was a typical day like when the agency was at the top of its game?

S: We would spend the morning concepting, go to lunch, come back and play some table tennis, pop in to Terry’s office and see which restaurant he was reviewing, then back to do some more work. Then we might ring Scott at Lynch’s or the Bot and present over the phone and then pop down later for a drink if he liked the idea. Heaven on every level.

Jr: Tell us about Antz Pantz (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=GU59Vq-nxjg)! Was that your first TV ad?

S: I think that was 1989 [at the Campaign Palace]. Candy Shoes (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=qdWUbRW-M1c) was actually my first ad. It was with Ian McKenzie who was a great DOP and it was his first director job, and we worked with this model that had to pull a folded up shoe out of her mouth. She pulled it out perfectly on the 32^nd or 33^rd take. The line was, Candy Shoes – put them on your feet not in your mouth. It was 15 seconds long, and the lead singer from the Models, Sean Kelly, was the voice over. It was this really cool, out-there ad.

Jr: That’s a great start. Was Antz Pantz a hard thing to get off the ground at the time?

S: They were the halcyon days. That was with Scott Whybin as Creative Director. I remember Mara and I were in our office and had layouts all over the floor. A boy team had done some jingle like “the girls in France have ants in their pants, the girls in Spain have ants on their brain…” which got rejected by the client. We had this script and had a picture on the floor of a girl with ants crawling over her crotch with an anteater and Scott sort of stumbled in after lunch and looked down at the mess on the floor and we told him the idea and he said that’s it, and just walked out.

Jr: That’s amazing. You must be sick of people asking you about that campaign! We saw it recently on 20 to 1.

S: It won a lot of awards. It’s up there with the 20 best Australian ads of all time.

Jr: Did you feel at the time that that was your big break?

S: Yeah, it really was quite ground breaking on many levels, and it really did get so much PR. It sold lots of product so it worked in market as well as in the award shows. And then they tested it 20 years later and girls still loved it so much, that they made a sequel.

Jr: How soon after that did you move to New York?

S: I’ve been in NY ten years. After my seven years at Clem’s doing Yellow Pages and the milk stuff with Tony Greenwood, we won a trip to NY for some of the Yellow Pages posters that we did. The Australian Outdoor Poster Award. We had a bit of a look around while we were here, as you do, and BBDO NY were really interested and brought us over.

Jr: How did you find it when you first went to New York? What were the differences from coming from Australia?

S: It’s a different world. It’s like it’s own little country. I’d always wanted to live and work somewhere else, I had traveled a lot but I was ready to try somewhere else. New York is the mother of all cities, and the center of the advertising world some would say. I’m British, so I wanted to try NY. I guess the size of the place, the energy and the budgets are extraordinary. It’s a completely different ball game from Australia. It’s a different sort of discipline.
In Australia you are trained to be a bit scrappier because you don’t have the luxury of those budgets. I think that makes us strong, holistic thinkers that are always trying to find a cheap way to get the message across. You still have to do that in NY, but you do have more of the luxury of the big budgets to do that.

Jr: Do you think the style of advertising is different in New York?

S: Yeah, it’s much more conservative. It really is the mid-west that you need to measure everything against. Unless it’s more of a content online piece of work that has less of a mass audience, but anything that is in the bigger traditional veins it’s much more conservative. The USA is the country of litigation and political correctness. We have loads of instances where we present to a US client and they think it’s fantastic, but they could never run it. And then the UK and European client will take it instead. A few of my clients are global so that makes it a little bit more rewarding.

Jr: So you’re an Art Director by trade, right?

S: I went to Art College so I started as an Art Director. Funnily enough most of my partners have been art directors, so I do a bit of writing too. A bit of everything.

Jr: Do you have a less rigid working style here in New York?

S: Yeah, and one of my teams here at JWT are both Art Directors as well. It’s weird. They both dabble in a bit of writing. I think strong conceptual thinkers are important, and of course it’s great if you have some writing craft as well.

Jr: That’s really interesting. There’s always been the whole question of whether you have to be a traditional team or not. It feels like it is frowned upon in Melbourne.

S: Some of my teams are regimented into the Art Director/Copywriter role, and I like having that because if I’ve got something that I need written in a very comedic style, I want to be able to go to someone who has that ability to craft it out.

Jr: How did you learn your craft?

S: I looked at a lot of award annuals, design books, fashion mags, record covers (ah, remember them)… art stuff, type stuff, anything I could get my hands on really. At Clem’s there were people like Henry Winkler and Libby Austin and others that were around at the time who were fab at craft. In Australia it is much more of an intimate environment so you could bounce ideas off of other art directors, and more senior creatives. I worked with Lionel Hunt a few times and that was really cool. You just look to those people that you admired within your agency and then bugged them for advice. At the Palace back then we had everyone, which was great.

Jr: Do you think it’s true though that Australia is behind the rest of the world?

S: Not really. Look at what wins at Cannes. There are bucket loads of stuff in the promo, media and digital categories from Australian agencies. I think that the budgets are probably the difference. In the US a lot of my clients still do heavy television and print work, but they are also very aware that people are also using other forms of media to view things, and they want to be where they are. Because of the nature of how much money you have it feels like you have more money to spend in those areas. I always have felt that Australia and New Zealand have been really progressive in advertising, and certainly in the quality of it, and how they make things go further with limited amounts of funds. It’s the obvious thing to do a great piece of content that doesn’t need a huge amount of media weight and spend behind it to get a message across.

Jr: Did you have a strategy when you were starting out for the agencies you wanted to work?

S: I always knew that I’d love to work somewhere like The Campaign Palace or Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, and luckily I was given the opportunity to work at the Palace Melbourne in it’s hey-day. You don’t want to get sucked up into some faceless giant. There’s plenty of time for that. I think when you’re young and you’ve got buckets of energy, you need to have a vision and stay true to that. Even if you do get swallowed up in something bigger until you get that opportunity, I think you’ve always got to have a little side book of stuff that you keep on working on. Bigger clients always look favourably when you’re being proactive which is a great way to sneak things through. That’s what happened with a lot of the work that we’ve done here. It’s being scrappy, inventive and proactive.

Jr: We definitely don’t want to get sucked up into a faceless giant… so If you had your time over as a junior what would you look for in an agency? Would you look at the Creative Director?

S: Absolutely. It’s the Chief Creative Officer over here in New York. I’d look at the brands that they have, the work that they do and the philosophy of the place. I think you get a feel by talking to people, the culture of the place – not all places suit all types. I just read about someone who I knew who was let go from an agency that everyone would love to work at. And he’s great, and the agency is great, but for some reason it just didn’t work.

Jr: Do you think it’s very different over in New York for juniors starting out their career?

S: I think because of the size of the industry, and the size of the agencies, you can get swallowed up and forgotten about. You need to make sure that you have some goals and not fall prey to the golden handcuffs if you can avoid it, and still keep true to doing great work for as long as you can. The money will come eventually if you get those awards and recognition under your belt.

Jr: In terms of the way agencies work here it seems like there are a lot more roles that make things easier?

S: We have print producers here that go on the shoots, and project managers. There are lots of people to help out-to make the process more streamlined. But there are still a lot of account service people here, and meetings can sometimes have 20 people in them. As a creative you have to keep focused that the end product is this piece of communication that everyone will see, and you all have to keep striving to make it the best it possibly can be. And sometimes people forget that and you need to remind yourself and your team of that. Always look to your Creative Director for that guidance, and that’s where your loyalty should be. Art Directors are slaves to the Mac, but it is also liberating. The thing I miss is the attention to typography and craft that we had back in the day. You need to find Art Directors who are brilliant at all craft these days, which is hard. We have a great Head Of Art here, Aaron Padin, who I worked with at Saatchi NYC, so he keeps everyone on their toes.

Jr: Did you have any key mentors throughout your career?

S: Oh yeah. Scott Whybin. He was so incredibly brilliant at spotting an idea even from a scribble. And he always pushed us and encouraged us to be better. And then at Clem’s David Blackley and Ant Shannon were really supportive and inspiring. In New York, I worked with the wonderful Tony Granger at Saatchi for 4 years. He definitely encouraged me to push the envelope and was so particular with crafting work. I hear his voice as I review work now. Ty Montague, who hired me here at JWT but has since left, is an amazingly smart and talented guy.

Jr: Do people work like that in New York too?

S: Not as much. Because of the nature and the size of the place it’s harder to get that sort of intimate working environment happening. We try and create something like that, but there are so many meetings, so many deadlines, so many jobs going on that it is easy to lose sight of just taking that moment, and giving yourself some time to really craft that piece of work. You have to remind yourself that if it’s not as good as it can be, you’ve only got yourself to blame.

Jr: What are your clients that you are working on at the moment?

S: I run Wilkinson Sword Schick. We do a lot of work for the US and also we do some of the smaller content/digital projects for Europe. Up until recently I had a lot of the Kimberly-Clark business. We had a great time doing the Kotex work — that really reframed how that sort of stuff is advertised here. The US are still in the era of twirling white skirts and horses galloping along the beach and using blue liquid, so that was excellent to stick the finger up at the hideous stuff that has been perpetrated here for years. We are also launching a global hair brand, but I can’t say any more about that just yet!

Jr: If you had advice for young people from Australia wanting to hit up New York or London, do you have any thoughts of what they can do to try to get their feet in the door?

S: Try and find an in somehow – whether it’s another Australian, or doing something proactive. Obviously the Australian Mafia works well. Hang out at 8 Mile Creek (http://maps NULL.google NULL.com NULL.au/maps/place?oe=utf-8&rls=org NULL.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=8+mile+creek+ny&fb=1&gl=au&hq=8+mile+creek&hnear=New+York,+NY,+USA&cid=11036833762921432919) and you’ll bump into someone who is working in advertising. There are quite a few of us sprinkled around the place and that’s always a great thing.

Jr: A lot of people have different opinions on when to go.

S: I’d say sooner, rather than later. I wish I’d done it earlier. That being said, it is a hard slog to get your foot in the door without a good solid base of stuff. Definitely try. I think world experience is just fantastic. And New York is an inspiring and motivating place on every level. When you walk out the door every day there is always something silly, bizarre or different happening. You’re constantly moved to experience stuff. I’ve been here ten years and feel like I’m still scratching the surface. You’re never bored. You’re always challenged.

Also posted in ADVERTISING, WRITING | Tags: ANTZ PANTZ, JWT, NEW YORK, SARAH BARCLAY, THE CAMPAIGN PALACE

Nov 17, 10

The Interview Series // 38

Mike Drucker is one half of the writing/comedian pair “The Drucker Brothers (http://www NULL.druckerbrothers NULL.com/)”. They’re subversive and funny. Mike has hustled to put together entertaining words purely for your amusement at online and television destinations such as The Onion (http://www NULL.theonion NULL.com/), Saturday Night Live (http://www NULL.nbc NULL.com/saturday-night-live/), McSweeney’s (http://www NULL.mcsweeneys NULL.net/), and Twitter (http://twitter NULL.com/mikedrucker). We first came across Mike’s stuff when we read a short piece of his entitled A Robot Performs Standup Comedy to a Lackluster Response (http://www NULL.mcsweeneys NULL.net/2007/11/6drucker NULL.html). Which, in our opinion, if you don’t laugh at, probably means you have a faulty TZ500 Sense-of-Humor Unit. He’s currently writing for a hush-hush video game project for Nintendo, but he found the time to talk to us about his creative process.

Junior: Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you ended up writing comedy?

Mike Drucker: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I did my undergraduate at New York University in English Literature and Journalism. My intention was to go into publishing and become a novelist while supporting myself off magazine articles. That wasn’t happening, so I stayed on another year after I graduated to get my Master’s in English Literature. My thesis was on parody novels in Victorian England. I was lucky enough to be in grad school when I started doing comedy, and a graduate paper on comedy was a fun way to bow out of my education.

As far as performing goes — when I was eight years old, I entered my daycare’s kiddie talent show. I read jokes from a book of dinosaur knock-knock jokes. I was booed off stage by other children. I still own the book somewhere, but those children are long dead to me.

My more modern entry into comedy was while I was still at NYU. After years of procrastination, I decided to try my hand at stand-up. I think my mindset was that I preferred to try it and suck and know I sucked than be the sort of guy who spends the rest of his life claiming he could’ve been great but never got around to it. I don’t mind failing, but I hate “what if?”.

Writing comedy followed. As part of my journalism degree, I wrote for NYU’s newspaper. The sports section. I’m not a big sports fan, but the position was open, and I wanted to see my name in print. I wrote for the hockey team, which was ill-supported to say the least. Every April Fool’s Day though the paper would do a fake issue with jokes. That’s where I really enjoyed it. I wrote an article called something like, “Record 12 Fans Come Out To Hockey Game.” The team loved it and the coach threatened to have me fired from the newspaper.

Over years, I went from a crappy comedian to a sometimes crappy comedian. Along the way, I began contributing jokes to a few television shows and websites, from which I began to get hired to write for bigger projects, and ghost write for a few celebrities. It’s hard to describe what happened in the transition from amateur to professional, because there’s no actual change. You don’t get a set of keys to the professional writers’ gym and a tote bag. You just keep doing it and eventually someone thinks you deserve money.

Jr: Now you’ve found yourself working on video game scripts. How does writing for such a non-linear, interactive medium work? Is it quite mind-blowing when you deal with all the possibilities that can play out?

M: Yes, in the sheer scope of things. I’ve just started on my project and I’m already mind-blown by the amount of text in a video game. There are so many things that happen, so many things that will be seen and won’t be seen depending on what the player does or doesn’t do. It’s exciting and terrifying at the same time.

But video games are a lot like live comedy – you create branching pathways based on how the audience reacts. They like this, you do this. They like that, you do that. The interactivity – and temporality – of both art forms make them some of the most fun and exciting to work in. They’re the few art forms that the audience really feels a part of in a visceral and real way. Please, touch this painting. Change it. Make it your own.

Thankfully, video games are also like movies in that you have a team of very talented people working together so nobody feels too lost. There is (usually) an overall vision of what the game will be, which helps rein me in and make me feel less scared.

Jr: Roger Ebert caused a stir recently when he said that video games couldn’t be art. What are your thoughts on the matter?

M: To be fair, he later went back and said he hasn’t played or enjoyed enough games to make that sort of blanket statement. He had only seen YouTube clips of video games, which is akin to seeing a photograph of a movie and saying they couldn’t tell good stories.

But even if he hadn’t reversed/apologized, would his opinion really matter? We shouldn’t need permission to enjoy the things we enjoy. Does Roger Ebert’s dislike of games make our childhood memories invalid? I hope not. Nobody should invest that much power in any other individual. Opinions are important, but defining what’s kosher to enjoy, or even worse, influence is weird to me.

I honestly think anything created is art. I’m liberal that way. Even if nobody cares, your expression is your art. Doodles in a notebook are art. Park benches are art. Are they good or interesting art? That depends on who you ask.

The key isn’t whether or not what you create is art – it’s whether or not people a) enjoy it, b) take something new away from the experience, and c) some cool third thing.

Jr: Ha! Can you describe your creative process? Is there any structure to it? Are there any Drucker™ tricks that you’ve found help the ideas flow? Or is it just a matter of sitting down and forcing your brain to go through the process of trial and error?

M: It honestly depends on the assignment. When writing for a television show, there’s usually a topic. “We need jokes on Obama’s XYZ.” So I approach that writing like a research paper – I pull up news stories, opinion columns, Wikipedia pages, and research my way into jokes. It takes a long time, and most of the jokes aren’t too pretty, but it works. Research helps me. I was a staff writer at the ESPN sports awards (ESPYs). I’m not a sports person. But research helped me make it work.

Of course, there’s a creative element to it. Just like a research paper, the information provided only takes you so far. The conclusions you draw from it are what’s important. I’m not saying I have a math formula I pour into comedy. I just try to know as much as I can before writing jokes.

When it comes to more freeform ideas such as The Onion articles or stand-up, I just try to draw from everyday experiences. There is a lot of staring at a screen waiting for ideas to come. A lot of trial and error. But it works. You just keep writing and eventually something funny will come out. Maybe you won’t have the time to write a masterpiece of stand-up, a masterpiece of fiction, and a masterpiece of cinema. But eventually you will write something funny.

Jr: What advice would you give to young people who want to write comedy?

M: Write what you think is funny, not what other people think is funny. Eventually, you’ll find a way to bring the two together. But if you start off doing jokes that you think you’re supposed to do instead of the jokes you want to do, you’ll hate comedy very, very quickly.

Think about what makes you laugh. Keep a notebook of jokes, articles, and stories that you like. NEVER copy them. But look at them and try to figure out what about them interests you and makes you smile. Take note of your interests outside of comedy. What is there you can write about or talk about?

If you can talk endlessly about music, you will be able to write about music. If you know everything about Austrian history from 1750 – 1975, you should be able to find something weird about it that people can relate to.

It can be an uphill battle to write about what you like – as opposed to the vanilla “sex is weird” / “race is weird” duo - but you’ll find it much more fulfilling.

Jr: How does writing for publication differ from writing for performing, if at all? Do you find the two play off each other, strengthening your skills in each process?

M: The two definitely play off each other. And when one idea doesn’t work in one form, it often works in another.

The biggest benefit to performing is seeing people react right in front of you. On the other hand, publications allow you to be super specific. You generally know who’s reading. Audiences are more generic but also more personal.

Jr: What’s your ratio of good stuff to bad stuff? Stuff that’s sold/published vs. rejected?

M: There’s a lot of bad stuff. A lot. More than you think. Nine out of ten ideas that are written never even get submitted or make it to the stage. Then out of that 10 percent, I’d say only a quarter of the resulting material is any good.

There’s a lot of rejection, a lot of failed jokes. At first you’re mortified and feel embarrassed. After a while, you get used to it. Rejection is never fun, but the more you mature as a writer; the more you mature as a person. Worst-case scenario, they outright reject the piece. Best-case scenario, they give you feedback and you grow as a writer or performer.

Robot Comedian was actually rejected by McSweeney’s with notes on the ending. The ending was a little more dramatic, a little more boisterous, but didn’t mesh with the rest of the piece. I changed things around, spiffed it up, and I believe that it became a much funnier piece because of those notes.

Jr: It seems a comedy writer’s strength is often in seeing through the bullshit, cutting through the facade and seeing the messy underside of things (pop culture, etc). Does this mean one has to have a cynical approach to life?

M: It depends on what you mean by “cynical.”

If by “cynical” you mean angry and hateful, no.

But if by “cynical” you mean analytical, yes. A careful approach to viewing the world is vital to comedy writing.

Unfortunately, comedy writers often confuse the two. A lot of people think hating something is the same as taking a critical view of it. “I hate my children. I hate my wife. I hate, I hate, I hate.” It gets tiring. To be honest, there are very successful comedians who do it. I even do it sometimes, I guess. I wish I didn’t, but I know I’ve fallen into it. It’s okay to have problems with the world – the world is full of problems – but nobody is helped by a wall of fury.

I’m much more interested in comedians and writers who talk about things they love. Eddie Izzard is amazing at this. Simon Rich is the best comedy writer in the world for this reason. Their comedy is so innocent; it comes from a place of joy. Even in the darkest moment, it feels like they’re sharing something special with you rather than having a shouting match.

If you’re going to hate something on stage or in a written piece, at least have a good reason why. This is my scholarly background talking, but if you have no supporting evidence, you have no point. If you want to go on stage and tell me something like women are stupid or immigrants need to leave, you better have five solid supporting paragraphs. And most comedy writers and performers don’t. They appeal to emotions and get applause for saying something easy or dirty. That’s not interesting for me.

A good comedy strategy I try to use when writing is to think of things I dislike and view them from the opposite perspective. I may still not like what I’m writing about, but it gives me a perspective that’s deeper than vitriol.

Jr: So tell us.. what’s the funniest thing ever?

M: So many things.

1. Simon Rich is the funniest writer alive today. His books are unbelievable. Just read this short piece (http://www NULL.newyorker NULL.com/humor/2008/08/04/080804sh_shouts_rich).

2. Portal is the funniest video game of all time. Even if you don’t like games, it’s an amazing look into the power of interactive writing and the participation of a player in a comedic scenario.

3. The Onion was funny before I wrote for it and will be funny long after I’m dead. “Daddy Put In The Bye-Bye Box (http://www NULL.theonion NULL.com/articles/daddy-put-in-byebye-box,2411/ )” is one of the saddest, funniest pieces of writing put to Internet.

3.5 Side note, the funniest Onion headline of all time is “Man Who Likes To Move It, Move It Still Searching For Perfect Song”

4. I don’t know why, but this Old Man Murray article (http://www NULL.oldmanmurray NULL.com/features/21 NULL.html) on America after 9/11 has always struck me as particularly funny, even years later after people stopped reading the site.

5. And finally, anything that reduces the epic to normal. McSweeney’s articles like this (http://www NULL.mcsweeneys NULL.net/2010/7/19weldon NULL.html). The funniest thing in my head is taking the grandiose and making it small and petty.

Interview by: Pete Majarich (http://petermajarich NULL.com NULL.au/)

Also posted in WRITING | Tags: COMEDY, MIKE DRUCKER, THE DRUCKER BROTHERS, WRITING

Nov 10, 10

The Interview Series // 37 / agIdeas Special

While Junior was in New York, we found Hamish Smyth (http://www NULL.hamishsmyth NULL.com/) tucked into the folds of Pentagram NY (http://www NULL.pentagram NULL.com/). Hamish had one of those experiences where so many rad things happened to him, we just don’t know how he did it all. First, he won a work placement at Pentagram. Second, he won a two week trial at Fabrica (http://www NULL.fabrica NULL.it/), Italy. Third, he won a full internship at Pentagram. Then! Just to top it off he’s recently been offered a full year back at Fabrica. New York or Italy, or both? AgIdeas NewStar (http://www NULL.agideas NULL.net/index NULL.php?nodeId=25) — enter now! Only five days left! That’s more than enough time to do something great.

Junior: You entered agIdeas newStar in your last year at uni?

Hamish: The start of fourth year I was doing honours at RMIT, at The Works. It’s a design studio run by the honours students. There are usually about 8-10 students there. I had just begun at The Works when I entered newStar, and all I entered was basically my work from third year. I already had it together in a PDF, so it wasn’t difficult to enter. For the Collie Print Trust award, also a part of newStar, you had to enter three pieces, so I just picked out my three most confident pieces and sent it all in. And then, we waited. They short-listed about thirty people for the award and at the agIdeas conference the international speakers judged those thirty entries, then the winner is announced on the last day of the conference.

Jr: From there what happened?

H: After announcing the winner I went up on stage — it was the best day. I was in shock I think. That was for the Collie Print Trust Award, which was flights, accommodation and two weeks work experience at an international studio of my choice. I chose Pentagram New York. Luckily I didn’t have to say anything on stage, because I wouldn’t have been able to speak. Ken Cato was standing there when I walked off of stage. I met him quickly and then he asked if I wanted to go to Fabrica as well, because they wanted to send me there too. I don’t know what I said, but ended up saying ‘Yeah that would be awesome’, or something stupid like that. They announced that on stage too and also gave away another three Fabrica awards because they liked the other entrants’ work so much.

Jr: What happened after you found out you won?

H: After the conference ended that day I was invited to the dinner that night at the Melbourne Museum, and got a wad of business cards from all the people that I met. This was in May and I was still completing honours at Uni. I could have left and started the trip straight away – but I decided to finish studying and begin the award in January 2010. Because I’d won two awards – one to Italy for Fabrica and the other to New York – instead of sending me over and back twice they bought a round the world ticket for me. The ticket lasted a year so I could travel too. I left Australia in January and went to Fabrica first, spent two weeks there on the trial and then I had four months before I had to be in New York. I ended up backpacking alone in Europe for four months, couch surfing everywhere and taking loads of photos – it was a pretty amazing experience. I had never been overseas before, so it was a real eye opener for me in a positive way.

Jr: What were you doing when you got to Fabrica for the two weeks?

H: I was on trial in the visual communication department, with another Australian girl, Ramona Lindsay, who also won the Fabrica award at agIdeas. We were working with the other designers there, and they had just got a new job for the UN World Health Organisation. Basically it was a large-scale worldwide poster campaign. They were in the early stages of the design process, had just finished researching and were starting on concepts and coming up with ideas — the fun part. We just slotted straight in with them and started working. It was a really challenging brief.

Jr: It’s pretty hard to prove yourself in two weeks!

H: Yeah, and it’s a tough job, you’re in a new place, you don’t know anyone, all the while trying to prove to them why they should invite you back.

Jr: Were there lots of other foreigners there too?

H: For sure. It’s probably one quarter Italian. But it’s a very international environment. English is the official language but a lot of Italian gets spoken. The people there were really friendly, completely into what they were doing and they’re all really talented. From speaking to the current “Fabricani”, the best thing about Fabrica is the people that you meet there and the contacts you make. After you have been there for a year you get to know these people pretty well – so by the end of the residency you have really talented friends from all over the world.

Jr: And then you left, and thought you hadn’t got a place to stay there at Fabrica?

H: I thought I bummed it. I left it really disappointed in myself. I wasn’t really happy with the work that I had done there so I thought that that might have had something to do with it.

Jr: What did they say when you left?

H: ‘We’ll be in touch’. ‘It was great to have you here’. I heard that they take ages to get back to people – I heard six months in one case. But nine months had passed and then I got this email last week totally out of the blue. The email was an offer asking me back for the year residency if I was willing to accept. I was pretty shocked to get it!

Jr: Do you find the style of stuff that you are used to from Melbourne, and RMIT, and even your own style of design — did it fly over there or was it very different?

H: I didn’t really get a chance to practice anything like I had done in Melbourne –which was good. Fabrica is all about very visual and confronting imagery, stuff that works on a global scale. I’d say that that is pretty different to my style, which is more of a traditional generalist graphic design I guess.

Jr: What is Fabrica like?

H: There’s many different departments there including– photography, visual communication, interactive design, design (products, furniture etc), video, music and Colors [Magazine]. There is probably around forty to fifty young people – the residents – plus the Fabrica staff. They give you a flat in town, and you live with another Fabricanti. They all go out, get pizza – that sort of stuff all the time. It’s really fun. I think the total population of the town, Treviso, is about eighty thousand, but the central town within the old walls is smaller. Lots of pizza and very cheap but good wine!

Jr: So what did you do after Fabrica? Travelled and then ended up in New York?

H: Yes, I got here [NY] in May, had two weeks to explore and then started the work placement at Pentagram. Back in February I was emailing a designer at Pentagram to organise the work placement. I basically asked her if I could stay longer than the two week placement. I thought I had nothing to lose if I asked. She said no, I couldn’t, but that I was welcome to apply for the Fall internship position they had open. I sent in my portfolio and got a phone interview with them in April. I did that when I was in London. I was in a hostel, on a bunk bed at night. I was really nervous but it must have gone OK.

So from there I went to New York and was at Pentagram. By applying for the internship I had turned the two week placement into a trial for the internship.

Two days after I started I was fortunate to get put on this urgent project that was happening within a different team. I was the only person in the office who was free that day, so I was lucky that I got to do it. I was thrown in the deep end, we had a meeting the following afternoon and they needed the project done by then. It was an environmental graphics job for a pitch with a big client. I had six hours to get all of this stuff done and was freaking out a little. I worked really hard, got some stuff together, and apparently the client liked it.

Jr: So it’s probably always different.

H: Yep. At the moment we’re working on a book and some signage. It’s really varied. I work for Michael Bierut and his clients include a lot of arts related projects, signage and publications.

Jr: You’re learning a lot?

H: So much. Working with Michael Bierut (http://www NULL.pentagram NULL.com/en/partners/michael-bierut NULL.php) is obviously pretty interesting and you learn something new from him every day. Even just listening to him on the phone you learn a lot about how he deals with clients.

Jr: Do you ever get to meet clients?

H: I’ve been in a few meetings, but generally interns won’t get to do that. Unless you’re very closely involved with the project. But, it’s a small team so you are always pretty involved, and not stuck in a corner on Photoshop all day. We do have to do that some days, but never all the time.

Jr: What advice would you give to the next winner of the internship?

H: My advice to those entering would be to only enter work that you are truly confident in. If you aren’t confident in even a small part of a project, cull it from your folio. It’s better to have five great things than ten OK projects. Also, you’ve still got time so you can probably do seven projects in that time. Make your own briefs up. Rebrand something that needs rebranding and put it in your folio. Work your ass off because it’s an amazing opportunity. Finally, work hard for a long time and good things will start to happen.

Entries close for agIdeas NewStar Monday 15th November. Enter at newstar.agideas.net (http://newstar NULL.agideas NULL.net)

Also posted in DESIGN | Tags: AGIDEAS, FABRICA, HAMISH SMYTH, NEWSTAR, PENTAGRAM

Oct 27, 10

The Interview Series // 36

When the Bogusky of Crispin Porter + Bogusky famously exited (http://alexbogusky NULL.posterous NULL.com/filling-in-the-blanks) the industry in August, he made a special mention of a few copywriters that he regarded as some of the most super, extra talented that he’d ever worked with. Among them was Bill Wright – CP+B Vice-President, and Creative Director on the agency’s Burger King account. Just imagine thinking about all of those Whoppers and fries all day! Anyway, we hear that he’s responsible for some of the tightest work to come out of the agency. We managed to hold Bill hostage in his office and get the goods on how not to suck at writing.

Junior: Can you tell us a little about how you started off in advertising?

Bill Wright: I pretty much grew up in front of the TV and I was fascinated by the ads. They were probably my favorite part of television. And, I always enjoyed writing. I knew I was better at it than anybody else in my school when I was growing up. So, my dream was to someday be able to write, come up with ideas, be creative — and get paid for it.

Jr: How did being schooled at such a top notch Journalism school help you in the advertising industry?

B: I went to the Missouri School of Journalism (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Missouri_School_of_Journalism) with the intent of going through the news/editorial sequence and ultimately landing a job as a reporter. However, my advisor, Jim Albright steered me into the advertising sequence. He was an amazing mentor who did a lot of great work for Doritos, Exxon and Frito-Lay back in the 70’s — I owe him a tremendous amount of credit for any success I’ve had. Missouri J-School is incredibly hard and demanding and you can’t graduate from there without being a very disciplined writer, who understands the craft.

Jr: An awesome piece of advice that we’ve once heard from you was “Don’t write funny; write about things that are funny”. Can you talk about that a little more? What’s the separation between the two in your mind?

B: Hopefully this is self-explanatory. But it means to find a premise, a situation that is inherently humorous and write a script about it. And not to write a script that is just a bunch of jokes or one-liners you strung together. That piece of advice was handed to me by Alex Bogusky, and I try to pass it along whenever I can.

Jr: A bad print ad just gets ignored. A bad TV spot, however, is up there on the screen for thirty seconds or longer, embarrassing everyone. There are just so many more things you need to get right in a TVC. Dialog, character, product messaging, establishing and resolving a story arc within 25 seconds. Would you say TV is one of the toughest mediums to write for?

B: I always thought radio was harder than TV, because in TV you at least have the visual part to do the half the lifting for you. A 60 second radio is hard; a 30 second radio ad is sort of impossible.

Jr: You showed us earlier a great memo (http://www NULL.movieline NULL.com/2010/03/david-mamets-memo-to-the-writers-of-the-unit NULL.php) that playwright David Mamet gave to his TV writing team. He discusses the need for drama in every scene (What do the characters want? What’s the conflict?); the fact that a flat script can’t be saved by great directing; and he has a great quote “If you pretend the characters can’t speak, and write a silent movie, you will be writing great drama”. All these principles seemed to be summed up perfectly in this great scene from The Wire (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=nAZZdL1qhk8). McNulty wants info on the perp, Pearlman wants to save her future shot at joining The Bar Association, and Levy wants to keep his shit on the down low. Can you break it down for us?

B: 1. “Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of shit”. – David Mamet

2. Drama is the quest of our hero to overcome those things that prevent him from achieving his goal.

3. Setup. Conflict. Resolution. That’s your story arc. Always follow it.

Jr: What’s next for advertising writing? Where do you see the next big opportunities are for creativity?

B: I wish I had the answer for this. But people will always hunger for great storytelling. Learn to tell great stories.

Jr: Do you get to work on any writing or creative projects outside of your day job?

B: Not at the moment. Someday I want to write a book about the Crispin experience.

Jr: Are there any other tips you can think of that would be useful for juniors to steal?

B: Think of an idea. Then do the exact opposite idea. Incredibly, this really works.

For example, here’s an idea for Burger King: Let’s give a free Whopper to every man, woman and child in America. Here’s a better idea: Let’s stop selling the Whopper.

Interview by: Pete Majarich (http://petermajarich NULL.com NULL.au/)

Also posted in ADVERTISING, WRITING | Tags: BILL WRIGHT, CP+B

Sep 16, 10

The Interview Series // 35

Do you want a DVD for free? Yes! Of course you do! That’s what the Pedestrian TV (http://www NULL.pedestrian NULL.tv/) boys, Oscar (front right) & Chris (front left) thought when they got onto video content turned zine, before anyone knew their hipster from their skinny jeans. From issues filmed at the Wet on Wellington, to interviews with Neon Indian, Chris & Oscar were on it. Now, they’re working with peeps like Virgin Mobile, and Honda Jazz (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=eW4D1lWq9Io) to create some pretty cool branded content. And, they’ve just launched a new site (http://www NULL.pedestrian NULL.tv/jobs/) for creative types to help them find their dream jobs in music, fashion, art, design, publishing, film, tv, photography, radio, advertising, sport and more. All of this coming from two guys who started out not knowing how to even edit footage. Legends!

Junior: Pedestrian started from the Plastizine (DVD magazine). Is that something you wanted to have in the real world and it just switched over?

Chris: There wasn’t really any definite plan. The Plastizine came from an idea of looking at what was out there and wondering why it hadn’t been done before. We were working in a traditional media buying agency – essentially helping big advertising clients buy ad spots on TV, radio, billboards and magazines. Media buyers are the people that fund most of the publishing industry, so they have a lot of power. I was always a little bit obsessed with street press and loved the idea of picking up a magazine for free. But rather than do the same thing and release another free magazine, we wanted to do something different. We asked ourselves why we couldn’t film content and put it on a DVD, and release it. We thought that there must have been something wrong with the idea because no one had done it before, and it seemed simple. So we looked into it, crunched some numbers, and while working our other jobs worked weekends, lunchtimes, evenings and whenever we could to help this idea that was sketched on the back of a napkin – to make it come to life. We were running around filming interviews..

Oscar: Meeting lots of great people..

Chris: Mocking up examples, and then finally it got to the stage that if we were to go anywhere with the idea, we had to take the plunge and go full time. Most of the world operates full time, and if you want your dream to become a reality you have to take that step. You can work weekends and every evening, but the people you need to fund your ideas don’t work like that. We left our jobs and that’s how it started. The plastizine went for 15 issues and three and a half years, and it’s still an idea that has it’s merit..

Oscar: And is very close to our hearts…

Chris: It’s an idea that was almost too different in a way. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel; you just need to make a better wheel. The DVD was trying to reinvent the wheel, it was a new product and we had to sell in the type of media, and the brand as well. I think that was the biggest obstacle we faced.

We were also really young. I was 22 and Oscar was 23 when we started. It’s a beautiful time to start something because when you’re young you’ve got nothing to lose. But you also don’t have many people who can help you out, in terms of people helping you to fund something. We had so many people that taught us things, like how to edit. It was a labour of love for us, and a lot of people who gave their time.

Oscar: I think everyone saw how passionate we were with the idea, and it rubbed off on them. Everyone came to our aid and helped us out. It was a daunting time leaving our jobs, we were working in a pretty reputable agency. I think taking the plunge was a really risky thing to do, but we just said stuff it, what have we got to lose, and we did it. We had countless all nighters working around the clock, we set up offices in our family homes… And it’s all still worked out five and a half years later.

Chris: There’s a quote I like: “If you act boldy, a million unseen forces will come to your aid” which is something I really believe in. People to do find that energy around people doing creative things and you can sometimes do a project and people will work for virtually nothing just to help you out – to see something come alive. In the first couple of years when we started, and even now, there’s staff that I’m sure could probably leave and go and work for bigger corporations and get paid a lot more. But there’s that energy there and you feel like you’re part of something bigger.

Jr: How long did you have the Plastizines out before you left your jobs?

Oscar: We didn’t. We were pretty much spending all our spare time putting together video content to go and pitch to advertisers. We chucked on our suits and traveled around Australia, and hounded people on the phones to get meetings. We finally ended up having a great meeting with Mini. They came on board and sponsored the first few issues, and gave us the confidence that this could be reality, and could actually work.

Chris: We left our jobs in Feb 2005, and the first issue came out in May 2005. So it was a fairly quick turn around. We gave ourselves a deadline…

Oscar: And worked around the clock to reach it. Chris and I were doing everything. We learnt how to edit and were bickering over edits all night. We were running around distributing the DVDs ourselves in our cars with boxes everywhere.

Chris: We did that until about issue five or six. Even interstate. We thought it was cheaper for one of us to fly down, get a car, and run into all the stores. We’ve gone up and down Brunswick Street, Oxford Street and Chapel Street, carrying hundreds of DVDs and dropping them into places like General Pants and Fat. It’s a bit ridiculous when you think about it, but that’s what you’ve got to do. When you look at anyone starting a business you do need to learn how to manage a lot of different tasks. Which is great too because when the business expands, you know how to do everything. So you understand the pressures on people whether they are carrying a camera or video editing or writing articles.

Jr: To get the guts to walk into those meetings — to call them up and organise the meeting in the first place, does that all come from working at the media agency?

Chris: Not really. In an agency you get lots of people calling you, you don’t have to call anyone. I think it just came from the fact that we really believed in it..

Oscar: And we had no jobs, so we had to do it.

Chris: I remember we sat there with a spreadsheet filled with all the clients we wanted to sponsor the DVD, and it was just basically any youth brand. We didn’t even know who half the contacts were, so it was a lot of cold calling. But that’s the thing, that even people who control the money for big brands like Coca Cola, or BMW Mini – Australia is a great place in that people here like enterprise. So, we never really had that much trouble getting meetings – they like to hear people that are passionate.

Jr: So there was the spreadsheet, what was the sell on it?

Oscar: We had a couple of good points.

Chris: The big sell was that you just needed to take one spot off your TV plan, and put it on our DVD. The idea was that every youth brand in Australia would do that for us, and then we’d have Ferrari’s and boats and shit like that.

Oscar: And who is going to throw away a DVD, you know what I mean? It’s not like a magazine.

Chris: The sell was different, and that’s probably why it helped us to get meetings. The positives are, that if it has never been done before, then people want to hear about it. It literally hadn’t been done anywhere worldwide.

Oscar: There were lots of great sells to it – like the ads were non-skippable, and once you put a DVD in you’re on the couch. That was the thing we faced though – the content had to be good. We were pretty confident, despite not being able to edit. The content was interesting stuff that you couldn’t really see at the time. Before YouTube, and Vimeo existed. It was different, interesting, fun and a bit quirky.

Chris: That was a big part of the sell at the time — that the content was really different. Digital video was around at the time but no one had found a way to really get it out there that was feasible. This was right at the time that YouTube started, so the idea of lots of video all over the internet hadn’t really happened yet. If you wanted to see videos, you had to watch TV. And if you watched TV, TV stations have to cater to a really large audience. If you wanted to take a video camera and film a band that has played a handful of shows but you thought were a great act, you just wouldn’t see that kind of video. At the end of the day music and fashion are there to be seen and heard. A music festival is to be experienced. Obviously now with the amount of videos out there on the internet, you can clearly see that there is a demand for it. We always say that we should have started YouTube because that would have been a lot more profitable.

We were onto the new things that captured people’s imaginations but they weren’t really big enough at the time, or mainstream enough to get that type of coverage where TV stations would come with their camera crews. And I guess that’s what we’re trying to do now with the website. Give people content presented in a way that they can’t necessarily find anywhere else. Give them local or overseas content that is unique and different and not just the standard type of fare you’d find on a news site or entertainment portal.

Jr: That type of content, that is the flavour of Pedestrian, obviously comes from you two. Do you have the confidence in yourselves that the things that you are into, everyone else would be into?

Oscar: I think we’re so different that we cover everything. We’re quite different people. Chris plays in a band, I surf.

Chris: I think the fact that our personalities were really different probably contributed a little bit to the somewhat schizophrenic nature of Pedestrian at the start. People used to come up to us and tell us how we’d interview a model, and that interview would sit alongside an interview with an indie band. And yet it sort of made sense.

Oscar: I think Pedestrian has always been cheeky and fun, a bit left of center, but still readable, intelligent and enjoyable for the masses. We have our little quirky edge on things.

Jr: When you were 22 and 23, you would have probably met a lot of people who talked about doing stuff. What made you take the step and actually do it?

Chris: Both our Dads had been fairly entrepreneurial I suppose, and I guess that was always the inspiration for us. It’s an interesting question as to why people don’t do it. One thing you see a lot is that people are perfectionists and they wait and wait until things are perfect. But the thing is, nothing is ever perfect. If you can get something to 85% you should probably do it.

Oscar: I think the imperfections with our first DVD were probably what made it so great. It was rough, it was raw – it was so dodgy that it was kind of cool. When we started out we were working at this agency, and the salary wasn’t great at all, we were both living at home or near home where we had our parents nearby so there was always that option to move home to be able to save money.

Chris: I was living in a sharehouse, and just living the dream.

Oscar: And then you had to move home.

Chris: Not that living in a sharehouse is a dream. Actually, it had no natural light. The four months I was in the house, it got broken into twice. It was a horrible house.

Oscar: I think we set up our first office in my bedroom at my Mum’s house. Then eventually we moved into a very small office. We got our first staff member, which was a very big milestone. Things grew very slowly from there. I remember our desks were propped up with cans of Red Bull and V Energy.

Chris: I think there is a whole host of reasons why people don’t make their ideas come to life. I guess our advice will be, just do it. The worst thing that can happen is that you leave the security of a full time job and you have to find work again. But the amazing thing that does happen is that when you are doing what you really want to be doing, firstly, the highs are so much higher, and the lows are so much lower. But secondly you see all these opportunities. You hustle, hustle, hustle and take what is there, look at the world without blinkers on and just grab opportunities. That’s how Pedestrian started, and how it works now. If you just believe in yourself, most people can do a lot more than what they try to do.

Oscar: I think the experience you get if you just try to do something, is invaluable. No matter what happens you’re going to look back and know that you gave it a go, rather than look back and think that you should have done that.

Jr: You talk to some amazing names. It seems like you had access to some pretty big people back then?

Chris: We don’t have that much time to chase, as much as we used to. Which is a bit sad. Some of the biggest people we’ve spoken to we probably spoke to at the start of the DVDs. The way that you sometimes get those opportunities is pretty random, and just happens by putting yourself out there. We met one of the guys who used to run Agent Provocateur, the UK lingerie brand. We were in Melbourne for Fashion Week, at this bar. We were busy paying the bar staff $10 to give us drinks in the after party area on the bar tab. This older, really well dressed couple rocked up to the bar and we said hello, and offered them a drink on the tab.

Oscar: I think we’d had quite a few already by then too.

Chris: We got them two rounds, and then they tried to pay for the next round – not that we were paying in the first place. Anyway, they brought out this wad of fifties, and we were wondering who these people were. We ended up getting them more drinks, said bye eventually, and then the next night we saw them out again. We did a quick interview with them, having no idea who they were, and finally they got chauffeured away in a BMW. Finally someone told us who they were, and it dawned on us. We convinced Virgin to fly us over the UK to do the London issue of Pedestrian. I still had the business card of the guy, Joe Corre, who is the sun of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, and just called him up. I got his PA, who told me that he was away for the month but he was coming into the office for one day, and that she’d tell him I’d called. She called me back, and said that he would do an interview with us at 5pm. So we were sitting in the reception of Agent Provocateur, staring at all these models that were walking around knowing that they were wearing amazing underwear underneath their clothes. Joe came out and did the interview with us, and that was phenomenal.

Oscar: It was a pretty awesome interview too.

Chris: It was great, that was probably one of the more interesting stories of how we met people. We had the guys from Ksubi give us an interview for issue one of the DVD – that was about five years into their career and it was great to talk to them. We spoke to Bloc Party when they were on their first tour of Australia. That was a terrible interview, but it was the first time we had spoken to an international band that we were really excited to talk to, so it was quite nerve wracking. It’s definitely one of the more interesting parts of the job is the people you get to meet and the random ways that that can happen.

Jr: You seem to be able to meet people quite easily. For a lot of people starting up networking is so intimidating. Do you have any tips for doing that?

Oscar: We have horrible livers.

Chris: I feel like it is easier if you have had a bit to drink, and I think anyone can attest to that. Most of those interviews come from going through the proper channels and asking publicists, but again if you are doing something for yourself and it is your project you find the courage. Go out, and you’ll never know who you might meet.

Oscar: Chris had a work experience guy here on Friday that he met in the bar last week.

Jr: You two working together, how do you work? As a creative partnership it must be quite difficult at times. Do you have different things that you take care of?

Chris: We can fight like cats and dogs, that’s something that probably any partnership has. The fact that we are still here doing it after five years means that there is something there that works. We don’t really have designated roles because I think we started off coming from similar backgrounds, and we learnt everything at the same time. There are some things that one of us is better at than the other, or more interested in, but I think my advice for anyone going into a partnership is that you should both know what you are trying to achieve. Most of the time any arguments that arise or any disagreements are a disagreement in how to get there. Make sure you are on the same page and going in the same direction, because if you aren’t then that’s when you’ll come up with issues and things will fall apart, and people won’t talk to each other.

Jr: Where it’s at now, what’s it like being the boss?

Chris: That’s the big change that happens. You go from being two people that run around doing everything, to now where there are ten full time employees. You have to learn all these other things that don’t really get taught to you of how to be a good manager and a leader and be inspiring and keep people on the right track and with the same vision. And making sure you’re getting the right people together. We have amazing people working with us at the moment and everyone has talent and that’s why they’re here.

Oscar: We always say, employ people who can do things better than you can do it yourself. Because if they do it better than you, then let them do it. That’s been a hard thing, stepping back. We used to do absolutely everything and see it through and it would always be our collaboration, and now there are other people that are doing things, which can be a bit intimidating. But it’s great to step back and give other people responsibility.

Jr: Everything is online now. Is that mainly what you guys are focusing on?

Chris: The business has moved from those early days, from the DVD magazine to online. It hasn’t always been easy, the hardest thing as we said is getting known online, getting the brand known, and it’s probably taken about two and a half years for us to get the formula right and to get to where we are now. There’s a lot of people that come to the site, check it out, read it. It’s also up to us to keep expanding the site. The big exciting thing for us for the next six months is the launch of the Pedestrian.tv jobs site – which is basically a part of the site for people to find their dream careers of which we think that there is a big gap in the market for. Seek, CareerOne, all of those big companies, they market to the masses. So even if there is occasionally a creative job up there, they will get tons and tons of applications. So even for the people that advertise it isn’t great, as they have to sift through hundreds of applications. We’ve advertised on Seek before, and you get more applications than anywhere else, but the amount of people that you want to interview from the people who apply is about 5%. If we put something up on our site, the amount of people we want to interview is about 80%. We’ve seen that as any creative does that it is really hard to find jobs in the kind of places that they want. We wanted to do something different and innovative.

Jr: When you see young people come in here, want do you want to see them have?

Oscar: Enthusiasm. Passion. Talent.

Chris: If someone is enthusiastic and wants to get involved and shows initiative, that’s what you’re looking for. That’s half the battle won.

Jr: What do you not see enough of? What’s the problem with the youth of today?

Chris: How old do you think we are? I don’t think that there is a problem. I think in the creative industries in Australia there are a lot of people doing the right things. I suppose maybe more initiative. I think Australia would be a much more interesting place if everyone took the idea that was sitting in their bottom drawer and just did it. I think there should be a national day – a quit your job and do what you love day. A day where everyone reflected on what they were doing, and if it was what they wanted to be doing. It would be great. You’re the master of your own destiny. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you can change that. I can speak for myself, I have the best job in the world and there’s nothing I want to change about it. And if there are things I want to change, I can do that. Quit your job.

Interview by: Jonathan Lim (http://www NULL.attheteaparty NULL.com/)

Also posted in PUBLISHING, TELEVISION | Tags: FILM, PEDESTRIAN, PLASTIZINE, VIDEO CONTENT

Aug 25, 10

The Interview Series // 34

For this interview we managed to get our grubby junior mitts on one of the most successful creatives this side of the planetoid — Matt Eastwood. This esteemed dude is so good at being successful, in the time between our chat and having our transcribing monkey do the typing dance, he was promoted from National Executive Creative Director and Deputy Chairman of DDB Australia, to Chief Creative Officer of DDB New York! It’s got a nice ring to it – don’t you think? We sat down with Matt and got the low-down on his career, and all the ins and outs between. If you’ve ever wondered how one goes about becoming a successful CD then you better keep on a-readin’ below.

Junior: So you’re a Sydney boy?

Matt Eastwood: I’m originally from Perth, but I went to Sydney at about 23. Stayed there, spent four years in Melbourne, London, New York, and back to Sydney.

Jr: So you started your career in Perth? How was that?

M: There were good agencies there. The reason I left was kind of weird. I was working for Ogilvy & Mather, and we were agency of the year two years in a row, and the agency went broke. Just announced bankruptcy and shut down. I lost my job. But I was already working for the best agency in town so I didn’t know what to do. Luckily, I’d recently won Writer of the Year and I was offered a job in Sydney at Foster Nunn Loveder, so I headed East. I only spent three or four working years in Perth, but when I came to Sydney I had produced dozens of TV ads, because everyone gets to do TV in Perth no matter what level you are.

Jr: That’s quite a start.

M: Perth is a real retail city, not all of it, but a big chunk of it. So you learn to work quickly. When I got to Sydney I thought, hang on, I’m pretty quick at this! It held me in good stead, as I was more accomplished and quicker than other juniors my age. And, it helped me progress quite quickly. It was a good foundation to get started. From there in Sydney I worked with some great agencies, Foster Nunn Loveder, and DDB – for the first time.

Jr: Did you have a lot of retail work in your book when you arrived in Sydney?

M: Yeah I did, but I had my fair share of brand work as well. When I was at Ogilvy & Mather, Ansett Airlines was still around, and I had done their brand campaign. Even though I’d made the spots for $60,000 each, they were pretty good I think. I got to work on some pretty big accounts – I’d done campaigns for the WA Tourism Commission, at the same time as doing work for shopping centers and that kind of stuff. It’s definitely possible to do great work in Perth. Just look at some of the agencies there, like The Brand Agency (http://www NULL.brandagency NULL.com NULL.au/), 303 (http://www NULL.303 NULL.com NULL.au/) and Marketforce (http://www NULL.marketforce NULL.com NULL.au/), they’re really, really good agencies. I don’t think the ambition is any less, but the budgets are less. You’re making stuff with nothing.

Jr: That’s the challenge, to make more with less.

M: And you do. You don’t have the luxury of big crews, so everyone bulks in and does a bit more, and you get used to it and that’s the way it is. It’s funny when I look back now on the first four years of my career, we didn’t even have an agency TV producer. So the creatives had to produce their own ads. I remember preparing estimates and calculating markups. Now I don’t know how I took on that responsibility. There’s no way I could do that now. But I guess now I know my way around production so much better.

Jr: As a junior, were you working in a solid team or did you move around on your own?

M: I did have a few good partners, but none of them lasted more than a year or so. Not because we didn’t get on or anything, things just change and people move around. When I got to Sydney I teamed up with a guy called Shane Gibson, who is currently at M&C Saatchi in Sydney, and we worked together for about 12 years. We traveled everywhere together, we moved to Melbourne to open M&C together, and then went to London. We both found something that worked and stuck with it. Eventually I was the Creative Director and he was the Deputy, and he was offered a job within M&C Saatchi to go and run the Singapore office as Creative Director. I stayed in London, and he went off to do that.

Jr: Do you think, now that you are a Creative Director, for juniors out there wanting to get into the industry, that not being in a team is less favourable?

M: I think it’s definitely easier in a team. Maybe 80% of the time when I’m looking for someone, I’m looking for a team. I was recently looking for a junior writer, because I already had the art director, but that’s probably the first time in about 10 years that I’ve done that. It just doesn’t happen that often. It’s much better if you can pre-package yourself as a team. Or even if you don’t team up, if you can find someone who you can put yourself in front of a CD with, tell them you haven’t worked together but you get on, it definitely makes things simpler. The natural way into our agency for first time juniors is through our LaunchPad program. We look for teams, but we also put teams together. But it’s much easier already if you’re pre-teamed.

Jr: At what stage in your career did you go overseas?

M: I think I was about 32. I’d been running M&C Saatchi in Melbourne for about four years. And we’d done really well. Back then we won Agency of the Year four years in a row. It was ridiculous. It was good; it was a really successful time. I got a call from Maurice Saatchi, who asked me to be the ECD of the London office, which was amazing. The weird thing was I was packing up my house to move to London, and about a week before I was due to leave he rang again and told me that the Creative Director of the New York office had resigned, and how would I feel about going to our New York office to fill in for three months while they found someone permanent? It was like a dream! So I went via New York and fell completely in love with it, I got on well with the CEO, and ended up staying. The London office didn’t need me to go there straight away, so they let me stay in New York. The sad thing was that “September 11” happened in 2001, and that completely destroyed our business. Our biggest client was British Airways. They were obviously having a hard time and couldn’t afford to pay us for the next eighteen months. Everything went from amazing to nothing. We put the agency on ice, let a lot of people go, and that’s when the London office asked me to come and do the London ECD gig. So I moved to London, stayed there for about four years, and eventually when New York started to get going again, they sent me back to renew the office there.

Jr: Did you work with Maurice Saatchi in London? How was that?

M: It was amazing. It’s weird, you really don’t get to meet icons of the industry that often. I remember there was two great moments for me. I’d already met Maurice, but I didn’t know him that well. There was one time when he took the management board out for dinner to celebrate my new role, and he did a champagne toast to me. And I was like, wow, Maurice Saatchi is doing a toast to me. The next moment was my first pitch in London, and I was sitting next to Maurice – him being the suit, me as the Creative Director. I thought – this is just awesome, seeing one of the world’s greatest ad guys pitching, and I’m next to him. It was pretty cool. A few words from him could make you feel three inches taller. He was very, very good, and incredibly smart obviously as he started two amazing agencies. It was an incredible time.

Jr: That’s pretty darn amazing! Is he still involved?

M: He’s still there, he’s still on the board. I haven’t worked for M&C now for about six years, but I imagine he’s probably winding right back and not so involved. When I was there he was at the office every day, and that was amazing. The five partners of the M&C London office all sat together in one room as they had done for 30 years through Saatchi’s and M&C. They had all the stories that we’ve all heard, but they were all the stories. They were the ones that did it. It was fantastic going out to dinner or travelling with those guys, and hearing the stories that go back 20 years. It was a great time. But in the end, I didn’t love working in London as much as I thought I would. I find New York to be a global city where I find London to be, London. There’s definitely a view that ‘we’re the best in the world and no one else matters’. Whereas I think New York is the complete opposite. Everyone in New York is from somewhere else. It’s rare to meet a true New Yorker. They’ve all come from all over the world, or all over America. It’s a melting pot of global ideas. I found them much more open to new thinking.

Jr: Did you notice much of a difference coming back from overseas to Australia in terms of digital thinking and capabilities?

M: The thing I loved about DDB is that it was a lot more possible to integrate digital thinking. I think it had a lot to do with scale. The last job I had in New York was at Y&R, and we had two floors of above-the-line creatives, and a whole floor of digital creatives. But they were all separate. I think if I had stayed longer I would have brought them together more, but it was difficult to get people working and thinking together. People were still seeing the two as separate roles, whereas now I think it’s seen as one person or one team can do it all together. The thing I found here was that because of the size and the scale of it, it is much easier to get people working together. We have Tribal DDB within our office but we don’t really run Tribal as a separate company. We run it as one creative department. Everyone reports to me, they all work together as one team.

Jr: A lot of people at a more junior career level and age group see the overseas thing as the pinnacle of making it, or getting somewhere. Do you think that helped you in your career moving overseas?

M: The tough thing is, if you only had five years’ experience and went to London it would be hard. It’s a tough, tough city to break into, especially if you’re junior-ish. The money is shit. I was shocked when I got there at how little we were paying our juniors, but it was industry standard. I don’t know how they could afford to live on it — it was frightening. The best thing is to get yourself some fame first because it’s a hard road if you don’t have it. At M&C I had these two students, who had been interning for two years. They had two silver D&AD pencils. They were really good, and they were working for nothing. I asked them how they did it, how they kept motivating themselves to keep trying. I remember being in awe of their tenacity to keep going. They had to fund their careers through weekend jobs and parental support, but they had two silver pencils to show for it. We eventually gave them a job, but I think that’s such a hard position to be in as a junior. It was definitely easier for me to go in at the ECD level, rather than as a struggling creative.

Jr: So with LaunchPad at DDB (http://www NULL.ddbcareers NULL.com NULL.au/User/LaunchPad/), how does it work? Do you get a few teams in?

M: We have six people at once – four creatives and two craft people – web department, designers, etc. They don’t all start together, but they’re all there for three months at a time. We also host a team from Miami Ad School once a year. It’s great fun. We’ve seen a lot of people come and go, and I think we’ve hired about 10 of them over the last four years, so a lot of people have gotten jobs. Even if they don’t get a job we’ve stayed friends. A few LaunchPadders have sold campaigns that have gone on to win Lions, which is ultimately why we do it for them. It’s so much easier if you’ve got something in your book that’s been published, especially when you’re competing against all the other juniors.

Jr: What do you look for in a good junior?

M: At the start of LaunchPad I say to the juniors not to let the three months slip by. A lot of them come in and have a lot of fun, and then the three months are up and they haven’t really made anything, and find it disappointing. I look for a hunger and tenacity, that ‘whatever it takes I’m going to make myself famous’ attitude. We push them, we give them lots of briefs, but ultimately as a junior you have to really want to be famous, and you have to want to make great ads. You need to give over a couple of years of your life but, if you do, it will set you up for life. So I guess I look for that spark. We get a lot of applications, and we only take a tenth of those that apply. I look for juniors whose books are well thought out in terms of campaign ideas. I definitely get bored at seeing a book of just print ads. I want at least half a dozen campaigns in a book, and at least half of which are blown out into different areas, from social media to digital to TV to whatever. And then I look for the equivalent in one off thoughts. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a campaign. You need to have a body of work that gives whomever is looking at your book a sense of what you are capable of doing. I think the most important thing though is tenacity.

Jr: So you’re a writer. Did you come out of an arts course?

M: Yeah. Weirdly, I’m a writer but my degree is in Design. I studied Graphic Design at Curtin University in WA. In my last year I also did AWARD school – I graduated from both at the same time. I had planned to work as an art director, but I saw a job advertised for a writer. And I thought, I can do that. I got a job as a junior copywriter with no real writing experience.

Jr: How did you learn your craft then?

M: I had a really good first boss. A guy called Gordon Dawson, he’s retired now, but he was amazing. He could see that I could write a headline but knew I didn’t have any writing training. In my first week he walked up to me with a stack of twenty novels, and said, ‘have you read Slaughterhouse Five (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Slaughterhouse-Five)’? ‘No’ ‘Have you read Catch-22 (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Catch_22)?’ ‘Nup’, and he kept going. He said read those, and gave me the Oxford Dictionary, and the Elements of Style (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Elements_of_style). He was great, and he used to really push me to be better. The criticism I have with a lot of young writers is that they don’t appreciate the craft of writing. They don’t read classic novels, or any novels, and that’s how you get better at what you do, Gordon drummed that into me. English was always one of my top subjects, but he made me better at it.

Jr: Seems like being versatile – knowing about Art Direction and Copywriting is a handy thing.

M: It’s so true. Its fantastic for me to be able to have a degree in design, I can get on a computer and do artwork, and I do my own blog (http://thingsihaveseen NULL.squarespace NULL.com/), I have always had that visual side to me. That’s part of the job as an ECD — you’ve got to advise on all aspects.

Jr: That said, do you think the craft or writing is a bit lost on many up and coming Copywriters?

M: You don’t really meet that many people who are passionate about writing. We have a CD in our Melbourne office, Brendan Guthrie, and he’s just into writing. He writes stories and screenplays and you don’t meet people like that very often. We’re living in an age where writing and long copy isn’t popular. It’s not like it’s unwelcome, it’s just that no one does it. It’s been like that for a long time. I remember in my own career having to make the specific decision to do a long copy campaign. No one tells you to do long copy; you have to make the choice. If you don’t make that decision in your career at some point to try to write one, you can get to ten years in your career and you’ve still never done a long copy ad. I say to a lot of juniors that at some point make yourself write a long copy ad. Because you can easily avoid it. But try it, it’s fun, you get to be more like a journalist than a creative. But it’s not always going to fly because clients don’t always want long copy or CD’s don’t like it, but you’ve just got to give it a go.

Jr: Fast forward five years – what sort of skills do you think juniors will need as they progress up the chain?

M: I think there’s definitely a challenge in deciding what your goal is. There’s a lot of pressure on creatives to become Creative Directors. But I think there are a lot of people who head towards that goal that don’t really want it, or aren’t really good at it. It’s deciding which way you want to go and manipulating your career to go that way, and getting the appropriate skills. A lot of what differentiates good creatives from great creatives is not just ideas, it’s the ability to present those ideas and lead a client. I put all my team through presentation and negotiation skills training. To me that is the thing that has stood me out from many of my peers — I’m very comfortable getting up in front of a CEO talking to them about ideas. When I moved to London, I was like a freak over there, because Creative Directors had been protected from clients. They literally didn’t go to meetings. But clients had started to want to develop a relationship with Creative Directors, and I had no problem with that as I had done it all my life. And they were like wow, who is this guy?

Jr: So it was just account service that went to presentations?

M: Yep. It was an easy blame game. If account management come back with unsold work you can either complain, or just sell it yourself. So that’s what I always did. That ability and that comfortableness in front of clients — I reckon that is probably the one thing that we don’t spend enough time on when training juniors. Or on how to be leaders within the department. When I was 26, I made the decision that I wanted to be a CD. I changed my behaviours, and even started dressing differently.

Jr: That’s what Mum used to say – “dress for the job you want.”

M: One team I worked with started their “3 buttoned shirts a week” rule, and it worked. From the time they joined me to the time they left they easily doubled their salary and their award list. I think people just started to see them as serious and professional. It’s not the be all and end all, but it’s important. When I was 26 I just started taking responsibility for looking after the juniors in the agency. I rallied them all together and helped them with their work, and that experience was like being a mini Creative Director. It kind of got me better at knowing what it would be like in front of senior people doing that same thing. It’s giving yourself opportunities to try out your skills. I say to all our guys, once they’ve been in the business for 4-5 years, to be an AWARD school tutor. It’s the best thing you can do, it’s a big commitment but you learn to give advice. And almost all of them tell me that they are better at judging their own work as a result.

Jr: You actually learn a lot about your own thinking when you have to put it into words and explain it to someone else.

M: Yes, and it makes you quicker. When you’re a Creative Director you get presented work all day. And creatives want a response right then, they want to know what you think, right now. And sometimes you don’t know, sometimes you need to think about it, but you can’t just keep putting everything off. Teaching AWARD School puts you under that same pressure, to listen to your instincts and just to go with it, and you get better at it. It’s not necessarily a skill-based thing, but it’s really important in terms of getting your career off in the right direction. Apart from that, I think junior creatives are generally learning all the stuff that they need to learn. There was a time when you had to say to people, I think you need to embrace digital, but you don’t need to say that any more. Although I’ve definitely had creatives that don’t follow any blogs, or don’t do anything online, one didn’t even have a Facebook profile – you owe it to your clients to at least understand what the digital space is about. Even if you don’t like it, you’ve got to do it. It’s so easy to stay across new developments these days because of the online space. You can follow whoever you want on twitter, and see what’s happening everywhere. It’s so instant and easy. If anything, it’s overwhelming with how to stay abreast of everything.

Also posted in ADVERTISING, WRITING | Tags: COPYWRITING, DDB, M&C SAATCHI, MATT EASTWOOD

Aug 05, 10

The Interview Series // 33

What do you get when you mix up two cool kids, no money, and a shit load of imagination? Tin & Ed (http://www NULL.tinanded NULL.com NULL.au/) told us all sorts of crazy things about starting out as designers. Not only were they young-en’s that started their own kick-ass studio (http://www NULL.tinanded NULL.com NULL.au/) straight out of Uni, they’re now represented by the one and only Jacky Winter Group (http://jackywinter NULL.com/) and are wrapping Australian design into a tornado of coloured paper and loopy costumes. Look at those outfits! They’re super cool bananas!

Jr: First of all, tell us how you guys met and started out.

Ed: In the Melbourne Design Guide it said we met in Vietnam designing a punk rock magazine.

Tin: We did meet designing punk rock magazine but we didn’t meet in Vietnam.

Ed: It does make it sound like I picked Tin up in Vietnam.

Tin: I was the punk rock kid on the street.

Jr: That’s so funny.

Tin: We met at Uni, at Swinburne, at the end of first year. Ed was in multimedia and I was in graphic design.

Ed: I did visual arts, and then I took a year off, and then started up at Swinburne doing multimedia. The good thing about Swinburne was that there was a major class that was with everybody else so I got to meet the graphic guys, and got to see what they were doing. I was much more interested by what they were doing, so I fought like hell to transfer over into graphic design – so I was in Tin’s class in second year.

Jr: Did you start working on projects together?

Tin: We had this collective with two other guys, John and Pete. We worked together and did things like magazine covers, which we thought was what graphic design was… We designed just one cover together which was completely ridiculous.

Ed: Neither of us are very punk.

Tin: We did it as an opportunity to do something outside of Uni, which in the long run was really good for us because you have real clients, and real deadlines.

Ed: Uni didn’t like it at all.

Jr: They didn’t like you doing stuff outside of class?

Tin: They didn’t make it easy for you to do it because they have so many projects, and they weren’t adaptable enough for you to actually try and include your external projects.

Ed: I think it’s a little bit of a shame that you can’t say, I’ve got this real world project – can I build it into one of these fictitious projects – and it’s like no, you can’t do that. And from a folio point of view that was one of the biggest things in terms of getting work. If you can say, this is the stuff that my lecturer asked me to do, and this is my real world stuff, I think that’s really important.

Jr: I would imagine that any employer would look far more favourably on someone that had real world work.

Tin: Exactly. We wanted to work together and they didn’t know how to mark us that way. It was a constant fight with the system and it wasn’t flexible enough for us to work the way we wanted to work. They want you to work in a particular sort of way. They train you up to be a junior designer for a design studio. That’s their goal for you, and that’s not really what we wanted to do. So there was a conflict there and I think that made it difficult. But, I’m glad that we went through it…

Ed: I think the art of Uni is that you’ve got all this criteria to meet, but you also have to try and work out how you can still do what you want to do. I think that’s pretty much the only way I got through it — by changing or engineering a brief to be something that I was actually interested in.

Tin: We saw a lot of people coming out of Uni who didn’t want to be designers anymore. What they were probably really saying was that they didn’t want to be that kind of designer. There’s all that confusion there. I don’t know what it’s like now though.

Ed: The biggest thing for us was that we realised that marks were totally irrelevant, and at the end of it you really need to have something strong that you‘re happy to sit down and talk about…

Tin: That you are proud of…

Ed: Even if you didn’t get a good mark.

Jr: It is so subjective.

Tin: Yes, it is really subjective. I remember they were teaching us all this stuff about design and what it should be. Some lecturers don’t allow you to put your own personal spin on what you’re doing, and I don’t really agree with that. Shouldn’t design be something that you do because you are enjoying it, and you are doing it as much for yourself as for the client? Don’t you get a better result if you are doing something for yourself as well?

Ed: I think it still is all about the client. But, I think you can do both. Something we try to do, and what we feel makes our work stronger, is when we are interested and passionate about it – and that’s when we are invested in it. We do things we are interested in at the time, things that we want to explore, in a way it’s really just for ourselves but we are connecting that back to the client too. We are not just going off and doing whatever the hell we want, it’s really is about making those connections and bringing them back to the client.

Jr: Does the client ever shun that sort of reason?

Tin: I think we’ve been lucky in that. For the most part we’ve had some really open clients, we don’t really get too many clients that are too prescriptive about what they want which is good for us because generally we are interested in very different things at different points in time and…

Ed: I think we can always say why things are the way they are.

Tin: We think a lot about things so it is not like we are going ‘let’s just make stuff out of paper’. There are an infinite amount of answers to any given problem. If you can do something you are interested in, that also works really well for the client too, then you are both happy. And you’ll do a better job.

Ed: You’re building on the concepts with the client in mind. The final outcome will be representational of that. It doesn’t really matter what it is.

Jr: One of the most interesting things about you guys is that you didn’t work anywhere before you got together. When did you decide to create Tin and Ed? Was Next Wave the start?

Tin: We got the Next Wave project, which was the day we finished Uni.

Ed: That was crazy…

Tin: I think I was at Kinko’s crying because my film wasn’t coming out, and I got the call. We didn’t expect to get it because when we had the meeting with them, they asked if we could design a 100 page publication and we were like yes! But we’d never done anything like it. At Uni when you design a magazine you do the cover, the contents page and a double page. We just said yes to being able to do everything.

Jr: So how the hell did you get the job?

Tin: I think they must have liked our ideas and we also had a quite big folio of work that we had done as well. Then, they gave us an office, in their office; it was a little room, just a side room.

Ed: It was a pretty amazing project. We didn’t know anyone, and we were surrounded by all these artists. We immediately became part of the community.

Tin: That was really good because we met the Crumpler guys who we have done heaps of work for and as a starting point, it was really fantastic.

Jr: When that finished what happened next?

Tin: That did go on for a long time. We started working for Crumpler (http://www NULL.crumpler NULL.com/au/) and people just started coming to us with projects because the Crumpler stuff had such a large exposure, and people really liked it. Then, we moved into our studio here, and the work just kept coming in.

Ed: I suppose the other thing, because we haven’t been in a studio, or this is the way I see it, we haven’t got used to earning a decent wage…

Tin: It was a long time before we started really earning. You are just scraping by but that’s the way it is. I think because we have never really had proper jobs before it didn’t matter because we were doing what we wanted and…

Ed: I’ve spoken to guys who’ve been in studios and gone on and done their own thing, they find it much, much harder.

Tin: They can’t do it because they are living off half the amount of money that they had so it was good that we just skipped the whole getting paid.

Jr: Did you have jobs at coffee shops or something?

Tin: No, never, we had to live off what we made.

Ed: It was definitely tough…

Tin: When you first come out of Uni you still have that crazy energy to make stuff and that really can take you a long way and I think that sustained us for a long time. We got really burnt out because we were working seven days a week and we took five days off a year.

Ed: Remember the time we worked Boxing Day or something stupid?

Tin: Yes. And New Years Eve.

Jr: Where does that motivation come from?

Tin: I think it was just this energy that we had from finishing Uni and just all of a sudden we were able to do what we wanted..

Jr: You had a real sense of purpose to what you were doing.

Tin: Yes, it was like, this is our life. This is what we are doing. We still have that feeling now, but I think it is a little more controlled.

Ed: I think it is also realising that your off time is really important, and that having weekends is actually a more productive thing to do – because when you are working you want to be working, instead of feeling overworked.

Tin: We got really burnt out at one point, and now we try to cultivate the creativity by having time off and going overseas, and taking the time to do things which will actually refill our creative reservoir.

Ed: Because when you’re working all the time, there ends up being nothing left.

Tin: What we were doing was amazing, really awesome work, but it wasn’t sustainable at all, you couldn’t keep on going with that forever because you would probably just decide not to be a designer anymore. It’s not really healthy to be working seven days a week forever, but for that time we just had this crazy energy.

Ed: We still do when we have to, certainly when the deadlines are crazy. When we get a big job that’s just part of what you have to do.

Jr: Are your friends hard working artists too?

Tin: Yes. We are surrounded by lots of really amazing creative people. I think that’s the best part of being in Melbourne. Everyone is really supportive of each other and everyone works really hard.

Jr: Have you had kids asking for internships or work experience?

Tin: We get a lot of people who want internships from France for some reason.

Jr: Really?

Tin: Yes, I’m not really sure…

Jr: You guys are big in France.

Tin: I don’t know, maybe, I really don’t know, but we get a lot of emails from them.

Ed: It has been quite funny because we have updated our website relatively recently and it’s good because the people asking to do work experience, the caliber of their work…

Tin: It’s completely increased, and it makes you feel good. We’d really like to bring someone else in.

Jr: On a full time type of thing?

Tin: No, just work experience, generally when we are working on big projects we will involve all our friends and stuff. The studio is called Tin & Ed, we don’t really want to expand…

Ed: I think we like the idea of collaborating. That is really what we do, when we get a lot of work on or whatever we get other people involved. It’s collaboration.

Jr: Collaboration rather than come work for us.

Tin: We like working with other people, I think lots of different people.

Ed: I think you get much better results when you are collaborating, you get someone that’s awesome, that can do stuff that we can’t do from a totally different point of view.

Jr: Where to now? What’s the plan, do you just want to work somewhere cool and be with your friends until the end of your days?

Ed: That’s a big question isn’t it.

Tin: We have lots of ideas.

Ed: We have lots of plans.

Jr: You’ve just got to pick one and run with it.

Tin: I don’t think it’s necessarily having to choose one, I think that we can have a few plans. We are very easily bored so I think that it is good to have a few plans that we can go with.

Ed: Really one of the biggest things that we’ve done is having this business adviser because essentially what she does is really simple. She asks us what we want to do and how we are going to do it – so it’s working out what are the things involved, and when are you going to do it by. It is very simple, but then she’ll come back to us next time and ask how we went with those things. It’s really great because we keep that going and to have somebody there…

Tin: Somebody who you have to answer to. She tells us that every time we finish a project we have to reward ourselves. So, we always have oysters…

Ed: That’s a big thing, we do owe ourselves quite a few oysters.

Tin: We used to do it religiously, maybe we can do it today.

Ed: I think we should do it. But she is really good at helping us feel like we are going somewhere. It is one thing to set goals but to realise you are actually achieving them is a really good thing, because then I know within myself I feel better about it, it’s like I’m not running around in circles with no idea.

Tin: I think that our plans are to work on more collaborative projects with other people, like product based collaborations and also our own..

Ed: We’ve got shit loads of exhibitions coming up.

Tin: We have four exhibitions this year, two of them are solo shows, two in Melbourne and two in Sydney so we’ll be busy with that.

Ed: There is heaps of stuff that is happening and I guess we don’t need to make that many plans this year because there is so much to do already. But we will definitely continue to make plans beyond that.

Jr: What’s the best way to get you involved in a project?

Tin: Email us and tell us about the project you are working on. We have been involved in agency projects really early and also conceptual stuff as well – we used to do a lot of conceptualising for publicists.

Ed: My favourite thing is to follow a project right the way through so the best thing is to start off talking about what ideas you might have for the project.

Tin: That is, if you have a slight idea and want help developing it. But even the smaller projects, the projects where we have been brought in later have been enjoyable. We really like the agency work actually. It’s always been really, really fun and challenging and we have always gotten a lot from them.

Jr: Any advice for kids who are just finishing Uni and want to start their own studio?

Tin: I say go for it, I guess that’s all you can really say isn’t it. It’s a scary sort of thing.

Ed: Just work hard…

Tin: I think that you have to be prepared to work really hard when you are starting and you have to be prepared not to have very much money and…

Ed: I think pretty much anyone can do it.

Tin: But you also have to decide what sort of studio you want it to be, because you have to be selective about the sorts of jobs that you get. What’s in your folio is the sort of work that you will get; so only put the sort of work that you want to do in your folio. I think that’s probably good advice.

Also posted in ART, DESIGN | Tags: TIN & ED

Jun 11, 10

The Interview Series // 32

Back in 1998, the distinguished dewd pictured above, Luke Sullivan, (http://twitter NULL.com/heywhipple) wrote a book called Hey Whipple, Squeeze this (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This-Advertising/dp/0470190736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269151763&sr=1-1). In the twelve years since its release, Hey Whips has become THE go-to book for all aspiring advertising creatives. There are several reasons why this is the case, but the only one really worth knowing is because Luke has that innate quality to call bullshit and talk straight. A quality that all great admen and women certainly seem to have. Unequivocally speaking, Luke Sullivan is THE man–he’s funny as hell and makes your dad seem like the uncoolest man alive. These days you’ll find Luke at GSD&M (http://ideacity NULL.com/) in Austin, Texas (http://maps NULL.google NULL.com/maps/ms?doflg=ptk&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=102594856052860215342 NULL.00048895d4ddeb59f9425&ll=5 NULL.344985,-164 NULL.79728&spn=134 NULL.70471,324 NULL.667969&t=h&z=3&iwloc=00048895d4e694e67dd83) where he is Senior VP / Managing Group Creative Director, making cool shit, doing interviews like this, and writing a pretty damn good blog (http://www NULL.heywhipple NULL.com/). So, for all you ad kids out there, read on, get the low-down, then buy the book (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This-Advertising/dp/0470190736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269151763&sr=1-1) if you haven’t already.

Junior: Hey Luke, how did you get your very first break in the industry?

Luke Sullivan: I entered the agency business from the fringes. I was a typesetter for the in-house agency of a department store in Minneapolis called Dayton’s. It no longer exists, but the brown building is still there. (In fact, you can still see it in the credits for the old Mary Tyler Moore show (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=zCL3B5LgUCo). They shot the part where she throws her hat up in the air in front of Dayton’s.) But I digress. I had a second job at night being what they then called a ‘keyliner’ at a weekly newspaper called the Twin Cities Reader. One day, I found a small publication listing the winners of the local advertising show and I was smitten by how cool the work was coming from a particular pair of people: Ron Anderson and Tom McElligott. I put together what has to be the worst beginner¹s book in the history of advertising, took it in, and somehow got a job. I also had a contact with the president of that agency through my college buddy. Kinda did both at once. And it worked.

J: Okay, fill us young pups in: What did a “keyliner” do?

L: Today, you would call a keyliner a studio person. You executed ads based on what an art director specified. The even-more-ancient word was “paste-up.”

J: Most people who start in typesetting become art directors. When did you start writing – or had you always been a writer?

L: I was in between. I liked to draw. And I liked to write. And as a kid I got to do both when I made my own comic books. By college, though, I knew. I liked writing.

J: What made you decide to write ‘Hey, Whipple, Squeeze this’ (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Hey-Whipple-Squeeze-This-Advertising/dp/0470190736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269151763&sr=1-1)?

L: I wrote Whipple when I was at Fallon in Minneapolis. I had been saving speeches and articles for a few years in a file and then gradually I started adding other people’s advice, insights, and articles. The file eventually grew unruly and bad-tempered and would barely fit in my drawer. Then one day I had to give a speech at the Portfolio Center in Atlanta and raided that file for all it was worth. In Atlanta, I handed out the notes of the speech and later learned that the notes were turning up as screen savers in agencies here and there. In addition to being flattered, I began thinking there was a market for a decent book on advertising. Most books (at least at the time) were pretty bad. All you had to do was look at the examples of “good advertising” these books contained and you could tell the authors weren’t practitioners of the craft, at least the craft I practice. So I just started writing. I didn’t have a publisher, nor any hope that such a book would be welcome on the shelves of bookstores. But that was beside the point; I had to write this book mostly get it out of my system. After I had finished, I showed the first manuscript around to about 40 people I admired, just folks in the business: creatives, account folks, directors. Every one of them was kind enough to read the entire thing and give criticism. I am still in debt to those people. After that, it was just a matter of getting it into the hands of the right publisher. Not knowing the first thing about the process, I just wandered over to the Barnes & Noble in downtown Minneapolis and bought some books on book proposals for publishers and other how-to manuals. I followed what they said to do and that was pretty much it. It’s been a fun thing. It’s made money. Not Stephen King money, but first-time authors rarely make any serious dough. It’s more of a love and pride thing.

J: There’s a lot of people and books out there that will tell you how to get a job in an agency. But once in, it’s sink or swim. Do you have any key survival pointers for kids just starting in Adland?

L: It helps to have a friend higher up, somebody who can keep an eye on you. Maybe it’s someone in the creative dept who isn’t the CD, but a senior person you can turn to for advice. Maybe it’s someone you met when you were interviewing there. Look for ‘em. Don’t be shy about it either. After hours, lean into someone’s office and just go for it. You’ll find them. Only if you look; they generally won’t walk up to you and introduce themselves. Creatives are often shy; always busy. Go find them.

If it can’t be a senior creative, buddy up with the friendliest juniors you can find. You’re always gonna find a few friendly souls who are the welcoming type. Hang out with them. Ask their opinions. What should I do? Where can I go to get help with such-and-such? The jungle drums are always beating.

J: We read on your blog (http://www NULL.heywhipple NULL.com/) something about marrying the techno-geek code-guy with the wordsmith/art director in terms of making yourself a valuable creative. What advice would you give both for discovering the beauty of the other?

L: The only way to do this stuff is to do this stuff. Sounds silly, I know. But that is my experience and it’s what I am seeing the successful agencies doing. They just start; they dive in; they figure shit out as they go. You, too, will figure shit out as you go, but first you have to dive in. After you start, you will begin to realize what you bring to the party (and what you don’t) and if you enter with a willingness to learn and to just shut the hell up and listen, you will meet in the middle regardless of which side you started.

J: These days, wannabe ad kids are springing up all over the world, mostly in geographically ‘unfortunate’ places (as far as the industry is concerned) How should these kids without access to interesting start-ups and creative powerhouses with a billion internship places approach the advertising world?

Back when I wrote Hey Whipple, I did some research through AAAA about how many agencies there were in America; just to see for myself. Turns out that even in 1998 there were over 13,000 agencies. Dudes, that¹s a lot of places to find work; a lot of places to get your foot in the door. And now, with the explosion of digital, there gotta be tens of thousands more places.

Fact is, you do NOT need your first job in the agency business to be at some creative powerhouse. What you need to do is get a job. First and foremost, get a job. That is the important thing. Yes, you should try to get one in a place of your choosing, but that’s not always gonna happen. There are only so many A+ agencies out there. But you can do great work in any number of places. There are agencies out there that may have a couple of big clients that make them do bad work, but if you take a look you’ll see they’re doing great work on other pieces of business. It’s just not black and white. So my advice is a.) yes, go for your fave agencies but b.) don¹t despair if you can¹t get a job there. There are plenty of great places to get a job. Get a job where you can and start working on adding good work to your book.

J: A lot of the advertising we see seems to feel the same – you know, a variation of an idea or style that won at Cannes the year before. What would you say to young juniors falling into the trap of monkey-see monkey-do?

Well, what I learned in grade school art was this. “No tracing, Luke. Did you TRACE this?” Umm, yeah.

I guess that advice still applies. I want to see what you think. The thing is, given the speed at which award shows are able to print and bind their award annuals…..when you are reading a new annual, you’re looking at work that’s about a year-and-a-half to two years old. These things get printed in China, okay? And to reach your hands, it had to come on a slow boat from China. Literally. So…I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna be modeling my ideas on stuff that came on a slow boat from China. I had a long talk with Mike Hughes about award shows once. He was actually considering not letting his creative department submit anything to any show for a year. Just to see what they would do if the orbital pull of the shows were entirely removed from the creative process. While the idea is not popular with creative people I mention it to, I still think, wow, pretty interesting way to go.

J: If you could give the one, final set of instructions on how to write clear and engaging copy, what would you say?

L: Sorry, but this is kind of a silly question. There is no one final set of intructions. Read William Zinser’s On Writing Well. Read the books of good writers. Read all the time. Write all the time. Read the awards annuals. Read everything. Adweek, Archive, watch the reels, read library books, read the sports section, the business section. Read history, read comedy. Soak up the culture around you. Don’t stay in your advertising ivory tower. Get out there. Learn and learn and learn some more. It is a process that will never end. There is no shortcut.

J: How do we find ‘the truth’ in a brief or problem? What does it feel like when you find it? How do you know if it’s really ‘a truth’ or not? Tell us everything about it. We feel like this might be the secret to everything.

L: Often times I see agencies working to briefs where the strategy looks more like a company mission statement. ‘We believe fresh foods mean better health.’ A strategy, however, at least by my way of thinking is a clever plan. Look it up in the dictionary. Well, lemme do it.

1 a: an artifice or trick in war for deceiving and outwitting the enemy
b: a cleverly contrived trick or scheme for gaining an end.

By this definition, the Trojan Horse was a strategy. It was clever; it was unexpected. Too often though strategies today seem to be little more than ‘themes’ or mission statements. Better, I think are strategies that are built on top of, and powered by, cultural tensions. Depending on the client you are working with, this isn’t always possible. But when a strategy can be built on top of a cultural tension, great work is built into the strategy and fairly bursts out of it, like volcanoes along tectonic plates. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in strategy. All I know is that ‘Fresh foods mean better health’ is a theme; not a clever strategy and not built on a cultural tension.

Also posted in WRITING | Tags: HEY WHIPPLE SQUEEZE THIS, LUKE SULLIVAN

Jun 02, 10

The Interview Series // MADC Junior Award Special

Are you a junior working in the Melbourne advertising industry? Are you still trying to figure out if awards are a waste of time or the key to success? Well here’s your answer: Who cares! Award shows are fun and winning awards will get you a better job, but not winning them doesn’t make you a loser and making ‘effective’ work isn’t such a bad thing to strive for. Now that you know the secret, ENTER OUR VERY FIRST JUNIOR SPONSORED AWARD AT THE MADC AWARDS. It’s way cool and your best chance of winning something this year.

If you’re a little unsure whether your work is up to scratch, let us introduce you to Richie Ralphsmith — el presidente of the Melbourne Advertising and Design Club (http://www NULL.madc NULL.com NULL.au/awards/), and Deputy CD of CHE (http://www NULL.che NULL.com NULL.au/). He’s pretty much THE GUY at the MAD-SEES (http://www NULL.madc NULL.com NULL.au), so listen carefully cause he’ll convince you otherwise. Then enter, enter, enter, you crazy foooools.

P.S. THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO JUNE 9! ENTRY DETAILS BELOW! HURRRRYYY

Junior: Why should anyone reading this enter the MADC Junior award?

Richie Ralphsmith: Enter it because it’s the only award in Australia that acknowledges the contributions of juniors in the industry. It’s the only award that recognizes that you guys usually get poor briefs and paltry budgets. On top of that, you’re still learning the ropes. So when entering an award you shouldn’t be pitted against a CD with 18 years’ experience.

Enter because it shows your CD that you care about great creative work and about awards. While you’re at it, remind him or her that entering the Junior category is half the price of the other categories.

Enter because it’s a good way to get your ticket to the night paid for. If you’re a finalist, the agency will fork out for you.

Enter because winning it could be your ticket to your next job.

Jr: Turning something shit into gold is a lesson that continues to appear in our interviews. And everyone knows juniors get the stuff no one else wants to work on. Do you think that’s what the junior category will be rewarding?

R: The judges will know when a piece of work has made something out of nothing. They’ll be taking that into account. Of course, juniors occasionally get great briefs as well, and do terrific jobs on them. What really matters is the end result. You guys shouldn’t be striving to produce good pieces of work, considering the brief. You should be aiming for great work, regardless of the brief. This isn’t the Special Olympics.

Jr: When you’re a junior it’s pretty easy to think your work isn’t good enough, so you don’t enter, and then miss the hell out on winning stuff you probably could have won. What would you say to someone not sure if they should enter their work?

R: I was going to say just enter it. But if you’re not sure whether your idea is good enough, ask your CD.

Jr: Got any tricks we can use to make it easier to judge our work and give us awards?

R: No tricks. Just make the entry clear and easy to understand. The judges will see through, and penalise, any overcompensation.

Jr: Now, tell us, you’re a deputy creative director and president of the MADC – did winning awards get your to where you are today? How important should winning awards be to us juniors trying to climb the ranks.

R: Awards are very important. But the thing that will build your careers is getting yourself into a position where you can do effective, award-winning work on a big client. That will get you further than winning Cannes Gold for the corner dog wash.

Jr: You guys have a student category (http://www NULL.madc NULL.com NULL.au/awards/entry NULL.php?a=catdesc&catid=39&eid=1) too – it seems pretty open – what kind of work should the kids be entering? What do you think the judges will be looking for in this category?

R: Just enter your very best ideas. The entry criteria are all the same. It’s the judging criteria that are different. The judges will make a bit more allowance for inexperience.

Good luck!

Entry details here (http://www NULL.madc NULL.com NULL.au/awards/entry NULL.php?a=catdesc&catid=84&eid=1). Don’t forget, entries to the MADC awards have been extended to Wednesday June 9.

Also posted in ADVERTISING | Tags: JUNIOR AWARD, MADC, RICHIE RALPHSMITH

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