Creative Bravery with Tara Ford and Barbara Humphries
Winning an award is a joyful experience. After all of those months of hard work and dedication to a project, to gain recognition among some of the industries best and brightest is a feeling unlike any other.
The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song were lucky enough to feel this unadulterated joy and triumph at the most recent ANDY awards.
These recent wins include: Best of Region: Weather Anything, MacPac and Best in Show for CRAFT: Play it Safe, Sydney Opera House.
While Play it Safe - Sydney Opera House, England Bitter - VB and Weather Anything - MacPac all won Gold for IDEA and This is Footy Country - Telstra won Gold for CRAFT.
LBB’s Casey Martin spoke with Tara Ford and Barbara Humphries about how wins like these affect their teams, and what makes a creative idea great.
LBB> First of all, congratulations on the recent awards! How do moments like this affect the morale of the creative teams?
Tara> Thank you. This type of win on a global scale always feels good for the people who worked on it. It is always great when the team gets this kind of recognition, because life as a creative person is full of rejection and questioning and soul searching. Everyone likes to be thanked and congratulated for a job well done. This is that, but on a big and public stage. It helps creatives to feel like they’re working at the right place at the right time. A place where they can truly do great work that gets noticed.
LBB> In your opinion, what do you believe it takes for a team to be awarded for their creative craft?
Tara> Blood, sweat and sometimes tears...
Seriously though, great attention and care. The whole team must care throughout the process because it could fall down at any point. Being relentless and mindful of the detail with every decision, because in the end the smallest thing can leave the viewer with a feeling one way or another or not at all.
You need a perfectly curated collaboration, which is what all these projects had. The right group of experts in their field for every component of execution. I’ve always said, hire great people and let them do their thing. Listen to their expertise, and make every decision in service to the idea.
LBB> Why do you believe that these campaigns that have performed so well locally also performed just as well globally? What does it take for craft to transcend its local market?
Barbara> Choices in storytelling, humour, casting, and music all play a role in helping a work transcend geography and context -- but a bold, original idea that can be universally understood must come first. The idea of “Play It Safe” for The Sydney Opera House was created to connect with audiences the world over, which we based on a simple human truth -- everyone has that nervous little voice inside them at some point that tells them not to take risks, and everyone can relate to the thrill of ignoring it.
Macpac ‘Weather Anything’ is also a simple, memorable product demonstration that is funny even if you’re watching it with the sound off. And while VB ‘England Bitter’ and Telstra ‘This Is Footy Country’ are grounded in local sports code nuances and rivalries - they’re both highly enjoyable examples of a simple idea well told.
LBB> When judging awards, what do you look for in the work?
Barbara> An original, clear idea. Craft choices that support the idea and take it somewhere new. But also, and it’s something we all strive for - work that moves you and makes you feel something. Hope. Empathy. Excitement. Envy.
LBB> Thinking back to when you and the creative teams were working on these campaigns, what were some of the highlights during the creative process?
Tara> It’s different for every project. For Sydney Opera House, it was an interesting one as there were so many creatives from many disciplines all chosen for their creative bravery. The shoot. Hearing the song that Tim (Minchin) wrote for the first time and then as it developed. Seeing Kim’s (Gehrig) treatment for the first time. The clients going with the vision and respecting the ‘creative bravery’.
For ‘This Is Footy Country’ the creatives visited rural footy clubs to get the initial inspiration. And so much of the cast came from ‘street casting’ and turned out to be fantastic and not your usual faces. Of course, working with Mark (Molloy) was amazing, with a special shout out to the props department who went above and beyond, literally knitting footy scarves just for the background in scenes. Everyone went above and beyond. And it showed in the end product.
LBB> What is a piece of advice or something that you’ve learnt from entering creative work into awards that you’d like to pass on to others?
Barbara> The process starts the moment you have the idea: protecting its single-mindedness, the choices you make throughout the whole process that elevate it, who you collaborate with and how those conversations can take the work further and make it memorable.
When it comes to entering the work itself, never assume prior knowledge, help the jurors understand what specifically makes your idea worth awarding. It’s easy to be too close to your own work, so a second opinion on your entry helps to make the story of it as objectively interesting and compelling as possible. As does being ruthless about what its strengths are (or are not).
