Creativity Squared: Originality Is Everything for Julie Matheny

Julie Matheny is group creative director at TBWA\Media Arts Lab.

Julie grew up in New Jersey and completed a master’s in advertising at VCU Brandcenter. She's worked at a wide variety of agencies (most recently Droga5 and Mother) on clients including Mailchimp, The New York Times and Google. She’s also worked client side at Away, helping to build their internal creative team. Julie joined the Media Arts Lab team from Mother London, where she led work for Uber Eats and Jagermeister.

Person

When I love something, I really love it. Movies, music, books, people, ideas, ways of speaking… whatever it is, I have this insatiable need to talk to everyone about it. I am aware I do this more than most people, which always surprises me. There’s so much about this industry that hinges on having a critical eye, it feels good to spend some time being a fan. 

When it comes to the job itself, I like working with people who do things I can’t. The best projects I’ve been a part of involved people who think completely differently from me. It can be a tricky proposition, though. Developing ideas and presenting them to people is an oddly vulnerable thing to do for a living, so when you’re doing it with people who are coming from a totally disparate place, it’s easy to feel misunderstood, or unheard, or even like people are rejecting you. For me, the trick is zoning in on that overlapping middle section of the Venn diagram I share with another creative person. If we try to get on the same page, we’re either both compromising or one of us is conceding. But if we try to find a new page together, it’s a rewarding leap of faith for both of us. The work is better for it, every time.

Product

I think originality is everything. This may seem both very pretentious and impractical given it is 2024 and everything is an iteration of an iteration, but I still believe it’s worth the attempt. Nothing beats the feeling of stumbling upon something you’ve never seen before. It’s like, wow, there’s room for this here? You can do that? Say that? Combine those two things? I really do think it makes the world feel bigger-- like somehow the planet is expanding for us all in generous, exuberant accommodation. 

If you’re looking for a less woo-woo answer, I like work that has an insight. It’s easy to become so concerned with saying something funny, or saying something inspiring, or even beautiful, that we often forget the part about saying something that’s true. Those ads should get all the extra points.

Process

There’s this thing I heard Lin-Manuel Miranda say in an interview once: “Make what’s missing.” I think about that a lot when I’m starting a project. It just works on so many levels. More practically on a business level, i.e. finding the white space, breaking through the clutter, all the buzzwords, etc. But it also goes deeper, because it’s a great reminder of the value of representation. The more we can encourage ourselves and those we work with to draw from our own unique experiences - particularly if those experiences aren’t something we’ve seen depicted in the world around us - the better. 

This can be a challenge, especially when you’re just starting out. Many of my early attempts probably registered as an opinionated twenty-something vomiting her personality all over everyone in ad form and daring them to embrace it, which never works quite as well as it does in reality television. But it does get easier. The more you do it, the better you get at taking who you are and using that as a starting point, a perspective on a universal truth that only you could write. Your specificity becomes the route to common ground, not the enemy of it. 

Press

When I was just getting started in advertising, I had a few not-so-great experiences with people who insisted that in order to do great work, I had to actively dislike people and systems that did bad work. That “taste” was something you either had, or you didn’t, and if you didn’t, why the hell are you still sitting in this room right now? It sucked, and it made me think I was always just one wrong idea away from failure. 

Later on, I was lucky enough to work with some amazing mentors who helped re-parent my wounded little creative soul. They gave every idea the benefit of the doubt, no matter who it came from, or how different it was from the work they were expecting. They shared their own ideas, and we laughed together if they were terrible. They modelled respect and patience in rooms where they didn’t have to. And on top of that, they were good. Really good. In a shocking turn of events, it is actually possible to make something you love without being crippled by panic the whole time. So, yeah. Now that I’m the one in the position to give feedback, I’m really vigilant about how fear can ruin the creative process and try to keep things relaxed. Also, pastries. Pastries help. It’s hard to give in to existential dread with a donut in your mouth.