Tara Ford: “Talent is Nothing Without a Client Who Gives You The Runway”

Tara Ford knows she has the right people and capabilities at Droga5 and Accenture Song to continue making world-class work, but “talent is nothing without a client who gives you the runway and gives you the right business problem to solve in the right way.”

“We've had some very big wins. We've worked globally, so the talent is here. And we've got the clients who are buying the work here as well,” she tells LBB. “It's all here and I would expect more great work this year.”

Making great work is “as hard as the planets aligning”, she says. “It's that perfect storm of a great brief, great clients that want the same thing, a business problem that's really interesting, talented, creatives, talented, depending on the project, director or illustrator or whatever it is, talented collaborators, and everyone putting their heart and soul into making it the best it can be.”

While the Droga5 AUNZ CCO and Accenture Song CCO across APAC and LATAM has to identify the big swings, and protect the ideas she thinks have the most potential, she doesn’t like over-analysing budding work.

“I never like to think in my head, 'Oh, this is one of those ideas,’” she explains. 

“I just try and put that aside and be watching it very closely and guarding everything you can. You kind of know something's good, but you don't really know until the end. Because at any point it could fall over a little bit, or a lot. 

“And it's just keeping that energy up all the way through. There's a certain electricity around those ideas, which is great, but it's excitement, but it's also nervousness, but nervousness in the best way.”

One of those ideas was ‘Play it Safe’, a two-minute film fronted by Tim Minchin to celebrate the Sydney Opera House’s 50th birthday, for which Droga5 dominated the global awards circuit. The agency picked up the film Grand Prix at Cannes, and, most recently, one of just four Immortal Awards handed out globally as part of LBB’s awards program. Late last week, LBB hosted the London Showcase, kicking off a global tour of the world’s best creative work, with ‘Play it Safe’ featuring as the first-ever piece of Australian work to receive the honour.

It feels very Australian - the Opera House, Tim Minchin, the premise’s connection to tall poppy syndrome - yet its international appeal and success is down to its universality, Tara thinks.

“The topic of creativity and creative bravery, and how you live your life, you don't have to be a creative person, but the decisions you make every day, whether or not you're going to go, 'Oh, I'll go out on a limb a little bit', it's super universal. It's human. 

“Kim Gehrig, the director, and Tim Minchin, the star lyricist, both incredible talents, both Australian, but both have lived overseas … So it was quite a natural thing that was imbued in the work. And it's certainly something that I have my eye on as well. I wanted it to be something that ... is Australian, but it's more than that.”

Mark Green, now the global CEO of Droga5 but then the local boss of Accenture Song and The Monkeys (which rebadged to Droga5 across Australia and New Zealand in December), petitioned Tourism Australia CMO Susan Coghill to boost the project’s production budget. As Michael Ritchie, the managing director of production company Revolver, said at last year’s This Way Up festival, the team needed an eight day shoot to match the idea’s ambition, but the budget only stretched to two.

“Then Mark Green, to his credit, said, ‘Look, I can get you a little bit more money,’” Michael recalled. 

“So he went and talked to Susan Coghill at Tourism Australia, and just said, ‘Can we have a little bit of money, just to help us get across the line?’”

With Tourism Australia’s help, the team got it done in a four day shoot. Having the Opera House as a shoot location, and so many of the talent belonging to Opera House-resident companies helped. But there were plenty of constraints. 

Tara says, “No one really cared that we were shooting a commercial. They were like, 'Well, the Symphony Orchestra has to play at 2pm so you're out at 12.’”

The logistics weren’t the only constraint. “There was definitely not enough money to do this project.”

“However, there was so much love,” she says. “There's so much love for the Opera House, getting Kim Gehrig to shoot something…” 

She stops here to explain that Kim turned down another project to shoot this one (Michael mentioned she flew herself out for the project, so tight was the budget); Tara was forced to come face to face with an exec from the agency Kim rejected at Cannes. They told her, “Thank god it was for this.”

Kim said of the 2-minute film being bestowed with Immortal status, “This is a piece of work about creativity and being as brave as the creators of our iconic Opera House - a building that is a constant reminder about taking risks and sticking to your vision no matter what.

“We are thrilled to be the first Australian project to receive this award and hope it is the first of many more Aussie projects to do so.”

The win taught Tara that “it’s still possible to win with film”, even with a film produced on a very limited budget.

“We should always be looking [at] more interesting, different shaped work as well, innovative work. I'd love to think that we're pushing ahead on innovation as well.”

Tara sat on the global Immortals jury this year, which also boasted the likes of DDB global CCO Chaka Sobhani, Ogilvy global CCO Liz Taylor, BBDO global CCO Chris Beresford-Hill, and FCB global chair Susan Credle.

“That global jury was pretty high powered, some amazing global talent there. Super smart people,” Tara says of flying to New York to judge the batch of projects. The jurors ultimately chose four of the 42-strong global shortlist to dub immortal: ‘Play it Safe’, ‘Adoptable’ by Colenso BBDO in New Zealand, ‘Recycle Me’ by Ogilvy North America, and ‘Coors Light’s Out’ by Rethink.

“It was a brilliant experience being over there and judging. An awesome room to be in, and talking about work is always such a joy,” Tara adds.

“People took it very seriously ... because people look back at it. Is this really the best work? Is this good enough? Does it align with past years?”

She’s now got her sights focused on the pipeline of work for the year ahead. She expects “more brilliance, always,” of her creative department, “but they expect that from themselves. You can't teach someone motivation and ambition. They either have it or they don't.

“It's always, what's next, what's the next opportunity, what's the next thing we're working on? How good can it be?”