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 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.

Hey everybody! We’ve got ourselves organised for 2010. This year is gonna be great! Stan‘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. 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 Leonardo, 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, this, this and this — 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.

That’s right everyone. Keep working. Don’t stop. We’re with you all the way. No matter who says your work is shit, off-brief, derivative, uncool, forced, uninteresting, lofty, idealistic, beige, untrue, wallpaper, too long, too short, too big, not big enough, square, round, pointy, or plain. We don’t care. Just keep doing your thing. And listen to everything Stan says…

Apparently I’ve been churning out these Monday Whips for over a year now. If you were there for the first one, and still haven’t landed a full-time creative gig, don’t panic.

As I wrote sometime ago, landing a job where you get to use your creativity for a living isn’t easy. But then you probably already know that by now.

So I’ll reiterate what I say to every young hopeful that comes to show me their folio:

If being a creative is what you want to do, what you really want to do, then you will eventually become one.

You must however steel yourself for what could be a long and frustrating ride.

People will criticise your work. They will question your ability. You will often wonder yourself whether or not you’ve got what it takes.

Hang in there, is all I can say.

Stay focused. Stay passionate. Stay hungry.

Because sooner or later you will happen to find yourself in the right place at exactly the right time.

Until then, keep working on your folio. Working until it is the best damn folio anyone has ever seen. Ever.

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’ 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 and The Face. From a design point of view, 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.

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.

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?

There once was a time in the history of modern advertising, when mad men were actually mad, and the industry produced characters larger than life. People like Charles Saatchi, Ed McCabe, Bill Bernbach, and George Lois, who in particular once said, “I know what the fuck I know, and you know what the hell you know, and I’ll tell you what I think, and you tell me to fuck off.” Stan knows the things that made these characters larger than life can make you successful too. You just have to find heroes worth following.

On Sunday I went to see The Damned United. It’s a film about one of the most charismatic men in English football, the late Brian Clough.

The only person I can compare him to is Don Draper from the TV show Mad Men.

Like Draper, Clough did not tolerate fools very well. What made him successful was a combination of his love of the game and sheer bloody mindedness.

These are characteristics you need to have too.

Of course you can have a career without them, but you’re going to need them if you want to get to the top.

Clough took a lowly team to the pinnacle of English football. And he did it his way. He broke rules, he ignored advice and he did whatever club management told him not to.

At the peak of his success he left and took on a new job at a bigger club. 44 days later he was sacked.

Did he let this stop him? Of course not!

Clough loved the game. And he believed in himself. That is an unbeatable combination.

If you have that combination, you too will succeed. But you need to steel yourself in order to succeed. Because the road to the top is tough. But it’s definitely a road worth travelling.

“Have you ever played the Legend of Zelda? That’s what getting a job in advertising is like.” This, my precocious and talented friends, is exactly the sort of nerdy but insightful advice you’re likely to get from Daniel Bremmer, especially after two shots of Absinthe, three cocktails and a round of Coopers. We met to conduct this interview on a beautiful summer’s evening in a quaint Brooklyn establishment, and sat talking shit for hours. We talked about highschool, the New York ad industry, the Obama campaign, the Legend of Zelda and even the merits of not having sex. You see, Daniel’s a 35-year-old kid from California, freelancing in New York City, trying his hardest to save the world, and has something to say about everything. Which he’s allowed to, for he’s pretty much worked on everything, everywhere, from Microsoft to Prius to Coke and Obama. He’s also just launched a site to save health care in the U.S. named notatable.org. But! Let. Me. Tell. You! That stuff didn’t matter after a particularly potent round of cocktails. You know what did? Talking to strangers sitting next to us, that’s what! Which we did for so long, we totally forgot we were there to do an interview, until Daniel remembered, and things got interesting…

Daniel: Alright! Start! What do you want to ask?

Junior: Ugh. I don’t even know anymore.

D: Come on! I’m the one that’s supposed to be drunk, not you.

Jr: I know!

D: You should have been sober. You should have been drinking coffee.

Jr: No, no! I’m all good! I swear! Alright, alright. I usually like to start with a quick rundown of where you started out, what you wanted to do, how you got into uni, and then the job, you know…

D: My life story?

Jr: Well… *Hiccup* …Yeah, I guess. Quick though! Two hundred words or less!

D: Ha, OK. I’ll try. I grew up in Orange County. It was a very conservative place. My parents are somewhat hippy. We grew food in the backyard. We had pet chickens. I went to Space Camp. My Dad was an engineer. My Mother was a teacher. I was the oldest child. Very idealistic. Tragedy struck. I had a brother die when I was in fourth grade. He was six months old. He was a baby. Really bad. I had a bad time in school after that. Wanted to take a class in Graphic Design, which wasn’t what it was called, it was some weird word. I signed up because I heard you got to make t-shirts. And I wanted to make t-shirts for bands I liked.

Jr: What bands were you listening to?

D: Well me and my friends were into this weird mix. There weren’t enough kids in my high school to have different alternative scenes. This was before Nirvana came out with Nevermind. Like, right before. Because we didn’t have enough alternative kids, we had to combine all the high schools together. All the kids would go to the goth club wearing black. Then the next week we’d go to the shoegaze concert, and we’d all be wearing corduroys and creepers. It was all the same kids. There weren’t enough kids to have different scenes; so all the kids who were into cool shit from all the different high schools were one scene.

Jr: And where was this? California?

D: Huntington Beach. A little conservative beach town.

Jr: Is this like The O.C? The TV show?

D: Yeah, that’s set in Newport Beach, which borders Huntington Beach.

Jr: So all the cool alternative kids made their own scene…

D: It wasn’t cool though! What we did became cool after we graduated. While we were doing it, it was super dorky.

Jr: So shoegaze and goth was super dorky.

D: Super dorky. Everybody liked bad hair metal and R&B.

Jr: I think this is a good opportunity to talk about schooling. A lot of high school students read these things you know. So what were you like at school?

D: Well I never did my homework. I was a horrible student. I loved to learn and I was a gifted kid. I was in honors, but I nearly got kicked out as a freshman for skipping class.

Jr: So did you have a problem with focus? Was that what it was?

D: Well it was all my fault, in retrospect. I didn’t have the discipline to do it. But when you really look at it, I knew that I knew the subject material. The teacher knew that I knew the material. I knew that the teacher knew that I knew the material… Everybody knew. And I wasn’t allowed to just cut through the bullshit. No one was allowed to do that. Because you had to jump through these hoops. And that just seemed stupid. I couldn’t comprehend how that mattered. In life, especially. And sadly, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter at all.

Jr: Yeah it doesn’t matter, but it does matter! Because it’s all about discipline and focus and sitting down and doing the work.

D: But you know what? I am a disciplined and focused motherfucker today. I remember I had a freelancer, while I was working at SS+K on a project, and he wanted to go home. It was ten o’clock, there was shit to be done, and I couldn’t understand. I said, “You’re trying to go home? What the fuck is wrong with you? It’s not done. It’s only ten o’clock. Grow a pair.”

Jr: Heh, yeah, grow a pair.

D: “We’re doing shit. Grow the fuck up. If you want to do shit then we need to do it right.” So when it comes to that level of focus and discipline on my projects, I’m incredibly dedicated. I guess at the time, teenage me never saw the value of jumping through hoops to prove something. So anyways, you can edit all that out. No one cares about that.

Jr: But I do think it’s important! Think about the kids! They need to know this stuff. They should feel they’re not alone and so on.

D: Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, fast forward a bit and I went to Community College after High School, got into design, I wasn’t that good, the dot-com thing came around and suddenly I was being paid a lot of money. I still wasn’t very good. But I could learn html and I was a really mediocre designer. This was the late nineties.

I DJ’d at a college radio station. I used to write for music magazines. I used to promote concerts. I was really involved in the underground music scene in Southern California. That was my life. It was through music that I discovered art and design.

And then I worked my way into a really crappy Orange County ad agency called Priscomm. I was their web guy. And I saw this guy Jimmy who was the Creative Director and his job was to look at a business problem and come up with ideas that became ads, which I would then make into websites. So I thought, “So he just sits around and thinks… And comes up with ideas… And gets to pay rent that way? You can do that? That’s an option?” So I took a night class in advertising, fell in love with it, and then it all started.

Jr: How old were you when you took a night class?

D: Maybe mid twenties? Like 25. Maybe 26?

Jr: You were 26 when you realized you wanted to do advertising?

D: Yeah. I had no idea that I could do that.

Jr: You know what the funny thing about that is. I know a whole bunch of 21, 22, 23 year olds that feel like they are over, they’re too old, by the time they get into advertising.

D: Dude, I just stopped getting carded at bars and I’m 35. It’s the beard.

Jr: Ha.

D: I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you.

Jr: I think this is the biggest problem with juniors. They think that their time is up by 25.

D: Sprout a pair. When I started at Art Center College of Design, the average age was 24. It very quickly changed. Now it’s down to like 18 or 19 years because of funding problems. But it used to be that it was a second career. For most of the people I know that are really good, it’s a second career.

Jr: Well that’s what we’re kinda hearing. That back in the day when the mavericks were running the industry it was full of misfits. The dudes from Brooklyn who didn’t know what to do with their lives but were super smart and street savvy and could sell anything to anyone. Apparently they were the guys who were getting into advertising. And now it’s become full of a lot of fresh-faced marketing kids straight out of uni who think they can change the world with a social media strategy.

D: All we need is smart people who are willing to call bullshit on everything. I have this issue. I’m freelancing at a large agency right now, I’m not going to say who they are… but you meet these people, and some of them are brilliant. It’s a large agency with a very good reputation. But sometimes you meet a person and you think, “Why are you here?” It’s filled with people who don’t understand how people communicate today. It’s like they still live in the old days of two creative guys sitting in a room who had an idea of what the world should be because they had these great lifestyles. They saw movies and did drugs at work and got paid big salaries to talk about their ideas all day. They had these ideas about what the world should be like and they turned them into awesome 30 or 60 second commercials and big lavish print ads that they shot in exotic locations. That’s over. That world still exists in some way, but it’s not relevant anymore.

Most people in America don’t live that life. They deal with real problems. They have their own ideas. They’re used to a different type of communication where they don’t suck down what the TV tells them anymore. They tell the TV what they want to watch. And when they don’t like it, they fast-forward or they skip it, right? They don’t even fucking look at paper anymore. They do once in a while, but if it’s not relevant to them then they don’t care.

The world of media and communication is dramatically changing and advertising works within that world. The skills that we have of, ‘I am a Copywriter. This guy is an Art Director. We get together and come up with ideas and they’re gonna look pretty and sound nice,’ is not necessarily the skill set that people who use social media, a medium that allows these people to express their ideas and control what they want, resonate with. Sometimes it is. Because I think all those people will sit down, even the most jaded among us, close the laptop, turn off the lights and watch a great fucking show. So that still exists on some level. But for the general majority of advertising, we need to figure out what these people want. What these people are interested in. We need to find a way to make our work relevant to them. I don’t think that’s the way advertising works today, and I don’t think the way we teach people to make advertising is relevant anymore. It’s fucking dumb.

Jr: And most definitely in New York!

D: New York is the worst! I have to live it! I sat in a room the other day to talk about a campaign for a large company’s effort in the health care industry, and it’s in a good way, they actually make things to improve health care. But I counted fourteen people in the conference room.

Jr: Wow! Fourteen! That’s fucked!

D: I know! Only four of them were involved in the ideation of what was happening. The meeting took about two hours. Nothing was accomplished. Which means this large American company was paying for fourteen people to sit around and feel important. For what? That’s what New York is.

Jr: OK, so, Obama. You need to tell me about Obama, start to finish.

D: Am I going to be forever known as the guy who did some work on Obama? Did I peak on November 4th, 2008? Am I over?

Jr: Well generally when we interview someone, we want to have a popular hook that people can associate with. So we’re tagging you with Obama.

D: So it’s not just my winning personality?

Jr: No. Not at all.

D: Ha. OK. Well, I will have to sadly disappoint you by saying that I worked on only one part of a six-agency effort to get the guy elected. This is how pathetic my little slice of history is.

Jr: But it’s still very important!

D: Well yes. Having said that, it was still the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life, the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of, and the greatest change I’ve ever had a piece of. It’s the best thing I’ve done, according to Kantian ethics… Are you familiar with Kant?

Jr: You mean Emmanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher from the Prussian city of Königsberg widely known as the last influential philosopher of modern Europe?

D: Yes, that guy. So, according to Kantian ethics, the best contribution to society I’ve ever made is getting this dude elected. My part of getting this dude elected was an ad campaign to get young people to get off their fucking ass and register to vote.

Jr: Because you knew that they’d vote Obama, right?

D: Totally. Our data said that 70 percent of the people aged 18 to 35 were going to vote for Obama. We had to make the idea of voting relevant to these people. We also knew that young people don’t believe that politics is a way of getting something done. Our insider challenge was to say, “If you show up and vote, it is a worthwhile way to accomplish the things that you already want of out life. The things that you want for the future.”

They don’t feel that voting actually accomplishes dick squat. They feel it’s been proven that it doesn’t. So the challenge was to register as many of them as possible.

Another problem we had was that the entire process is outdated nonsense. Every state has different laws. You need to buy a stamp, a postage stamp, to register to vote! You can’t do it online. It’s stupid. So we had to overcome all this shit. The bottom line was, ‘How do we make registering as relevant as possible and how do we register as many of them as possible?

Well, the easiest way to do it is through a website. Anyone who’s young knows how to use the web. All they care about is ‘Give me a fucking URL and I’ll take care of it.’ That became Voteforchange.com. (Editors note: Which is no longer online, sorry kiddies.)

Jr: And as little clicks as possible.

D: Yes, exactly. I’m sure someone else on the Obama campaign thought of that name as well, but my partner Peter Cortez and I came up with the name and they liked it. A guy named Scott Thomas was the information architect of the site. He was also the design director for Obama For America. He’s the one that took the Sol Sender icon and cleaned up the type. He was responsible for most of the look of the Obama campaign. He’s the one that brought in Shepard Fairey.

Jr: Sounds like he’s the bro to know. So voteforchange.com…

D: Yeah, the tagline for the site was, “Everything you need to register and vote”. Most of the campaign was Peter and I working 18 hours a day in a room. It was a lot of BO, bad sushi, and favors from awesomely talented people. We sent out questionnaires from a Gmail address to everyone we knew. We didn’t tie it to the Obama campaign at all, a lot of the stuff we didn’t even tell our own bosses, because we knew if we told our bosses they would have to go get approval, and we didn’t have time for that, so we just did a lot of shit fly-by-night.

So we set up this Gmail account and sent out these petitions to everybody we knew. We wanted to know, “Why is it worthwhile for you to vote? What are you going to get out of it? What do you expect to happen?” We got back hundreds of responses from all over the country. We got a lot of people from other countries, but we couldn’t use their stuff. We took all the interesting responses, broke them down into probably seven or eight categories of why you would vote. We built these buckets and filled them with responses that were good. Then we reached out to a lot of poster artists. We had two artists that were instrumental in getting everybody else. On the West Coast it was Brian Flynn of Hybrid Design. On the East Coast it was Tristan Eaton of Thunderdog Studios.

Jr: So these guys do music posters and stuff?

D: Yes. These are the guys who are big fucking dogs in their scene. Then it was all about our fantasy file. Who are all the designers you’ve always wanted to work with? We just emailed everyone, called everyone. And you know, it was just me and Peter in the office, the air conditioning shuts off at seven or eight, the funk kicks in, the smell of the old sushi boxes too, and you just go. You call all your East Coast peeps until it’s ten o’clock and it’s getting kind of late. Then you start calling West Coast peeps until about one. And you’re calling everybody and you’re briefing people constantly. We’d brief someone and say, ‘Health care: The issues are X, Y, and Z. Obama’s platform is 1, 2, and 3. Here’s three different headlines that should be able to work with the image you’re going to create. Show us your sketches.’

Jr: So was everything you got back good? Or did you have to refine some things?

D: Almost everything was good. There were a few people that we couldn’t use, not very many, I think at the end 18 artists did about 22 or 23 pieces that were published. All the artists worked for free, nobody got paid.

Jr: Nobody got paid?

D: Not a penny.

Jr: So how’d you do that?

D: We tried to get honorariums but we told them upfront that they had to be willing to do this for the love and the glory. We had exactly one guy tell us no because of the money.

Jr: Really?

D: Yeah, then he called us back and said yes. The only people who said no were people who were just physically overbooked. If people were already yelling at them for work and they were overbooked.

Jr: And then Obammy won!

D: Then he won! Success. Best thing I ever did.

(Editors note: If you wanna get something super cool, Scott Thomas has made a book filled with all the Obama design stuff, featuring Daniel’s posters and the voteforchange.com website. Buy it here.)

Jr: So, OK, we’ve been drinking now for how long? Let’s jump into the nitty gritty shit and see what happens. What’s your advice for juniors?

D: Well, if you’re a junior, all you’ve got to do is start working. Make good shit. Be a smart person. Be nice. And hopefully that’ll work out.

Jr: I know this. And a lot of others know this. But for a lot of people it’s about getting that first ‘foot in the door’ or whatever.

D: Have you played The Legend of Zelda? On Nintendo?

Jr: Umm…

D: You haven’t played fucking Zelda?

Jr: I’ve had a fiddle.

D: Ha. I should slap you.

(Turns to the person sitting next to him.)

D: Have you played the legend of Zelda?

Random 1: A little while ago.

Random 2: I have.

D: Then I only need to slap one of you.

Random 2: I remember the Nintendo cheat.

D: Oh Yeah?

Random 2 and D simultaneously: Up. Up. Down. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. B. A. B. A. Select Start.

D: Yes!

Jr: Oh my god. You guys are total nerds. So what’s the importance of Zelda anyway?

Random 2: Yeah what’s the significance?

D: Well remember how in Zelda, when you wanted to get something accomplished, you had to go through these weird adventures that seemed like they had nothing to do with anything? If you wanted to beat some bad guy, you had to go find a leaf, give it to an old man, get a potion, take it to a lady, she’ll make you some arrows. Then you have to take the arrows to a dungeon, and shoot a guy with the arrows. Right?

Random 2: Yeah!

D: Well that’s what getting a job in advertising is like.

Jr: Hahahaha. Woah.

D: It’s exactly the same. Exactly the same! You’ve got to have teachers, they need to be smart, and they have to get you and like you. Then you’ve got to work fucking hard and you’ve got to be smart. If you don’t work hard and you’re not smart then you’re a piece of shit. But if you’re one of the smart hard working people, your teacher will recognize that and will introduce you to somebody. Then you start going on these little ‘go sees’, you know, while you’re trying to get a foot in the door. You meet these people and you say, “Hey, man, you work in advertising. I want to work in advertising. What do you think about X, Y, and Z? How does this work? You did blah blah blah, what was that like?” Cause you don’t know. I didn’t fucking know. I still don’t know most of this shit. So you ask all these questions and they answer you. And they feel smart for answering you. Once you’ve asked them enough questions and whatever, you say, “Is there anyone else I should talk to? Maybe at another agency?” And they say yes or no. Then you ask them if they can recommend some people. You know, say, “Do you know anybody at this place or that place?” And then they say, “Actually I do.” I did this in London. I got people to pick up their phone and make calls to people on their cell phone. Numbers you’ll never get. Once you meet that first smart connected person, and he or she likes you, they’ll make a couple of calls for you. Then you’ll meet a couple more people, and the next thing you know you’re meeting people, meeting people, meeting people. Then all of a sudden, somebody knows of a job. Or an internship. And if your work is good, and you’re a nice personable person, why not offer you a gig? Even if it’s an internship, which is how you prove to everybody in the building how smart and good you are.

Jr: Wow. Yes. You make yourself invaluable.

D: You have to be good though. You have to give a fuck, you have to work hard, and you need to be good. If you do that, then you’ll be fine, especially if you’re a social person.

Jr: That really is very good advice. You are such a nerd though.

D: Ha, yeah. But you know, when Zelda came out for Nintendo GameCube, while I was in school, everything else suffered.

Jr: It always does with video games.

D: My TV and my GameCube were going all hours of the day. It was either me or my roommate taking turns playing. So when one person was doing homework, going to school or taking a nap, the other person was playing.

Jr: It happens to the best of us.

D: It was good though. It was like a religious experience.

Jr: How long did you do this for?

D: I don’t know–too long. Then I became the student president. That was a bad idea. Don’t do that.

Jr: Ha, OK. That’s good advice. Do not become student president.

D: Do not become student president at Art Center, do not play video games, and do not have sex.

Jr: Hold on. Do not have sex?

D: Be chaste.

Jr: What? What’s the theory? Why?

D: You have bigger things to worry about than sex. Chastity is important…

Jr: Why? I don’t understand.

D: Because if you’re dealing with relationships, you’re not dealing with your work or your ideas, and your not dealing with your life. I do think there’s some connection between the creative and the procreative. That sex and creativity are linked. It’s the urge. There’s a common passion, a common energy. When you’re still developing one of them, you don’t want to drain it with the other one.

Jr: Actually that sounds like a pretty interesting point. What about masturbation?

D: It’s a good stress reliever.

Jr: Yes. It’s not procreation either.

D: It’s not procreation, there’s not another person there, and there’s no one else’s feelings to deal with. That’s the thing that sucks.

Jr: Yeah, don’t deal with feelings. They get in the way.

D: No, you should deal with feelings! You should be a sensitive person. But you should know that if you involve somebody else in that part of your life, especially if you’re a male and you’re dealing with a female, she’s going to have an opinion and feelings about your chosen activities. So your choice is to either be a dick, which is not good, or to deal with those, which is very time consuming.

Jr: Yes that’s a hard bargain. Be a dick, or give up your career/creative time to deal with your shit. So don’t get involved?

D: Don’t get involved. 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 as usual we spoke for way too long and Daniel had way too much good shit to say. So hang in there for Part 2. It’s got everything to do with not buying dumb shit, knowing which companies are helping the world, and how you can retain your soul. Coming soooooooon.)

Ben Birchall and Shane Dawson had it all: A job at The Campaign Palace in Melbourne, money to buy food, and great haircuts. They evidently spent a lot of time on all of the above for they were model advertising citizens, making funny campaigns and acting like dags for money and fame. Until one fateful day, not too long ago, they were politely asked to ‘leave the agency’. Also known as getting ‘The Sack‘. Instead of ‘losing their shit’, they decided to document their ‘sacking’, while trying to get their respective ‘sacks in the door’ somewhere bigger and better than before. The resulting video diary is a great lesson in ‘getting your shit together and looking for a job’. Something every junior needs to learn. We were impressed and felt it was a great opportunity to talk about ‘gimmicky’ ideas, losing your job, getting a job, and working on your folio.

Junior: At what stage in the job-losing process did ‘The Sack‘ idea come about?

The Sack Lads: Straight away really. We initially posted photos on Facebook and people really liked them, then we had the idea to film the process because it might be interesting to watch later. Blogging it daily led from there, and it meant that we had a deadline and the motivation to actually do it.

Jr: Tell us a bit about how you got into the industry? Did you originally get your job at Campaign Palace in a similar way?

TSL: Hell no. We got into the Palace the old-fashioned way – working for free for a few months. We were out of Award school and we got paired up to do a placement at the Palace. We were supposed to get paid for every bit of work we got up, but after two months it was cheaper to hire us.

Jr: Emma Hill once told us, “If your idea is a bit gimmicky, you come across as a gimmicky creative. Rather than a genuine, intelligent one.” Obviously there are plenty of kids out there who’ll want to do something similar hoping to get a job. How do you suggest they straddle the line between gimmick and intelligent stunt?

TSL: It just has to be good. If it’s good, it’s an interesting piece of work in itself and hopefully shows a potential CD that you’ve got something that the fifty other teams that have contacted them that week haven’t. And then you need the work to back it up. There’s no point getting in the door to see a CD if you don’t have a decent book.

Jr: When a lot of people lose their jobs, they freak out and take any old job they can get. Is this you guys freaking out or are you looking to make a big jump in your career?

TSL: It’s probably a bit of both. It was initially something to keep us busy, particularly in that first week when you go from working eleven hour days to sitting around the house. But the end result is that hopefully our next job will be better than our last job. That probably wouldn’t have been possible without The Sack.

Jr: Google loves The Sack, you’ve got posts on Campaign Brief, Mumbrella and over 2,000 hits on your first video on youtube. That’s great and all, but what has the reaction been like offline and in the interview room?

TSL: It’s been really positive. We’ve been able to see people who would never have seen us without The Sack. And they already know who we are, what we’re about and what our work is like. Which means that rather than going through your book, you can just have a chat about where you want to go and where the agency is headed. It’s a far more productive way to spend their time and yours.

Jr: We’re big fans of how quickly you guys got your shit together. We have plenty of friends who are still ‘working on their folio’. What would you say is the 5 steps to getting a job in advertising?

TSL: Here’s the list!

1. Keep your book current. Things happen very quickly in advertising, so even if you feel safe and cosy, plan for The Sack.

2. Show your book to people you respect. Even if they can’t give you a job. It’s good to practice presenting, and it’s good to get different perspectives on the work.

3. Do a heap of different stuff. Don’t have a book that’s full of pale imitations of D&AD finalists from 1998. Dream up a product, create a brand, include some digital or viral stuff. You have to show you can do more than write a headline or lay out a strip ad.

4. Work for free if you have to. It sucks, and there’s a line you have to draw before you start seeming sad, but the CD you’re trying to see probably did it, and their CD before them. It’s a grand old advertising tradition, like sexual harassment and cocaine.

5. You have to pay for tip 5. We accept paypal and all major credit cards.

Jr: And finally, losing your job sucks. What advice do you have for any kids who lose their job or have lost their job recently?

TSL: Our old CD, Tony Leishman told us that you have to treat advertising like you work for yourself. Jobs will come and go. You can’t control that. What you can control is keeping your book sharp, doing cool stuff and staying busy and creative. And that doesn’t necessarily mean working on advertising briefs. Start a website, write a script, take some photos, design a font, dream up a product. Whatever it is you do, do it. Don’t stop because you’re not getting paid. In fact, do it more and do it harder.

Remember that emo-kid at school who ‘managed’ the punk band? Let’s call that kid ‘street smart kid’. ‘Street smart kid’ was the shit. He was creative, tenacious, focused, could get a hundred screaming kids along to some shitty gig in the sticks, and hacked up letterboxes with an axe after downing a bottle of Jimmy B at your fifteenth birthday. Where is ‘street smart kid’ now? Running that record label you want to work for, of course. This week we interview one such ‘street smart kid’ – Leeor Brown. His L.A based label, Friends of Friends, sells limited edition tee-shirts and other tangible goods that come with a download code instead of a CD. He’s already done one with Daedelus, and Mos Def stole the idea with his newest release, so it must be the shiz-nit. We know there’s some ‘street smart kids’ reading this site – so why don’t you go out and start a label, y’all? Go on! It’s better than a real job. Fuck!

Junior: Why the hell did you start a record label? Aren’t all of those things going broke?

Leeor: Well, I think that’s debatable. Labels that have been around and built a business model on what was happening back in the day, treating it like a product based business, aren’t keeping up with the times. I saw an opportunity to do the things that labels used to do without nearly the same amount of overhead. There’s still money out there – people are still buying digital. Not at the same rate or the same amount of income earned as it was with CDs, but at the same time you spend a lot less money getting that release out and distributed these days. For me it’s about trying to do things differently, not spending that much money up front so the artists and label can see some money at the end of the day.

Jr: We read somewhere that vinyl sales were actually through the roof too.

L: Yeah in the last few years they went up something like a thousand percent where CD sales dropped off. The way I always look at it is that the people who are clamouring the most are the ones that made money, or established their business in that model, and that shit just doesn’t exist anymore. Not even just the major labels either, even the bigger indie labels that have been around for ten or fifteen years are struggling too because they created a whole business that now has to shift modes.

Jr: Definitely. You’re releasing your second EP soon right?

L: Yeah, we have one release out, Friends of Friends Volume 1. But I also have these remixes that came exclusively with the shirt for the first three months but I put those out on iTunes last month.
Our second release, Volume 2, is out September 15th and is this group Larytta. That’ll be the second shirt release. Then our first full length will be this dude Ernest Gonzales in February.

Jr: Is the full length going to be just a shirt too or will it be something else?

L: No no no, it’s going to be a whole other thing. I’m pretty excited about it actually, I’ve got to say. I’ve gone big for Ernest’s record: we got 16 musicians to do covers, so there is a cover for every song on the full length, and then we got artists from around the world to do their interpretation of a song so there are 13 pieces of artwork that will be made into a book that comes with the download codes for the record, digital artwork, and covers.
The way I look at it especially with the word of mouth idea – we have sixteen remixers, fourteen artists, Ernest and his label, me and my label, and the label doing the vinyl. All of a sudden we have something like 40 people built into one release and talking about it or having a reason to get people excited for it. It’s instant promotion.

Jr: So have you made some mistakes so far? Anything you’d like to share with other first timers wanting to make their own label?

L: I mean, it’s all a learning process. I’m sure there have been a bunch but I have no idea yet. (laughs), I actually think about that all the time because I only launched in March – so I’m not even that far into it. At this point I’m still flying by the seat of my pants. Eventually I’ll be able to look back and be like, ‘God you fucked that up’, but for now there’s not too much. Again I’m not putting that much into it, financially that is, since it’s mostly just my time, it doesn’t feel like I’m making too many mistakes because I’m not really going to get screwed financially or anything.

Jr: Is it hard to convince artists or people that you’re working with to love the idea or do they love it just like we do?

L: For the most part people tend to jump right in. I tend to not work with a bunch of really established artists though, Daedelus is probably the most well established artist I’ve worked with to date, and he is legitimately a close friend and if it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t have done the label. He kicked me in the ass more than a few times to make sure this went down. Besides that I try to work with artists that aren’t that well known and they are just hungry, they want to get their music out there. On top of that I have the ability to promote rather extensively so most artists are like ‘Oh this is dope, let’s do it.’ I’m sure I’ll run into a fair share of people who aren’t that into it, but for the most part the artists and press are loving it.

Jr: You’re a publicist at Terrorbird Media right now too. How do you break into that world? Because it seems like that would help you with ideas and the progression of making them a reality.

L: Yeah it’s all been a slow build so far. I started off in college radio as a hip hop director at KZSC in Santa Cruz, got a job in radio promotion that I got over in a while, moved into online marketing and finally progressed into publicity. Basically all of my experience with my job was teaching me lessons about the music industry. Trying to talk with labels and artists and evaluating everyone’s situations and seeing how I might be able to fit into it. Slowly but surely I realized I have access to all these great artists and could promote because that’s what I did for a day job and that you can release things digitally for nothing! At the end of the day I realized I have this possible business in hand for a very minimal investment and it just kind of went from there. I have to say, I don’t know if somebody else could just up and do it like I did because I was lucky to already have certain things in place if I wanted to do them.

Jr: So one of the biggest assets for you was probably your network of creative people around you?

L: There’s no doubt about that. That’s kind of what the whole Friends of Friends notion came from because I knew I had this really awesome network of people but ultimately they were homies with all these people I didn’t know about, and they didn’t know me, but of course I know their music or something. So that was how the idea progressed. I didn’t want to be restricted to only the people I knew but I had to start the label that way.  So the idea of Friends of Friends is that I can bring in the people I know but maybe they can bring in other and slowly and surely the word can spread between friends. “Oh hey I’m with this thing, it’s called Friends of Friends, you should check it out…”
I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just about me, because that’s what a lot of labels tend to be and this was trying to expand on what network I already had in place.

Interview by: Pat Collins