Creativity Squared: Ads as Conceptual Art, with Oliver Hammerton
Before joining Wellcom Sydney as creative director, Oliver Hammerton established an extensive portfolio in film, music, fashion, and advertising within the traditional and nontraditional space. He has created campaigns, commercials, content, music videos, experiences, and brands for agencies and clients alike in the UK, USA and APAC.
He is most excited about things that are new and progressive, and conceptual thinking that evokes, entertains and says something that resonates culturally.
I don’t make ads. I don’t think anyone who’s genuinely making really good work feels like they’re making ads either.
People engage with great narratives, clever ideas, stories and things that make you feel things.
So, in that sense I set out to make feelings, emotions and educate when I can.
I look at it as a responsibility not just to put shit out into the world. I have had these values ingrained in me since I was a young kid, because of the amazing creatives that were around me, and MTV. I feel commitment to this industry.
I came into this admiring people that I considered great. Paul Arden, Toni Arden, Alan Waldie, Tony Kaye, Walter Campbell, there are many more. These are legends, incredible minds.
I saw them work and treat briefs like art. Conceptual and thoughtful. They played in that space. I found it fascinating.
The results were executions that took form as ads, Benson and Hedges ‘Swimming pool’, Silk Cut, Guinness ‘Dreamer’,‘Surfer’, Dunlop ‘unexpected’ but really they were conceptual ideas that were intriguing, exciting, beautiful.
These weren’t just ads, they’re ideas that took me somewhere.
Like conceptual art, what we make is often the result of so many things. It’s such a talent to craft something to a point that then makes you feel so much. That’s the best work. It can be so profound.
This marriage of feeling, entertainment and brand, it transcends the label of just being an ad and becomes a much more powerful piece in the world, it has a much bigger impact. I know this can sound a bit lofty but really fucking good work, does all those things. The best work doesn’t come from saying “let's make an ad”, it comes from a much more human place.
If it’s really played with, enjoyed, hated, felt, the work is always better and has impact. Personally I’m fascinated by people and how culture evolves - It’s so wonderfully unpredictable. Through my work I want to be ingrained in it, support it and be part of the evolution.
I believe one of my greatest abilities is to inspire people and identify something in them they won’t see. I help amazingly talented people see more in themselves, bring ideas to life and put them into positions that get them seen. I think it’s a real privilege to do what I do.
I like to start from an honest place. A feeling place. A human place. Creating work that has logic and touches on human truths. Work that does one job but at the same time does so much more. We are human beings communicating with other intelligent human beings, when we forget this the work suffers.
I think about the ads that never got made and the amount that some of those ideas could have done. Every day we climb into people’s eyeballs, completely uninvited. I respect that, so I want people to walk away with something from my work. A feeling, a reminder of something, a new discovery…. that’s 10/10 for me.
25 years ago, Guinness ‘Surfer’ showed me Leftfield, which sent me down a path of loving UK dance music. I was previously all guitars and bands but that ad made me see that genre differently. I saw the magic of Jonathan Glazer working with Walter Campbell or Frank Bugden commercials… I can’t describe them.
He’s a fucking genius. Today I’m equally inspired by someone's TikTok. It’s never been about the scale of the production for me. I'm driven by ideas and the feelings they create.
It’s the same way I think about great conceptual art. When you experience an amazing piece of art, 10 people could be in the room with you and each takeaway is something different. It’s incredible to me, to make something that exists in one form yet the experience of it is far more expansive.
In some ways I feel adjacent to that of a conceptual artist. The thinking, feeling, emotions, the need to say something that then materialises as a piece.
Under the label of “our industry” I feel the work or the potential of what can be done is often absently thrown away. Collectively it becomes easy to just cast it aside. With that, all the energy and emotion that goes into it gets devalued. Creatively, it begins to undermine the wonderful nuances involved in creating something, they’re the best bits. For me, it’s vital we look after this almost fragile way of being. Everyone involved should feel safe in the moment, let thoughts out, share and build on them.
I aim to make a space where everything can be heard and where we can play with what’s being said. I enjoy the eccentricity of it all, when things get ridiculous, exciting, or emotional. This kind of meandering collective journey is so important to me. Playing with ideas and seeing where we take it is probably the best part of my job.
At times I like to be in a room with the person I am most contentious with. Like a mini experiment. “Let's see where this goes’... If there is an opinion in the room, it matters. It’s great to peel back that opinion, why it exists, it means something.
Paul Arden taught me to share. He put his hand on my chest and said “never do anything that is not from here” … “When those ideas open up, share them and see what comes. You’ll gain so much more than you'll lose”.
As a creative, I have an innate need to share from the heart. When it comes to the people I want to work with, I look for that inside of them. I am not interested in the people who just like it, I am interested in the people who can’t escape it. They’re the people I want around me. With them we can create that space to feel and share.
In a place where anything goes the best always comes.
