Creativity Squared: Why Deepak George Is Big on Collaboration

Deepak George, a Chicago-based associate creative director, fell in love with advertising when Nike debuted the 'Griffey in ‘96' campaign during the presidential election. It was so well-done that Deepak told his dad to vote for Ken Griffey, Junior at the polls - leaving his dad utterly confused. Fast forward a decade or two and that love of creativity has fuelled Deepak on an award-winning jaunt to agencies across the country including Zimmerman, FCB Chicago, The Marketing Arm, and Barkley. Deepak recently joined H/L in February 2024.

Person

We’re all born creative. We all draw. Write. Explore. But over time, those numbers dwindle. It’s 'educated' out of us. And that’s a shame. For many people, the kid, the creative, the inquisitive mind falls away and is replaced with a mindset that doesn’t ruffle feathers and is more acceptable to the masses. But I fully believe that everyone is innately creative. Whether that’s making ads, movies, or carving wooden bears holding toilet paper rolls, everyone has something creative to offer. 

The resilient ones learn craft as we age, how to improve and even monetise our creativity. My hope is that more and more creative voices from diverse backgrounds get a chance to make a living off of their creativity - whatever that may be.

The work I’m most proud of is what my team and I created for Jake from State Farm during the pandemic - circa 2020-2022. I joined The Marketing Arm (TMA) in the fall of 2019, just as they had won the majority of the account - with a promise to reboot Jake for a new generation. With Jake 2.0, we had license to create a whole new, yet familiar character. One that was multicultural, young, with all kinds of interests that an insurance spokesperson had never been expressed before. We did lean a bit on the actual interests of the actor playing Jake, Kevin Miles, who helped inform the character. 

And then came March 2020. While the world may have stopped, I’m grateful our State Farm clients realised they couldn’t. The work ramped up, and like so many others, I found myself using any available space - the kitchen table, a lawn chair in the backyard, the space under the stairs - to tackle the many briefs coming our way. Jake 2.0 was out in the world and we couldn’t afford to lose any momentum. 

Everything was weird, everything was on Zoom, but we persevered and made work the client, agency, and our consumers loved. In the early part of the pandemic, once shooting restrictions were eased up, we found ourselves doing remote shoots with a skeleton crew on set. Agency and client realised this was (hopefully) a temporary solution, and as time went on we found ourselves on a soundstage for 14 hours wearing N95s. And as hard as that was, what I’m most grateful for was that everyone (agency, client, director, talent) knew that we were doing our collective best given the conditions.

Besides the conditions, I’m proud that we pushed Jake (and the brand as a whole) into spaces they hadn’t previously explored. One in particular was Twitch - the video live-streaming platform most frequented by gamers. As an individual, Kevin Miles was a gamer and was already familiar, but the cool part was doing Twitch streams with Jake and other famous gamers (i.e., Dr. Lupo) and seeing those watching become instant fans. By putting Jake into places he’d never been before, we were able to push the voice of the brand, making State Farm more human and relatable - even funny. Kudos to our State Farm clients for letting us play and explore in this space. 

Another piece I’m really proud of is the work my partner and I did for Justin’s Peanut Butter to promote the fact that 33% of pollinators (which includes bees) die every year. Alarming, right? But totally under the radar. To highlight this, we created a stunt that saw diners have 33% of their dinner removed from their plates, while we filmed everything with hidden cameras. I like to think of it as “Punk’d for Pollinators.”

Process

I started in strategy so when I get a brief it’s the first place my eyes go. 

Next, I like to take time, by myself, with the brief. Jot down thoughts, areas, rough scripts, whatever. Then, I meet with my partner. I never like to go into the first brainstorm (or is it braindump?) empty-handed. I always try to bring things we can build off of. It doesn’t have to be anything fully fleshed out, just something. I’ve been in brainstorms where both my partner and I start with nothing and go off on huge time-wasting tangents - which are different from productive tangents, just sayin’. But those tangents waste time because we have no starting point. We need something to build off of, jump off of, something to trash and laugh at. Time is precious so let’s make sure we make the most of it.

Press

I’m big on collaboration. I love working with my partner to tighten an execution, a script, a platform. It could even be the night before we present, if there’s a way to make the work better, let’s try it. Can a joke work harder? A line be clearer? Does the idea still make sense? I can’t say enough about working together to make an idea so awesome and airtight, clients would be foolish not to buy it (which, full disclosure, has happened before). 

This also extends to creative leadership. The bigger the project, the more I like to get my creative director involved early. “Are we going down the right path?” “Is it tight to the brief?” “Is it off-brief?” “Is it so off-brief that it’s on-brief?” You know the drill. Or, maybe you don’t, that’s OK, too. 

No great idea happens in a vacuum - it’s a team effort. And speaking of a team, it’s what makes me most excited about joining H/L. To help grow the agency creatively with those here, while also helping to grow the team with new, diverse perspectives. Our client roster is diverse and memorable, and I’m excited for the opportunity to throw my hat (a Seattle one at that) into the H/L ring.