Uprising: Maddy Franklin Asks, “What Would Minions Do?”
Perpetually sporting a smile, Maddy Franklin - now a senior art director at M&C Saatchi Sports and Entertainment North America - was a curious child and began her obsession with image early on. Whether it was through exploring her own sense of fashion or pouring over magazines and curating her aesthetic on Tumblr, she developed her eye long before leaving her ‘farm girl’ life in Gilroy, California for a creative career in the Big Apple.
Despite feeling a lifetime away from her current situation - a cosy New York apartment with her Italian Greyhound Miss Lottie - Maddy was shaped by her childhood surrounded by goats, donkeys, hay bales to play on and general mess to be made. “As long as my chores and homework got done, and I didn’t track mud into the house, I could spend my days outside without a worry in the world,” she says. “There were no wrong answers because there were no right answers. I got to connect with nature on a one-to-one level and it’s something I feel incredibly privileged to have engrained in me… I still feel like a farm girl at heart.”
Like many of her fellow creatives, after nine years in the city, Maddy now calls Brooklyn home - living out a childhood dream that began when she moved across the country for college. Both creatively and socially, New York’s spontaneity was a big draw for her and she revels in the idea of being able to put herself out there, find inspiration and meet new friends by simply walking outside her apartment.
While studying communication design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, she says she had professors who continue to be inspirations for her today, and who showed her the possibilities of being a creative, encouraging her to pursue her interests while in the freedom of school.
Be it during her education or in her professional career, Maddy has always been driven by her love of making things. She’s been a designer, a florist and a claymator among other roles - and through each of these has picked up a new set of skills, for example, the colour theory from her floral work or composition from directing and designing with claymation. Living by the mantra that it’s “impossible to waste time learning how to do something new”, she says that an art director must be prepared to make anything to overcome a complex problem, for which they’ll need the desire to learn how anything and everything is created. “Absorbing and translating that knowledge into an actionable everyday practice is how you develop your skillset and personal taste.”
She continues, “My mom has this saying: ‘Put your guts in a bucket and do it’. My dad’s version is: ‘You can either go cry in the truck or you can cowboy up’. Both are pretty gruesome ways of saying something pretty similar to the largest sports slogan in the world. Maybe you’ve heard it: ‘Just Do It’. (Nike, hit me up if you want to change your slogan). It’s such a broad piece of advice but I often need the reminder that my own fears are what are standing in the way of success - or even experimentation.”
An early lesson in absorbing new influences came from Maddy’s design internship at the “now defunct and disgraced” women’s club ‘The Wing’. While upper management had “a myriad of issues”, she says the design team there taught her more than any school could, as working under two Pentagram alumni and other talented designers allowed her to see top tier design, creative ideation and production. “A lot of roles and responsibilities in the creative industry are too intangible to be taught in school,” she says. “So this felt like a peak under the hood of a very tuned-in creative process.”
Now fully in the swing of her own creative process, Maddy reflects on some recent projects that have validated her ability and passion for the business. When launching beer brand Natural Light’s ‘Vintage Cans’, she spent hours photoshopping mullets onto cans, encouraging customers to adopt the resurging hairstyle in exchange for free beer. “I had a moment where I realised this is my job… That ridiculous feeling was something I wanted to hold on to. The key visual ended up getting great coverage, even making its way into People magazine, and it was incredibly validating to see that something that brought me so much joy to make resonated with people, even if it was just a goofy graphic.”
Hoping to make a similar impact with all her work, she shares that she recently put her vintage clothing and style knowledge to the test, sourcing vintage items for a brand’s seeding kits from various online auction sites. The individuality and unpredictability of online vintage shopping posed its own challenges, but the result was a unique and intimate project that only sharpened her skills.
One element that ties together many of Maddy’s ideas is humour. More specifically, the senior art director is interested in humour that “extends beyond language”. This has led her to create a new acronym to live by: ‘WWMD’ (What Would Minions Do?), citing Illumination’s “little yellow freaks” as something of an inspiration for her new approach to brainstorming and non-verbal comedy.
“The whole industry is a song and dance of trying to be likeable to the consumer, so why not add some humour in?” She continues, “It can be worked into any story you are telling, no matter how heart wrenchingly sad or serious. People will never say no to a laugh – and they will say no to just about everything else. The glimmers of humour and absurdity in everyday life are what inspire me and I’ve found it to be the best way to connect with people both professionally and personally.”
She has also noticed another trend in the creative world - something she dubs ‘the great EGOTification’. For the uninitiated, an EGOT is someone who wins an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. Explaining that the changing creative landscape is prompting artists to diversify their interests to cast a larger net of talent, she says that this mindset has caused creatives in the ad industry to also broaden their scope from specialised roles. “We are no longer doing one job, instead we’re working towards that figurative ‘EGOT’ of creating everything.”
She adds that a benefit of this is streamlining the process, however it also risks losing the specificity and attention that she believes some of these jobs desperately need. “While I am personally excited to see more EGOTs, the greater industry will have to strike a balance between perfecting your craft and being a multihyphenate in order to make authentic work.”
‘Authenticity’ is a term that Maddy hears thrown around a lot, but she says that few brands truly understand how to achieve it. In a time when brands are expected to be more human than ever - holding a point of view, tone of voice and sets of values for people to align with - she says that there is a great need for authentic community building. “That community will naturally get you further than any dollar will, but only if it is done earnestly and honestly.” She adds that to create a reflective community, the industry must value it as much as they do profits, and commit both financially and ethically to aligning with these communities before they publicly associate with them.
Aside from that, she also shares one of her personal values, “I try to make the industry feel more human,” she says, “and am willing to admit that we are often making it up as we go along.” Having taken on a handful of mentorship opportunities with Incorp[HER]ated, speaking to young people about creative careers, she shares she has an interest in teaching at the college level and enjoys seeing how the industry looks from other perspectives. “Creative mentorship often consists of confirming people’s passions and encouraging them to find ways to apply those passions to work. Young folks don’t know the possibilities of the industry, as it is shrouded in mystery and ego - [which is] part of what makes the creative field so intriguing.”
When she’s not in the office or mentoring ambitious young creatives, Maddy can be found co-hosting the ‘Little Big Market’, a seasonal market that brings together an assortment of like-minded creators. “Every market leaves me invigorated with how inspiring and talented our vendors are, often feeling a little teary-eyed when it’s over,” she says.
Planning to keep evolving both personally and professionally for the rest of her life she says, “Sometimes learning and growing can be as simple as reading the Wikipedia page for a movie after you’ve watched it, and sometimes it’s discovering an entirely new passion you’ll devote years of your life to perfecting. I try to value both of those learning experiences equally.”
