The Memorable Moments That Made Creatives Do What They Do

2022 was a year of recovery for the creative industry - a year of steadily returning to in-person events, of figuring out how to combine working at home with revisiting the office, and of seeing old consumption habits rise up alongside new ones which emerged during the pandemic.

We now move out of this time of adjustment and turn our eyes to new possibilities for the year ahead. And, so, it seems prudent to reflect on where, why, and how we entered this crazy industry to begin with.

LBB’s antipodean office decided to do just that by asking some of the region’s young exciting creatives what it is that made them pursue creativity as their passion, priority, and profession.

As we ring in the new year, we take a look at their memorable moments:

Psembi Kinstan

Psembi Kinstan is the ECD for DDB Melbourne. His career began in the city, working with the ABC. He joined last year after a seven-year stint in London where he was the youngest creative director in the histories of VMLY&R London and BBH London. He also won a BAFTA.

“Let’s go back in time to the pre-YouTube era. I’m on my parent’s desktop PC, bleeping and blooping as the dialup internet loads up an email attachment a kilobyte at a time. It’s one of those late ’’90s email chains where every participant has forwarded the message onto 50 friends. After a long wait, I sit and watch the John West Bear Fight ad. Then I watch it again. It’s the first ad that I saw that made any impression. It was great then, and still is. Twenty odd years later, I ended up in the office above Paul Silburn (the original Bear Fight copywriter) at BBH and got to thank him in person for getting me into this crazy wonderful industry. Without that email chain, who knows where I’d be.”

Brandon Nee

Brandon Nee, an art director at Howatson+Company, has a wide creative background, having dabbled in acting, filmmaking, and even soccer - but, in his words, “found my passion in advertising”. A top 10 AWARD School graduate, Brandon’s multidisciplinary creative skills are exactly the sort that will guide the industry in the year ahead.

“I love trying many things in life, but I was never great at one thing.  I jumped between wanting to pursue acting, to filmmaking, to forensics, to soccer, and very often – Batman. Eventually, I decided to pursue creativity - especially when I discovered that you get to create all sorts of different things in advertising. At first, my parents (aka "finance providers") didn't think it was funny. So, using my advertising skills, I pitched this career to them. The “clients” didn't buy it, but they saw my tenacity and passion, and, all the while, I realised my own potential.”

Zach Edwards 

Zach Edwards is a digital planner at Keep Left. He’s been with the agency since 2021, and has worked on, among other things, the CTV+ Watch Different Campaign, demonstrating his trademark enthusiasm for the future, and the love of creativity that serves the people - as described below.

“In 2013 the social enterprise Thankyou launched a campaign to get their products stocked at Coles and Woolworths. 100% of their profits go toward alleviating global poverty, so it was a pretty big deal if they could get into Australia’s biggest chains. Thankyou created a film, a social media impact campaign that went viral, and flew planes with banners in the sky above the Coles and Woolies head offices – all demanding that the supermarkets take action and partner with this little brand to do better. "

“I was 15 at the time and was blown away by how a not-for-profit in Melbourne was taking these giants head on. People all over the country were sharing posts and hashtags, demanding action (and sure enough, both supermarkets agreed to stock Thankyou as a result). That was an incredible moment for me as I realised creativity and thinking could start a conversation and lead to actual impact. After seeing and participating in that, I knew I wanted to work with brands and do good things to not just get people talking, but influence real change.”

Courtney Fay

Courtney Fay is a senior art director at R/GA. She describes herself as “a creative with an eye (sometimes two) for art direction and design”, and helpfully offers that “You'll likely find me making anything but my bed, visiting every yuppie restaurant on Broadsheet, listening to So Fresh Winter Hits of 2003 and asking my copywriter Kate if she can copy her timesheets”.

“I was at my first agency, working as a junior designer, when I first met and heard of 'creatives'. I curiously watched them navigate the joys of the creative process – the frenzy phase, the quarrel phase, the ‘staring at the ceiling’ phase, the coffee phase, the wine phase, the ‘free falling into the creative hole’ phase and the ‘rising from the ashes like a triumphant phoenix’ phase. It looked like a rollercoaster I wanted to ride. So, I strapped myself in, enrolled in AWARD School and I’ve been in the front seat with my creative partner ever since.”

Tom Bradbeer 

Tom Bradbeer is a senior copywriter at We Are Social. He believes “that every brief is different, and so is every solution”. Tom sports a unique blend of digital and traditional creativity, which no doubt comes in handy when working at an agency as cutting edge as We Are Social.

“I was in my second year of uni, still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life when I got an assignment brief for erasable pens. This turned out to be huge for two reasons. First, my pen licence was now worthless. And second, I realised I wasn't half bad at coming up with ideas. Under the creative guidance of my tutor Blair McLeish, I cracked the brief and had the print ad designed that afternoon. Erasable pen sales went up, and the world got one more copywriter.”

Madeleine Semit

Madeleine Semit describes herself as “a copywriter, former brand marketer, and rehabilitated management consultant”. She joined Howatson+Company last year, after graduating in the top 10 of her year at AWARD School in Victoria. With a background in customer experience and leading-edge digital innovation, she’s exactly the sort of creative spirit who’ll be leading the way in 2023.

“I had a housemate who's a creative. While working from home, I'd hear him laughing. And laughing. And having absurd conversations, in the vein of "what should a talking crocodile sound like?" I realised my workdays were largely sat in silence. Without laughter. And that I had ideas on what the croc should sound like, too.”

Harris Galloway

Harris Galloway has been with Keep Left since early 2021, and recently made his way to being a full-time strategist after beginning as an insights + strategy intern (and spending some time as a planner in between). He graduated last year from the University of Melbourne with a Masters in Applied Psychology, knowledge which he says has proven essential in his exploration of the advertising world.

“Some of my earliest memories of advertising are of the ads I used to see as a kid. The ones that stayed with me the most were always those from the TAC – a Victorian Government-owned organisation known for its hard-hitting and highly effective road safety advertising. Obviously, being quite young at the time, I didn’t understand why these ads were having such an effect on me. I thought it was possibly a product of their now famous (and still brilliant) tagline: “If you drink, then drive, you’re a bloody idiot.

“It wasn’t until I took ‘Psychology of Advertising’ at university, and studied the TAC’s advertising in-depth, that I truly came to understand why these ads were so effective. I realised that in just the same way it’s possible to sell a brand, it’s possible to sell a behaviour. And you do it using psychology. The mind. Something I’d been studying for years already. That’s when I knew I wanted to go into advertising. When it clicked for me that psychology could be used creatively, rather than just clinically, to change people’s behaviour for the better.”