Oops. We forgot we took photos at our last event in Melbourne at The Worker’s Club a couple of weeks ago. But we didn’t forget Brendan! As the Editor of the newly revamped Desktop (http://desktopmag NULL.com NULL.au) magazine, his tips were great – and you can see most of them in the snaps below.
Brendan McKnight (http://twitter NULL.com/hellobrendan) is the fresh-faced editor of Desktop (http://www NULL.desktopmag NULL.com NULL.au/) magazine. At just 26, the magazine is almost older than him – but that hasn’t stopped him. Since stepping up from Online Editor, he pitched a new vision for the mag, which centred around a celebration of the ‘culture of design’. We’d tell you more of the juicy goss, but Brendan swore us to secrecy when we caught up with him amid the craziness of the unveiling of the first issue. Which, by the way, goes on sale next Wednesday. Fact: Brendan watched Press Gang (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Press_Gang) as a kid — so, for all you Lynda Day (http://www NULL.yoyo NULL.org/pressgang/images/slides/lynda NULL.gif) wannabe’s, Brendan’s gonna show you the way!
Junior: Hey Brendan! What’s your background? Uni degree? Where was the house you grew up in — tell us all that stuff.
Brendan: I grew up in the western suburbs of Melbourne, and once year 12 had finished, I moved to the big smoke (West Footscray) and began a bachelor of Fine Arts/Media Arts at RMIT. There I dabbled with a bit of animation and video art, but mostly focused on installation and ‘non-linear’ work. My graduate project was called ‘Brendan McKnight’s Incredible Moving Image Wishing Machine’, which was this hectic coin-operated machine I built, inspired by those whacky contraptions the dad makes in ‘Honey! I Shrunk the Kids’. This was shown in a group exhibition I curated as part of the 2005 Melbourne Fringe Festival.
Jr: Then what?
B: After graduating I packed my bags and headed for Tanzania in East Africa where I helped to develop an arts curriculum in a secondary school, whilst also teaching English to classes of 50 beautifully spirited and eager students. I also managed to do some other fun things like climb Mt Kilimanjaro, white water raft down the Nile and go on a safari. Fast forward six months and I rocked up in London with no job, no contacts and about £500 to my name.
Jr: Being poor sucks. What did you do to survive?
After six months working in a call centre, I landed a gig as the creative assistant to the Chief Creative Officer (Tim Greenhalgh) of international design studio FITCH (http://www NULL.fitch NULL.com/), which at the time was still being headed up by Rodney Fitch (appointed Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1990 for his ‘influence on the British Design Industry’). Whilst I wasn’t directly working for Rodney, I did work very closely with him throughout my stay at FITCH.
Jr: We googled Rodders, he sure does have a lot of little letters after his name. What was it like to work closely with such an industry great?
B: It was pretty fantastic, although in hindsight I probably took it a bit for granted and perhaps should have utilised his knowledge more. Hearing Rodney speak, even just around the office was quite inspiring, he was quite old school and traditional, but a very clever thinker. At that time the recession was starting to hit, but it was almost just another day for him as he had been through a few before. Rodney obviously came from a time when there were no computers and thus his mentality was never about technology — and always very concept, consumer and ideas based. The evolution of design education was also something he heavily believed in – he was Governor of the University of the Arts London from 1989 to 2007.
You can read a little more about my initial struggle to find a job here (http://www NULL.desktopmag NULL.com NULL.au/blogs/londons-calling/).
I left FITCH after a year to do a cycle trip across Germany, and when back in London started sourcing and taking on a whole bunch of freelance writing work. I’d always been interested in writing as a kid, but it all kicked off again about then. I put my name out there and tried to get as much work as I could, and ended up writing for a range of blogs and magazines including Dazed, Vanity Fair and also writing on-and-off for thecoolhunter.net (http://thecoolhunter NULL.net) for about three years. Although most of these were unpaid, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today without them, and I scored some incredible travel experiences along the way. I have a pretty mean snow globe collection to prove it.
Jr: It seems writing for publications for free is a bit of a rite of passage for all young writers. But knowing when to draw the line is also important. At what point did you stop doing freebies?
B: Yes I absolutely agree that it is important to draw the line, but it’s always going to be difficult deciding just where that line should be drawn. It sounds easy (it’s not), but I suppose you need to weigh it all up; is what you are getting in return (freebies, exposure, experience etc) worth the amount of time you are putting in – or are you just being taken for a ride? For me, I had a full time job on the side, so the money wasn’t a massive issue, and the writing work I was doing was something I enjoyed. The perks were pretty great, as was the experience and the exposure. I had never studied journalism or writing, so it was all one big learning curve for me.
Jr: You’re 26. You must have grown up watching Press Gang (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=E-uOKWWYl1I). Did you ever watch it and think you’d be an editor of a publication like Lynda Day?
B: Ahh, the good ol’ Junior Gazette. The Press Gang wikipedia page describes Lynda as ‘brittle, very fierce, no empathy and very cruel to the people around her’. I hope my colleagues do not see any comparison! Actually growing up, all during uni and even up until very recently, I wasn’t at all sure about which career path I would take. I had a strong interest and good eye for art and design, but did not want to be a designer. I loved writing and research and was a bit of a culture junkie, but was uncertain as to how my skill set would all fit into place.
Jr: Tell us how you started out at Desktop and about your journey to become editor of the entire mag?
B: After working for a year with the trends and insights team at Nokia Design in Soho, I’d clocked up four years of living overseas — and so decided to call it a day and head back to Melbourne. I arrived a few days before Christmas 2009 and really had no clue about what I wanted to do with my life and which direction I should take things in. I was scared again that even with all my experience in London I would end up working in a café or call centre. Searching through Seek one night, I was applying for any jobs that sounded vaguely interesting and came across a listing to be the online editor for Desktop, a magazine I remembered reading at uni. I applied for the job at 2am on the Monday morning, was called in for an interview on the Wednesday, and by the following Monday I was in the office starting my first day. I spent eight months working as the online editor and features writer, and in September was promoted to editor.
Jr: Was editor always the goal? Why do you think they promoted you?
B: I didn’t have the goal of editor in my immediate sight, as I thought I’d be in the online role for a while longer. However having said that, the editor role was of course the next natural progression. The previous editor (who had been there for 4 years) moved on, and so I applied for the editor position – it wasn’t a given that I would instantly be promoted to the role by default. The publishers were looking for someone who could give the title a revamp, I put together my vision, and they liked it.
Jr: What advice do you have for those of us keen to progress up the foodchain?
B: Work hard and prove yourself. In my online role I was already putting together about a quarter to a third of the magazine each month, so the publishers knew I was a hard worker, well organised and could look after the title. Try to take on some of the work of the role above yours, challenge yourself, be genuinely nice and interested in those above you and ask questions.
Jr: What plans do you have for Desktop now that you’ve taken the reigns?
B: The relaunched Desktop goes on sale next Wednesday, and it is a completely new offering. Over the past five months I’ve met up with countless designers as well as run a focus group and readers’ survey to try and get as much feedback as possible. The response was overwhelming and it was a challenging yet exciting time for me and my team to mould and shape the magazine into the new format that you will see on newsstand next week. From the design point of view, you can expect a much nicer looking magazine, perfect bound, uncoated stock, up to 100 pages (from 84) with a clean structured template. Editorial wise, the content is more sophisticated, inquisitive and rather than only showing finished works, the new Desktop is about ‘the culture of design’. The readers get to find out a bit more about the people behind the work, their backgrounds, ethos, mentors, inspirations and opinions. Plus we have some really great local and international designers and academics that will be writing for us throughout the year. On top of this, each issue has a pull-out poster, designed by a different designer/studio each month.
Jr: For those of our readers who want to write for publications like Desktop, tell them what not to do. What mistakes do people commonly make that could ruin their chances?
B: Instead of just sending your CV through with examples of your past writing, actually write an article suitable for that particular publication and pitch it to the editors, or at least pitch a list of bullet-points of articles/angles you think would suit the publication. Do your research and make sure the topics are ‘on brand’ and have not been covered before. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box a little bit. If the magazine has a strong online presence, then pitch some articles first to the online editor, as normally that is a great starting point. Most editors get hundreds of emails and press releases each day (I know I do), and they all start to blend in after a while. Be creative, stand out and don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.
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 32nd or 33rd 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.
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/)
The creative business can be a trying one at times. There’s no shortage of curveballs to keep you on your toes. And without a mentor you’re on your own. So if you can, find yourself one and don’t let go. Like we’ve done. With Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com).
Over the last couple of months I’ve been working with a prominent industry body to set up a mentoring scheme.
This is something I am very passionate about.
It’s almost impossible to put a price on the value of a mentor. They are a sounding board, a helping hand, a reassuring pat on the back and a kicker of the arse when required.
And when you’re in the early stages of your career finding one is essential.
Obviously it’s not easy to get someone to become your mentor, but if you ever meet someone who impresses you why not just ask them?
The worst thing they can say is no.
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/)
Penny! Like a fresh breeze she sailed in and told us the what-nots, the who-hows and the go-do-its. This super editor from ThreeThousand, the now sadly out of print Is Not Magazine, and writer for The Age is the go to girl for what’s the hip-hop-’n-happening in this town of ours. Penny spent the evening telling us to shut up, speak the truth, and not to use cliches, ever — which, at the end of the day, we think is pretty sound advice.
Matt Eastwood told us last week how as a fledgling copywriter his mentor got him to read all of the good stuff to become a better, and knowledgeable writer. The famous, the historic, the informative.. and also the dictionary. One of those authors that should be top of your reading list is Kurt Vonnegut (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Kurt_Vonnegut) — a staple of American literature. He’s as crazy as a coconut in his fiction, witty in the speech he gives below, but more than anything is a pretty onto it, and influential character of the written world. Watch ‘em, then get out and buy his books! Your writing will love you for it.
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.
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