“Why do brands keep looking around and pitching?” Think:Long, presented by The Communications Council and AWARD with major sponsor, Facebook, is about to explore – and try to answer – posers like AWARD chair, Mike Spirkovski’s, opening question.
Do agencies persist with confidence? Do they evolve or throw it all out and start again? And what about individuals? Do you stick it out in one agency with confidence hoping that consistency will shower you with rewards or do you spray yourself around hoping to make your mark – somewhere?
Think: Long is a damn good theme for an industry that has lost, not just the arrogance it once had (which admittedly, is not such a bad thing) but also its swag – its self-confidence. It’s an industry without self-esteem right now. An industry that keeps talking about change as if it was something unfathomable and overwhelming needs to talk about creative longevity. To work out what it is and how to get it. And that’s what this taster of what might become Australian advertising’s first annual festival did.
“It takes time to become you.” Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder, The Glue Society
First up was Australia’s creative genius, Jonathan Kneebone. Kneebone is anything but arrogant. His opening comment was to admit that he was nervous. But he has the self-confidence to show off his first ever ad (which was pretty awful, and he was fine with admitting it) and to have a strong view about creative longevity. “Creativity is inextricably linked to individuality. The more you can be you, the more you can be creative.” The more you can be you, the more your ideas will be unique and different and special. That all takes time, Kneebone explains. He shows his audience a painting of a tree. It has an impressionist feel to it. Do you know who painted this, he asks. No one does. He shows another – a geometric artwork of lines in a circle. No one knows its creator either. The third is instantly recognisable. But all three were painted by Mondrian. Even Mondrian took a while to work out who he was creatively.
“You shouldn’t be trying to please me, you should be trying to please yourself,” he borrows, from advice he was given by Saatchi & Saatchi legend, Paul Arden. “Your vision of who you want to be is the greatest asset you have.”
Finding out who Jonathan Kneebone is, and finding out who The Glue Society, the agency he co-founded, produced some remarkable work. An interactive ad way before these became a thing or even had a name, for example, for Mazda. It was launched at a time when people were recording movies on their TVs and included fast cut clips filled with written information. If you wanted to fill in the gaps in the ad – or win the ad’s competition – you freeze-framed those clips. Its music was picked up by Oasis. It also entered pop culture before that was a thing.
Also in the process was an ad for Wizard that didn’t feature Mark Bouris, but instead starred a mortgage that behaved like the family’s difficult toddler. That ad triggered outrage from Kerry Packer, who asked, “Why is there a turd who pees on the floor on my TV channel?” And delight from its real audience.
As The Glue Society’s sense of self evolved, so too did its creativity. The Glue Society moved off TV screens and into real life before that became a thing too.
(This became a series after Warren’s number, originally put there just to make the ad look “real”, received thousands of calls.)
And then it launched its first ad stunt before these became a thing.
The Glue Society’s string of firsts (let’s not forget that it was also a creative collective that no one could define at the time) didn’t stop there. Nor did its evolution. As The Glue Society became more clear about who it was, it found out that it was also a creative production company. It began putting Glue-ness into other people’s ad. Its first directing job was NOT an underachiever.
Then one day the agency asked, “What would our own self-initiated projects look like?” The answer was challenging, disorienting, [cliché alert, sorry] immersive and wildly creative – the black humour series, Watch with Mother.
“Glue Society’s comedy-horror Watch with Mother is a sketch show like no other. Is it horror? Is it comedy? Is it a TV series, or an interactive app? In truth, Watch With Mother is all the above.” [SMH, October 2015]
Watch With Mother isn’t who Jonathan Kneebone and The Glue Society (which celebrated its 20th birthday this year) have become, but challenging, disorienting, immersive and wildly creative is what their work has become. Plus they’re the four characteristics of great work. And it would seem, The Glue Society’s creative longevity.
Great work like this:
https://youtu.be/Z_lYIbqyVpI
https://youtu.be/zUrKC6nYRkI
(Kneebone wrote the script that allowed this to have two very different endings and become a hearing test)
The Glue Society’s clothes line revives the importance of traditional everyday life
______
“Never Be Boring.” Susan Hoffman, co-chief creative officer, Wieden + Kennedy
“She is batshit crazy in the best possible way.” This was one of the quotes that Tara Ford, who introduced her, had extracted from Hoffman’s W+K co-founders. Hoffman is also smart. Very, very smart. She knows that we all want her to talk about bravery in advertising, because we all call the work that she and W+K produce “brave”.
So she begins with a Wieden + Kennedy quote, “Bravery is stupidity”. Hoffman is about to upend our idea about bravery, And rightly so. Bravery implies that there’s danger. It’s so hard to sell danger, except to the foolhardy. Assume your clients are foolhardy at your own peril.
“How do you get a client obsessed with safety to take risks,” she asks her audience?
“You don’t.”
Instead she presents a series of W+K work that’s unfettered by cluttered minds, second guessing, convention and what the client wants:
“Fighting for gender equality in sports is not brave,” she states.
“Talking to women in an ad for men’s bodywash isn’t brave.”
“The world’s biggest advertiser taking on unconscious bias during the Olympics isn’t brave.’
https://youtu.be/1SwFso7NeuA
“Using an unfit kid to promote achievement in sport isn’t brave.”
“Using a pony in an ad for a telco isn’t brave.”
https://youtu.be/Ekr05T9Iaio
“Challenging Indian women to change the world on their terms isn’t brave.”
https://youtu.be/0pJ3wXDzNew
“Using a female country star as Colonel Sanders isn’t brave.”
https://youtu.be/FwzoDS3zL_4
“Casting local Londoners instead of celebrities isn’t brave.”
None of these ads is brave, Hoffman tells her audience. “They’re just right for the brand, consumer, culture, channel and business objective.” Hoffman has been a woman creative in advertising for 38 years. We don’t have to tell you that’s remarkable. She is an ad legend – one of three, maybe four. Her agency, Wieden + Kennedy has set the benchmark for creativity since its inception in 1982. We don’t have to tell you that’s remarkable either. It still has its founding client, Nike. That is extraordinary.
W+K’s secret? Not bravery, clearly. But maybe it’s W+K’s mantra, The work comes first. “If everyone is focussed on doing great work [rather than all the other things that get in the way in agencies] then creativity flourishes,” Hoffman notes.
Or maybe because it keeps its rules really simple. “Don’t act big. No sharp stuff. Follow directions. Shut up when someone is talking.”
