Artwell Nwaila is Head of Creative & Ecosystem at Google and led the MAD stars jury for Interactive, Integrated, Innovation, Mobile, Data Insights and Social & Influencer. Before he joined Google in 2015, he was Creative Director at television channel group, SuperSport, and OffLimit Communications in South Africa. He also founded SA Creatives in 2015, a creative network that inspired and kept creatives up to date with latest industry news. You will see in his interview that he is a remarkably broad spectrum creative, who began his career in advertising as a graphic artist with a fine arts degree.
The Stable: This is going to be a hard question for you to answer because you judged such a diverse range of categories. But what struck you most inside the judging room?
Artwell Nwaila: I think what’s interesting is you see a big difference in culture from the African continent to here. An example would be how big gaming is in Asia? And because it’s so big, brands are partaking in it so much. Whereas with us, we’re at the beginning of the gaming evolution. So gaming exists back home, but only brave brands are starting to jump into it. We’re sort of testing the waters.
Also grassroots cultural things. There’s a beautiful campaign about young Indian girls and the whole practice of parents trying to prepare them for marriage, right? There is this link between creativity and localised nuances. That was the first thing that struck me. I also find that when I judge things in America or Europe, because we emulate them so much, it feels familiar. Whereas this was a very big difference, which I appreciate because it made me grow up a bit more as a creative.
The Stable: Did it make it harder to judge?
Artwell Nwaila: Yes, because I had to put on a different hat, a much more global hat. I’m always cautious of bringing my assumptions into a room, regardless of whether I’m judging, pitching something or approving something. But this one was a bigger scale? So I had to consider that what is defined as success in a lot of these contexts might be different to what might be defined in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa. It made harder, but not a difficult hard, it was like a nice challenge, it was a good hard that I really enjoyed. It has actually made me have a much keener interest in doing a lot more work or judging in regions that are not too familiar for me. Europe, the States and Africa are just too familiar. So it’s a good challenge.
The Stable: After the pandemic, there’s been a massive change in advertising. New challenges as well as new opportunities. What have you seen?
Artwell Nwaila: The obvious face level challenges were the actual tone and styles of advertising that we could advertise during the pandemic. Everything stopped being funny. All messages were the same. Everything was that slow tone. Every single ad started with, “In a changing world,” or “In these uncertain times”. And that made it difficult to be creative. I remember there was a time during COVID where you couldn’t even say the word COVID. Then if you go even deeper, directors had to shoot in a different way because you couldn’t have people close to each other, and there were masks and all those things.
But now if we look beyond that, with the current wars and the economy, business leaders are putting really strong pressure on marketing managers to have return on investment. And we can’t ignore that as creatives. Because as creatives, sometimes we love to put ourselves in this creative bubble where we are beings that do not feel budget and the impact of what’s happening from a monetary point of view around the world. But that pressure is hard now. And business leaders, CFOs, CEOs are making hard decisions. They’re saying, “Do I cut budgets on marketing, do I cut budgets on procurement, or do I cut budgets on whatever?” And marketing is always the easiest one to cut. If we don’t prove ourselves as creatives and become impact-driven creatives (and I’m sure there’s a creative out there who’s probably cussing me out for putting those two words together), we’re just going make it much more hard on ourselves.
The Stable: Please give me an overview of the work in your region. Is it inspired by the UK and US as it is in some regions?
Artwell Nwaila: I think it looks familiar. We have similar cultures. But I wouldn’t say we’re inspired. It’s still very much African-styled. Where I’m lucky is that I can see across Sub-Saharan Africa and see a very localised style of creating in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and other regions. There are nuances that tie to, say, America or the UK is, for example a popularity in using YouTube, 30-second bumpers.
The Stable: What are you most proud of in your career?
Artwell Nwaila: What I am most proud of comes from where I started. Initially I studied to do IT. I dropped out because I hated it. It just didn’t work for me. Then I studied to be a fine artist. I’ve always loved the arts and I finished that. There I was very fortunate to have a lecturer who said this to me, “I appreciate that you have the skill for fine art and you can paint and you want to be a painter, but a creative needs to be a person who can learn everything around him that he can grab onto and it doesn’t have to be specifically creative.” What happened then was that I went from being a fine artist (I still consider myself a fine artist), learned to be a graphic designer, then I went to advertising as an art director, then I changed to a photographer, then I did copywriting, and then I went into long-form writing, then I did a little bit of video stuff. So I’ve done a whole lot of things. Now I’m doing my MBA, so I’m doing business as well. And what I’m really proud of is that I’ve been true to what he said to me. Now, I’m on my fifth degree all in different sectors. And if there’s a young person reading this, avoid the whole idea of just being a copywriter or just a graphic designer or whatever, because that’s a very old school way of thinking. The world is changing right now and you need to be a creative of the world. Try everything and anything you love, even if it has nothing to do with what you do.
