shots - Highlights 2015

MARCH 2015

FEBRUARY 2015

Wayne McClammy THE QUIET AMERICAN OPENS UP

Aoife McArdle PROMO PASSION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO

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Sir Ridley Scott

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FISHING FOR IDEAS

Johnnie Frankel SPACE EXPLORATION

WINNERS AND THEIR WORK

Elspeth Lynn

Deutsch LA CRIMINALLY GOOD CREATIVITY

Marco Cremona GOOGLE’S NEW MAN IN MOSCOW

MAY 2015

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Martin Stirling

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

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FROM BOOM TO GLOOM AND BACK AGAIN

Ben Seresin China Special Gary Freedman

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looking the part · how to take a beating · poster king · the wild west of VR

TURNING UP THE HEAT…

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the art of foley · a shot in the dark · feeding hollywood · mad props

SEPTEMBER 2015

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Highlights from 2015

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THE SOURCE

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MOVED BY AVIAN MUSINGS There is nothing that inspires Corinna Falusi, Ogilvy & Mather New York, more than a giggle at the expense of duped neo-Nazis, chocolate served as dark as her comedy, good music, which solves all her problems, and reflecting on the brilliance of A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

What product hasn’t been invented yet that would make your life/job better?

What is the most creative advertising idea you’ve seen in the last few months?

It’s not very recent, but still so great is Nazis Against Nazis: Germany's Most Involuntary Charity Walk. [Anti-fascist campaigners] in a German town tricked neo-Nazis into raising thousands of euros for an anti-extremist charity.

Without the marchers’ knowledge, local residents and businesses sponsored the 250 participants of the march in what was dubbed Germany’s ‘most involuntary walkathon’. For every metre they walked, €10 went to an organisation which helps people escape extremist groups.

What’s your favourite website/digital service?

Over the last few weeks my favourite digital service is the Edyn smart garden app (edyn.com) on my phone. It keeps track of my vegetable patch.

What product could you not live without?

Right now, I cannot live without dark chocolate. I am hoarding an enormous amount of 70-100 per cent cacao bars in my drawers and bags. It actually makes me nervous to go anywhere without it.

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A tracking device for all my lost items.

I am literally losing everything from keys and phones to shoes and passports.

What are your favourite magazines?

IdN, Der Spiegel and Us Weekly (when at the dentist).

Mac or PC? Mac. My last experience with a PC was probably 10 years ago at an internet café on a deserted island.

What’s the best film you’ve seen over the last year?

Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence. Andersson finishes off his ‘living’ trilogy with this deeply comical exploration of very serious topics. The previous films in the trilogy [Songs from the Second Floor and You, the Living] are great as well.

What show/exhibition has most inspired you recently? #Setinthestreet. It is an ongoing art project in which Justin Bettman is building elaborate sets out of unwanted materials and furniture from the streets of NY, LA and San Francisco. Most recently he was commissioned to create one of his installations in Times Square.

If you could live in one city, where would it be?

Right where I am – New York City.

I have lived in Amsterdam, Hamburg and Munich, which are all beautiful places, but nothing compares to the restless insanity of New York. In the last eight years that I have been living here, I've never felt bored or uninspired. Whenever I see the city, it’s always like I see it for the first time. It forces me to live up to it and make the most of it.

What track/artist would you listen to for inspiration?

This list solves all my problems: Frida Hyvönen, Electric Guest, Jens Lekman, Jan Delay and The Knife.

“…nothing compares to the restless insanity of New York.

Whenever I see the city, it’s always like I see it for the first time. It forces me to live up to it and make the most of it.”

What fictitious character do you most relate to?

Mia in Maria Blom's film, Dalecarlians.

It’s the story of a woman who left home at an early age for a life in the city and then she returns to her family to join the celebration of her father’s 70th birthday.

Who’s your favourite photographer?

One of my favourite photographers is Corriette Schoenaerts. Her work takes me places, even though most of the images are shot in the studio.

Who’s your favourite designer/illustrator?

I am a big fan of Christoph Niemann’s work. He puts a twist on the mundane by taking simple objects – a comb, a pair of headphones, wadded-up scrap paper – and transforms them into something totally unexpected. This leads to amazing work like ‘I Lego N.Y.’.

If you could have been in any band, what band would you choose?

I would have to be part of a German electro pop band. I can't sing or play an instrument very well, but I could certainly dance off-beat if needed. S

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What inspires Corinna: 1 A scene from the film Dalecarlians 2 Illustrator Christoph Niemann’s work 3 Dark chocolate 4 Edyn gardening app 5 The music of Jens Lekman 6 The work of photographer Corriette Schoenaerts 7 IdN magazine 8 #setinthestreet by artist Justin Bettman 9 Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence

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D IS FOR DROGA

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There’s no question that there’s an Australianness to my sense of humour and by default Droga5, whether it’s intentional or not. Aussie humour cuts to the chase – it’s direct and that goes into our work too, whether it be humorous or thoughtful. Too many people spend time around. People appreciate you being straightforward, saying what you’re about.

I was really lucky to grow up playing in a national park [Kosciuszko, in New South Wales].

It allowed my imagination to run free. It was self-preservation – you had to create your own reality, your own fun, your own games. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m Bear Grylls but I was very comfortable in my own skin, in my own head.

Also, because I was the fifth of seven children [his mother would sew labels in his school clothes that read Droga5], I had to get my opinion out there or I might just be invisible. It made me want to prove myself, be a scrapper.

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DROGA Unlike many daydreamers, David Droga is also blessed with drive, derring-do and a heroic work ethic; qualities that saw him swiftly move from 18-year-old mail boy at Grey to partner and ECD at Omon, Sydney, at just 22.

By 33 he had the unquittable role of Publicis worldwide CCO. He quit, of course, to set up Droga5 in New York. A brave move that

work, from the apparent defacing of Air Force One for Ecko, to comic Sarah Silverman waving a fake penis around for the Equal Payback Project. He and his agency have won every accolade going, but as the Aussie daredevil tells Carol Cooper, he’s still happier chasing chooks with his kids than chasing awards 02/09/2015 08:28

06 Highlights from 2015 | D IS FOR DROGA

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D IS FOR DROGA Not coming up with an idea is part of coming up with an idea. It’s weird but I’m not intimidated by pressure and problem-solving and working within the constraints of a brief and deadlines.

I’ve always performed better when I knew the pressure was on, rather than having total freedom.

I was once asked to paint a picture for an advertising auction, something that would be was so debilitating. If I’d been given a canvas that had two lines on it and a triangle and told to do something with that, I would have been more excited. But being given a blank canvas…

“We all have the same dots, we just try and join them sequence.”

At school I used to get into trouble for daydreaming. I spent more time daydreaming than actually studying, but I knew I could sit down and write an essay about anything. I may not have known anything about the subject but I could tell a great story. I used to convince myself that I was going to write a novel or a screenplay, but I didn’t have the time, the patience, or the confidence to do that. I’ve written short stories but they’re not for publication, although my wife has read them.

It’s good to get something out of your head, to see if it’s what you think it is, or whether it’s a piece of shit. You’ve got to clean all the pipes out.

It was fortunate that I managed to get into a career that allowed me to daydream. Our job is like those drawings where you join the dots by numbers. We all have the same dots, we just try

PHOTOGRAPHS: PAUL MCGEIVER

1, 2, 3 maybe you go 1, 4, 2, 4, 3 to try and create something original. That’s what daydreaming is – you’re not following anyone else’s footsteps, anyone else’s thought process.

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On holiday I buy those cryptic puzzle books, which I’ve loved since I was a kid. I like trying to solve problems in original ways. A lot of creative is like that – you try and work out how to get to the end point and the end emotion, and there’s a million ways to come at that.

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I admire artists. From a standing start, to do something original and incredible, I applaud that. I love architecture. I love the thought that someone can be confined by budgets and engineering but still create something spectacular and amazing. And practical. It would be amazing to be a great architect, to build something that stands the test of time. But I wouldn’t have the discipline to be an architect.

I’ve never thought of becoming a politician.

What is it that they say? Politics is showbusiness for ugly people. There’s too much dodginess in politics. Also I think I’d always get in trouble because I say the wrong things.

I didn’t want to go to university because the idea of parking myself there for three or four years just felt like treading water. I regret not having that social period in my life, but once I decided what I wanted to do I thought, “I’m just going to get into an agency and work my way up – I want to start now.” My four older brothers all went to university and got scholarships to Cambridge etc, so it was a foregone conclusion that I would do that too. But I didn’t want to wait. I’ve always been in a rush. Someone told me, in advertising, if you want to be a writer you write things and within and that appealed to my short attention span.

I kept thinking, “Wow, I can do that.” Maybe it’s a flaw, but I’m pretty tenacious. When I want to do something then I do it, all guns blazing.

As soon as I got into Grey in Sydney I loved the energy of it. It was run by a young hotshot creative called Simon Reynolds and he made me realise that you don’t have to be old to be good. It was just his attitude; he really had an impact there.

At Grey I delivered the mail and when I put mail on people’s desks I would look at their work.

Maybe this is where my ego and naivety kicked in, but I thought, “I can do that,” and that gave me the incentive to move up faster. People there knew I wanted to write, but they told me I’d have to work my way through the agency, so I signed up to study at the Australian Writers & Art Directors School. I think I was the youngest there and

I thought, “If I’m going to do this, and sacrifice being an 18-year-old guy who goes out and parties, I’m going to have to win this,” so I worked my arse a copywriter. I’ve been appreciative and working hard ever since.

Working at Saatchi Singapore was fantastic.

Two years there, working at such a fast pace in such a tiny, competitive market, was like five years anywhere else, and that really embedded in me the idea of a work ethic. I felt that Saatchi London was dismissive of us as an agency, so I thought the best thing was to do better work than them. of running Saatchi London. That was a great learning curve because it taught me about the balance between creativity and business and craft. In the three years I was there I really gained in confidence and appreciation of scale, and then

and I chose to live in New York.

It wasn’t lost on me that Publicis brought me in as the young gun to try and make them shiny again, which was a fantastic opportunity. But then I got to that thing… I was worldwide CCO of a big network, I was 33 – I didn’t want a job where I was wheeled in as this wonder kid. When you have a big position, you go to meetings and you talk about what you stand for and your principles, but you’re as far away from those as you can get when you’re in a position where you can’t implement something, I want to be building something.

Agencies try to make it impossible for you to quit, because they pay you enough and they incentivise you enough, and they’re smart, it’s smart business strategy. But I liked the idea of being the guy who quit the job no one else would quit. So I thought I’d go back to the rawest and purest thing – which is me, a plan, an ambition and good intentions and see where we go. I’ve been fortunate to collect a lot of good people on the way, and I try to stay true to the reason I set up the agency.

My ambition for Droga5 to be the most influential creative agency is one of those grand plans where there’s no real finish line. It’s not more a focus on what we’re doing today and what we’re going to do tomorrow. The only thing the success we’ve had to date has allowed us is to have a little wind at our backs, a bit more self-belief that we can do it. Influence isn’t measured by the want to feel that our work has a positive impact.

If we can contribute to our industry and make people believe that things can be better, then that’s a good thing.

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08 Highlights from 2015 | D IS FOR DROGA

“Agencies try to make it impossible for you to quit… they’re smart, it’s smart business strategy.

But I liked the idea of being the guy who quit the job no one would quit. ” Every campaign is just one dimension of a grander ambition, and it’s better that it’s something that’s always just out of reach, to keep running forward. Some days we’re sprinting forward, some days we’re falling forward, but we’re always moving forward, and I like that. I’m not a coaster. I’m not scared of failure – I’m scared of repetition.

In advertising sometimes you do have to compromise, you just have to try to do it as little as possible – I think whoever compromises the least wins. I like to think I’m a principled person, but I’m also an optimist, so there’ve been times

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when I have convinced myself something is better, or going to turn out better, than I thought. I have good intentions in everything I do.

At Droga5 we try to be authentic to each client.

I love the fact that we don’t have an agency style, what we do for Newcastle Brown. We have always milk comes out of your nose, or I can make you cry and think about your family. I want us to be super smart and really thoughtful about why something is right for this client, why it’s authentic.

Each morning before I go to work I get the kids

going to be calmer, more manageable. My wife is a fantastic mother and she’s a creative force as well, which is why my kids are all over the place!

The majority of my day is spent interacting with the work at some level. Sometimes my contribution is heavy-handed, and sometimes the best contribution I can make is to get out of the way – but every decision I make is about how to help the work. We are our biggest critics, and we

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D IS FOR DROGA Obama mentioning our Honey Maid campaign This Is Wholesome [on how it promoted more diverse perceptions of families] was definitely a high point for us. I think it probably drills down to the origins of most of our work – the best things are grounded in really smart roots and observations, and aren’t just trend-based or technique-based. I’m not afraid of the obvious – because obvious is a really core starting point, and then you can be exceptionally creative with that.

We can’t just bombard people with marketing messages anymore, we’ve got to put something out there that touches them in some way, and people can make a connection with it. Advertising at its best is extraordinary. The problem is that 90 per cent of advertising isn’t at its best.

People appreciate honesty. They don’t like things that are manufactured or curated, pretending to be authentic. That was the whole thing with the I Will What I Want campaign [for Under Armour, with the model Gisele Bundchen that won the 2015 Cyber Grand Prix at Cannes].

If you’re going to make a point about female athletes, that they’re in charge of what they do, you have to show that it’s not all positive and rosy.

“I definitely feel like a foreigner in America, but I feel very at home in New York, I love it. I love the energy, the people, the attitude, the ambition, the quirkiness.” look at what we can and should do better. We’re not growing the agency for the sake of it. Our biggest accounts are our most progressive accounts – you’ve got to be selective about who you work with, and how and what criteria you come together in. Fortunately, we’re not for every client – we’re aware of that, and we turn down more business than we take on. As soon as you take on one big account for the numbers that it brings, not what you can do together, that’s when you lose your soul.

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A brand now has to be in sync with what it’s saying. A brand can’t just claim it’s something if all its behaviour behind the scenes isn’t consistent with that. So you’ve got to be a lot more transparent about what you put out there.

And we’re all learning, no one has a formula for it, but good intentions get you half way there. If you’ve got good intentions then you’ll find a way.

The deal with the talent agency WME [in 2013 WME bought a 49 per cent stake in Droga5] hasn’t transformed us in the sense that we are still very independent, it hasn’t changed the fundamental core of our business. WME has access and influences that no one else in the industry has, so it’s more about being aware of what’s coming up in the pop culture pipeline – it doesn’t suddenly get us celebrities cheaper. I’m not anti-celebrities if there’s a good reason to use them beyond just using their identity, or if you can be a little bit subversive with them. In our industry, just putting a celebrity in an ad usually means you don’t have an idea. There has to be a reason to have them in there, beyond them just being famous.

What’s really interesting is that a lot of dimension to them, like with Anna Kendrick and Newcastle Brown. It was authentic to her character: she’s cheeky, irreverent and she put herself out there – it was fantastic. But if she had just been wheeled in and propped up to hold up you also pay for that, it costs you a fortune.

I think I’m both extrovert and introvert. If I’m in an environment where I’m comfortable around the people, I think I’m an extrovert, but I don’t have to be doing tap dancing jazz hands, I don’t have to be the centre of attention. I like being a leader of an agency, I definitely like that, but not just for the sake of being a leader. I like that with it comes responsibility and I like the thought that

My mother [a Danish artist, poet and environmentalist] is not seduced by her children’s success – she wants us to be happy, contributing people. She’s not caught up in the shininess of success. She just wants to know if I’m happy, and being true to myself. She still talks about The Tap Project – that’s what she wants to talk about, not awards.

I go back to Australia once a year at Christmas and it’s fantastic. I’ve spent a couple of years building a farm in upstate New York, so this year I’ve convinced my family to visit for Christmas – so I’ve got 26 people coming…

family. I’m not a social animal that has to go out three nights a week or go to galas and dos. I like skiing and the outdoors if it involves my kids. At the farm we have a trout stream, so we do a bit of fishing, trail bikes, chasing chickens…

I definitely feel like a foreigner in America, but I feel very at home in New York, I love it. I love the energy, the people, the attitude, the ambition, the quirkiness. And I’ve got deep roots here – the company, my wife’s a New Yorker, we have four kids who are 49 per cent American. I still get excited by the city. I don’t walk the streets like a tourist, but it’s not lost on me. I’ve worked around the world, and loved my time in Asia, but I always missed Australia. Now, when I go back to Australia, I miss New York.

The one thing that makes me angry is dishonesty. It drives me crazy. People make mistakes, that’s life, but people who are deliberately dishonest just infuriate me.

If I were US president for a day I’d try to ban guns. There are just too many incidents involving guns, it’s unbelievable. Then I would have a great party on the White House lawn.

If I could change careers with anybody, it would be David Attenborough. He’s brought the world to people and he’s done it so charismatically and honestly… has there been a better storyteller over the last 50 or 60 years? Isn’t that the best possible thing? To make people look at the world in a the first time that no one has seen, and bring it to everybody – that’s about as good as it gets, mate. S

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10 Highlights from 2015 | N IS FOR NEXT 25 YEARS

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s it because we hate the present? So exhausted with the monotony of the everyday that we collectively enjoy imagining a time when there could be peace, hope and possibly even flying objects whizzing around in the air?

(If there’s one thing I can confirm about the future, it’s that there’s going to be a lot more whizzing.)

Perhaps it’s because humans like to be in control… we hate surprises, we thrive on having life mapped out so that we can plan, save money and mentally prepare accordingly. In a Western world that’s becoming increasingly dominated by secularisation, futurology is arguably reaching religion status, with futurists (mostly white, middle-class, middle-aged men) prophesying new forms of transport, politics and relationships that we will need to adapt to (although very rarely do these modern-day Yodas emphasise the role that we common folk play in creating these futures).

Futurology is a science; it requires a wealth of data, testing and imagination. But the interesting thing about cultural and industrial forecasts is that they’re generally based on the mentality and aspirations of the time. So if you’ve ever read Nostradamus, who was writing during the dark, dark days of the 16th century, his predictions were about governments being overthrown, kingdoms being built and destroyed and he foresaw more deaths than even the Final Destination movie franchise. He focussed on power, and men.

If we move along through history, the beautiful science fiction of the 19th century was powered by steam; their machines of the future were elaborate, dramatic, romantic and representative of an era dominated by discovery. Much of this, of course, influenced the steampunk trend we enjoy today.

And then came The Jetsons, an animated TV sitcom that ran from 1962 to 1988 and was essentially the American Dream set in space. 2.4 children and a robot housemaid (the jury’s out on what race Rosie the robot was intended to represent). Now of course we live in an age of science. So when we make predictions about the next 25 years everything’s

NEXT YEARS

Amy Kean, head of futures at Havas Media Labs, predicts that the future of creativity will be blowing our minds – in a The growth of grey matter good way

the blowing of minds that I’d like to concentrate on.

Over the last 25 years, society’s fascination with the brain has increased: we love to learn about its malfunction, about sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists and addicts, while geeks with big brains – your Zuckerbergs, Schmidts and Musks – are worshipped as technoGods. The brain is the most complex computer known to man, so designing technology that replicates it is the ultimate goal.

Alphabet/Google is investing heavily in artificial intelligence but that’s not where the mind-blowing stops. The fairground ride

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Cheil Worldwide to Neurosis is the world’s first “It’s widely help young children with rollercoaster you can control autism improve their ability and ride with your mind… predicted to make eye contact and who needs a theme park read facial expressions. when you have a virtual that by the In the future augmented reality helmet and some year 2040 the electroencephalogram reality will also be a common tool to help other mental transmitters to play with? most deadly conditions. For example, But the future’s not all it’s already being used to fun and games. The brain is a global disease sensitive machine – some might won’t be or snakes as part of therapy argue more sensitive than the to help overcome phobias. bones and skin that surround it. cancer, HIV And when it comes to the It’s widely predicted that by the subconscious, it’s likely that the year 2040 the most deadly global or Ebola, but industry will take it one step disease won’t be cancer, HIV or depression.” further with ‘dreamvertising’, Ebola, but depression. Mental ie marketing that infiltrates the illnesses, so often ignored or reviled, sleeping mind. Using will overtake physical ailments neuroscientific technology, brands among the general public in most will be able to transmit lifeinternational markets. This needs to be taken into account now so that the messages that promote a healthy – creative industries can plan for the yet aspirational – sleep. Think Red impact this change is going to make.

Bull bringing you flying dreams or Think about our current relationship the National Lottery delivering with technology. We’re so close to our dreams of immense wealth, even mobile phones that to be away from them Lynx could deliver a subconscious causes genuine fear and anxiety – a experience that enhances your dealings psychological condition known as with the opposite sex. If we can get nomophobia. It’s likely we’ll have robot our heads around using technology to lovers in the future, not because people find get even closer to the mind, then we can robots attractive per se, but because people are going to get lonelier. Driverless cars will But we, as creative individuals, bear the exist not because people don’t like driving, but responsibility for where this goes. because humans cave easily under pressure Within this industry, we have the power and become vulnerable in the face of fatigue to act for the greater good. Advertisers have and dangerous when exhilarated. always been experts at mind control and Cuddling up to technology manipulation but every industry needs to evolve, and over the next 25 years there will So in my opinion, the creative industry needs to become more meaningful, mentally. Rides such to solve – not just hunger, thirst or other as Neurosis show that technology means very physical needs. So, unlike Nostradamus I’ll little to the consumer unless it’s peppered with make some positive predictions. Over the next creativity and imagination. Over the next 10 or quarter of a century I think technology and 20 years creative technology won’t just be used for immersive creativity is going to get better at blowing people’s minds, but will also have the reality will evolve to become an aid for people with power to put them back together again. S depression or mental conditions such as agoraphobia – rich creative executions that can help the user feel freer, happier, more enriched. Microsoft has already begun making waves with holographic technology via its HoloLens [see page 96] but over the next 25 years holograms will utilise artificial intelligence to create ‘companions’ with a range of functions, from medical to recreational. You could have branded entertainment delivered by your favourite stand-up comedians performing in your living room – you’ll even be able to heckle and receive a real-time response.

Samsung is already leading the way when it comes to using mobile technologies to make lives and minds better – its Look At Me mobile app game was developed by ad agency

“Using neuroscientific technology, brands will be able to transmit life-

messages that promote a healthy – yet aspirational – sleep. Think Red Bull bringing you flying dreams or the Lottery delivering dreams of wealth.”

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PHOTOGRA PHS: TOBY BURROWS

JEFF LOW

12 Highlights from 2015 | JEFF LOW

“I’ve realised that the thing I love doing the most is making things funny… it’s hard to get things past the goal line that are genuinely funny, and anything that people find funny is what I’m most proud of.”

| Highlights from 2015 13

JEFF LOW

to becoming the award-winning director of spots like Skittles’ Cat and Tena Men’s Keep Control, reads like the sort of surreal farce this funny-loving guy would write as a treatment. His unusual-tosay-the-least journey from covers band musician to IT tech to PA to director, via a combination of unbelievable luck, balls and sheer graft, may explain this writerdirector’s taste for the ridiculous – and ridiculously funny – but also his incredible work ethic, attention to detail and intense focus. But, as he tells Iain Blair, coming from nowhere and coming late to the business doesn’t worry him – “I just do the best work

14 Highlights from 2015 | JEFF LOW

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ver the past eight years, Canadian director Jeff Low has established himself as one of the top creatives in the business, largely thanks to a simple, but highly effective, philosophy: work as hard as humanly possible (and then work a little harder still), and never forget that comedy is king.

“I’ve realised that the thing I love doing the most is making things funny,” he states. “It’s the most fun you can have on set, and I never feel like I’ve wasted my time if I’ve succeeded in making something funny.

Not ‘ad’ funny, but actually funny, and it’s just so difficult to do, as there’s so many competing agendas with clients – ‘We have to do this’, ‘We can’t do this’, and ‘You must never do this’. It’s hard to get things past the goal line that are genuinely funny, and anything that people find funny is what I’m most proud of.”

A look at some of his extremely witty Greatest Hits helps underscore his point: there’s the recent Tena Men Keep Control campaign for AMV BBDO; The Guardian, Use In Moderation for BBH London in 2014; Mattel/Scrabble Blank and Q for Pereira & O’Dell SF in 2012; General Mills Fruit Snacks Cocoon for Saatchi & Saatchi NY; and the famous Skittles Cat for BBDO Toronto, both in 2011.

“And I just did World Animal Protection Before They Book [for BBH, which won Best Integrated at the recent British Arrows awards in London], so I don’t just like to tell jokes,” he adds. “Essentially all I really care about is, is it the best idea? And it’s the latest thing I’ve done that I’m proudest of, that and Tena Men. Everything else seems like a million years ago to me.”

Making it up as you go along Low sees the writing process as a key component. “The times when it works out best for me are when I get to write as well as direct,” he states. “I like the process of writing a lot, and I like to add as much as possible to a script on paper, before you go to camera.” Running with this thought, Low also admits that he’s “actually still unclear about what a director is, in a way. There are some who just take a script and execute it, and there are guys who are really good at that. I can do that, but I’m much more useful if I can also help write.”

The Tena Men spot is a good illustration of this approach. “I wrote a lot of those scenes with the team,” he notes, “and so those are ideal conditions for me, when I can combine it with ideas and conjure ideas with the creative team. And then on set I’ll execute them, as a normal director would. It also allows me to write my own scripts, sometimes. So if there’s a script that isn’t perfect, but it’s a situation where everyone is pretty flexible, then I’ll tend to take that script if I can do stuff to it.” Low also “loves the satisfaction” of taking a blank page, writing something, and then later watching that idea “become a reality that works. There’s something very cool about that.”

Despite his success, and self-awareness, Low comes over as genuinely modest and unassuming. “The truth is, I have a hard time even watching my own reel,” he insists. “I’m not my own cheerleader. I think I may be an honorary Brit in that way.” He’s happier talking about the work of others.

The recent Honda The Other Side spot shot by Daniel Wolfe “blew my pants off – and if it doesn’t win the best ad of the year, I’ll be pretty shocked.

I was very impressed.” And while Low feels that there are “just too many” awards shows, he recognises that the financial benefits of winning shouldn’t be ignored. “Just because I’m Canadian doesn’t mean I’m a socialist,” he notes drily. “A healthy amount of competition is good. I just wish I’d been

smart enough to start an awards show, as I feel that may be the best job in the whole industry. You accept money so you can hand out trophies?

What could be greater?”

But ask him about his favourite spots of his own and he quickly takes a considered step away from the subject. “I suppose there’s two ways of looking at it,” he allows. “There’s the ‘careerist’ way – stuff that sort of helps me in my career, and then there’s the stuff that I like, the comedy stuff.”

The accidental commercials director Successful comedy, of course, depends on timing, and it turns out that the Toronto native, who eventually found his way into directing through an unlikely and non-traditional route, always had a great sense of timing – and time. Starting off as a musician in his 20s, Low played bass guitar and keyboards, “in bar bands and David Bowie tribute acts, for drunk college kids mostly,” he reports. “It was tons of fun and a great way to spend a decade. I loved it.”

But gradually he felt the gravitational pull “to grow up and do something other than just drink beer for a living, which is basically what you do as a musician in those kinds of bands,” he explains. So Low got a day job repairing computers in the back of a shop. “I was in my 30s, struggling to grow up and be responsible,” he adds. “It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but then I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and it was a job.”

When one day he got called out to the sales floor as a temporary replacement for a salesman who’d had to leave, Low’s gift for timing arrived in a career-changing moment. “This guy came in who wanted to buy a computer, and I told him I couldn’t sell it to him as I wasn’t a sales person, but a repair guy in the back,” he recalls. “So he said, ‘Do you like your job?’

And I said, ‘Of course not – I hate it!’ So he said, ‘If you sell it to me at a discount, you can come and work for me tomorrow’. It turned out he was a production manager and needed an assistant, and thought I’d make a good one. I had to ask him what a PA even was. But it sounded far more interesting than what I was doing, so I thought, why not?”

Low was promptly fired from the computer store for his unauthorised stint as a ‘salesman’ and started his new career the next day. “I didn’t mean to do any of this,” he laughs. “There was no big plan. It all happened by accident, and when I got on set, I found that everyone was really cool, and they all had the same problem I had – no one really knew what the hell they were doing with their lives.”

After learning the ropes and gradually working his way up through production, a burned-out and frustrated Low decided to leave the film industry – but not before he gave it one last shot. “I’ve always felt creative and had that need to express myself, so I thought, ‘I’ll pick a job that I want, and I’ll really try to get it,’” he says. “And if I don’t get it, no big deal. I’ll leave and go back to my old life as a musician.”

Aiming for the stars, Low picked ‘director’. “I wanted to do what they do, and by then I’d been doing treatments for them and sort of understood the job,” he adds. “I’d learned how to speak to agencies through treatment writing, and knew what they wanted to hear – good fresh ideas.”

With this minimal training, Low “somehow convinced” an acquaintance with a local production company to build his reel. “I’d write fake commercials, and he’d help me shoot them on the backs of jobs he

“There was no big plan. It all happened by accident, and when I got on set, I found that everyone was really cool, and they all had the same problem I had – no one really knew what the hell they were doing with their lives.”

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JEFF LOW

16 Highlights from 2015 | JEFF LOW

already had,” recalls Low. “And he helped me get some scripts, which put me in a position to do what I already knew how to do – writing and crafting treatments. And ever since then, my strength’s been writing and crafting ideas on paper, and being very specific about them. And then, just with experience, I’ve learned to see what’s going to work and what’s totally not going to work.”

Although Low paints a fairly breezy picture of his move into directing, he admits that if he’d known just how hard it would be, “I probably wouldn’t have pursued it. Every single happiness in your life has to be forfeited, for at least a year, and if you go into this thinking, ‘I’ll make a ton of money’, you’re an idiot. You need to let go of everything and forget about money, which is hard to do. And it was a real grind, a game of inches, and it’s so competitive.”

His big break finally came with his acclaimed interactive Skittles spot which garnered 1.5 million views online within 24 hours of its debut (the overall campaign won two gold Lions at Cannes). “For a guy like me to even have a brand like Skittles really got me noticed,” he says. “And it was all blind luck. I worked my ass off to get it, but I didn’t write it.”

But it was the spot that got Low signed to Biscuit, and got him leverage.

“I had a cool little reel before, but this was a major deal, and it solidified me as ‘a funny guy’ whether I liked it or not,” he notes. “And in America, at least, I find you can only do one thing. You’re ‘that guy’. You can’t do four things, because it’s such a specialised market. But that’s not the case in the UK or Canada or Australia, at least in my experience.”

Since then, Low has actively “tried to leave money out of the equation” and focus on work “that I feel good about. Forget about awards and so on – just do the best job I can, and work my tits off. That’s the secret.”

That and intense preparation. “I do a lot of research and forensically go through every aspect of a job,” he explains. “I’m almost scientific about my approach, on paper. But that only gets you so far. You still need the je ne sais quoi.”

While he still has a home and family in Toronto, Low rarely works in Canada anymore, and divides his time between London and LA, “almost 50-50. And I’ll almost always get ‘funny’ scripts in both markets, but the UK will give me opportunities to do other stuff,” he reports. “Culturally, it’s just more open to a director doing varied material, and I don’t know why.”

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Come over here and sit next to me

Jeff Low

Asked about his directing style, Low describes his approach as “trying to be a conduit for the script’s author. Sometimes they may want me to totally take over, but more often when you’re working with a top creative team, they have a very strong position on how it should be,” he states. “So it’s not really my vision, and I want to amplify their vision. And you can work two different ways: either I sit down beside you and we go over things, or I sit across from you. And I’d rather sit beside you. That’s the best way I can describe my approach. Maybe it’s collaborative to a fault sometimes, but I love the debate and the back-and-forth.”

As for the future, Low says he has no plans to move into movies. “I feel like I’m perfectly trained to make a terrible movie,” he claims. “I like the short format, so I can definitely see myself doing sketch comedy, and I love writing so much that – whatever I end up doing – as long as it involves writing, I’ll be happy.” S

Commercials representation UK and US biscuitfilmworks.com Canada opc.tv Australia rabbitcontent.com France lestelecreateurs.com

Key work • World Animal Protection Before They Book • Tena Men Keep Control • The Guardian/Observer Use in Moderation • Scrabble Blank; Q • Skittles Cat

“I do a lot of research and forensically go through every aspect of a job. I’m almost scientific about my approach, on paper, showing why an idea will work. But that only gets you so far. You still need the je ne sais quoi.”

1 The Guardian/Observer, Use in Moderation 2 World Animal Protection, Before They Book 3 Skittles, Cat

| Highlights from 2015 17

JEFF LOW

Jeff Low is inspired by…

What’s your favourite ever ad? Maybe Cat With A Pipe [for the Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival]. It’s just such a great idea with a 50 dollar execution. Reminds us that it’s all about having an idea.

What product could you not live without?

Lettuce spinner. It’s by far the most fun and dynamic of kitchen appliances.

What are your thoughts on social media?

Having a ‘stance’ on social media is like having a stance on pigeons at this point. It’s just part of life on Earth. And like pigeons it can be used for good and evil… but mostly it’s used for neither.

How do you relieve stress during a shoot?

Prep the job properly. Be organised and clear with everybody what the hell you’re going to do.

I’m pretty serious about protecting our shooting time and I work very hard to keep stressful things off the set. I consider it part of my job to create the best shooting conditions possible beyond just the creative stuff. It’s not only the producer’s job, I guess is my point. Also it helps to understand that you are not obliged to adopt someone else’s stress. That’s their thing, not your thing.

What’s the last film you watched and was it any good? I watched That’s My Boy with Adam Sandler and Andy Samberg just to see how bad it was. And it was pretty dumb but I laughed and didn’t regret it. I wouldn’t recommend it but I would never judge you for liking it.

What was the last gig you went to? It was an opera with Noam Murro and [Biscuit UK’s MD] Orlando Wood actually. Which makes my life seem like something that it’s totally not.

What film do you think everyone should have seen? Goodfellas. It’s just weird if you haven’t seen it.

What fictitious character do you most relate to? Sisyphus… but more thankful for the rock.

If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you like to be? I’m pretty jealous of people in the hard sciences. Intense math seems to be the language of the universe and it seems like it would be really cool to be able to talk to the universe or understand things in a different way than the normal way that everybody understands things. To understand things rather than be trapped in the phenomenon all the time would be a nice perch to sit from sometimes. To me that sounds like a whole new level of creativity, way beyond anything we normally refer to as creative. I doubt I could hack it, but that’s what I’d like to do other than this.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know… I can’t bend my left thumb because I split it open as a kid running with a glass Coke bottle. Because of this I’ve never been that great at imitating Jimi Hendrix on the guitar, ’cos he wrapped his thumb around the fretboard fairly often.

18 Highlights from 2015 | MOBILE DIGITAL ART

Unlocking your inner artist could be just a screen swipe away.

Carol Cooper discovers the new digital art democracy and meets the pioneers of a new medium

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MOBILE DIGITAL ART 1

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20 Highlights from 2015 | MOBILE DIGITAL ART

“It’s just a matter of time before the barriers separating mobile digital art from non-mobile digital art will break down and the word ‘mobile’ will become superfluous – and digital media will be considered ‘conventional’.”

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Jeremy Sutton

Page 4 Banana, 2014, Mike Mittendorfer, Sketch Pad on a Nokia 520 phone Opening page After Hockney #1, 2013, Jeremy Sutton, painted on iPad Air using Sketch Club with Pencil by 53, while viewing a video replay screen of David Hockney’s work in David Hockney: Bigger Exhibition, De Young Museum, San Francisco 1 Ervin, 2014, Jeremy Sutton, painted from life on iPad Air using Art Set Pro and Sketch Club with Pencil by 53 2 Ishmeet, 2014, Jeremy Sutton, created from life on iPad Air using Sketch Club with Pencil by 53

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ll of us start off as artists. Once the average junior human has got beyond the stage of purely filling tummy and nappy, they move on, via percussion, construction and demolition, to the visual arts – creating images and interpreting their environment via fingertip smudges, crayons and paint. By adulthood, for most of us the desire to daub has long been squeezed out by pursuits considered more vocational, and a full-time artist is seen as a rare creature, inspiring awe, often envy.

But since the launch of drawing and painting apps, such as Brushes in 2008, a quiet revolution has taken place that could affect a subtle shift in our concept of ‘the artist’. The habitual faffing with phones or tablets that marks modern life no longer means the user is just communicating, gaming or surfing, they could well be painting with pixels.

Digital art is no longer the preserve of the illustrator on a studio Mac, it’s on the streets and in the hands of the everyman.

But what might have been seen as amateur app bothering or a fleeting gimmick has now moved into mainstream art, helped along by professional artists adopting the new medium with relish.

Lake Michigan-based artist Susan Murtaugh, who worked in advertising and graphic design for 45 years, has been producing digital art for 20 years using Cintiq and Photoshop. She became a beta tester first for the desktop painting program SketchBook and then for the Brushes app, developed by Steve Sprang.

“I saw an iPhone painting by Disney art director, Stéphane Kardos, and emailed asking him how hard it was to do. He wrote back telling me to get one and get to work. I did and I’ve never looked back.” In 2009, Murtaugh appeared in an ABC news feature on mobile digital art with Kardos and Jorge Columbo, whose iPhone illustration made the June cover of The New Yorker the same year.

Various mobile digital art shows began popping up around the States as the movement grew, but it was the unveiling of David Hockney’s stunning iPad images at his Royal Academy, London exhibition, A Bigger Picture, in 2012, that placed the medium firmly on the global art scene.

“I believe the fame of Hockney and Columbo made it much easier for me and other artists to promote our work,” says Murtaugh. “It’s still in

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1 Three Strikes, 2014, Susan Murtaugh, SketchBook Pro, Frax and iColorama on iPad 2 Pineapple, 2014, Mike Mittendorfer, Sketch Pad on a Nokia 520 phone 3 Concentration, 2012, Susan Murtaugh, SketchBook Pro on iPad

progress, though, and educating others is all part of the process. The hardest misconception to overcome is that we’re just pushing a button in an app, and art appears.”

Murtaugh spoke at the Second Annual Mobile Digital Arts and Creativity Summit in California last year, along with San Francisco-based British artist Jeremy Sutton, who’s been a digital artist, authority and pioneer for more than 20 years.

When more of Hockney’s iPad art was revealed at A Bigger Exhibition at San Francisco’s De Young gallery in 2013, Sutton performed a live iPad drawing event at the opening and taught workshops in the gallery. “My students and I would stand in front of our favourite Hockney works and draw them on our iPads. The level of excitement and awe was palpable!” he enthuses.

“Each of us was like a digital art Pied Piper attracting a little crowd of onlookers. What surprised me was when people exclaimed ‘Oh, so you can draw on the iPad?’ while they were surrounded by Hockney’s huge iPad prints and his replay videos [following the development of each piece] endlessly repeating on screens. It made

me realise the power of seeing mobile art in action, created in real time before your eyes with the human hand and the iPad. It also made me realise that this was art for everyone. Everyone we met, old and young, wanted to have a go.”

Digital painting from real life A true polymath, Sutton started taking art classes while studying physics at Oxford University, and his fascination with new technologies led him to try digital painting in 1991 – he is one of only 36 Corel Painter Masters worldwide and teaches iPad painting internationally.

He got excited about the artistic possibilities of mobile devices after seeing Steve Jobs introduce the iPhone at MacWorld 2007 in San Francisco, and experimented with iPhone painting, but found the small screen limiting. After the 2010 release of the iPad, however, everything changed.

“From the moment I started drawing in earnest on the iPad I loved it. It was small and light enough to be truly portable and something I could carry with me, while being big enough to feel comfortable for sketching.”

22 Highlights from 2015 |

MOBILE DIGITAL ART

“There are many photorealists and there are some killer abstractionists now. This is still a tool in its infancy.

Time will give us more styles and more ways to express ourselves, perhaps in ways we can’t even imagine.”

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Susan Murtaugh

Murtaugh also loves the ‘grab-it-and-go’ element of mobile digital art, while Hockney, who carries his iPad around in a specially designed jacket pocket, finds iPad drawing “much more interesting than computer drawing because it’s quicker. You can pick up a colour from another colour. You can work very fast [which] is something most draughtsmen are interested in.”

In his action painting events and workshops Sutton demonstrates the thrill of live drawing.

“The convenience of the iPad makes it an ideal live sketching tool,” he says. “I love sketching portraits from life. There is something so special about the interaction between artist and model. It is such a different experience to working from a photo. As Hockney said, ‘Photography is all right if you don’t mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralysed Cyclops – for a split second. But that’s not what it’s like to live in the world, or to convey the experience of living in the world.’”

The speed and ease of art apps mean they’ve been embraced for drawing from life, allowing a broader range of styles than the over-airbrushed look that has previously been prevalent.

“It seems many of the websites showing digital art in general, not specifically mobile digital art, tend to be showing more of the airbrushed, smooth-skinned fantasy type of art,” says Sutton.

“The mobile digital art that’s [emerging] seems to include more variety of approach and more use of thicker, bolder brush strokes. This may be because mobile devices lend themselves to quick, spontaneous drawing and looser marks.”

Breaking down barriers Sutton says he’s excited to see that artists are experimenting with the new medium, pushing it in new directions, and Murtaugh, who has curated many international digital art shows, sees a world of possibilities ahead. “I see so much different art now. There are many photorealists and there are some killer abstractionists; Patricio Villarroel Bórquez and Helene Goldberg are two of my favourites. This is still a tool in its infancy. Time will give us more styles and more ways to express ourselves, perhaps in ways we can’t even imagine.”

So, just like any other new art medium that’s emerged in the past, from egg tempura to screen

printing, mobile digital is leading to the creation of new artistic styles. But the new technology could also be leading to a radical shift in the way we think about media. “Defining ‘mobile digital art’ is like trying to define a moving target,” says Sutton.

“It’s moving in space and time, since everything’s heading mobile. The devices we can use for digital painting are converging towards mobility from both ends of the spectrum: mobile phone screens getting larger at one end and laptop computers getting more compact and mobile at the other end.

Desktop computer operating systems are evolving into universal operating systems that are indistinguishable from mobile/cloud operating systems. It’s just a matter of time before the barriers separating mobile digital art from non-mobile digital art will break down and the word ‘mobile’ will become superfluous – and digital media will be considered ‘conventional’.

I ask Murtaugh and Sutton if the new medium could also break down the barriers between artist and non-artist; if the mobility of the new tech and the ubiquity of its hardware coupled with the cheapness of its software will allow those of

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“These days most people have this powerful artistic tool in their pocket. And most definitely, mobile technologies have revolutionised creative expression. I think that, ultimately, humanity can only benefit from more people making more art.”

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Kerry Crocker

1 Kirk, 2010, Susan Murtaugh, Sketchbook Pro on iPad

us who’ve not painted since childhood to return to the joy of art as we go about our daily lives.

“It’s funny, I had this conversation with other artists this year,” says Murtaugh. “I think we’re at the beginning of a new era that appreciates creativity in all forms. Anything we can do to encourage others to get back in touch with that inner child artist should be done. I like to empower those that don’t think they can, with the tools and the knowledge that all it takes is time.”

Sutton agrees that most of us start out in life “making marks and expressing ourselves in what we draw. It’s not about being born with or without talent, it’s a natural way we react to the world.” He feels there is a general movement in society for more people to express themselves creatively and we’re also becoming more used to interacting with screens. “Anyone signing a credit card payment on an iPad enjoys a few seconds of uninhibited mobile digital art as they create a signature on the screen with their finger. It feels natural to draw on a screen now. Drawing on a device like an iPad is less intimidating for someone who doesn’t think of themselves as an ‘artist’ but wants to have a go.”

But if everyone is ‘having a go’ are they actually producing anything that’s any good?

Unsurprisingly, as a teacher, Sutton emphasises the importance of education: “When it comes to learning how to master the art of effective composition, use of line, shade etc, mobile digital art may be an amazing new medium but it doesn’t replace art education, practice and commitment to process and learning. Even Hockney took about eight months exploring and practising with the Brushes app on his iPad, after a few years of him already using it on the iPhone, before he felt ready to produce his iPad masterpieces. A tool is a tool is a tool – it’s what you do with it and the creativity you bring to it that makes a difference and produces great art.”

But is it art… and does it matter?

Kerry Crocker (aka Parasol B, parasolb.com), an artist who curated last year’s Smartphone Art Show at the Carrack Modern Art Space in North Carolina, feels that the more art out there the better, “These days most people have this powerful artistic tool in their pocket. And most

definitely, mobile tech has revolutionised creative expression. I think that, ultimately, humanity can only benefit from more people making more art.

But, if everyone is quickly and easily creating images the signal-to-noise ratio for quality content seems lower and lower – although it may just be that there is more content to sift through and the ratio of great to mediocre is the same as always.”

So quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality. But does that matter? And what is ‘quality’ art anyway?

My neighbour Mike is an engineer, a down-toearth man who’d never call himself an ‘artist’, but after upgrading to a phone with a decent screen he started to doodle while commuting, painting fellow travellers, then progressing to landscapes and still life. Practice having honed his natural talent, he’s built up an impressive gallery. As Murtaugh says, “If you put in the time, the talent will come. And it will make you very happy.” Surely, whether it’s art or not, that’s got to be a force for good. S For more of Jeremy Sutton’s work and his thoughts on mobile digital art see jeremysutton.com and for his online tutorials see paintboxtv.com. See more of Susan Murtaugh’s work on flickr.com/photos/suzi54241/

GLASS LIONS PRESIDENT

Glass ceilings don’t last long around industry activist and ardent feminist Cindy Gallop, making her the obvious choice for jury president of Cannes Lions’ newest award celebrating gender equality.

But, while lauding its birth, the former account executive tells Selena Schleh she can’t wait for the Glass Lion to become obsolete

PHOTOGRAPH: JULIAN HANFORD   JULIANHANFORD.COM

24 Highlights from 2015 |

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CINDY GALLOP

CINDY’S WAR

26 Highlights from 2015 |

GLASS LIONS PRESIDENT

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ounder and former chair of BBH New York, Cindy Gallop has worn an eclectic selection of hats since stepping down from agency life in 2005: advertising and marketing consultant; motivational speaker; sex-tech entrepreneur.

Her real-life wardrobe is equally idiosyncratic. When we meet at London’s Haymarket hotel, Gallop opens the door to her suite in spray-on PVC leggings and a hefty pair of biker boots, which must come in handy when your day job is kicking through glass ceilings and stomping on gender stereotypes.

Irked by extravagance This summer, Gallop will be switching her urban warrior attire for something a little more Croisettefriendly, as she dons yet another hat: that of jury president for the inaugural Glass Lion, which recognises ‘work that implicitly or explicitly addresses issues of gender inequality or prejudice’. Although it’s her first time on a Cannes jury, Gallop is no stranger to the festival itself, having engineered a visit many years ago through a copywriter boyfriend working at BBDO Amsterdam and becoming a regular in the 90s while running BBH New York. “It was a big deal for doing business,” she remembers. Her fellow agency heads weren’t initially as keen to attend. “I told them we [all] needed to go, in order to establish ourselves as a global network, and dragged a very reluctant Nigel Bogle and John Hegarty along with me.”

Business opportunities aside, Gallop’s personal views on the festival are decidedly mixed. “It’s the only truly global meeting place

“[The Cannes Advertising Festival] is also appallingly old world order – all those ridiculous yachts and lavish spending in a way that I honestly find embarrassing on behalf of our industry. That is not the image that we want to be putting out there.”

for the advertising industry and a phenomenal celebration of the best of the best in terms of creativity and the extraordinary talent that exists within our industry, so I love it for that,” she ponders.

However, while supporting its core values, Gallop thinks the festival’s flashness is increasingly out of touch. “It is also appallingly old world order – all those ridiculous yachts and lavish spending in a way that I honestly find embarrassing on behalf of our industry. That is not the image that we want to be putting out there.”

There are other aspects of Cannes that have irked Gallop over the years, including “the appalling gender ratio” of the juries. Lately, her attendance at the awards has been sporadic, but physical absence is no barrier to the self-dubbed ‘Michael Bay of business’ – Gallop simply blew up the issue on Twitter and Facebook instead. That sparked a conversation with Cannes’ director of brand strategy, Senta Slingerland, who was, says Gallop, “already acutely aware of the [gender inequality] issues herself” and taking steps to address them through initiatives such as the Sheryl Sandberg-backed ‘See It Be It’, introduced last year to help accelerate the careers of women creatives.

“Senta rang me and said, ‘We’re working on a project we think you’ll like, and we’d like to bounce it off you and get your input,’” recalls Gallop. “So we had a long call where I recommended how I thought the award should be positioned and characterised, and what the criteria for entries should be.”

Interestingly, the Glass Lion had been foreshadowed by a proposed Lioness award just a few weeks earlier, cooked up by a creative team from DDB Sydney for the Young Glory competition, to honour work ‘that changes the culture of objectifying women in order to sell stuff’. The fact that the concept was generated by young male copywriter, Christian Tough (and female art director Effie Kacopieros), shows that it’s not just women pushing for radical change in the old world order of advertising, claims Gallop.

Reimagining male morons and hapless husbands, too Although she was closely involved in the development of the award, Gallop says her subsequent appointment as jury president came as a complete shock: “I was absolutely gobsmacked!” Not that she lacks the chops for the role. Her background is account management, rather than creative, but she has ample experience of reviewing and evaluating work, having chaired a creative review committee at the Advertising Council in New York for years, as well as organising Advertising Women of New York’s now-shelved awards event, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, which celebrated depictions of women in a non-offensive, non-stereotyped, non-objective way and shamed advertising that did the opposite.

The male-female ratio of the Glass Lion jury will be 80:20 in favour of women and while the priority remains recruiting industry leaders (“We need people who can really evaluate the best of the best creativity”), in an ideal scenario, says Gallop, some of the 10-strong jury will have been drawn from beyond the agency sphere. “We want people who operate in areas where there is a real need to rethink the gender ratio and representation of gender,

CINDY GALLOP

whether that’s media, entertainment or technology, because everything that this award is about is also true for popular culture generally.” Since this interview, jury members announced include the executive director of UN Women, Elizabeth Nyamayaro and founder and CEO of non-profit organisation, The Representation Project, Jennifer Siebel Newsom.

So how will she direct the jury, when it comes to judging the entries?

For Gallop, the award should recognise “great creative work in our industry reflecting the world around us, as opposed to perpetuating outmoded stereotypes.” What it’s not about, she stresses, is going to the other extreme and bringing in new gender stereotypes. “Ads showing women in wildly empowered situations is, unfortunately, what people’s minds go to, but it’s enormously important that this [award] is about great creative work where a complete re-envisioning of gender is a fundamental part of the DNA.” And that goes for both sexes. “When we talk about shattering gender stereotypes we’re not just talking about women. I am fed up with young male morons in beer ads and hapless husbands in household goods ads – and men are as well. I have a very wide [social media] network and every day young men are critiquing advertising for the stereotypical way it depicts them.”

Making the Glass Lion less of a ‘girl’ thing When asked for examples of brilliant gender-neutral advertising, Gallop is more cagey. “For me, the best advertising of that sort is where I don’t even think about it; I don’t have to be outraged. I’m not going to point to all the usual suspects and say ‘[these ads] really empowered women’. By far the most interesting creative work is where gender is not an issue at all.” She cites Apple as a brand which has never discriminated between men and women in its advertising, in contrast to what she dubs the usual ‘pink it and shrink it’ marketing approach.

Where does Gallop stand on the widely-publicised wave of pro-female advertising such as Always’ 2014 spot #Like A Girl and, more recently, Sport England’s This Girl Can? While she applauds the likes of Pantene and Dove – “Obviously, I’m absolutely thrilled that all this is happening, and we can’t have too much of tackling this issue from every possible angle” – she is keen to see a creative diversity of approach when it comes to entries. “I just worry those ads are creating a very narrow bandwidth of what people think would win the Glass Lion,” she explains. “There are just so many different ways that we can reflect the real world. Those [types of] campaigns are one area – which has gotten a lot of coverage because it’s so rare – but I want to see the entire spectrum.”

One of the biggest challenges for Gallop was positioning the Glass Lion as more than just ‘the women’s award’. “Things concerned with gender equality – because it’s not something that affects men – can very easily be marginalised,” she says. “I want this to be the award that every single young male creative around the world is gagging to win. Obviously I want every young female creative around the world to enter, too – but if we crack [the young male creatives], we’ve cracked the problem.”

| Highlights from 2015 27

“Ads showing women in wildly empowered situations is, unfortunately, what people’s minds go to, but it’s enormously important that this [award] is about great creative work where a complete re-envisioning of gender is a fundamental part of the DNA.”

If anyone can galvanise people into action, it’s Gallop. After all, this is the woman who got into advertising after being told ‘You could sell a fridge to an Eskimo’.

After landing her first job at Ted Bates in 1985, she moved to JWT, Gold Greenlees Trott and BBH London, where she worked on a string of big-ticket accounts including Coca-Cola and Polaroid.

In 1996 she left the UK for Singapore to start BBH Asia Pacific as Simon Sherwood’s number two; two years later she set up BBH New York (essentially Gallop “in a room, with a phone”), growing it into a successful shop with the likes of Johnnie Walker, Unilever and Levi’s on its books and bagging herself the 2003 Advertising Woman of the Year award along the way.

After her textbook rise through the ranks, it was a surprise to many when, in 2005, Gallop stepped down as chairman in favour of fresh challenges and a portfolio career – founding her own brand and business innovation consultancy and carving out a niche as a professional public speaker. It was during an explosive TED talk in 2009 that Gallop launched the first of her two internet start-ups, MakeLoveNotPorn (MLNP). Garnering over 1.2 million views on YouTube to date, the talk tapped a global social nerve that Gallop had no idea existed, catapulting her into the sex site industry. “It’s the start-up the world asked for, but it started off entirely by accident,” says Gallop. “Through dating younger men, I experienced first-hand what happens when today’s total access to hardcore porn online meets our society’s equally

28 Highlights from 2015 | GLASS LIONS PRESIDENT

total reluctance to talk openly and honestly about sex. Porn becomes by default the sex education of the day.” MLNP seeks to redress the balance by depicting “real people” having “real world sex”. In two years, Gallop’s “tiny clunky site” has blown up in a way she never anticipated, gaining 350,000 members across the globe (their biggest market is Scandinavia, followed by China), undergoing a sleek facelift and taking a monthly revenue, “in the low five figures” admits Gallop, “but in a world where the received wisdom is: nobody pays for porn, they’re paying for real world sex.”

Following prolonged but ultimately fruitless discussions with Durex (who “fully endorse the concept but are too nervous to partner with us”), Gallop is negotiating an interesting brand partnership that’s currently cloaked in secrecy. The branding opportunities, she says, are huge.

Flip the gender, fix the ad MLNP’s success has put Gallop’s second, socially-minded start-up, If We Ran The World (a web platform designed to turn good intentions into action) on the back burner for now. With all these projects on the go, does she ever miss her agency days? “Not in the slightest,” she says cheerfully. “But I love the industry and I’m very much still involved.”

And she’s unlikely to step away any time soon since her twin goals – advertising that reflects the real world and parity of men and women in the top creative and management roles – are still some way off, as her experiences as one of the chairs of the Ad Council’s campaign review committee have shown.

While Gallop won’t name names, she recalls “a very large agency” presenting a campaign in 2014, which featured a daughter in the kitchen with her mother, and a son on the football pitch with his father. Gallop’s first recommendation? Flip the genders of the kids. Another recent review illustrated the problem even more clearly: in a series of six TV spots, every single one featured a male-centric scenario – despite the fact that the main decision-maker and action-taker in the household would be the woman.

When Gallop pointed this out to the “two older white guys” who’d presented the campaign, there was a “deathly silence”: the issue hadn’t even occurred to them. “And that,” says Gallop, “is what happens when you have all male ECDs, all male creative directors, all male creative teams – they unfortunately default to outmoded stereotypes.”

Looking back in anger and forward to smashing glass

“I can see all sorts of things which horrify me now, but at the time… well, you’re ambitious and you’re working really hard. It isn’t until you’re older and you have the chance to take a very clearsighted look at your industry, that you start thinking about things like this.”

The paucity of female creatives, especially at the higher echelons of the industry, isn’t a new issue, but it’s reached a tipping point now that women are the predominant purchasers and doers of virtually everything the industry targets. Now more than ever, it’s head-slappingly obvious that there’s a huge commercial case for taking women seriously: “Gender equality is not a ‘nice to have’, it’s great business.”

Incremental changes, with the odd female hire here and there, won’t bring change fast enough: agencies should be, as Gallop puts it, “bulkbuying”. Tokenism famously doesn’t work; one senior woman cannot change things single-handedly so ends up adapting to the environment around her, inevitably becoming like her male colleagues in what Gallop calls Highlander syndrome (“There can be only one”). That leads to “the very unfortunate dynamic of women competing with women. And it’s a syndrome entirely brought about by men.”

It’s tempting to speculate that Gallop is speaking from personal experience, so just how much gender bias did she encounter while working her way up through the agency ranks? “Quite frankly, it’s not the kind of thing I ever thought about,” she claims. “Obviously I can look back and see all sorts of things which horrify me now, but at the time… well, you’re ambitious and you’re working really hard. It isn’t until you’re older and you have the chance to take a very clear-sighted look at your industry, that you start thinking about things like this.”

Notwithstanding the flaws that are now apparent with 20:20 hindsight, Gallop’s affection for the advertising industry is clear – “it’s jam-packed full of brilliant, talented, creative, articulate people who do not get enough credit for that talent from the outside” – and for Cannes itself: “I welcome any opportunity to celebrate those vast amounts of talent.”

As for the award she helped shape, Gallop is already looking forward to the day that the Glass Lion is smashed to smithereens. “I really want this award not to exist in a few years’ time; I want it not to be necessary.

To paraphrase a well-known slogan, every Cannes-award-winning ad will be built this way.” S

FASHION SPECIAL

| Highlights from 2015 29

PREYING ON THE SENSES 1

From big cats in collars and coyly flirtatious actresses to pert-buttocked male models and bored buffaloes – scent expert Lizzie Ostrom examines the weird and not always wonderful history of fragrance ads and asks, where can they go next?

30 Highlights from 2015 |

PERFUME ADVERTISING

L

et’s start with the panthers. The leopards and the tigers. The whole panoply of big cats. They’re everywhere in perfume adverts: lounging on a chaise longue, wearing a diamanté collar; slinking around a mock-Versailles palace with a beautiful woman in a floor-length gown; making us ask, ‘Is this her pet, or is there some kind of weird relationship going on here?’

The thing is, panthers do make for a useful prop when the intangible, ineffable essence of scent must somehow be poured into something concrete,

“Fragrance has no product truth you can work with. It’s versions of a fantasy, of having a moment to escape your mind.”

It’s easy to see why the same props list turns up again and again. Perfume ads for the screen must strain to translate the emotional ‘weather’ that’s conjured by an intriguing scent into a narrative, and get stuck in a tired roster of scenarios. As Jade Tomlin, senior creative at digital agency Hugo & Cat points out: “Unlike all the other products you’d work on, even in beauty, there’s no product truth you can work with. It’s versions of a fantasy, of having a moment to escape your mind.”

“They throw a leading Hollywood director or actor at the problem and paper over the lack of idea with layers of cash.”

2

something visual. What better symbol of the danger and unhinged excitement of the latest big scent launch? Interestingly, perfume ad art direction in the 1920s, which also loved to feature big cats, was pretty much interchangeable with cigarette artwork. Both used symbolism, particularly of the ‘Orient’, to convey the druglike intoxication offered by these products.

Spotting the archetypal landscapes and characters populating global fragrance commercials resembles a game of Jungian bingo. Double-page spreads and epic screen ads are littered with chess sets (unlocks the strategist in you; a go-to in 1960s aftershave ads), sand dunes (escape from bourgeois conformism), grey-carpeted penthouses (you successful man, you) and photographic studios (because you’re the ingénue star of your own destiny). Of course, sex must be a part of it, given that perfume basically exists to help us get laid – perhaps overlooking the Eiffel Tower, on a beach with a rapidly turning tide, or in an industrial corridor, as if the protagonists are stuck in a mall loading bay and need some way of passing the time until they’re rescued.

But is it more a case of losing our minds?

BMB’s Trevor Beattie says what we’re all thinking: “It’s an idea-less insanity. For fragrance brands nothing can be too camp, too ludicrous, too unfathomable or, of course, too expensive. They throw a leading Hollywood director and/or actor at the problem and paper over the distinct lack of idea with layers of cash. The irony being that they’ve all blurred into one big fat stinking un-fragrant daft brand, which has become the new low-light of Christmas.”

Should we be groaning, though, at a formula that seems to work? Peacocking, the very act of showing you can afford the best and therefore that your perfume is ‘caviar for the general’, has served Dior well in its campaign for new fragrance Sauvage, shot by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Starring Johnny Depp and a nonchalant buffalo, it’s racked up over 20m YouTube views at the time of writing and topped the Viral Video Charts this September (it’s early, though, to gauge sales effectiveness). The millennial J’Adore by Christian Dior remains the number two bestseller in France, sold by Charlize Theron giving iterative service to the act

1 Dior Sauvage 2 Dior J’adore

FASHION SPECIAL of wearing a gold dress. And Cool Water by Davidoff, 27 years old and still wildly popular, is spurred on by a recurring dive into the ocean by the latest choice of action hero. The oiled pecs and butterfly stroke are a constant; subtle tonal changes update the story for the times. 2015’s campaign, starring Scott Eastwood contemplating the elements, portrays a more introspective, thoughtful masculinity compared with 1992’s poseur Brian Buzzini doing push-ups on the beach, toned buttocks on show.

Will Andrews, of Proctor & Gamble’s prestige fragrance design team (behind the Hugo Boss brand) thinks the palette of options will always be limited. “If we smell a new fragrance blind, it’s largely meaningless – beyond a like or dislike. It’s utterly abstract for many people. So we’ve got to seize meaning

“It’s utterly abstract for many people. So we’ve got to seize meaning through metaphor.

And that means attaching celebrity.”

1

cultural memes. Take their 1996 screen ad featuring a geeky lad’s wild night with a beautiful woman, which comes to a brutal end when he wakes up from his dream and realises he’s stuck with his girlfriend: Jennifer Aniston.

But as a personal care product, rather than a fine fragrance, Axe has room to play. Humour is difficult when collaborating with a fashion brand purveying luxury goods that’s tightly in control of its own image. Even mass market scents don’t often work well with it. Take, for example, Enjoli, which in the 1970s attempted to align itself with the feminist cause: “The eighthour perfume for the 24-hour woman.” Promoted with a doctored version of the Peggy Lee song I’m a Woman, in which the singer takes us through her various guises, from

“One shift is represented by the invitation for the viewer to be a part of the story, rather than just a voyeur in the world of models and big cats.”

2

through metaphor. And that means attaching celebrity.”

Andrews admits being absolutely riveted by the Depp campaign: “I was in London Waterloo station, and it was playing repeatedly on a big screen and I was stood there watching it ten times. This is the thing. They just have to grab your attention, to get you intrigued enough to try it.”

Using celebrity to sell fragrance isn’t a recent phenomenon.

Early 20th-century ads generally festishised the packaging, with close-ups of bottles and boxes, but they knew how to rope in the fashion icons of the time, too. In 1910 Bourjois brought out a scent dedicated to the French opera singer Marguerite Carré.

A year later, British firm Atkinsons signed up London’s variety entertainment dancers, the Gaiety Girls, to flog their latest release, Poinsettia, with the cheery claim: “I am surprised that a perfume of such rare charm and delicacy can be obtained at such a price.” There’s a line today’s fragrance ambassadors could try at their next press junket.

There are some examples where the dreamland of fantasy is replaced by something more prosaic, or even parodic, and this can work brilliantly. Following in the footsteps of Hai Karate’s groundbreaking marketing ploy of issuing men with self-defence manuals to fight off horny females, BBH’s work for Lynx/Axe has for years deployed the cologne-as-confidence-trick motif with tongue-in-cheek and an eye for toying with

| Highlights from 2015 31

1 Lynx/Axe, Astronaut 2 Lynx/Axe, Angels 3 Davidoff Cool Water

3

busy worker to caring mum to man-pleaser, Enjoli threatened to demolish the glamour of the fragrance world in one swoop by actually featuring someone wielding a frying pan on camera. Where can you go from there?

The story is changing, though… slowly. One platform shift, shared by the fashion industry, is represented by the (sometimes reticent) invitation for the viewer to be a part of the story, rather than just a voyeur in the world of supermodels and big cats.

Last year Burberry extended their core Kate Moss- and Cara Delevingne-fronted My Burberry campaign and teamed up with agency Storm Digital to offer an invitation via TV-on-demand ads for punters to monogram their own bottle using a smartphone and see their flacon on a Piccadilly Circus billboard. This autumn Armani is promoting Sì by asking women who want to ‘Say yes to life’ to curate their own shareable film package from a reel of vignettes, each featuring someone embarking on an unusual or inspiring activity.

The industry needs to find something new. In traditional markets consumption is on the wane. China is a growing market, one where fragrance enjoys positioning as a symbol of luxury, but where there is little tradition of fragrance use which, as P&G’s Andrews acknowledges, presents a problem, not least because, “We have to find the cultural fit that’s relevant to the audience. How do you promote a product that is about standing

32 Highlights from 2015 | PERFUME ADVERTISING out and being personally identified by your fragrance, in a country with a recent history of prioritising collective identity over all else?” Brazil, whose love of premium fragrance is cheering the industry, currently favours traditional, simpler compositions, not creatively challenging concepts. Market buoyancy has come from the Middle East, which has a long tradition of perfume-wearing and a thriving luxury offer (think $25,000 editions); below-the-line is the strategy here, predicated on in-store personal discovery experiences and private parties that turn shopping for scent into a ritual.

Meanwhile, in Europe and America it’s another story. As with many other consumer products – most notably beer – perfume has been going niche in the past 15 years. For a while this was

“The first person view means the viewer feels the elements directly…

It’s direct, personal and open to interpretation – like a perfume.”

4

version of the Cool Water world. According to Matt Huband, associate director of global marketing for Penhaligon’s: “The first person view means the viewer feels the elements directly without the interference of a narrative. It’s direct, personal and open to interpretation – like a perfume.” The films aren’t just for social media sharing. Principally, they’re played in the brand’s 22 stores around the world to heighten the in-store scent-sniffing experience.

Can larger brands now start to offer the same intimate relation with fragrance – multi-modal experiences where your own perceptions take centre stage? Andrews thinks the possibilities all come down to the size and type of space in which the fragrances are marketed: “Those types of fragrance

“Niche fragrance may be small when it comes to campaign budgets, but it can afford to break away from the archetypal narratives…”

5

a trend restricted to those who considered themselves to be connoisseurs – fume-heads and scent freaks – but it’s moving mainstream. Last year Estée Lauder purchased both Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle and cult US favourite, Le Labo. But as soon as the global fashion brands gobble them up, a new army of small, splintered, artisanal names pop up like mushrooms after a damp night.

Niche fragrance may be small when it comes to campaign budgets, but what it can afford to do is to break away from the archetypal narratives, and explore a different kind of storytelling. These days there are scent brands inspired by the highly-personal unfolding of a real-life love affair (Jul et Mad); by photographic images – perfumers are given a photograph as inspiration to recreate in fragrance (Olfactive Studio); and by specific moments in history (Carlos Huber’s Arquiste range).

While fashion-led fragrances conjure a world that they hope leads you to pick up the scent, the upstarts are using the scent itself as a portal to transport you to another world. For example, Penhaligon’s (recently bought by Puig, who also produce Paco Rabanne perfumes) collaborated with Cereal magazine to produce a film conjuring the sensation of smelling their new duo: Blasted Heath and Blasted Bloom. With no people in-shot, the film features tactile footage of cold, wild landscapes accompanied by diegetic sound, like an incredibly English

4 Dior Sauvage 5 Olfactive Studio’s inspirational photograph for Ombre Indigo 6 Penhaligon’s Blasted,

by Cereal

6

houses have their own stores – they control the space, and so can produce original and exciting live content. The task for brands in shared retail with limited options for engagement is how to do that – to stretch out into this real estate.”

Jonathan Bottomley, chief strategy officer at BBH, runs the Axe account and is pretty au fait with fragrance. He believes that what niche offers is “more than storytelling; it’s access to the creative process”. Following the cue of the cocktail movement, the mystique of fragrance is giving way in certain audiences to greater consumer inquisitiveness.

How is the stuff actually made? What am I smelling here?

How can I alter the juice? This has found expression in American brand Juniper Ridge’s touring perfume-making truck which sets up shop in mountain ranges to distil wild materials, or Ex Nihilo’s precision-dosing, polished-brass Osmologue machines, which mix customers’ personalised fragrances (something that recalls 1930s couture house Jean Patou’s perfume-cocktail bar experience).

Bottomley thinks the golden egg of the new age of fragrance marketing will be “the Nike ID of fragrance. The emerging generation has grown up in a world of authentic products where they’ve been invited to meet the maker. Scent is a form of self-expression and so we have to start with how the product can offer that personalisation.” S

DAVID LUBARS

Seems these days our language adopts new words and phrases faster than you can ROFL, or look up ‘askhole’.

Finding himself in a lexical loop-theloop about the actual meaning of the term ‘branded content’, Danny Edwards asked David Lubars, president of this year’s Cannes Lions Branded Content jury, to share his definition of this most industrydefining erm... thingummy

W

| Highlights from 2015 33

hat is branded content? This is both an actual, and rhetorical question because while it seems everyone has an answer, no one really has the answer. Content is a word that is thrown around by pretty much everyone these days. It’s the Holy Grail of contemporary advertising and the elusive thing that every brand would like to successfully create. But the definition of ‘content’ changes depending on who you talk to and can be confusing: “So, what are you working on?”

“A great piece of content for Brand X.” “Fantastic. What is it exactly?”

“It’s actually a music video but you never see the product and only get a ‘sponsored by Brand X’ caption at the end’.”

“Right. Sort of like an ad.” “<silent, hateful look>” It’s tempting to revert to journalistic cliché and quote the dictionary definition of the word ‘content’, but I don’t think we need to. Content is basically everything, and everything with a brand attached is, therefore, branded content. Right?

A 60-second commercial is branded content. A short animated film sponsored by a fast food chain is branded content. A tweet sent from the Academy Awards by Ellen DeGeneres on a Samsung phone is, it seems, branded content.

But then, what do I know? Because according to this year’s president of the Cannes Lions Branded Content and Entertainment jury, chief creative officer of BBDO Worldwide and chairman of BBDO North America, David Lubars, that explanation is not strictly true. “Branded content, to me,” he says, “is where [an idea] couldn’t exist without the product.”

If anyone can fathom the definition of branded content it would be Lubars.

A veteran of Cannes juries (he headed the Titanium jury in 2006, and both the Film and Press juries in 2009), Lubars is no stranger to a darkened room, a set of guidelines and a whole heap of creative ideas, but even he admits that there can be various interpretations of what branded content is. Most importantly, the Lions festival defines the category thus; “The definition of Branded Content and Entertainment… is the creation of, or natural integration into, original content by a brand. Entrants will show how a brand has successfully worked independently or in association with a content producer or publisher to develop and create or co-create entertaining and engaging content for their audience. This could be either by creating original content or programming for a brand or by naturally integrating a brand into existing formats by partnering with a publisher or media partner.”

And who are we to argue? [Though we could. A TV spot is also ‘original content’. Usually, anyway]. “I loved judging all those other categories,”

34 Highlights from 2015 | DAVID LUBARS

THE CONTENT

CONUNDRUM

PHOTOGRAPHS: BILLY SIEGRIST

“The definition of Branded Content and Entertainment… is the creation of, or natural integration into, original content by a brand.”

DAVID LUBARS

| Highlights from 2015 35

“All kinds of video is what a campaign really consists of now; different lengths, different channels. Everything’s blurring into entertainment because first of all [people have] got to want to look at it, to send it on, and that’s how it’s going now. To me, this [category] is where the future is.”

explains Lubars of his previous jury stints, “but this is the category for right now. What a campaign is has changed so much. It’s funny because everyone predicted the death of regular television but that’s still going strong. And all kinds of video is what a campaign really consists of now; different lengths, different channels. But everything’s blurring into entertainment because first of all [people have] got to want to look at it, to send it on, and that’s how it’s going now. To me, this [category] is where the future is.”

Modern Family’s quintessentially modern content Lubars states that a piece of work which has caught his eye over the past year is the Daniel Wolfe-directed spot for Honda’s Type R, The Other Side, created

by Wieden+Kennedy London. An interactive film featuring a ‘dark’ and ‘light’ storyline that sit cleverly side-by-side with a press of the ‘R’ key, it has already picked up a slew of advertising awards. A good example of branded content then? “I think a lot of [deciding what is branded content] is just gut instinct,” Lubars says. “But Honda is great content that is highly entertaining, interactive, fun and cool, a great product demo and it’s different [and] it really is entertainment. And I assume they’ll enter it into this category.”

Another, more unusual and possibly purer example of branded content that Lubars admires is a February episode of US comedy show, Modern Family – which ironically was not actually paid for by the brand. The episode in question, Connection Lost, was shot using, and takes place entirely on, Apple products – utilising laptops, iPhones and iPads for the characters to interact with each other. “It’s fantastic,” he states. “I mean, I don’t know if they’ll enter it, and at the start you might immediately roll your eyes because it does feel a bit product placement-ey but it’s so well done you’re just like, ok, I’ll go with it. And it’s really, really funny.” Picking him up on the product placement point, asking whether this is branded content or, indeed, pure product placement, Lubars returns again to the salient point he made before, that to be branded content it needs for the content to only be able to exist because of the brand, and that this is a perfect case in point. “Product placement is when you see a movie or a TV show and they suddenly pull out some branded crackers or something, it’s when a product’s just stuck in there,” he says. “Take our spot for GE with Jeff Goldblum [Enhance Your Lighting]. He actually talks about and shows the product the whole time, talking about lighting and how light works, but the whole thing couldn’t exist without that product and it’s super-entertaining rather than being entertaining and then a product is just randomly dropped in.”

Lubars is perfectly placed to head this particular category, not just because of his experience at leading a jury in general but due to his very early adoption of branded content as a form of advertising. Back in 2001, when he

was at Fallon Minneapolis, Lubars was the driving force behind BMW’s series of films called The Hire. Starring a then relatively unknown Clive Owen, the shorts were directed by luminaries such as Wong Kar-Wai, John Woo, John Frankenheimer and Ang Lee. The car was front and centre but the content was clever, interesting and rich enough that people sought it out. The films were also released on DVD because download and streaming speeds at the turn of the century aren’t quite what they are today, and The Hire heralded a new era of both content-rich and non-TV commercial centric campaigns.

The Hire was hugely successful and was actually a big factor in Cannes Lions introducing the Titanium Lions, to celebrate ideas that defied categorisation and which broke the mould, and Lubars states that it was the limitations of the time which actually helped them in the end. “They were long-form films but at the time there was really no place to put them,” he says.

“You didn’t have YouTube or anything like that so you had to download them over a period of hours. It was actually supposed to be an hour-long film but you’d never have been able [to download it] so we chopped it into six minute [segments] and then thought, why make it continuous? Each one could be it’s own film, and we actually had several directors [lined up] so the idea actually became better because of those limitations.”

As for contemporary branded content campaigns, Lubars believes that it’s now much more difficult to create such financially expensive work as The Hire. Though there’s still a place for big productions, he says, it’s now more about the constant flow of smaller ones. About quantity as well as quality.

Citing the old adage of being able to choose two from ‘cheap, fast and good’, Lubars states that nowadays you need all three and the only way to do that is to create content in-house, as BBDO New York did with its Vine-based Fix in Six campaign for DIY chain Lowe’s.

Conversations about the categorisation of content As for the festival, a discussion with the Cannes hierarchy could be on the cards, he says, over the whole definition of this category. “Maybe they should just call it branded entertainment,” he muses. “I’d get that. But then that’s the good thing about those guys; Phil [Thomas, Cannes Lions CEO] and Terry [Savage, Cannes Lions chairman], they’re happy to have those conversations.” Mostly though, Lubars is once again looking forward to being locked in a room at the tail end of June with a selection of his peers for the best part of a week – “it is a long time to be in a dark room, looking at everybody else on the outside, but it’s always great to be there” – and to examining the best of what the industry has to offer in terms of Branded Content and Entertainment. Even if none of us still quite know exactly what that term means. S

36 Highlights from 2015 | S IS FOR SCAM

‘S

cam’ is defined as a dishonest scheme. In that sense, much of what we call scam advertising is no such thing. Most of it simply looks for an advantage within the parameters of an awards contest, then exploits that advantage. There are very few ads that actually transgress those rules then hope not to be caught.

But when the ad industry uses the word, it generally refers to work that sits at the outer limit of the conditions of entry; not illegal as such, but consistent merely with the letter of the law rather than the spirit. That’s why you’ll find scam advertising all over the world and its practitioners able to deny producing any such thing.

I started working in advertising in 1996.

Back then the word scam was unheard of, and yet scam ads did indeed exist: there were the two-minute director’s cuts that ran

“Proactivity became a very deliberate drive towards the collection of Cannes Lions and D&AD Pencils, and the race to the podium inevitably led some to run before they could walk.” a few times “to qualify for awards”; the ads whose edit, grade or music were changed for the award entry version; the DPS with the phone number sliced off the entered proof. Nobody really cared about those practices, mainly because everyone was at it. They also provided the lucky people of planet Earth more perfect examples of what the rest of us could aim for, so where was the harm?

You’ve got to spin it to win it Then a couple of things changed. One was the rise of the Gunn Report, which counted up the scores of an ad’s global awards and then declared a poster/copywriter/production company to be THE BEST. Suddenly there was an empirical measurement of an ad’s or agency’s creative ability, and that could then be used in creds meetings, which led to pitches, which led (hopefully) to cash. The other thing it led to was

SH159_p92-93_S is for_KF2.indd 80

There’s been plenty of brilliant advertising to celebrate over the past 25 years, but is the relentless pursuit of awards encouraging a darker side of the industry to flourish?

Ben Kay, the copywriter behind If This Is A Blog, Then What’s Christmas? shines a light on the murky practice of scam advertising

is for

SCAM 1

the rise of international ad awards. You see, the sneaky thing about the Gunn Report is that Donald Gunn never explained which awards counted to the final total or what each award was worth. This meant that agencies started entering their ads in somewhat questionable schemes all over the world. But how do you please international jurors? You create ads with as few words as possible, with a conceit that would play as well in Botswana as it would in Basingstoke.

So a certain kind of ad began to take precedence: the fewer elements, the better.

That doesn’t mean that such reductive ads were always scam – far from it. An ad with few elements is often a much better ad anyway, due to its greater simplicity. But clients don’t always want ads without their logo or website, so agencies started to create ads whose only purpose was to win awards. I guess that initially it appeared as

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“It’s the creation of work whose intended audience is an award jury, not the general public. Is this why we no longer attract the most creative people?”

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Soon after came the explosion of media, creating many new categories that awarded ads unlikely to have been seen by anyone in real life: banner ads, pre-roll, experiential, one-off OOH, mobile, social media etc. As nobody saw them, and they took a bit of explaining, they were accompanied by an explanatory entry film, which gave a huge amount of scope for exaggeration (eight people visited the site instead of two? That’s a 300 per cent rise in web traffic!) and, some might say, bullshit. Of course some of these films are genuine, but they come from ad agencies – who can blame them for presenting the best side of something when that’s essentially what they do all day?

If an ad runs and no one sees it…

1 Ben Kay 2 JWT India’s unapproved ad for Ford Figo 3/4 Saatchi & Saatchi New York’s Speed Dressing for JC Penney 5 DDB Brasil’s controversial 9/11 ad for WWF

a kind of laudable proactivity that showed an agency doing extra-curricular work on behalf of its clients. But give human beings an inch and they will always take a mile: huge agencies started devoting entire floors of their buildings, months of the year and the best teams in the department to nothing but the winning of awards. Proactivity became a very deliberate drive towards the

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collection of Cannes Lions and D&AD Pencils, and the race to the podium inevitably led some to run before they could walk. Some efforts, such as the WWF 9/11 ad and the JC Penney teen-fumbling Speed Dressing spot, crossed far enough over the boundaries of good taste that the clients feigned ignorance of their existence and the agencies involved received global opprobrium.

So now anything can be an ad, and you barely need any proof that it really happened, let alone had any significant impact in the world. Add to that the fact that award schemes have neither the time nor incentive to check the veracity of entries (I believe a client sign-off is enough these days), and you have a vicious cycle of complicitous rule bending, commonly known as ‘scam’.

Is that a problem? Well, it undermines the credibility of what we do. It makes agencies look craven and, I would argue, pathetic. It’s the creation of work whose intended audience is an award jury, not the general public. Is that why we got into this industry? Probably not. Is it why we no longer attract the most creative people? Maybe.

Is it why our salaries are shrinking in relative terms? I think so. But while we continue to reward the bullshit, the bullshit will continue to flow. S Follow Ben’s blog at ben-kay.com

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38 Highlights from 2015 |

FAVOURITE KIT ‒ MATT POWELL

MATT POWELL Co-president, KBS+ New York; co-founder, Spies + Assassins

FAVOURITE KIT 1 Fujifilm INSTAX Mini 90 instant camera I fell in love with the Mini 90 Neo Classic during a trip to Paris last autumn.

The tiny polaroid-style prints, the softer focus and painterly feel of the colours and light, and the constraint of 10 image rolls of film made the perfect medium for capturing Parisian beauty and romance.

3 Big Green Egg grill Modern materials science meets 4,000-year-old ‘kamado’ [Japanese wood-fired stove] cooking tech in the badass Big Green Egg – my culinary secret weapon. Just about anything can be grilled, smoked, baked or roasted to epic perfection with the magical Egg. So far, I’ve only badly burned myself once. So far…

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4 Cheerson CX-10 Mini drone

My first (and, to date, only) drone. It sounds like a bee, fits in the palm of my hand, and flips on command!

I’m kind of a terrible pilot but thankfully replacement parts are cheap and repairs are easy.

5 Zeagle Express Tech BCD I love being around, in, and under the water. I’ve been scuba diving for 10 years. Last year, I built my own BCD (buoyancy control device) by modifying a kit because I wanted something lighter and smaller for travel – and something sleeker for diving in.

Plus, it kinda looks like the rigging that Navy SEALs use, and who doesn’t 5 want to look like a SEAL?

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6 KBS+’s Oculus Rift DK2 Our office is a nerd’s über playground. The latest edition of Oculus Rift is one of our best new toys. The effect is insane. You can’t help but lose yourself in it… and I have the scars to prove it.

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2 Marshall Stanmore speaker

7 Dyson DC24

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Vacuum as modern art. And, functionally, I can literally see the dust start to shake before the DC24 sucks it up.

Unbelievable. S

Sexy, vintage, aesthetic. Legendary Marshall sound quality. Modern connectivity.

What’s not to love?

PHOTOGRAPH: MEGAN JOLLY

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Highlights from 2015