Sharon Edmondston is Group Creative Director at M&C Saatchi and led the Diverse Insights, Outdoor, SDGs, PIVOT, Place Brand and Radio & Audio jury. She joined M&C Saatchi in 2015 as Creative Director and was promoted to Group Creative Director at the beginning of this year. The intensely forward-thinking creative is also Co-Chair of the M&C Saatchi Groups Employee Led Network for women, FEMM&C.
The Stable: Take us inside the Executive Jury room
Sharon Edmondston: We were debating Grands Prix across many categories and they’re really diverse categories. So there was a question yesterday at the Executive Jury panel session about how you differentiate between what deserves to be the best of the best of the best. We debated it quite a bit because it came down to a couple of things. Is the brand authentically in the narrative? Does it belong there? Does it feel like it’s just been, “Oh hey, we had a good idea and we peddled it to somebody?”
Then there was also the overarching thing. We realised that there’s a message to the industry in these awards. What gets awarded is of great significance. So we asked what was the message that we wanted to send? It came down to two – what gives the best message to the industry about the future what kind of advertising would we like to see more of. These really shaped the end result. But it was great just to have that rigorous discussion because we’re talking about seriously excellent work and the nuances of it. It was a really rich and interesting debate.
The Stable: Were there any trends that you noticed in your judging?
Sharon Edmondston: Well, it’s really interesting looking at a market as diverse as Asia. I have never done MAD STARS before, so I was really struck by the different kinds of cultural stories that were woven through a lot of the entries, and cultural stories that were genuinely foreign to me. That was fascinating in its own right. I think there was a lot of social good, but that’s probably also because of the categories that I was judging. But I feel like there was a lot of work trying to make the world a more equal and fair place, work to reframe the way we see or do things, act or behave. That was definitely a trend, a bit of a wake-up to the way that we see things. One example was Change the Angle, and its cause is something that is not exclusive to Africa but also very prevalent in the Western world.
The Stable: What are the main obstacles for creativity at the moment?
Sharon Edmondston: I feel as though we might be entering a bit of a renaissance, and that’s because we’re starting to really understand that there doesn’t have to be a normal art director-writer structure, and we’re going to break those conventions more and more. We’re looking for people with different experiences, different stories, different skill sets.
We’ve kind of been doing more of the same in the past and we’ve probably lost a little bit of credibility in the creative space. When you lose a bit of credibility in the creative space, your clients don’t afford you as much creative licence. They feel that they know what you’re doing. You’re not surprising them. So, if we can start to bring in more of those surprising, insightful voices – even those that don’t live in an advertising bubble so we’re not just talking to ourselves, we’re actually really genuinely reflecting community – the really exciting stuff is going to happen.
Bruno [Bertelli] touched on it yesterday in the Executive Jury’s panel discussion. Even for the biggest brands, it’s not about talking about global insights, it’s about being acutely local. It’s about really, really specific regional cultural insights and brands being able to see things on a very, very localised level, but still with global appeal because there’s some truth to the human condition. I feel that’s a massive, untapped layer of storytelling, and it’s going to be an interesting way to achieve genuine diversity and talk to people on a completely different level, but one that’s very real.
The Stable: What are you most proud of in your career?
Sharon Edmondston: It’s interesting. I feel as though right now, I’m discovering how excited I am about unearthing talent from different places. I’ve already touched on that. But I also feel as though all my experiences leading up to this point have just made me even more interested in what we’re capable of. I can retrospectively think about projects that I’m proud of, but I feel that the proudest projects I’ve got are still in the making. I think that’s probably true of most creative people. It’s like, “yeah, yeah, that’s old news”. I can’t really say, “that project was the biggest thing”. I’m thinking about the work we’re about to launch on the weekend, and well, that’s probably the proudest thing that I’ve got at the moment. But then I’m more excited about the things we’re going to do in the future.
The Stable: What about creativity in Australia? Does it have specific challenges?
Sharon Edmonston: Well, it’s really funny because I think I’ve got a lot out of this Mad Stars event, being able to sit with my peers and talk about the Australian industry and be a bit reflective about it. One of the things that came out I was that in some of the smaller markets, not US, not UK, there’s been a bit of a yearning historically to replicate their style. But really, I think if we can rediscover our Australian style, it makes us uniquely us. We talked a bit about humour in the Executive Jury panel yesterday. That feels like a massive opportunity for us to flex our “larrikiness”, our funny kind of laid back, tongue-in-cheek personality. I think we need to maybe stop looking abroad for inspiration and start kind of really thinking about who we are. To work out what our personality is. What our brand of humour is. What are our stories. I think that that will completely reinvigorate the Australian advertising industry. But I also think we’re already on an upward swing. Some of the work that has been happening lately has been so much better than in some of the years before. We just need more of it.
