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Dear Junior Series // 05

Dear Junior: an attempt to ask industry leaders the pressing questions that us, the quarrelous and unfriendly youth of today, are interested to find answers to. In our fifth installment, we’re talking Women in Advertising. Rather than write an intro ourselves full of the male bravado you’ve come to know and love, we hired an intern to do the job for us. Here’s Crystal with her very best intro.

Chaka Khan once sang, “I’m a woman in a man’s world”. She was chanting about the wonderful world of showbiz but it’s fair to say the wonderful world of advertising is only the far less glamorous sister. It’s a sausage-fest no matter where you go! And being part of that can be fairly difficult when you’re sausageless. As if the industry’s not tough enough. That’s why we asked our good ol’ female buddy, Mel Peters, digital creative director at Lowe Sydney (http://lowesydney NULL.com), to give us her best advice on being a lady in a man’s world.

And girls, or boys for that matter, if you want to pick her brain some more, reach her at mel.peters@loweworldwide.com (mel NULL.peters null@null loweworldwide NULL.com). No spammy spam please.

Junior: Do you personally find it tough to be a woman in this industry?

Mel: No I love it! It’s all about standing out with great ideas and that’s something I’m passionate about. A lot of people have been comfortable with male creatives because that’s what they’re used too. However, good ideas will always cut through no matter who you are.

Jr: Has there been a particular incident where you know your gender has worked against you? What about for you?

M: It’s how you look at things. For example, working on car accounts, I was the only female creative on the team. In this situation I always added a valuable and different perspective to briefs. I was able to approach the brand with really powerful insights that led to award winning creative. Taking the car ‘beyond the metal’ was a big part of creating innovative campaigns that engaged and empowered their audience. Female creatives can do amazing work on even the most ‘blokiest’ of briefs. There really is no boundary to what you can work on.

Jr: Why do you think it’s more difficult for women?

M: I think there has been a limited number of role-models and Senior Female Creatives in the industry and for young female creatives on the rise, this can be daunting. I’ve worked with strong female Creatives like Fiona Davidson and Paula Keamy who are both fantastic role-models. It is important to find these role models and seek advice along the way. Women have a great opportunity to lead in senior creative roles today and I see more and more talented young women choosing ‘creative’ as a positive career path.

Jr: Is there any other advice you have for women in or wanting to get into the industry?

M: Understanding your audience is key, and women are the primary purchase decision-maker for many brands in Australia. Female buying power hasn’t fully been tapped into in Australia, and there is a great opportunity for female creatives to lead this. Women are also powerful communicators, and as we continue to move into the digital world with influence marketing and social networking changing our traditional communication habits, women in the industry will bring great insight and creative ideas to the table. Ultimately though, it’s all about great thinking and powerful ideas.

And just cause she can, here’s Mel’s tips to success:

01- Believe in your ideas. Gain confidence in your thinking by exploring your ideas thoroughly before you talk to others around you.

02- Present, present, present your work. This is so important. Grab as many opportunities as you can to showcase your ideas yourself and get in front of clients, as often as you can.

03- Look for female mentors, if not in your agency, outside it. Some may have blogs or twitter feeds that will give you insight and spur you on. You can follow me here (http://twitter NULL.com/its_mel).

04- Hit the streets and do your own market research. Get to know your audience inside and out and become an expert in the briefs you get. If your agency celebrates big ideas based on powerful insights, you will shine.

05- Don’t be afraid to think of yourself as a brand and sell yourself. Getting your voice and point of view out there is a great place to start. I see many juniors who have put their folio online and started a blog. It’s a great way to make sure you are heard and noticed.

06- Have fun and enjoy what you do. If you love it, everyone will know.

ADVERTISING, DEAR JUNIOR | Also tagged DEAR JUNIOR, SUCCESS

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Monday Morning WHIP // 60

Looking for a job can be a real drag, man. Heck, even thinking about looking for a job takes a lot of effort sometimes. And we should know–we’re slack just like the rest of you bananas. But you don’t have to make it that hard for yourselves, jeeeeeez. Listen to Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) and give yourself a chance.

Imagine you’ve heard about a job opportunity at an agency in town. You ring up, put on your best telephone voice, and snare yourself a chance to come in and show your folio.

What next?

Well from what I’ve seen of late, you probably wait until about an hour before your appointment, dig your dog-eared folio out of the cupboard and then head off to show it.

And you wonder why you don’t have a job?

Firstly, your folio needs to look as good as it possibly can. So think about which work goes where, how it’s positioned, etc.

Next, make sure you and your folio have a point of difference. Yes that’s right, a point of difference.

Something to help you stand out. Something to remember you by. Something that says this kid’s a little different to all the other young folio carrying wannabes.

I can’t tell you what that point of difference should be. Only you can determine that. But to get one, you need to think of yourself as a product, then put together a brief to create your personal brand.

And like all strong brands, you will have a clear point of difference. Because if you don’t, you’ll probably end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

WHIP | Also tagged DESIGN, JOB HUNTING, WHIP

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Interview Series // 28

Alright, alright. We know what you’re thinking, “Another ad-guy? When you kids gonna get over this ad-schmer-tising thing, huh?” Well you’re right. Evan Fry (http://evanfry NULL.com) is an ad-guy. But he ain’t just any ad-guy–he’s a true-blue award-winning ex-Creative Director of Crispin Porter & Bogusky (http://cpbgroup NULL.com/) style ad-guy, and he has some good shit to say, so chill out, bro. That sort of heritage makes him better than most ad-guys, who on the whole are a dime-a-dozen, and definitely don’t look this good with a head wrapped in ostrich feathers. He just left CP+B to start up the world’s first ad agency utilising the power of crowd-sourcing, named Victors & Spoils (http://victorsandspoils NULL.com/). That’s pretty cool-magool if you ask us. You know what else makes Evan cooler than most? He’s an old-school copywriter. Which tends to be rare these days. So if you’re one of the few who want to take up the lost art of copywriting, listen to what Evan has to say. You can actually use his advice–which is darn considerate of him, seeing as most of these so-called ‘ad-guys’ have a lot to say about nothing. In summation: Evan Fry ain’t just your average ad-guy, he’s a super-talented old-school copywriting mega-machine, and wants you to Be Fucking Awesome (http://befuckingawesome NULL.com/).

Junior: We heard somewhere that you’ve got a crazy story about getting a job at Crispin Porter + Bogusky (http://cpbgroup NULL.com/). Apparently it’s a ‘doozy’. May as well tell us the whole thing!

Evan Fry: Sure. But it’s a long one. It basically began with me having been fired from the job I had and sending my book to Crispin. At that point, this was the spring of 2002, I had been a writer/ACD for 8 years already, and I wanted to work for CP+B more than anywhere else–so I sent my book. About a month after I sent it in they returned it to me with a form letter, “signed” by Alex Bogusky (http://alexbogusky NULL.posterous NULL.com/) himself. It was encouraging, but standard. Very professional of them to be that on top of their shit, I thought. And then I forgot about it. About two months later, after becoming a bit bored of not getting much play from the shops I truly wanted to work for, I had an idea: what if I acted as though that letter really was a sincere letter from Alex to me, and started sending him weird notes from the stance of ‘jilted-lover-gone-psycho-at-not-getting-any-more-letters-from-Alex’?

So I got some really precious stationery like a grandma might use, a super nice calligraphy pen, and went to it. My thought was keep them short, keep them anonymous, and keep them weird. And not think for a minute that Alex himself would ever even get them. I think the first one said, in really weird cursive, “It’s been two months since you last wrote me, Alex. Don’t you love me anymore, Alex?” Nothing else. A few days later I sent another one. And then another, after a few more days. For the fourth one, I reduced a photocopy of the original form letter he’d sent me, but used black permanent marker and inked out my name on it. I accompanied it with a psycho note on the psycho stationery that this time said, “Perhaps by now, Alex, you’re wondering who the hell I am? Well maybe I’m a lot like you, Alex.”

Four days later as I was thinking about how to take it up a notch, I got a FedEx delivery. It was from Miami. When I opened it, it was clear something was weird. There was another envelope inside. And then inside that envelope was a Ziploc bag. It had the vibe of an evidence bag like in lawyer movies. I opened the Ziploc and there was a Photostat-camera blowup of the part of the form letter I’d sent where I’d inked out my name. But by blowing it up 10 times, its size had revealed the name under the ink. ‘Evan’, just huge. Stapled to it was a copy of my letter, and in red ink someone had circled “… who the hell I am.” And that was it. It was all just one big fucking “touché, motherfucker. We got you.”

I was psyched beyond belief. Because all of a sudden I had concrete proof that not only had my letters been getting to him, but they’d been actually getting to him, you know? And he took some time and effort to play the game. So I immediately loved Alex. And the day after I got the envelope, Veronica Padilla, his assistant at the time, called for my book again. I thought I had a job in the bag, or at least a flight out. But it didn’t work like that. I didn’t hear anything for weeks.

By then I’d started a whole other self promotion idea where I was mailing a weekly photo of myself to the top 30 or 40 creative directors around the world who I wanted to work with. Each one was literally just a 4×6 photo – showing how much time I had on my hands. Like, in one I was having a tea party with stuffed animals. In another I was drinking tallboys with bums on the street. On the back of each, every week, I wrote in pen something that went with it, like, “God I need some work,” and I’d include my phone number.

So I had these going on, and was also sending them to Alex. But I still didn’t hear from him. However the photos were working, and I was getting a lot of great freelance so I didn’t care as much, although CP+B was still where I really wanted to be.

About six weeks later Alex himself finally called and said, “I’ve been meaning to call you, why don’t you fly out.” I did, and had a great interview. Thought I had it in the bag for sure, and… didn’t. He didn’t have a slot for me. So I kept the weekly photos going, kept freelancing, and then four months later I was freelancing at Mad Dogs & Englishmen (http://www NULL.maddogsandenglishmen NULL.com/door NULL.html) in San Francisco and got a message on my answering machine. “Hey Evan, it’s Alex, call Veronica back and tell her the code word is pineapple.” I called her back and she said Alex wanted to offer me a job. It was literally one of the best days of my life. P-e-r-s-e-v-e-r-a-n-c-e.

Jr: Wow. Ok. That definitely is a doozy. It’s nice to see someone with experience and good work struggle like the best of us. In fact, your website mentions that at twenty-six you “weren’t exactly setting the advertising world on fire”. How did you push through that? Did you ever want to give it up and go mountain biking for good?

E: Oh man, you got that right. Actually, a few times. I got out of school from the University of Oregon and unlike my partner in school, Glenn Cole, I didn’t take a good job out of school. My book was shit and I spent a year working on it but the only job I could land was at the ‘third biggest place in Portland’ – which basically means nowhere you’ve ever heard of. And even though I only stayed there a year, it seemed my destiny was sort of set. I couldn’t get play in the Weidens (http://www NULL.wk NULL.com/) or the Goodbys (http://www NULL.goodbysilverstein NULL.com/) of the day, so I was just floating around at the mediocre places, like 95% of us.

I moved to San Francisco in 1996 and experienced more of the same. But I moved to be in a bigger market with more chances. I kept at it, kept trying, and just didn’t give up. I guess that’s why I ended that last question by saying perseverance. That’s really the only answer when you feel like you’ve got what it takes, when you know that in your heart. If you know you’re good and you know you’re smart but can’t seem to get a break, you’ve got to prove how smart you are and make your own break. I’m 100% convinced of that.

Jr: You’ve written your entire career. But a lot of young people aren’t taught hardcore writing anymore. From our experience, advertising education tends to be more ideas-focused. What advice would you give to young writers?

E: I think this is true. I went to a School of Journalism program, and was lucky enough to be a decent writer just inherently, I dare say. And then in school at University of Oregon, I was also lucky to have two great ad professors who were classically trained. So the mix was pure writing and grammar, mixed with classic concepting classes, and barebones, fucking copywriting courses. It didn’t hurt to have Dan Weiden (http://danwiedensuperdad NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) himself teaching a couple of intensive seminars. But today, you’re right–ad programs stress concepts first, at best. Copywriters today, I swear to God, most of them shouldn’t call themselves “writers” at all. But it’s not really the game now, nor is it anyone’s fault really.

The advice I would give is to read a lot. And to pick up the book Grammar for Journalists (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Grammar-Journalists-E-L-Callihan/dp/0801968232) and study it like there’s going to be a quiz on it every day. I’d also say to use self-discipline. And read The Book of Gossage (http://www NULL.amazon NULL.com/Book-Gossage-Howard-Luck/dp/0962141534). Teach yourself. If you’re a copywriter who can actually write, you’re set for life. Love the headline, love long copy, do it all the time, get better at it, write hundreds of options for each headline idea. Treat it like a craft. That’s what it is. I still love to write ads.

Jr: Do you get the urge/time to do any writing or other creative stuff outside of advertising?

E: Nope. I really don’t, not writing. I get the urge to do other things besides advertising though. And I do those things. It’s why I started sharklove.com (http://sharklove NULL.com/) and also befuckingawesome.com (http://befuckingawesome NULL.com/). Be Fucking Awesome, especially, is just a labour of love. I kept having this idea where I would write a book that would be a sort of “guide for living.” I had this idea for a title and it was “How to Be Fucking Awesome.” This was while I was really cranking at CP+B, on the road producing all the time. So I didn’t really have the energy to do it, but I bought the URL befuckingawesome.com (http://befuckingawesome NULL.com/) and felt good enough about doing that. Then I just sat on it for a couple years.

Finally I had John Parker, my partner at the time and now a CD at W+K New York, do up a branding identity for BFA. He rocked it. And it sat there again. Then I had the idea to tweak it into a social network of sorts where you could post your Fucking Awesome deeds, let the world vote on each one, and those votes would contribute to your Awesome Quotient. So then I fucking had to do it. And that’s what I did. I found another amazing designer to help with the design, a fantastically talented developer, and sunk a lot of my own money into paying him to develop it. It’s been live now since the end of September. It isn’t really taking off the way I’d hoped, but I am learning a whole lot from it and know what to try to make it take off more. It’s really satisfying, in some ways. But mostly, it’s just a massive learning experience.

Jr: So, now that you’ve left CP+B to start your own agency, what can the world expect from Victors and Spoils (http://victorsandspoils NULL.com/)?

E: Good question. I think the world can expect to see a viable new way of coming up with ideas for the advertising industry. A way where the clients feel like they get the service and attention that traditional agencies give, but ideas and work that is devised from a much broader base of amateurs and/or the users of their products and services–then directed and shaped to be on brand and on brief. So it’ll feel like an ad agency to the client, but engage the world to help solve their business problems. What we’re trying to do is show that there is a new way of doing things. A way that works and can let more people into the process. We’re all savvy critics of ads and marketing communications nowadays – because we’re exposed to it from birth. There are a lot of people out there who could be really good at it, and we want to give them a way of working on things just like those of us who went to school to become experts. There’s a shitload more to it than that, obviously. But the world can expect some really interesting briefs to work on for some really interesting clients. At least.

Jr: The business model you guys described on launch, was anything but ‘more of the same’, but there’s going to be the inevitable detraction from folks not into the whole model. Are crowd-sourcing naysayers the new ‘30-seconds-of-TV-is-the-only-media-we-need’ dinosaurs?

E: I don’t know; that’s a good question. There are naysayers out there. Basically what the internet gives people is a voice, and they love to use it to say how dumb everything is that isn’t their own idea. I learned pretty fast after we launched that I just had to turn it off, it was exhausting trying to answer or consider everyone’s points. Which we still care a lot about, but so many people were just being so aggressively mean and negative, so full of hate, that we realized very fast that no answer would satisfy the vocal minority. It’s one of the most loaded issues out there right now and because we consciously launched with as much hoopla as we could create, we became the brightest bull’s-eye. It’s cool though; we intend to just continue doing our thing and trying to get some good clients and craft briefs that let people play with brands if they want to. If they don’t want to, that’s cool too.

Jr: How does a junior (or anyone for that matter) get a shot at working for a hot shop like CP+B or Victors & Spoils? Can you give us five awesome tips?

E: What if I give you one tip and explain the shit out of it?

Jr: Evan, you do what you feel…

E: Good.

1. Get really good at the craft of being a creative.

- Write down everything. Take notes as you learn. Take notes as you concept.

- Doodle as you think. Keep the pen moving.

- Do lots of options for everything. Only through looking at it can you know if something is better or worse than what you already have. Look at it.

- Take it seriously; don’t expect it to come easy. Focus on the brief. Do “concepting intervals” where you focus and write every idea down. Then have a break. Then get back to it.

- Sketch everything. Go analog. Don’t fucking concept on your fucking laptop. Pad of paper. Pen or pencil. You alone, or you and your partner. Find somewhere to get in sync and focus and riff. When writing headlines, that’s when I think writing on your computer is good. But try using all caps, or two spaces between each headline. Treat it like art, and have some pride for how the words look. Do a bunch. Edit them a little. Do a bunch more. Edit a little. Repeat. If you’re building your book, keep the presentation simple. But don’t ignore the presentation.

Jr: Is there life after advertising? Should advertising be a means to an end?

E: For me, I think there has to be. For anyone, for sure there can be. Depends on how much a boner it gives you, I guess.

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

ADVERTISING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES | Also tagged COMMITMENT, COPYWRITING, CP+B, CREATIVITY, FOLIO, JOB HUNTING, SUCCESS, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, WRITING

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Monday Morning WHIP // 59

What’s your excuse for not visiting every Creative Director, Senior Creative, Group Publisher, Studio Manager, Design Director and Big Wig With Advice to Give that you can guess the email of? It better be good, because if it’s not, you’ll meet someone like Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) in the real world–and they might not be this helpful.

Once upon a time a kid rang me to ask if I’d take a look at his folio. When I asked him what sort of folio it was he ummed and awed before replying that he wasn’t sure.

When I asked him why, he said that his was just a black plastic one that he’d bought at Officeworks.

As you can imagine, I pissed myself laughing.

I then explained to him that what I actually wanted to know was whether he was a writer, an art director or a photographer.

“I’m a writer,” he said.

So I told him that whenever he rang people up to look at his folio he should always say up front that he was a writer.

“But what if they’re not looking for a writer,” he said.

My answer was the same piece of advice I have given many times over the years;

Don’t show a folio with the expectation of getting a job. Show it with the aim of asking for advice on how to make it better. Because the better your folio gets, the better your chances of getting a job.

ADVERTISING, WHIP | Also tagged FOLIO, HUNGER, JOB HUNTING, JOBS, WHIP

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Monday Morning WHIP // 57

Hey everybody! We’ve got ourselves organised for 2010. This year is gonna be great! Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/)’s back with more weekly whip’s, we’ll be posting a new interview every week, and we’ve got a handful of new columns to surface over the next month. But enough of that hoo-hah–listen to Stan! Get to work! Do stuff!

I thought I’d kick start the year with a little tale about how getting off your arse and simply creating stuff on a regular basis can help get you a foot in the door of whatever creative industry you aspire to be a part of.

About 18 months ago I was at a brekky gathering in Sydney, where I met Annik Skelton (http://annikskelton NULL.com/). At the time she was doing some mundane job that she thought would involve creativity but didn’t.

Like many of the people I meet nowadays we hooked up on Twitter.

Over the course of last year she has kept me, and I’m sure many others, entertained with her surreal Twitterisms (http://twitter NULL.com/neekatron) and seriously off the wall blog posts. The girl can write, no doubt about it.

Seems I wasn’t the only person who noticed, because late last year she was hired by new Sydney agency Tongue (http://www NULL.campaignbrief NULL.com/2009/12/tongue-lashes-out-on-hiring-an NULL.html).

In the agency press release about the appointment they described Annik as, “a well-known Twitter personality, notorious for her tongue-in-cheek commentary and unique methods of story-telling.”

So there you go kids. Next time I tell you to just go off and create something, do it. Because the more stuff you put out there, the better chance you have of getting to wherever it is you want to go.

WHIP | Also tagged COMMITMENT, HUNGER, JOB HUNTING, JOBS, WHIP

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Interview Series // 23 (Part Two)

daniel2

“Work on your shit. Ride your bicycle. Don’t have sex. Work hard. Be nice. Pay attention. What else? That’s kinda it. Oh, and don’t buy dumb shit.” And that, our clever and taste-ridden friends, is where Part One of Daniel Bremmer’s interview finished. If you haven’t read it yet, read it now. We got really drunk in a Brooklyn bar and solved the problems of the universe, pretty much. This second half however, is even better–we really hit our stride. It seems the more alcohol we consumed, the more articulate, erudite, considered and clever we became. If you want to figure out if advertising is a vain waste of time and resources on the rich white people of the world, or if it can be used to save the world’s environmental and economic problems, gosh, are you in for a treat…

Daniel: Don’t buy dumb shit.

Junior: Don’t buy dumb shit? Like what?

D: Anything that has an expensive logo on it. I’m going to think your dad has money and that you probably suck.

Jr: So what should you wear to an interview?

D: Stuff that doesn’t have expensive logos on it.

Jr: Like this?

D: That’s fine. Grey t-shirt and short shorts. I might skip the short shorts.

Jr: Oh really? Why? They make me look cool!

D: They’re a little short. Definitely not that cool. Anyway, you know what? I’ve had had an epiphany.

Jr: What’s that?

D: I don’t give a fuck about making ads that make a dude richer. I don’t care anymore.

Jr: Which dude? Who’s the dude?

D: Well, it’s not a dude — it’s corporations. So it’s really like a bunch of people.

Jr: Ah, I see. Tell me more.

D: I wanna make things better in the world. And I think everybody does — well most people. There are bad people, people who don’t give a shit; but most conscientious people, most creative people, want to make things better. That’s what I wanna do from now on. I got on this high, where I got to see the good results of something I did (Editors note: Daniel worked on the Obama campaign), that I was a part of. You know, changing things for the better, in a good way, and that’s what I want to do from now on.

Jr: Wow. I think that’s a wonderful epiphany.

D: So do I. I have a little philosophy. It’s called, ‘Do good well.’ Because there’s a lot of agencies entirely built around doing good work for non-profits, and a lot of the time they get involved in doing philanthropic work for big companies, to make the big companies who do evil shit look good cause they threw a few million out of their x billion dollars in annual profits towards something nice. And there’s a lot of non-profits that hire agencies to do their fund-raising who need the money, to do good work, but that’s not as rewarding as doing cool stuff. This is a movement that’s happening slowly. A very good friend of mine, an early mentor named Don McKinney, who is interactive ECD at Grey, he calls it the purpose driven economy. Which is based off The Purpose Driven Life (http://www NULL.purposedrivenlife NULL.com), a book by pastor Rick Warren. It’s bullshit, but it helped a lot of people.

To me, it’s about making ‘good’ and ‘right’ both desirable and popular. Especially when you’re dealing with stuff like the environment, solving issues to do with global warming, dealing with respecting our natural resources, not polluting our environment, treating our environment as a living organism that we need to survive, not as a tree you should hug and respect because it’s beautiful, but because that tree keeps you the fuck alive and you better stop being a dickhole to it. These are the basic principles if you have a long view of the world.

Jr: This is how I feel about my health.

D: Your health is exactly the same.

Jr: It’s no longer, “I need to eat better just because I should be healthy, but because I don’t want to wake up every morning feeling like shit. And I don’t want to be exhausted at the end of the day.” You know what I mean? It’s cause and effect.

D: Exactly! Our body and our planet are the same shit. It’s the exact same shit. And our economy is really the same shit. And what we’ve seen with this giant economic collapse is a whole lot of high-fructose, partially hydrogenated, high-risk, bullshit get-rich-quick nonsense that is sinking our economy, our planet, our health and our souls. It’s retarded. And there’s a better way to do all that shit. There’s a better way to do everything. Let’s all tell the fucking truth, let’s all do the right thing, let’s all come up with systems and products and services that help everybody do better.

Jr: But can you do that as a junior?

D: You can, I think. You have the energy, you have the soul, you don’t have children. Right? That’s the great thing. Older people can say, “I have kids. I love my kids more than I love an abstract notion of life in twenty years, therefore I’m going to sell Snickers.” Snickers is going to give people diabetes. Snickers is going to destroy the fucking world. Right? Snickers is a bad product.

Jr: But it’ll pay my children’s school fees!

D: In the short term it’ll bump me this much up in life if I do a big Snickers campaign. Pepsi, right? Peter Arnell (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=WJ4yF4F74vc) is a piece of shit. He was the guy that redesigned their look. I wouldn’t trust that guy to fold my goddamn napkin, much less design my brand. The guy is a fucking catastrophe. I looked through his website (http://arnell NULL.com/) today. It’s atrocious. They have an ad that has CG lizards dancing with football players. It makes no sense. Pepsico has given the keys to the castle to this guy. Why? Because he has round glasses that used to be cool? Round glasses and a beard can get you anywhere these days. Maybe you shouldn’t hire the guy with round glasses anymore. Maybe that worked in the 90’s.

Jr: Yes! Let’s bring back square glasses! But we digress.

D: Yeah, fuck that guy. Ha, we got on a weird Peter Arnell tangent there, and how bad Pepsi was. Oh yeah! Pepsi.

Jr: Yeah, because people want to pay their bills.

D: Pepsi makes the world worse. It makes us all fat. It encourages reckless consumption. It’s not good. Nobody should be selling SUVs. As a junior, I turned down a job. I had graduated Art Center College of Design. I thought I had a job waiting for me at Karmarama (http://www NULL.karmarama NULL.com/) in London. They came back with an offer that in Britain was very generous. But in America it was so low. I was looking at a six-figure student loan. So I flipped out. I said, “I cannot afford to make that little money. I need to pay this loan off now.” So I turned Karmarama down. Worst decision I ever made.

Jr: Oh wow.

D: An ethical, smart, brilliant, creative agency that cared about doing good work and cared about making the world better, in an awesome country with a visa waiting for me. And like a stupid idiot I said no. I had to move back in with my parents in Orange County and freelance in L.A. I would drive two hours to get to these freelance gigs. It was horrible.

Jr: Why was it so horrible?

D: Because it was a two-hour drive to get there and an hour drive to get home!

Jr: That sucks balls.

D: Yes! That sucks balls! And while doing that I wouldn’t take jobs working on things like Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs). I wouldn’t take a job at Chiat because I wouldn’t work on SUVs. Did you know that the Nissan Pathfinder Armada has thirteen cup-holders and seven seats?

Jr: Thirteen cup-holders!

D: And seven seats. No one should buy that. That is bad for the world.

Jr: Thirteen cup-holders and seven seats? That doesn’t even make sense!

D: It is bad for the world and I wouldn’t go take a job working on it.

Jr: So were you briefed on it? How do you go about turning down a job?

D: No, no, no, I wasn’t briefed on it yet. I just didn’t take the job. I had been in one situation where I was briefed on something though. It was explained to me that the brief was aimed at human resource directors at Fortune 100 companies. The idea behind the campaign was how this very large American health insurance company reduces costs and that’s how they’re solving the health care crisis.

Jr: Because they reduce costs?

D: Because they’re reducing costs for employers. Which makes it more affordable. Which means that more employers will be able to continue to provide insurance for their employees. Which is a good thing. In the absence of a modern, sane health system, you need that. So I did the campaign. Half way through the campaign, I find out the media buy is for Congressional Quarterly and The Hill. You know, newspapers that Senatorial and Congressional staffers read, telling policy makers, “Don’t worry, we’ve got it under control.” So I realized this half way through, and the creative was basically done. I told my Creative Director, “I’ll finish this because I started it. But I can’t work on this client anymore. And if it means my job, that’s a conversation we can have.”

Jr: Wow! You said that? So big!

D: I had no savings and I was in debt, but I just couldn’t do it. The bottom-line was: I do not have the discipline to do work I disagree with. The worst obligation I have is a stupid loan that my parents co-signed for. I don’t have a house, I don’t have any children, the worst I can do is fuck over my parent’s credit a little bit. That’s the worst-case scenario. Actually, I have a life insurance policy to cover my student loan. So if I get hit by a bus on my way home tonight, they’ll foot the bill. But I don’t want to be run over.

Jr: Cheers! To saving the world!

D: To saving the world!.

Drinks: *Clink*

Jr: Love the world. *Hiccup*

D: But no, I mean, I don’t know any young smart creative person that wants to make the world worse. The only ones I know want to make the world better. The world is fucked because of our parent’s generation, it’s not their… Well, it is their fault… But you can’t really blame them. It’s not like your mum and my mom decided to fuck the world. But the world is fucked and we need to fix it. And there’s a lot of money to be made in fixing it. Capitalism can solve this problem. Advertising is the lubricant of capitalism. Lubricate it for good, don’t lubricate it for bad.

Jr: Absolutely.

D: Don’t compromise yourself. You don’t have to.

Jr: So as a young creative, what should you be doing to make sure that happens? Should you be trying to work for the companies that have the good and moral clients? Should you be calling up the clients who are doing good things and saying I need to be working on your business?

D: You can’t call the client! Who are you going to call? Who are you going to call at Proctor and Gamble? There’s a shitload of people. But! Proctor and Gamble is doing things bit by bit that are good. Unilever is doing things bit by bit. Pepsi, which in it’s current state, is causing obesity and diabetes and short attention spans and hampering education efforts, is a terrible thing. Pepsi is horrible. No one should have Pepsi in their life or their home. It is a bad influence. It is probably worse than drugs. Because it is so widely acceptable to do. No one’s going to give you shit for drinking Pepsi at the Christmas table, but if you bring out the cocaine at Grandma’s house, someone’s going to have a little talk with you. You know, “We’re going to get you some help with that cocaine problem.” No one’s going to intervene and give you help with your Pepsi problem. Who’s going to say, “You know Bob, that shit’s going to give you diabetes and you’re going to fuck up our health care system.” You just don’t have to work for them. Although with Sun Chips, Pepsi is moving to biodegradable bags and using Solar energy, so that’s good. Hopefully they’ll bail on the high fructose corn syrup.

Jr: So I guess you just pick the right places to work for or when a job comes on you decide to try and change the company culture.

D: I think if enough people would simply be honest and straight up about everything — shit’s going to change. If you’re stuck in a situation where you’re the person building a coupon for the agency that’s not the decision maker, you’re fucked. But if you’re the decision maker and you’re in a room with your client and you’re smart and you’ve thought through what you’re going to say and it makes sense, they should be OK with everything. Look at G.E. Big fucking company. They own NBC. They make jet engines.

Jr: Jet engines? Wow.

D: Yes. Somebody had the balls to present ‘Ecomagination’ as a platform for the company. And it’s fucking brilliant. It’s a mainstream company that has banked their success on making things cleaner and more efficient. And making that into a business that is sustainable. Right? You look at Snapple. They’ve dropped high fructose corn syrup and are switching to sugar.

Jr: Really?

D: Yes. Walmart. Fucking Walmart. Adam Werbach of Saatchi and Saatchi S (http://saatchis NULL.com/), his company used to be called Act Now (http://www NULL.actnowproductions NULL.com/). He was the youngest president of the Sierra Club, gave a speech saying, “Environmentalism is dead. We’re not going to hug trees anymore. We’re going to hug the people. We’re going to make everything fucking better at the same time.” Then he started working with Walmart. He looked at the company, inside the company, and said, “How do we make this shit better?” They have language for this, I don’t remember exactly what their internal terms are, but basically they’ve worked with the employees, you know, the people wearing the smocks in the stores, and said, “Make a pledge. Do something to improve your health or your planet.”

Jr: Wow.

D: And the brilliant thing behind starting with that is that somebody can come into Walmart, a CEO or whatever, down the road, and say, “Fuck that guy. Fire Saatchi S.” Guess what? Nothing changes. Because your entire culture is built on making things better. So what they did, they started making their shit totally eco — the easy stuff was switching off the lighting, making things more energy efficient. Then they started working with their suppliers, said they wanted to reduce their packaging, said they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint — they’re doing a lot of stuff. Say what you will, they’ve done some evil shit with employee relations and health care, but they do some really smart shit with supply chain management. And they’re doing that to help the environment. And the new thing they’re doing, they’ve banned recombinant bovine growth hormone in their dairy products. That’s a chemical that Monsanto makes that is in American dairy that is illegal everywhere else in the world. American milk is not legal to sell in Canada.

Jr: No… Really?

D: Yes. Because it’s filled with this fucked up chemical that makes cows produce a shit ton of milk really fast. And we feed that to American girls. And we wonder why they have giant boobs and get their periods really early.

Jr: Shit! Is this true?

D: It totally is! So Walmart said no. Walmart — which many people would say is the worst company in the world.

Jr: But they only said no recently.

D: Very recently. I mean, today capitalism isn’t a force for good or bad. Capitalism is just a force for ‘is’. It’s an efficient way of getting shit done. The ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on what people demand of it. And our role as advertisers is to create consumer demand. It’s our choice.

Jr: So I guess what you’re saying is, as a junior, even though you probably can’t influence change until you’re in a room with a decision-maker, you can be educated on what is happening and who the companies are that are implementing these ‘good’ forces of capitalism.

D: Yes. But really, I would just say have standards — with everything. Because every company has the potential to be good. Every person has the potential to be good. You look around this bar, some of these people are really nice people, some of these people are not nice people. They all have the potential to be either. And we as communicators, we as cultural artists, we as people that create feelings and emotions with our work, when we’re doing advertising, we’re creating desire. We’re creating emotion for our clients. We can steer that for good. Even in subtle ways.

There was a project I did for Intel, with Venables, Bell & Partners (http://www NULL.venablesbell NULL.com/). When I got there, they had already sold the strategy of ‘Sponsors of Tomorrow’. That was done. The TV and print had sold, they were already working on pre-production, that was done. They needed me to work on the interactive and launch. The idea was, we asked people what they want from the future. “What do you hope for in the future.” So you could go to the website, and you could say, “In the future I want…” You could answer that. You’d type that in. In Times Square, on crazy LED billboards, you could go and see a little guy dance, and see, “In the future I want blah blah blah. What do you want? Text it to this number.” You could text what you wanted out of the future. What do you think people texted?

Jr: World peace?

D: Ha, there was a lot of that stuff. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there was like, “I want a girlfriend,” or, “I want a computer that’s super fast.” There was stuff like that. But a very large percentage was humanitarian. People have a hope deep down inside, people want shit to be better. If people didn’t have that we wouldn’t have gotten to this civilisation where you and I can go into this bar and talk to some dude, he’ll bring us a bunch of alcohol, while assuming that we’re going to be good enough to pay and not run out. Girls can come in and we can talk to them, and they’re not going to think we’re going to club them over the head and drag them back to our cave, right? I don’t believe that people are inherently good or bad, but I think we want good.

Jr: Everybody wants good. Even the bums. *Hiccup*

D: Even the bums. And if we tie this back to the Obama campaign, what that guy did was appeal to the best of us. He appealed to the best of our nature and it fucking worked.

Jr: Absolutely. I completely agree with that.

D: And it bums me out that we’re in this weird hangover right now as a world.

Jr: What do you mean?

D: Don’t you feel like we’re all in a giant hangover where we all had this big high and hope and now everybody is like, “Oh, shit’s still kinda fucked up.”

Jr: Yeah but we’re all just seeing what happens. Maybe the first year is recognizing the problems, the second year is fixing the problems, and the third year is changing the world.

D: I don’t think it’s like that. I think it’s much faster and more delayed. We did a lot of stuff really fast. We’re starting to see the early indicators of economic recovery. But it hasn’t hit the average person yet. The haemorrhaging is stopping. We haven’t started to heal yet. But the haemorrhaging is stopping. I’m freelancing at a lot of agencies in midtown now, and there’s a lot of empty offices. Empty offices everywhere.

Jr: Wow. You know, Australia is technically not in recession.

D: Really?

Jr: One of the only countries in the world.

D: Why is that?

Jr: Well it’s seen a downturn, but not into negative national GDP. That’s not the reason but that’s the evidence.

D: That’s good.

Jr: Yeah, I mean, doesn’t mean that a lot of people haven’t lost their jobs.

D: Well you still drive those stupid cars — the GM ones…

Jr: What stupid cars? You mean Holdens?

D: Yeah Holdens! You still drive those big stupid Holden SS Utes. You gotta change that shit.

ADVERTISING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES | Also tagged COMMITMENT, CONSUMERISM, ENVIRONMENT, JOB HUNTING, NEW YORK, PEPSI, PETER ARNELL, PROCTOR & GAMBLE, SAN FRANCISCO, SNICKERS, STANDARDS, SUCCESS, WALMART

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Monday Morning WHIP // 55

whip55

Why do you keep trying? What’s the point of it all? We ask ourselves this all the time — so don’t worry, you’re not alone. Even Charles Saatchi, the famed advertising genius, was once asked, “What keeps you going?” But being the genius that he is, in his infinite wisdom he replied, “Well, what’s the alternative?” Need more answers? Don’t worry, Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) has another…

I went to the Melbourne Design Market yesterday. Made me feel genuinely proud, with so many young Melburnians following their dreams by getting out there and creating stuff.

As I’ve said many times before, anyone can have an idea. But it requires real creativity to make that idea actually happen.

I spoke to a few of the stallholders about their ideas, whether or not they required any kind of funding and, most importantly, any obstacles they had had to overcome.

All of them told me stories about self-doubt and stress, of feeling insecure and wanting to give up.

But they didn’t.

They pushed on even though they felt they were on the verge of failing.

Why?

Because that’s what creative people do.

ADVERTISING, WRITING | Also tagged CHARLES SAATCHI, COMMITMENT, HUNGER, MELBOURNE, MELBOURNE DESIGN MARKET

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Monday Morning WHIP // 53

whip53

If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com) in over a year worth of WHIPS, it’s that he loves a football metaphor. See exhibit A, B, C and D. So when we saw that Frenchman playing european handball (http://www NULL.guardian NULL.co NULL.uk/football/blog/2009/nov/21/thierry-henry-handball-france-ireland) with a soccerball last week, we just knew Stan would find a way to write it into this week’s WHIP. So here you are kiddies. Learn a thing or two.

Much fuss in the sporting media this week about French footballer Thierry Henry committing a professional foul to help get his team through to the World Cup in South Africa next year.

For those of you who are not familiar with him, Henry is an exceptional talent. A creative genius on the football field. Yet he chose to cheat (http://i NULL.dailymail NULL.co NULL.uk/i/pix/2009/11/19/article-0-0746AED1000005DC-99_306x423 NULL.jpg) in order to help his team win.

Now I do not wish to condone his behaviour, because he is a dirty cheating Frenchman, but in order to achieve the ultimate prize you need to follow the mantra of Malcolm X – By any means necessary.

If you want a job, you need to be prepared to do what it takes.

And if what it takes is a little bending of the rules, bend them. If what it takes is a bit of brown nosing, then go get brown. And if what it takes is to lie, then be prepared to be a little loose with the truth.

Because if you don’t, somebody else surely will.

ADVERTISING, WHIP | Also tagged FOLIO, FOOTBALL METAPHOR, JOB HUNTING

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Interview Series // 25

Man or machine? Leo’s glowing global reputation as a ‘wunderkind’ will have you believe the latter. It was our supposition that surely he must be human — mortal and unfunny in real life — just like you or I. We ventured to New York City in order to find out, and the story goes thus: Three short years ago, Leo and his creative partner, Jan Jacobs, were anointed Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s joint Executive Creative Directors. At the time Leo was just 28. They left after one highly awarded year, joined forces again to set-up their own NYC-based agency, Johannes (http://www NULL.johannesleonardo NULL.com/) Leonardo (http://www NULL.johannesleonardo NULL.com/), and have been working harder than you in the two years since. Leo and Jan have created some of the naughties’ most awarded, hilarious, insightful, haunting, and incredibly succinct advertising you’ve likely seen or heard in London and the U.S — ads like this (http://adland NULL.tv/commercials/nspcc-ventriloquist-2003-060-uk), this (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=YMkkQO5HUXM), this (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=X2cs8gnb42A) and this (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=k6z3bGILwMg) — winning many lions and other assorted animal like statues. The jury is still out on Leo’s genetic make-up, for at the interview, Leo spewed mythical reams of advice from his lion-like mouth, then galloped off into the sunset laughing like a hyena. The Junior team turned to one-another, wide-eyed and mystified, mouths gaping like hungry, hungry hippos, gasping for air. Are we making this up? Yes. Without further ado — Leo, Leo, bo-bio. Banana-fanna-fo-fio. Mee-my-mio. Leeeee-o.

Junior: Hey Leo! Sorry about that ridiculous intro — our intern wrote it. He’s nuts. So first we wanna know, how did you get into the ad game? What was your journey from raw junior to respected senior?

Leo: It’s a little odd… I was coming out of an operation; my appendix had burst hours before I was due to board a plane to Germany for professional football trials. I woke up from the anesthetic with an advertising idea and my decision was made. I stuck to advertising. Which was a good thing because I wouldn’t have stood a chance at the whole football thing.

A couple of years before that I had been selected as one of the AFA trainees out of university. It probably helped to have an understanding of how the entire process worked from media, to strategy to account management. But it was most useful in making me absolutely desperate and determined to work in the creative department because I quickly realized I didn’t want to do any of those other things for a living.

Jr: We’re dying to know if have any stories from your time as a junior when life sucked? Any horror book crits or moments of creative block that made you reassess life and what you were doing?

L: Sure I did, I think everyone does. Don’t be intimidated by thinking creating great work comes completely naturally to some people. Truth is, anyone who is any good has spent hours and hours perfecting their craft and if they tell you otherwise they’re full of it.

And the same goes for ‘creative block’. I don’t want to sit here and say I never have it, of course I do. I think the trick is to try and not see it as ‘creative block’. See it as something that happens to everyone, something you just need to work through or come at from a different angle.

Jr: Wow. Yes. You have no idea how relieving that is to hear from you. You know what else is intimidating? Awards. Obviously you’ve won a lot. Everyone has their own take on what they mean and what they should mean. 99% would agree they mean nothing when compared to ‘creativity’ or ‘effectiveness’ or ’selling lots of shit and making your client happy’. How important have they been to you and how should we as juniors approach the current award industry?

L: I remember being about 25, at Cannes for the fist time and winning 4 or so Cannes Lions. I realized pretty much right then and there that awards weren’t going to keep me excited about getting out of bed each morning.

At the end of the day the most important thing for any junior to do is understand what sort of creative person they want to be. Then to strike that balance of getting enough respect and trust to actually one day be able to create that path for yourself.

Personally, I believe award shows matter less now than they once did. Partly because there’s so many of them, and partly because everyone has a gazillion of them, including students, but more importantly because why would we care so much to see what a panel of 20 or so people think when we have the opportunity to see what millions of people think about our ideas?

The true reward for our creations now is seeing how they effect and touch the public.

Jr: Ah yes! But! If that be true, are award books worth looking at these days for inspiration or an education in ideas?

L: I think it’s important to know what’s been done before, and what hasn’t, to know the rules so you know how to break them, to know the history of work and of a category. As a junior you should soak up all the inspiration you can get.

I’d just say don’t try and replicate the stuff you see in books. We live in unique and as they say exponential times. Things are changing quicker than ever before, so what was good a year back has never become so old so quickly.

True inspiration though — that’s not in award books. It’s around us in the world we live. But if the books can help make the work better year upon year, and ultimately the stuff we force into the public’s face a little less crap, then I guess we should take them any which way we can.

Jr: Someone once told us, “Leo is a genius. He was also supported by brilliant ECDs at every agency he went to.” How important have your mentors been to how you approach your work and what should juniors look for in a brilliant mentor?

L: Absolutely crucial. Whenever I see a junior unsure of which agency to join I tell them to focus on the individuals there. Ultimately it’s the individuals there who will help guide you and who define those places during the time they spend there. I was lucky enough to work under some great ones, but even more than that I got to work alongside some as a junior writer. With Toby Talbot at Colenso BBDO and of course a few years later working with Jan at Saatchi & Saatchi London.

So I’ll always be appreciative of how much time senior creatives gave me when I was knocking on their doors with a bad portfolio. Granted I could be an absolute pain in the ass so it was probably easier to see me than not back then. There are great people out there, generous with their time and passionate about their jobs, it’s really just a matter of tracking them down and feeding off them.

Jr: Could you possibly speculate how important working internationally has been to your career? Can you imagine if you had stayed in Australia and where you might be now?

L: Probably a much better surfer than I am these days…

Advertising is a great vehicle to check out the rest of the world. But the strange thing is wherever I’ve ended up I’ve always been glad that I started out in Australia. When there isn’t a whole lot to rely in terms of budgets, production time and global media buys you’re only left with the strength of your idea so that’s what you focus on. Once you’ve learnt how to make your idea bullet proof, all those other layers, they only make your original idea better.

Jr: What’s your best advice for dealing with politics within an agency, both dealing with others and fighting for ideas, especially when you’re at the bottom rung of the hierarchy?

Work for someone you believe can spot good ideas. It’s that simple. Chances are part of the reason you got into this industry is because you realized the work rules. So take advantage of that as a junior. My advice would be don’t worry about the other stuff. More and more the true power will lie in the hands of creative people, and we all know the best ones aren’t political.

Jr: Obviously there are a lot of kids coming straight out of ad schools today with the same work for the same old clients with the same witty headlines and such… What are you looking for in a junior and what can those graduating from the ad schools do differently to stand out and impress someone like you?

L: The best way I can think to explain that is with something John Lennon said. He was once asked why he wrote music and he responded by comparing it to writing a letter. Writing the letter, he said, got him excited but what he really got off on was the response he would get to that letter. That’s it at its essence. We’re looking for people who have that thing inside them, that urge to touch people with their ideas, those who live for simplifying things down to a common language that effects people, deeply and broadly.

Of course, now you’re also trying to stand out during the biggest recession of our lifetimes. But I believe that soon this will be an advantage to the kids coming through. History has shown that when the slate is clean, when things are being re-appraised, and it’s happening on two levels in our industry right now – on a technological and an economic level, it’s the turn of the new guard to step up…

So don’t underestimate yourself, don’t set the bar at junior thinking. You’re competing with every kid out there with a digital camera and internet access. We live in a democratic era of communication, a time of accessibility and participation, where big production budgets can in some cases be more of a burden than a gift.

Jr: Generating ideas – what’s your process? Have you got any crucial tips to tackling a problem creatively?

L: I ain’t got any secrets. It happens differently every time, that’s part of the fun. I don’t really keep shortlists of my ideas. I know if it’s good enough it’ll stick around in my head – Jan calls it ‘the volt’. I would say though, don’t ignore the things that on the surface don’t seem crucial to creating great advertising. Like, spending time to identify what the real problem is – not just the advertising problem but the business problem, and embracing the limits imposed on you. It’s often there the real gem lies.

I also think it’s important to keep in mind, especially as a junior when you don’t have a ton of production experience that as big and important as coming up with the great idea, is understanding what about it will keep it great. Another reason why it’s so important which creative director you work under.

Jr: OK, enough of that cliche ad-guy question guff — how the hell do you live a balanced life? You obviously work really hard. Is that something that comes naturally or do you have to sacrifice things to make your life liveable outside of hard work?

L: Hard work has never felt like hard work because it’s something I’ve always loved. Reducing something down to is most basic form, I’m not sure how many other professions there are where you have the same tools as anyone else in the business irrelevant of your experience – a blank pad and a pen.

So for me loving what you do is the most important ingredient really. If people advise you against being a creative don’t listen to them, listen to your heart. If you’re passionate enough about what you do, you’ll work hard enough at it and the skill will eventually come. Just make sure you’ve instilled a healthy effort reward ratio. By that I mean make sure you’re always working on something you’re excited about – which usually means something you haven’t done before.

Jr: How far into the future do you look? You’re not that far past thirty and you’ve already achieved more accolades than many people achieve in their entire careers. We know you probably don’t buy into that sort of statement, but where to next? How often do you need to reassess your career and where it fits within your entire life? Do you even think about that shit?

L: I was made ECD of the Saatchi & Saatchi New York office when I was 28, and I remember when I would walk there across west 4th street, there was a faded chalk scribble that would always catch me out. It simply said ‘where are you going?’. Every time I read it, it made me think: where was I going? To another meeting? To a corner office? Over time, without me realizing it, I think these four words embedded themselves into my subconscious.

So when I look back on it now Jan and I left Saatchi and Saatchi because we kinda had this feeling inside we weren’t being pushed as much as we could be. We began directing a couple of things and really enjoyed that as a distraction. But we knew there was a bigger issue on the table. We felt the world around us was changing quicker than the big agency model could, and us if we stayed in one. So even if you don’t intend to look far ahead, I guess there’s something inside of us that does.

Best of luck juniors, I hope this helps.

ADVERTISING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES | Also tagged CREATIVITY, HUNGER, INSPIRATION, JOB HUNTING, NEW YORK, SUCCESS, THE INTERVIEW SERIES

Tag Archives: ADVERTISING

The Interview Series // 24

woody

Most interviews we read in magazines are shit. It’s what inspires us to do what we do. That and other magazines that do brilliant interviews. Magazines like SneakerFreaker – Melbourne’s very own incredibly good and culturally important international publishing success. Founded, edited and owned by the original sneaker freaker himself, Woody has built SF into a global behemoth. He’s also seen his fair share of young upstarts float through his office, lived and worked overseas, moved from career to career, started a family, and even has SF translated into Spanish. Which means he has some fascinating shit to say and some incredibly crucial advice to give. As usual, over many a beer, we sat and talked for hours. Ergo, this fucker is long. But that’s cool, cause the ones who need to read it most have a lot of time on their hands. So grab a tea, put on your headphones and use this as a guide to figuring out what the hell you’re gonna do for the next twenty years.

Junior: Hey Woody. What’s your coming of age story? When were you at uni?

Woody: I spent five good years doing the Media course at RMIT in Melbourne. I was involved in a bunch of stuff and ended up becoming the co-editor of the student newspaper, Catalyst, which was literally a catalyst for me in terms of how my life panned out. I was introduced to a whole bunch of people who’d been the editors before and I ended up living with them for years, and for some reason they took me under their wing, which was weird because I was a wildman from the suburbs. Fitzroy was a very creative place then. We started a magazine from our house called Radar and had these awesome parties in the bank vault where we lived on Smith St. They were good times. I hate getting nostalgic when we’re only one question in…

Jr: Ha, man, you can do whatever you want one question in – it’s your interview. So tell me more about Catalyst; the student newspaper.

W: Oh yeah. So because we won an election to edit the newspaper, all of a sudden we had to learn how to make it; you know, write, design and create the whole thing. We were the first editors to get a Macintosh computer too. It was totally primitive before that point. We started the year with a bromide camera which we used to put screens on images for manual paste-up, as well as creating multiple tones for hand-made colour work which we did with scalpels. My memories involve a lot of sliced fingers and layouts lost in the wax machine. When we saw a scanner for the first time, we were really, really impressed. Actually my entire design career started when my friend Bert showed me how to move things around on the Mac screen. It’s hard to imagine how boring life was before the machines existed. No one I knew was a graphic designer. It was a trade, like being a plumber. People spent years learning how to do things in a really mechanical sort of way. When the computer came along, all of a sudden, you could have fun with a machine and make stuff. Straight away I really got into design which was totally unexpected. I never thought about a career in design at high school, where art classes were seen merely as a bludge. Random things can spin your life off in a whole new direction, it’s the kind of thing your mum tells you but you never believe her.

Jr: Damn straight. As long as you open yourself up to happy accidents you’ll be fine for sure. So we know you moved to London for a while after uni. What brought on the London thing?

W: I’d encourage everyone to head for the hills immediately after school finishes, because you’ll never get a better time to do it. But the real reason I left was because I almost got involved in some trouble with the fuzz after doing the O-book where we wrote the usual student articles about shoplifting and taking drugs and shoplifting while on drugs and not paying for tram tickets. All the cliches.

Jr: Ha! Wow. Really? That was you?

W: Oh yeah, it was par for the course in those days. It was a tradition to stir the pot so we just rewrote the same articles over and over every year. I think a year or two after my indiscretions they nailed the editors of Rabelais (another student newspaper) for the exact same type of content and it seriously fucked them for years – so going to London was a great move.

Jr: Sounds like it was. So what was the plan?

W: I thought I could parlay my limited experience into something design related, but all I really knew was that I didn’t want to work in a pub like every other aussie dingbat. I’m pleased to say I did one day as a street cleaner and that was enough motivation for me. I got so, so close to a design job at NME, which would have been awesome. I also made the final two for Penthouse as well. That would have been interesting for sure.

Jr: So were you into ‘The Face (http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/groups/thefacemagazine/pool/)’ and all those types of magazines coming out of the UK at the time?

W: I was obsessed. I never felt iD so much but I loved Raygun (http://www NULL.flickr NULL.com/photos/joekral/sets/72157621244439899/) and The Face. From a design point of view, Neville Brody (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Neville_Brody)’s work was great but it was the mix of content that hooked me. The Face made London seem underground and wicked cool and it had fashion and art and politics and serious stuff as well as loads of club news and even it has to be said, quite a few sneakers. It was probably the most effective marketing tool any city has ever had but you go there and you find that it’s a grey depressive shithole. But that’s only one visual side of London, the other is that it has the most vigorous youth culture – certainly it’s the top city for music in my opinion. I really regret not keeping my collection of The Face, I had years and years of them but they were too heavy to lug from house to house.

Jr: Ha, awesome. What year did you go?

W: 1993 or something.

Jr: OK, here’s a good question: For a lot of fresh faced uni kids that go overseas, the ‘big break’ rarely comes. They haven’t got any contacts, they haven’t done any work yet, so they’re not even that good.

W: Well the thing is they’re pretty much unemployable. Sorry to break it to you kids but it’s the truth, no matter how cocky you are. I think bullshitting is perfectly acceptable in order to get a break, just be sure you can do what you say you can do. I was fortunate enough to get picked up by a freelance agency. I also went to the UK at a time when no one really had the skills that I thought I had, so it was a bit easier in hindsight. My big break was to learn on the job at someone’s expense even if I taught myself.

Jr: What were the skills?

W: Well, I mean, desktop design as it used to be called. At that time it was Quark Express, a very early version of Photoshop and Illustrator – so the programs are still the same, but at that time no one knew how to use them. You couldn’t learn it anywhere. It wasn’t in the tertiary system. So I turned up to London expecting them to be high tech and super advanced but then realised I was one of maybe a few hundred people in the city at the time who knew anything at all about Macs.The advertising agency I worked for had no computers except for the receptionist’s PC. Everything in the creative department was done by hand and illustrators did all the mock ups with Yoken markers. It was seriously like the Dark Ages.

Jr: So who picked you up?

W: I started working for a few freelance agencies. I bought a suit to wear to big banks to create flow charts which I did for about three or four months.

Jr: Did you make much money?

W: I think I earned ten pounds an hour or something like that, which was pretty sharp in those days, certainly better than pulling pints. Luckily my agency really liked me and they gave me a crack at a job that was going at a small advertising agency in SoHo.

Jr: How long were you in London all up?

W: Quite a while. I developed a really bodgy English accent that got me through. I guess you could say I was slightly overstaying my welcome, officially speaking.

Jr: Ha, yeah we know the one. Did you make friends when you were there?

W: Yeah. I made all my friends, still ten or more years later, based on this time.

Jr: Really?

W: Yeah. All my closest English friends except one have emigrated here to Melbourne.

Jr: Wow! Really? Why?

W: It’s a great place to live. To come here from London and have sunshine and space and freedom and this ‘Neighbours’ lifestyle dare I say it, it gets more and more attractive as you get into your 30s. One of my oldest friends even had his mum emigrate. I think going back to London now would be pretty devastating from a lifestyle point of view. Melbourne has its weaknesses, but the lifestyle isn’t one, although with the price of houses now, we’re in danger of it becoming unaffordable for anyone creative or less than committed to the corporate grind.

Jr: A lot of people think the same way I suppose. Although London has all the culture and so on.

W: When you’re in your twenties and you’re mad for it, for sure. If you’re going out all night, every night, it’s a great place to live. It was absolutely brilliant, there was always something entertaining to do.

Jr: Did you do that? Did you go out all night, every night, while you were working?

W: I gave it a good nudge!

Jr: What happened when you came home?

W: After the usual case of mild post-travelling blues, I worked in advertising for a year at Patterson Bates (GPY&R). It wasn’t a great time for the company; I think they lost a lot of pitches. It was ok. I wasn’t excited about what I was doing. It wasn’t that creative. Maybe I should have been pushier and tried to get into writing TV ads or something. But my priorities were elsewhere, I was DJ’ing and organizing events at night and doing other stuff that was a lot more fun.

Jr: Did you like the advertising industry?

W: Yes and no. I was a little disenchanted creating junkmail which to be honest, which is what I did. In the 80s, it must have been a wild scene with so much money floating about. In London I arrived at the tail end of that and they were all misty eyed about these crazy times when, you know, ‘Steve rode his Harley down the hallway and crashed, knocking himself out on the photocopier’ or one classic I remember was when a new guy called Nobby joined the firm. The story was on his first day he managed to spill a Flaming Lamborghini on the boss and set his shirt on fire at dinner. In Australia it was much more conservative. I had green hair. It wasn’t going to end well and I wasn’t thinking about a career. I never have really.

Jr: The employment prospects haven’t always been great for school leavers have they?

W: Nope. When I left Uni, there was nothing going on. I think a lot of kids leaving university are facing a similar sort of situation. The pressure is to get a break somehow, but beyond that, if you are useful and you can justify your own existence at a company they will always find room for you. The hard thing is when you have no experience and you can’t prove that you can or can’t do something. You have to make yourself valuable.

Jr: Is that something that you had to work on? Making yourself valuable? Or were you just like that?

W: I wouldn’t say I ‘worked on it’. I just worked. The harder you work, the luckier you get. I was annoying, quite frankly. I got into radio by annoying people, and ended up working at various radio stations while at Uni. I bugged people til they let me have a go. I think that just being super keen is all you can really expect from somebody at a young age.Think about it, you can do whatever you want with your life but only if you have a crack. However, I think there are some things you can teach people and some things you can’t. An understanding of the world and how things interrelate – you can’t teach anyone that. It’s an instinctive thing. If you are going to work in fashion, you need to ‘get it’. There’s no point just trying to be in that industry because you think it’s glamorous or you’ll get to root models. You’ll be chewed up by someone who’d climb over your dead body for a job.

Jr: Have you gone through your fair share of young people who aren’t diligent at Sneaker Freaker?

W: We’ve had a pretty good track record. A few times I’ve tried to advertise and get someone out of college but never really found the right person. We’re a really small outfit and I don’t have time to teach someone from scratch. It’s frustrating for me but I learned that you can’t expect too much initially, you have to be patient and let them work it out. I’ve had some pretty funny experiences. One kid trying out for a job told me that I couldn’t teach him anything about Photoshop, and he’d probably been using it for two years. He was actually quite skilled, but I think his attitude alone rang bells for a potential employer. You want a little bit of cockiness but you don’t want someone who doesn’t listen and doesn’t think that they can’t learn. You mainly want accuracy and speed, that’s super important. That is one thing that the school environment doesn’t seem to promote in my experience. Young kids get tired and need a little nap to get back on track. It’s a grind. You’ve got to be productive 8 or 9 hours a day.

Jr: There’s a lot of talent going around, but not a lot of work ethic. I suppose there’s always going to be someone more talented than you, but it’s about how passionate you are and how hard you work.

W: True. I gotta say, the work ethic of Gen Y kids is a hot topic amongst my peers right now. I think that’s because they are now managing staff for the first time, but there’s definitely a sense that the GFC could be a good thing as it might take a few uppity kids down a peg or two. I’m not so sure this generation’s work ethic is that much different from my own Gen X clique… just a little more distracted by the overdose of technology.

Jr: What’s the most valuable skill to have aside from being keen?

W: A knack for networking. It’s a shit name for it but it is what it is. You can’t teach someone how to do it, though you might learn the secret someday through observation. It’s a vague business. Some people just have a knack at making friends with other people who can help them. That’s why starting a mag or writing a blog can become so universally useful. You meet people. Forget about the rest of it, meeting people and connecting the dots is crucial. You can base an entire career on knowing people.

Jr: Oh god, don’t get me started on social media and ‘networking’. I think we’ve got to be careful, you know. Everyone seems to get so caught up in the conversation and being part of the technology that they actually forget to do stuff. Everyone is talking about it, making comments, but not actually creating anything.

W: No shit! I picked up a biz card recently where this kid had over 12 ways of contacting them and I wondered how the hell he gets anything done? People get obsessed with Twitter, but six months ago something different was happening. I’ve seen it with trends, and in footwear, certain things have come and gone so fast I’m still scratching my head. I must admit the pace of change recently has really kicked up a gear. We’re now facing a world where TV, newspapers, magazines and even radio are no longer the foundation of our media diet. The porn industry is on its knees! Books are on the way out as well, at least in a printed sense. I’m really intrigued as to whether this new Kindle could really do for books what the iPod has done for music.

snkrfrkr

Jr: That’s an interesting point. Sneaker Freaker is kinda like a book. It’s a bit nicer than the usual magazine really. You must sell a few more older issues than any other magazine. Do you think the content goes out of date?

W: It does and it doesn’t. You can’t buy those shoes anymore, but every magazine becomes a document of its time so you can go back and still enjoy them as a snapshot of the years they were made. We sell a lot of our old issues, more than most magazines perhaps. Magazines are a good barometer of style and opinion and when you go back you do get a good insight into the times. We’ve been going about seven years or so and really the first one was pretty raw when you look at it. I have to say it was actually designed that way on purpose, but still, it was pretty loose. I wish I could have seen into the future.

Jr: Ha, I totally have that copy. How many people were working on it then?

W: The magazine didn’t have any staff for probably the first four years. Hans DC came to work with me part time helping in various ways. I wish I’d ramped it up earlier but I just didn’t have the foresight to go for it. I was also still working on my label called Wankuss (with my friend Alasdair McKinnon), as well as doing design work for films like Ned Kelly and Queen of the Damned and other stuff. I liked to keep my options open.

Jr: Really? It was just you? Wow. Back then a lot of clever people put out free magazines. I used to read Stu Magazine and Large whenever I could get my hands on them.

W: Stu was good. Vice came along. And Lucky. There were about seven free magazines floating around. Our first edition was free then I decided to charge for it. People still think it’s free.

Jr: Yeah it seemed to be the heyday of free magazines.

W: Yep. Not sure we’ll see too many new ones open up for business. But I have a killer idea for a new magazine that would be awesome which only proves how out of touch I really am.

Jr: Haha. Maybe. Maybe not. You’d probably be surprised. I’m sure that’s what people said when you came up with an idea So why sneakers?

W: I thought that I was one of the few people who were into sneakers, but then I could see it was bigger than I thought – there were a lot of guys like me who had 50 or 60 shoes in their closet but we didn’t know each other. Sneakers are one of those things that men can talk animatedly, dudes are really into their feet. It used to be about Air Max and chunky runners but it’s flipped on its head now. Pointer and Clae and Gourmet are doing very well, brands with simple things, not super jacked-up runners. Trends are definitely changing. You can’t stop progress, but it’s easy to feel like a dinosaur.

Jr: Was it difficult starting up a magazine?

W: Not really, because I only needed a few thousand dollars to get it printed. Then by issue two people wanted to buy it. Our first international customer was a very well known store in Paris.

Jr: Wow! How did they find you?

W: Through our website. We were one of the first online sneaker sites. The reason they are so renowned is because they find out about something before anyone else. They’re the top of their game. I was in there last week and it was mental how many people go in there. It’s like a tourist attraction! Once we went international I also had to learn about things like international shipping, which became crucial to the business growing. Boring things like this are so important and can be the difference between survival and death.

Jr: That’s the thing with publishing in Australia. You can print it here but then you’ve gotta ship all those heavy issues overseas. Some magazines print overseas and distribute it that way. Do you ever do that?

W: Once about five years ago we sold out of an issue in about a week and we got another order of 2000 copies. The reprint quote locally was nuts, so I found a printer in China and got them shipped straight out of there. I haven’t done it since. We’re still printed in Melbourne, five blocks from my house. It’s just too stressful to not know where your job and therefore your whole life is at. I remember all too well a launch party in Sydney where the magazines were still on a truck locked in the warehouse as a result of a snap industrial action.

Jr: Can you raise a family on a niche publication?

W: I can now. In the first few years I never had staff to pay so the overheads were low. I learned over time how to make money from a variety of sources. You can sell magazines, advertising, online banners, syndicate your content and do marketing for brands and product development. I have to say in every respect, I learned the hard way. Piece by piece. I learned a lot from watching other people and making mistakes. I also had to learn to trust people in other countries. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. I’ve been pretty lucky in that department.

Jr: And I guess you have that giant monolith Nike to buoy you up.

W: Nike has always been good to me, right from the start. But we are also supported by nearly every other brand in the footwear biz. If you wanna start a niche magazine, make sure what you do is invaluable to the marketing managers of multinational companies or you’ll forever be pushing shit uphill.

Jr: How would someone who really wants to work in big brand sneakers approach getting a job at a company like that? How do they go about it?

W: Actually we did a feature about how to get into the business a while back. There’s a few simple things. Every brand needs accountants and pen pushers but if you’re talking about shoe design, a lot of the guys at Nike and other brands are originally architects or sculptors, in other words they had an idea of three-dimensional space that could be translated to footwear. Shoe design school didn’t really exist til recently. Doing research on any company that you want to work for is a must. Knowing everything about them, but also having an understanding of how they hire is essential. If you want to work for adidas, find out how to get in contact with their HR department. Start on the phones or in their factory outlet and build your way up. There are plenty of CEOs who started in the mailroom. It’s also thinking strategically. Working for Sneaker Freaker could be a good way to get in as it’s an insight into the industry. Foot Locker wouldn’t hurt either. You need to know what you’re talking about and have a foundation of knowledge.

Jr: Loving sneakers isn’t enough at the end of the day; you have to have some sort of skill or craft.

W: Correct. Loving something can actually be a handicap, if you wanna be a hardass about it. When you love something too much, your opinion and judgment can be clouded by sentiment. But if it was me, I’d go for the passion every time. I think one of the biggest things that kids could learn is to be persistent. Some kids expect to start as a junior and take over the company in two years. Or if you start your own thing, that you’ll be rich overnight. The reality is that businesses mature over a few years and it takes you time to work out what you are actually doing, unless you are super advanced or lucky. It’s human nature that is probably exacerbated by this frantic model we’ve built up. Everyone wants everything yesterday. If only it was that easy… whatever happened to paying your dues?

Jr: I think that’s a wonderful point to make. Persistence is something we’re big on. But sometimes persistence isn’t even enough. You know, it’s really hard to do something big in such a small market place like Australia. Take publishing for example: If you want to get distribution of your magazines, you’ve got to be in a bigger market.

W: That’s true, but I don’t think that’s a reason not to do anything. It’s like procrastinators who never do anything because they’re too cool to put themselves out there or they think it’ll never work so why bother. Melbourne is full of creative people, the only problem is that most of them are, like anywhere else, mildly talented at best. The most talented ones find it a struggle to attract the same benefactors they’d find in Europe or the US. Look how many talented Australians have to leave? We are a nation of 22 million, the same size as greater New York. So to answer your question, you def need to be in a bigger market, but it’s not going to happen sitting on your date in Fitzroy drinking Chai and smoking rollies. You have to work your ass off. In my own world, I realised that if I wanted to succeed beyond Australia, I learned from others that staying home in my office wasn’t gonna make it happen. I’m on the road a lot.

Jr: Isn’t Sneaker Freaker translated into Spanish?

W: Yeah, it has been for the past two years. It’s been going really well and we have a great partner running the office over in Barcelona. I’m pretty sure we are the first Aussie magazine to be translated into a foreign language.

Jr: Do you ever think about moving it all overseas?

W: I have at different times, but this is where I’m from and this is where I’m staying. The footwear industry in Australia is in Melbourne. But I think I do regret not moving a bit. Maybe I’m just not the personality type to really take it to the max… Either way, we have been successful on our own terms which is just part of the story.

Jr: Maybe because you married and had kids. Was that the plan? To settle down?

W: I think that cycle of life is inevitable. I wish I’d had a family earlier in hindsight, but we can all look back and say that. Luckily I have a very understanding wife who encouraged me to go for it, even if she recently confided that she thought the magazine was a crazy idea and would be lucky to last six months.

Jr: Any plans to expand your team?

W: I would like to find an Editor to take over next year so I can spend some time working on different ideas. We are always looking for writers. But it’s hard to find anyone who can write these days, as well as have a command of sneakers. If anyone is interested they can email info@sneakerfreaker.com (info null@null sneakerfreaker NULL.com).

Jr: So that means that you could focus on running the business.

W: Absolutely, I could move to the Bahamas and sit under a palm tree with my blackberry.

Jr: And a cocktail! Any final advice for the kids who wanna start a magazine and make a living out of it?

W: My advice is go for it. What the hell. What’s the worst that can happen? You might go bankrupt and have to flee to Brazil… just don’t let anyone tell you something can’t be done or you’ve got a stupid idea. I had that plenty of times. How many people get rich from stupid ideas?

DESIGN, PUBLISHING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, WRITING | Also tagged COMMITMENT, CREATIVITY, HUNGER, INSPIRATION, JOB HUNTING, LONDON, MAGAZINE, MELBOURNE, OVERSEAS, PUBLISHING, RMIT, SNEAKERFREAKER, SNEAKERS, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, WOODY, WORK, WRITING

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