5 Minutes with… Boyd Hicklin

Boyd> I went to university and got my Bachelor of Arts with a focus on graphic design. I was very much exposed to that sort of mass communication mentality of how to get your message across in succinct and powerful ways. 

I'd always been an avid reader and a lover of language, as well. While I was interested in design, I also still passionately pursued writing. When I left university, I started as a junior in a small advertising agency. 

I was able to design and write. I was given projects where you could handle both and adapted from there quite organically into being more of a creative as opposed to a designer. 

As luck would have it, that agency had some clients that let me dabble in sport, which was something that I’d grown up being an avid participant and fan of. 

During the very early days of my advertising career, I worked with some small direct clients that gave me the chance to be playful with sport and entertainment. I learnt the ropes that way. 

Boyd> The documentary, Save Your Legs, was a passion project. I was living with some friends at the time and one of them was a fantastic entertainer. He had some friends who had started a cricket team, for the purpose of wanting to go to India. This was right after I had just come back from there having fallen in love with the place. 

I went, “Oh, if you guys are going to India to play cricket, that's going to be an incredible journey. I want in!” 

And so I joined this cricket team as a player, which you didn't have to be particularly well-qualified for. They were very, very welcoming of all skill levels. I roped in a mate who was great with a camera and we began documenting the season leading up to India.

We were literally walking around with a camera on the field, being part of the action. I was learning along the way, having never filmed a documentary before. The team embraced the chaos. We spent six weeks in India and got absolutely humiliated everywhere we went, but had an incredible, chaotic, and welcoming experience. When we came back, I worked with editors, cutting some of the footage myself. I made it into the shape of a story and eventually got funded by Film Victoria to create a teaser, which then got bought by SBS. 

It’s very tongue in cheek, it embraces life and uses sport as a vehicle for connection between two different cultures.

Professionally, I saw the opportunity to use the storytelling skills that I learnt through the documentary to try and take that into branded content, to help brands tell their stories. This led me to creating branded content documentaries for Nike where we followed an Australian athlete in his preparation. 

Boyd> I started focusing on longer-form content production. The Nike documentary that I made was seen by one of my colleagues I went to university with, Rob Mills, who is now the CEO of Gemba. 

At the time, he was working with brands who were sponsoring sports and he was looking at all the work I had done with Nike and with cricket.

After a couple of projects together as a freelance director, we decided to create a branded content production company. It was a separate entity with the same ownership structure. 

Gemba has grown to become 'the authority in sport and entertainment', supporting the industry holistically by offering insights, strategy and communications services. Within the communications offering, we are able to connect brands with fans through sport and entertainment by leveraging their shared passions.

Boyd> We leverage the power of sponsorships. So, if you're a fan of AFL, and Toyota as the biggest sponsor of that sport, that brand is charging us with the responsibility to get the brand messages through to them. 

It's up to me to work with our team to uncover the right insights and find the best ideas, then wrangle the different assets that we have at our sponsor's disposal. It's a very complicated ecosystem. 

There are a lot of sponsors and stakeholders everywhere, from leagues, clubs, athletes, managers, platforms, broadcasters, and more. Add to that complex ecosystem, large corporate clients with multiple agencies. My role as the ECD is to try to simplify those complicated situations and see if we can find a clear path through to our consumers. 

Boyd> 'Celebrating Celebrations' was an evolution of the long running 'Legendary Moments' campaign for Toyota, originally developed by Mojo. 

We took the very talented lead characters, Steve and Dave, and brought them into the digital age, with a real-time social campaign that cast them as 'celebration coaches' for the Aussie cricket team. ‘Celebrating Celebrations’ lasted for about three years and generated lots of positive buzz amongst fans. I'm proud of that one.

And there was another campaign with Transport for NSW and the NSW Blues State of Origin team. This campaign was called “The Knock-Oon Effect”, and it was made to encourage safe driving amongst young men. It was a powerful piece featuring Greg Alexander and Brad Fittler, the two coaches of the NSW Blues. 

We unpacked the incredibly powerful story of a tragic loss that Greg Alexander had while both he and his brother played with the Penrith Panthers. It was a very sensitive subject, but told with great empathy and power. It was the first time that Greg unpacked that story in such a powerful way. What I’m especially proud of is that it was used as an education piece for the NSW Blues to take into schools and educate young men around dangerous driving behaviours.