Immortal Creativity Requires a Touch of Madness and Irrationality

Marketers and agencies wanting to make world-class work need to embrace a dash of “madness” and irrationality, according to three of Australia’s top creative leaders and Immortal Awards judges.

“To pick apart and find the top of the top of the top, there is a bit of an element of madness in there, and an element of slightly irrational creativity,” Katrina Alvarez-Jarratt, TBWA\Sydney’s executive creative director, told LBB.

“You can make really great work, and you can make work that's rational and strategic and on point, but I think the further that you go into that slight element of madness, the better the work is going to get, the more creative it's going to get, and it's going to push us all forward to make better stuff.”

On Wednesday, the AUNZ jury sent five pieces of local work through to the final, global judging round of LBB’s Immortal Awards: Telstra’s Better on a Better Network, Pedigree’s Adoptable, Sydney Opera House’s Play it Safe, Minderoo Foundation’s The Plastic Forecast, and +61’s branding.

The award show is free to enter, has no categories, and no minimum or maximum number of winners: the sole ask is to choose work that is truly immortal.

Katrina’s comments were made on a panel on Wednesday night, following the AUNZ judging round, where she was joined by Telstra CMO Brent Smart, and Bear Meets Eagle on Fire founder Micah Walker.

“I'm hoping that it challenges people to push and be a bit weirder,” Katrina said of the work the jury sent through.

Brent noted, “I never have to push Micah. He's always pushing me.” Telstra’s Better on a Better Network, chosen as one of the five best pieces of work across the region, represents Brent’s commitment to craft, he said. The 26 stop motion films were painstakingly shot frame-by-frame, with each little critter created and filmed on a miniature set.

“The Telstra work is so, so beautiful, obviously a high level of craft,” Katrina said of choosing it to represent AUNZ, “but you could have done that with five ads. You did it with 25 and I think that level of just keep pushing, keep going, push further. I think that's in all of that work that we've just seen.”

Brent previously told LBB he would cut media spend before production budget, and on Wednesday, added, “I'm really passionate, obviously, about craft, and I think it can be a great differentiator for brands. When I think about Telstra, we're in a pretty boring category. So I think just making the effort to be entertaining, making the effort to really care about what we make makes a difference. 

“Craft is incredibly powerful. It's the contact surface between the brand and customers.

“The other thing is, we're premium, we're expensive. So there's a great opportunity for us to, through our work, make our brand feel worth paying more for.”

The marketing team’s work across the past year hasn’t just done a brand-building job with consumers, but with Telstra employees too. Brent’s boss Brad Whitcomb, Telstra’s group executive of consumer, has a framed still of the chaotic +61 branding experiment in his office.

“I can't walk the halls of Telstra without someone who I don't even know coming up to me and saying, 'Oh my god, I love the network work or the new Christmas ad.' Or, 'What are you doing next? And can I have a T shirt?' They're just getting really into it.”

Micah said the Immortals judging process was “actually quite difficult”, because it required setting a bar for immortality, and deciding collectively on the work “we all felt would make us proud as a region … that we believe isn't just nicely made, but might be remembered.”

“When you're choosing work that is borderless in terms of categories, it becomes very different,” he added.

“It's a big thing to live up to, to try and select work that we think, for what it is and what it's meant to do, that it can stand on a global stage, and that it has the potential to last more than one memory cycle, or is it work that people might remember or reference or talk about.”

Brent was the sole client juror, and added he has extra admiration for big work on big clients, because he knows just how hard it is.

“Anyone who has got a great idea through a highly complex, highly political, very public company - for me, that gets points,” he said. 

“It's not easy. It's hard. Anyone who's worked in an agency with big clients knows it's hard. Good work's never easy, but there are certain categories, certain types of clients, where it's a little bit easier.”

The body of work progressing to the global judging round includes an AI-led idea to find shelter dogs good homes; highly-crafted stopmotion films; integrating the reality of plastic rain into weather reports; a Titanium Lion-winning piece of film that makes Australians proud of a cultural icon; and an ambitious piece of agency branding work. Reflecting on that collection, Katrina said the commonalities are simplicity, emotion, and craft.

“We talked about what elevates a piece of work,” she explained. “Adoptable [by Colenso for Pedigree] is a great example. It's a beautiful piece of out of home that uses AI in a way that is great, and is not stealing our jobs, but making it better. But then it goes really deep. I really love the data element of that.

“That depth of thinking, the insight, and then, of course, the craft in all of that work. 

"I hope it's really inspiring for everyone in the industry as well to look at that and go, 'Yeah, I want to make work that looks as cool and weird and fun as that.'”