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The Monday Morning WHIP // 26

whip26

It’s no use calling yourself a creative if you don’t make things. We learned that lesson last week. But what to do? Where do you start? “I need briefs!” – Graduate student, 22. “I need inspiration!” – Artsy Schmartzy Dude, 24. Bah! You don’t need nuthin’. All you need is to start. If even that’s giving you grief, here’s some suggestions from our resident whip-cracker, Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/).

You don’t need me to tell you that getting a full time creative job takes time. It can take months, even years. Yes years.

But if making a living out of being creative is what you want to do, what you really want to do, then you will get a job. Eventually.

So what can you do in the meantime to put your creativity to good use?

Got an idea for a short film or a TV ad? Get some friends together, grab a video camera and post your work to YouTube. Believe me, it’s easier than you think.
You could start a blog. But there are literally a billion blogs already, so if you start one use your creativity to put together something new, different and uniquely you.
If you enjoy writing, set up a Twitter account. There’s no better way to sharpen your skills than by churning out pithy 140 character bon mots on a regular basis.
Photographers should be regularly posting photos to photography sites. Just be sure to set up an email list and let people know whenever you post new work.

Art directors and designers can get work by offering their services to local businesses. If a handful of shops in your area let you makeover their logo, or design a flyer for them, you’ll quickly fill a folio with real work.

There are loads of ways to put your creative skills to work. And all of them will make you more employable. As long as you understand that getting a job takes time.

ADVERTISING, ART, DESIGN, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY, WHIP, WRITING | Also tagged ADVERTISING, DESIGN, INSPIRATION, JOB HUNTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, WRITING, YOUTUBE

Tag Archives: CREATIVITY

The Monday Morning WHIP // 25

create1

If you want to be a creative there’s only one thing to do – create. Make stuff every day. Someone once told us, “There is no right or wrong – only make.” This week Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) does what he does best, reminding us why we’re here and what to do.

So you wanna be a creative do you?
OK then. Tell me what you’ve created this week?
“Well….It’s a bit hard at the moment. Um….I work in a café a couple of afternoons a week, so it’s hard to find the time.”
That, my young friends, is a snippet of a conversation I had this week with a wannabe copywriter who came to show me her folio.
She had a pretty good book to be honest. But It hadn’t really changed since the last time she’d come to see me three months ago.
Which is, to be totally blunt, not bloody good enough.
If you want to be a creative, you must create. Not now and again. Not just on the weekend. You must create whenever and however you can.
You should be constantly adding to your folio. If it stagnates, so too will your chances of getting a job.
So if you’d rather come up with excuses than great ideas, do yourself (and me) a favour and go get a job in an accounting firm.

ADVERTISING, ANIMATION, ARCHITECTURE, ART, DESIGN, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY, WHIP, WRITING | Also tagged HUNGER, JOB HUNTING, WHIP

Tag Archives: CREATIVITY

The Interview Series // 12 (Part Two)

tobyselena

OK, so yesterday we posted Part One of this interview. If you haven’t read it already do it now. For those that have already read it, just quietly, this half is wayyyy better. Well, not that the last half sucked, but this is sexier. If the last half was Carrie Bradshaw, this half is Samantha Jones. Apply any analogy you like. You’ll see what we mean. P.S. If you’ve ever wanted a list of blogs and magazines the successful and beautiful people are browsing, then this is where you’ll find it. Just a couple of scrolls down. But don’t be a fucker and skip straight there. Jeez. Read it from the start.

Jr: Tell us a little bit about the work that you did here in Australia. We’ve been a big fan of the Victoria Tourism ‘Red Thread’ (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=WaZbnWpm5aU) and Nike ‘Reincarnate’ (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=1sElYG7LmUU) campaigns. Was that good work for you guys? Do you feel like you could do better?

S: We always feel we could do better.
T: Our book has always felt like a catalogue of errors and missed opportunities. Those two jobs included.

Jr: What are briefs like that you get at Fallon (http://fallon NULL.co NULL.uk)?

T: They’re more open compared to Australia. When we were here there was a lot of pressure to write to a line or come up with a line, then to come up with an execution for that line. But over there the briefs are more open and this can lead to less ad-y stuff. The solution could be a film, could be an event, could be a documentary, could be an online thing, could be a new technology, it could be anything and everything.

Jr: So is that what a lot of the work coming out of Fallon is now? Not ads?

S: Yeah. A Swedish team for Cadbury had this thought of just planting purple flowers everywhere in disused parts of land, traffic islands and stuff like that, to give people a moment of joy. And that’s what the brief was. Bring people moments of joy.

Jr: So does that mean Fallon’s not a place for people in advertising?

T: People who want to execute traditional ads would probably be disappointed at Fallon.

Jr: What’s it like going from writing traditional ads in your first portfolio now to doing everything but. Are you doing what you’d imagine you’d be doing in advertising?

S: Very early on we wrote a manifesto of what we liked in advertising. It was almost to work out whether Toby and I got along and to see if we saw things the same way. We wrote a manifesto of what we would never do and tried to stick by it.

Jr: Did you put that in your folio?

S: No, we didn’t. It was just something we did for ourselves. We did revise it a few times though.
T: We did four manifestos. I think two still survive somewhere. But that was really good for us to do.
S: Just to remind yourself that you shouldn’t compromise.

Jr: So if that was to work out whether or not you guys could work together, how did you meet?

T: We met at a really small little agency in St Kilda.
S: But then our Creative Director committed suicide and Toby and I were made Creative Directors as juniors at this shotgun of an agency.
T: No we weren’t made Creative Directors. We just called ourselves Creative Directors cause we were the only creatives there.
S: We just knew after a while that as juniors we had so much to learn and we weren’t going to learn it there. So we hauled ourselves off to London.

Jr: We spoke to Todd Lamb the other week, and one of his ideas was ripped off by some guy here in Melbourne. What do you think of that?

S: See that shit pisses us off. It’s like seeing commercials on TV directly ripped off YouTube – “How can you fucking live with yourself?”

Jr: Yesssss!

S: I fucking hate it! Did you hear the inflection in my voice? I fucking hate it, stop fucking looking at YouTube for fuck’s sake! I find it disgusting, lazy and appalling.

Jr: It happens all the time though. I suppose we can try to help educate the kids. Anyway, what’s your relationship with the photographers and directors that you work with?

S: There are creatives out there that will see something in a photographer’s book and come up with an idea using that style. Toby and I always work on the strategy first, work on the idea, find the references to bring it to life and then execute it. That’s the way it should be done.
T: Well that’s not quite right is it? We try and involve the director as soon as we can. And that’s really encouraged. If he finds references or has ideas then that’s really great. Recently we’ve had some dialogue heavy spots we’ve had to do and we tried to involve the director as much as we could in coming up with scripts. We said, ‘here’s our scripts, here’s what we’ve done and look at it as a first draft. If you want to change the whole fucking thing go for it. And then we can look at it and work on this together.’ No director wants to be told, ‘this is what we’re shooting – this is what you have to shoot’.
S: So we always try and involve the director. They’ll make your shit better, because they do it better than you, ultimately.

Jr: So what happened, for example, during the Red Thread campaign? How did you involve the director Glendyn Ivin (http://exitfilms NULL.com/directors/default NULL.htm?DirectorId=24)? Was the final TVC (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=WaZbnWpm5aU)what you had in your head?

S: Toby and I did so much research for the ad. Yeah I guess we had already shot the commercial in our head, because at the time we lived on Little Collins St. When we pitched it to Glendyn we gave him the broader idea of what it was and asked him what he would change or how he would do it.

Jr: But you’d never been on top of the Town Hall or other secret spots like that?

S: No that’s right. And that was one of the things that Glendyn found.
T: He found lots of places.
S: Yeah, and that was one of the reasons why we went to him because he showed us something that we hadn’t. So that sort of gives you an idea that this person is going to bring something to the table.
T: Just like Steve Rogers (http://revolverfilm NULL.com/) on the Nike ‘Reincarnate’ (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=1sElYG7LmUU) campaign. It was his idea to do the two-camera thing. Two cameras – same take. And when we saw the test shot we thought, ‘yes, this is really, really good.’
S: And then the typography for Red Thread, we have always loved Niels Oeltjen (http://www NULL.nails NULL.net NULL.au/). He’s a great typographer and artist and he lives in Melbourne. We wanted to keep it Melbourne. Everything from Melbourne.

Jr: You used Josh Petherick (http://www NULL.joshpetherick NULL.com/) as well.

S: Yeah for the illustration style. We really love Josh’s stuff.

Jr: So how do you get inspiration for these things?

S: We are sponges. We look at anything and everything.

Jr: So then what are you guys reading and listening to? What are your influences? How far do you cast your net?

S: At the moment Toby’s listening to 70’s horror rock.

Jr: Like who?

T: Goblin. (http://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Goblin_(band))
S: Late at night, at 12 o’clock, he’s listening to Goblin. Tapping away at his keyboard.

Jr: Are you looking at blogs?

S: Here’s a short list and it changes often. Boing Boing (http://boingboing NULL.net/), swissmiss (http://www NULL.swiss-miss NULL.com/), anp quarterly (http://www NULL.rvcaanpq NULL.com/), vvork (http://www NULL.vvork NULL.com/), It’s Nice That (http://www NULL.itsnicethat NULL.com/), reference library (http://referencelibrary NULL.blogspot NULL.com/), SuperTouchart (http://www NULL.supertouchart NULL.com/), Wooster Collective (http://www NULL.woostercollective NULL.com/), CR Blog (http://www NULL.creativereview NULL.co NULL.uk/crblog/), things magazine (http://www NULL.thingsmagazine NULL.net/), The Moment (http://themoment NULL.blogs NULL.nytimes NULL.com/), aNYthing glob (http://glob NULL.anewyorkthing NULL.com/), the art collectors (http://blog NULL.theartcollectors NULL.com/), Universal Everything (http://universaleverything NULL.com/), Everyone Forever (http://everyoneforever NULL.com/), ?? blah blah jinx ?? (http://jahjahsphinx NULL.blogspot NULL.com/), teenageteardrops (http://teenageteardrops NULL.com/), Design*Sponge (http://www NULL.designspongeonline NULL.com/), Duffed Out Industries (http://duffedout NULL.wordpress NULL.com/), the wormholes (http://www NULL.thewormholes NULL.org/), Kitsune Noir (http://kitsunenoir NULL.com/blog/), We Made This (http://wemadethis NULL.typepad NULL.com/), UUIUU! (http://uuiuu NULL.tumblr NULL.com/), Dezeen (http://www NULL.dezeen NULL.com/), broke ya neckkkk (http://brokeyaneck NULL.blogspot NULL.com/), Wooooo (http://www NULL.wooooomag NULL.com/), Sneaker Freaker (http://www NULL.sneakerfreaker NULL.com/), Irakny (http://www NULL.irakny NULL.com/), 12ozprophet (http://www NULL.12ozprophet NULL.com/), art crimes (http://www NULL.artcrimes NULL.net/), hurtyoubad (http://www NULL.hurtyoubad NULL.com/), this American life (http://www NULL.thisamericanlife NULL.org/), izrock (http://www NULL.izrock NULL.com/), reas international (http://www NULL.reasinternational NULL.com/blog/), Colette (http://arkitipintel NULL.com/reporters/sarah/), Busy P (http://arkitipintel NULL.com/reporters/pedro/), Hypem (http://hypem NULL.com/), mafia hunt (http://skelemitz NULL.wordpress NULL.com/), The Selby (http://www NULL.theselby NULL.com/), Art decade (http://artdecade NULL.blogspot NULL.com/), Bibliodyssey (http://bibliodyssey NULL.blogspot NULL.com/).

Jr: What about books and magazines?

S: I’m reading a bunch of different magazines Wooooo (http://www NULL.wooooomag NULL.com/), Apartmento, The Drawbridge, The Believer, Art Forum, Art Review, ANP Quarterly, Won (http://nownow NULL.com NULL.au/), Zoetrope All-story. Looking at Kramers Ergot, Anything Dave Eggers makes like McSweeneys, Chris Johanson, Todd James, Oz Magazine, old Graphis Annuals, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simons, Tiny Vices, TV Books, Serps zines (http://theserps NULL.com NULL.au/). And listening to mixtapes from friends.

Jr: So do you try and keep your influences to film and music and writing?

S: And comics and newspapers and yeah.
T: And it tends to be reflected by the work that you’re doing. If you’re doing comedy dialogue scripts you probably tend to start watching a lot of dialogue heavy comedy.

Jr: So what comedy do you watch if you’re doing dialogue heavy comedy work?

T: ‘The Thick of It’.

Jr: What’s ‘The Thick of It’?

T: It’s a BBC comedy written by Armando Iannucci (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=h_7pyktzpY8) – It’s fucking brilliant. It’s like – this is fucking terrible – you know the whole TV show ‘Yes Minister’? It’s a bit like that but there’s a lot of abuse and swearing. It’s really, really funny. And the process that they use to do it is really good too. It’s all pretty much adlib.

Jr: So how do you use that influence and study it so you can write something along those lines?

T: Well I was really more interested in the method they use. Because you watch it and it feels really fresh. Basically they shoot a scene about three times – once to the script and another couple of times totally adlib, then they cut it all together – they don’t even care about jump cuts or anything – so they just use whatever makes it funny.

Jr: There’s this stupid advertising humour that goes around a lot. A lot of people just keep trying to do it and it’s so unfunny.

S: But then there are the effortless ones like the Skittles ads – they are fucking hilarious. They’re not overly intellectualised. Pinada man is amazing. (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=3yPaLq1EpQw) We showed Toby’s younger brothers who aren’t in the advertising world – they’re 16 or 17 – and they just sat there and laughed. It’s just effortless and simple.

Jr: Yes, like the great ‘Berries and Cream’ (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=wYX_zhlTDr8) TVCs.

S: Yeah. Pinada man is better though. And the guy that turns everything he touches into skittles. (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=sxItH0I6xmQ)

Jr: We don’t really see you as ‘advertising’ people. You’ve made films and been exhibited in art shows.

S: Oh, we’re advertising people alright. We spend too much of our time working on the stuff to call ourselves anything different. But we hate it. We’re subjected to so much of it.

Jr: Do you tell people when you’re at a BBQ, ‘I’m in advertising’?

T: Yeah. Because part of me loves it.

Jr: Any final advice? If someone came in to show you their folio at Fallon…

S: Which we’re always happy to do. As long as we don’t just see ads.

Jr: Do you do it often?

S: Uh, not often enough. Not as often as we’d like. But we’re always happy to see anything, especially Australian folios, but don’t just show us ads because that would be a waste of time.
T: We don’t care if there are no print or TV ads, just show us some really interesting ideas that aren’t advertising based. We’ll pay attention. Like if there’s good ideas and there’s no advertising there then great, fantastic. And then we’ll take it from there I suppose.

Jr: Is there an opening for a junior team at Fallon at the moment?

S: Well Fallon just retrenched 14 people so, I don’t know.
T: Who knows?

Jr: What if a junior team came in and worked for free?

S: Sure. We’ve got a few placement teams at the moment working really hard on live briefs. It’s an awesome start.
T: If a great book reaches the Creative Director then he’ll do anything to get them in.
S: You can’t stop good work.

ADVERTISING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES | Also tagged ADVERTISING, FALLON, FOLIO, INSPIRATION, JOB HUNTING, LONDON, THE INTERVIEW SERIES

Tag Archives: CREATIVITY

The Interview Series // 12 (Part One)

tobyselena

Have you ever been jet-lagged? We have. It sucks balls. You wander around aimlessly for days and people say things like, ‘wow man, you look like a zombie’. Thanks friend. Thanks a lot. And you look like an asshole. When Toby Moore and Selena McKenzie rocked up to an inner-Melbourne bar for this interview, they looked like friggin’ zombies. We caught them on a weeklong whirlwind tour of their old hometown before flying back to their snug offices (above) at the ‘world famous’ ad agency Fallon London (http://www NULL.fallon NULL.co NULL.uk/). These guys are pretty much our idols. They even paid for our beer. We spoke for so long that we’ve had to cut this interview into two. But that’s cool cause we get double the amount of hits. Suckers.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for Part Two in the Toby/Selena jetlagged beer-off.

Junior: What was it like when you guys finished uni?

Toby: Well I finished around ’96. Straight after I took a year off and just sorta hung around my house…
Selena: Smoking bongs.

Jr: Should we strike that from the record?

T&S: Ha, no don’t. Leave it in.

Jr: Ha, OK.

T: Yeah. And you know, like anyone, you put off actually going out and getting a job. Finally my step-dad who I was living with basically said in a nice way, ‘I’m going to kick you out if you don’t get a job’. Which I was pretty bummed about cause I had a really big room at the back of the house with my own door out to the patio.

Jr: So what did you do?

T: Ugh, I panicked a little bit and then, out of the blue, I got a phone call from a design lecturer (I went to Swinburne) saying, ‘There’s this job going at a studio in South Melbourne.’ I only lasted about two weeks after I got there. I got sacked. But the next day, I went back to get my paycheck and the whole business had gone under. Apparently the accountant had put the decimal point in the wrong spot on the latest lot of bills, and they went under.

Jr: That’s ridiculous.

T: They should leave it to computers.

Jr: So we’ve heard some different stories about you guys. One particular story is that you sat in a library for a couple of months writing hundreds of ads. Did that happen? What’s the entire story?

S: We went to London with our book that Toby and I had put together of our own graduate work. We showed it to a Creative Director at a certain agency…
T: A not very good agency.
S: And this particular Creative Director said, “Uhh, it’s a bit middle class.”

Jr: Middle Class? That’s the words he used? What did he mean by that?

S: As in middle class – a bit boring, a bit safe…
T: A bit beige.
S: So we walked out and threw it away.

Jr: How many ads did you have in it?

T: Probably about fifteen things.
S: Yeah so we threw it away.
T: And took our middle-class asses back to Australia and back to the middle-class library.

All: Hahaha.

T: So we got home, got in my mum’s Volvo and said, “fuck this, fuck you, we don’t want to be middle-class.”

Jr: So you actually listened to this guy?

S: Fuck yeah. It hurt. Plus he was in a real office in a real agency.

Jr: But you said it wasn’t even a very good agency.

S: It still mattered.

Jr: Do you think it matters to take all criticism?

T: No definitely not. We should point out that the ‘middle-class’ incident was the worst insult of our lives.
S: Heh yeah, so we went to the library in the Volvo, which of course was beige, and for every brief we worked on we came up with one hundred ideas. We were angry.

Jr: One hundred ideas for every brief?

S: Yep. Roughly. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
T: When we say one hundred ideas, they were just written down. We didn’t execute them. We’d execute the best three as campaigns and we’d put those into a separate folio. So we had two folios. We figured if they didn’t like the ideas in one folio, we could show them the other. Like insurance.

Jr: How many briefs?

S: Ten to twenty?
T: No. Twelve? I don’t know. That took us ages… How long did that take us?
S: Oh, about eight months. On the dole.

Jr: Before Mojo (http://www NULL.publicismojo NULL.com NULL.au/) or after Mojo (http://www NULL.publicismojo NULL.com NULL.au/)?

T: Before Mojo (http://www NULL.publicismojo NULL.com NULL.au/).

Jr: So this was before you’d had a job in advertising at all?

S: Toby had worked at Y&R Mattingly.

Jr: Right.

S: And then we showed our book to Dave Alberts who offered us a job in Sydney, at Publicis Mojo (http://www NULL.publicismojo NULL.com NULL.au/).
T: We were there for eighteen months. Then Darren (Spiller – Creative Director of Publicis Mojo (http://www NULL.publicismojo NULL.com NULL.au/) Melbourne) invited us down to the Melbourne office. We’d actually gone for a job interview there during our unemployment stretch, and Darren had kind of gone, “Ohh not sure guys, this is OK, don’t mind this, but I don’t think so.”

Jr: So what’s Darren’s version of that event?

T: We never really spoke to him about it. It was as though he’d wiped it from his mind. But I suppose our persistence paid off and we got to work with him in the end.

Jr: Haha, OK. So you were in Sydney, how was that? Amazing? Boring? Shit?

S: It was really amazing and great to work as an Australian team in a department of mainly English creatives. It was great how they threw around ideas and were really open with sharing thoughts. So we would share our ideas with them and everyone would make each other’s work better. It was tough, but we were around really good people.
T: Initially we did some ads that were pretty average though.

Jr: As you do when you’re starting out.

T: Yeah we tried so hard. I can’t believe how hard we tried to make them decent. But they were just, yeah, shockers.

Jr: So were you the first and last to leave every day?

S: I remember one night we worked thirty or so hours to meet a deadline. We’d read somewhere that Winston Churchill used to have powernaps. So we thought, ‘we’ll do that too!’
T: So every hour, I think the idea was you’d have fifteen minutes sleep.

Jr: Did it work?

T&S: Ha, no. Not at all.
S: We found it took more than fifteen minutes to get to sleep.

Jr: Heh, bummer.

S: Except we did come up with an idea at about 8am in the morning, which we then took into the presentation with the client and they bought it.

Jr: Was it any good?

T: It wasn’t that good.
S: We ended up re-presenting something better a week later.
T: But it was hell.
S: We’ll never do that again.

There’s still plenty more where that came from. Part Two coming tomorrow!

ADVERTISING, THE INTERVIEW SERIES | Also tagged ADVERTISING, FALLON, INSPIRATION, LONDON, OVERSEAS, PUBLICIS MOJO

Tag Archives: CREATIVITY

The Interview Series // 10

ericquennoy

See this picture above? It’s Eric! Don’t you just want to give him a cuddle? Aww, what a guy. He’s currently one of the insanely talented creative directors at Wieden+Kennedy (http://www NULL.wk NULL.com/) Amsterdam. It’s there that he makes ads for Nike and other authentically relevant brands. He made this ad about talking arteries (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/watch?v=WRlIZVeNI1k) which we think is particularly cool. We wanted to find out how we can make cool ads too, because we have no idea where to start. So we tried to ask some insightful questions, and maybe we did, but we suppose you’ll be the judge of that, Mr and Mrs Readership. So, what are you waiting for? Go on, it’s good we swear.

Junior: Eric! It’s lovely to meet you. What are you up to at the moment? Is the weather annoying you like everyone else?

Eric: Hey! Nice to meet you too. Right now, I’m at my desk and the first hints of Spring have hit Amsterdam. Everyone is so unbelievably happy and relieved that the rainy Winter nightmare is over. I’m also nervously waiting to hear if our Nike World Cup campaign has been approved from the head honchos in Portland. Please God/Allah/Vishnu/Satan.

Jr: We’re praying too! So we hear you’re a Melbourne boy from way back. How does one of those end up at W+K Amsterdam?

E: I left Melbourne in ’98 for New York City. Worked there for 7 years, had a kid, decided to get out, and landed a job here at W+K Amsterdam. Sweet.

Jr: Did you have a job lined up before you packed your bags and said goodbye to the lucky country?

E: No I didn’t. Having married an American I had a green card, so I thought I’d just move there and try shopping my book around. See how that goes. Luckily I got there in the midst of the dot com boom, when they were giving jobs to monkeys. I say luckily because my work was very Australian – weird brands, strange humor, low budget – and it didn’t go down all that well. But honestly, there was so much money around at the time they just needed people.

Jr: You know, everyone in the world wants to work at W+K. All we hear is, ‘man, they do really cool work.’ Somehow we think it can’t just be guys shooting hoops and spending million dollar budgets. Is it really about ‘cool’ work or is there something more to it?

E: Of course it’s about doing cool work, but that could never happen if the culture wasn’t in place to support the creatives. It is the only place I have ever worked at that is genuinely driven by creative. If the account people don’t think it’s right, but the creatives think it’s cool, well the creatives win. That doesn’t mean that the account guys are muppets, it’s just that they know they will never win that fight. So they get on board and support us wholeheartedly. All W+K offices are managed by two ECDs and one MD. Majority rules.

Jr: That’s really nice to know. Advertising is generally filled with people bred to KILL creativity. Bah! What are we to do? I suppose everyone aspires to work at a ‘cool’ agency to get past that, but realistically not everyone is suited to the W+K’s of the world. What do you look for in an aspiring W+K candidate?

E: There’s such a wide range of oddballs here, it’s hard to pick any defining feature of a W+K employee other than being ‘into it’. I guess everyone here is passionate about stuff, creative or otherwise. You can’t fake that. Oh, and an above average ability to write or art direct will help.

Jr: As a Creative Director, how can a junior get on your good side? Is it all about presenting good work or are there other ways we can get you excited?

E: I just want to see lots of ideas. And I never want anyone to take themselves too seriously.

Jr: Copywriting. It’s misunderstood by so many juniors, probably because art direction seems to be the obvious choice for an ‘aspiring creative’. What would you say to a kid who wants to be a copywriter, but has no idea where to start, let alone hone their craft?

E: Study the annuals and showreels. Read and write a lot. Work with a partner. Don’t smoke too much dope.

Jr: What about the copywriters out there who are working already and are sick of writing brochures and eDMs for cooking utensils? What should they do to step it up and write better ads?

E: Well if they’re already working they should be trying their utmost to do cool stuff for every client in the building. Anything will do, a banner, a flyer, a spot shot on a mobile phone, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s cool. They should also get very chummy with the best art director in the building.

Jr: Very good advice, but as juniors we might have cool ideas yet it’s our presentation skills that need help. Any tips on how to present better, and especially creative that might seem a bit wacky, or worse, a ‘risk’?

E: I always think it’s good to explain how you came to to an idea – your thinking process – no matter how left-field it is. And by the way ‘risk’ is good, but wacky is rarely good. And tell your idea like you’d tell it to your friends at the pub. With the same level of enthusiasm and all the little additional quips thrown in.

Jr: Finally, all juniors are told to get a good mentor. What makes a good mentor and where should a junior look to find a good one?

E: A good starting point is to get a mentor who isn’t shit. Someone who has done good work. Beyond that it’s about liking the person. Any half decent human will be happy to help you if you reach out to them for help. It takes balls, but I also suggest approaching someone you admire directly with a letter or a phone call. Once you ask them for advice, there’ll be no stopping them. We all love to bang about how much we know.

ADVERTISING, ANIMATION, DESIGN, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, WRITING | Also tagged ADVERTISING, AMSTERDAM, NEW YORK, THE INTERVIEW SERIES, WIEDEN+KENNEDY, WRITING

Tag Archives: CREATIVITY

The Monday Morning WHIP // 08

As a junior, it’s easy to take things for granted – your spontaneous creativity, your thirst for knowledge and your eye for interesting things. But as you get older, it becomes easy to lose your mojo. Other things get in the way. Things like kids and houses and babychinos. Though not all is lost yet dear reader. This week, Stan (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com/) has some tips for retaining your youthful mojo. And it is, of course, translated into a metaphor every Gen-Y will immediately understand.

When you’re young you’re constantly exposed to new things. Even old things are new if you haven’t seen or heard them before.

One of the best ways to ensure your creative mojo is always operating at an optimum level is to continue to expose yourself to new things.

The best way to do this is to act like an iPod shuffle. Rather than doing the same things day in day out do something different.

So how is that like a shuffle, you’re probably thinking?

What I’m talking about is putting your mind on the shuffle setting. So rather than doing what you have done before, you end up doing something different or unexpected.

Which means you’re discovering new things on a daily basis. Much like you did when you were young.

Here are my five favourite ways to add a shuffle element to your life:

- When you turn on the radio in the morning choose a different station everyday.

- If you take public transport get off one stop before or after your destination and walk.

- Talking of public transport, leave the iPod in the bag and just soak up the life going on around you.

- Next time you see a Big Issue seller don’t walk past. Stop for a chat. No need to buy a mag, although that would be nice, just take a moment or two to talk to them.

- Finally, if you read blogs try clicking the Next Blog button at the top of the webpage. If you don’t read blogs start. Apparently Brand DNA (http://branddna NULL.blogspot NULL.com) is quite a good one.

WHIP | Also tagged SHUFFLE, TIPS

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The Monday Morning WHIP // 08

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The Monday Morning WHIP // 25

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The Interview Series // 12 (Part Two)

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The Interview Series // 12 (Part One)

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The Interview Series // 10

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The Monday Morning WHIP // 08

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