Into the Library with Jenny Glover

We’ll start with one of my most recent pieces of work at Zulu Alpha Kilo. 

This is the kind of project I love working on because it was formed in a creative mosh pit of sorts. Yes, it began with a seed of an idea and the trust of a wonderfully collaborative client, but the process was what made it. Everybody brought something to make this better, more visually beautiful, and more interesting. Even as a hardcore introvert, I enjoy the inherently social side of creativity. There’s an energy that comes from buzzing around an idea and having different brains and talents contributing, which is super powerful. 

It’s also a piece that I got to take my kids to experience, and, for a very, very brief moment, they thought that my job was actually cool. I’m always up for a mom win.

This piece of work is interesting because it’ll always take me back to a moment in history. I remember Jill Nykoliation chatting to the agency one morning, showing the stats that were coming out during covid-19 about the increase in domestic violence. Lockdown, something that was supposed to keep us safe, was essentially enabling abuse. This news became a problem to solve. 

I think it’s so important to always keep your eye on what’s happening in the world beyond advertising. As creatives, letting the world inform our work is not just smart; it’s key to staying relevant and tuned-in. 

The single best thing about this piece though, was that it had over eight billion impressions. It got written into TV shows and comic books, and was used to train police. People took this and ran with it because at that given moment, it was an idea that the world needed.   

I spent over 20 years of my career working in South Africa, so I feel like the next piece requires a bit of a tonal disclaimer. South Africa is a wonderful, crazy place, and we have a somewhat wild sense of humour. It is not delicate or sensitive, and we don’t tiptoe around. 

This spot was a lot of fun to work on; who doesn’t love an elaborate workplace assassination plot? But it was the client that was the most memorable part of this work. I was working at BBDO as part of an ECD team leading the agency, and our client at Chicken Licken was an old-school gentleman named George. He was the founder, owner, and an all-around legend. The trust and partnership that we had with him allowed us to do incredible work. He was at every shoot, from call time to wrap. At edits, he would always bring his young grandson in, watch the edit twice, and then shake everyone’s hands with a smile. I think this really showed me how important client relationships are, and that trust is one of the most powerful creative amplifiers.  

This was one of my first times overseeing a design piece, and is where I got my taste for that kind of work. It was such a different creative muscle to flex, especially as a writer, but it turned me into a complete design fangirl. Staying in your lane is such a missed opportunity, and honestly, it’s a bit of a career cop out. 

Here, I loved the process and how much I had to learn on the job. We’d pour over paper stock and then rolls of fabric, getting the clothing samples; it was all my craft dreams come true. My daughters modelled the clothing in the case, and when their faces popped up on the big screen at Cannes, it made it particularly memorable. This job gave me the confidence to collaborate more with designers, and I’ve never looked back. 

Remember my firehose analogy? Well, this is my favourite unmanned firehose example. 

We had this client, Student Flight (part of Flight Centre), that sells travel packages for students – the Oktoberfest, spring break, Coachella kind – and it had this longstanding platform, ‘Travel Before It’s Not Fun Anymore’. I had just come off maternity leave for my second child and was living the ‘babies really change your life’ insight while working with young creatives in the agency; it was the perfect marriage of pre and post-baby collaboration. 

Long story short, we decided to build a robot baby and give it to a well-known young comedian, Loyiso, to take to a music festival. We had a guy in the agency who had some fancy robotics qualification and could build anything – even a pooping, crying baby. We called in favours and phoned friends to make it happen. 

This is what I fondly call the ‘glue gun and chicken wire’ creative method, and it’s how I made a lot of the work in my career. There were no craft services and the hotel accommodation was a borrowed tent. We took a risk, made it happen, learnt how to formulate synthetic baby poop, and honestly, it was the best time. Loyiso wouldn’t talk to us for a long time after this, so I think we proved how unfun babies and music festivals can be. 

I built my career on radio, so it seems only fair that I include at least one piece. I started writing radio because, to be honest, I was just desperate to write something. No one else seemed to want the radio briefs, so we took them. It was incredibly creatively freeing because we were largely left to our own devices. Just the producer, the engineer and the creative team. We found the voices, the music, and we directed everything ourselves. Radio was an outlet for my love of writing and my sense of humour. I made so much radio back then that there were even parody spots about ‘Jenny Glover’-style radio.