Solid, strong creativity should feel uncomfortable

Solid, strong creativity should feel uncomfortable, according to some of the country’s top marketers.

The panel discussion was part of an event for The Growth Agenda (TGA) in Melbourne and was modertaed by TGA editor Pippa Chambers . Photograph by Arsineh Houspian

As much as you can “derisk” a big creative idea before its launch, the fear ahead of a rollout never dies for top marketers at some of the country’s biggest brands.

Admitting the pressure on the role as a marketer had not let up, having always been intense, Australia Post chief marketing officer (CMO) Amber Collins, who has worked at some of the nation’s biggest brands including Coles and Target, said it was no better or worse than a decade ago.

“The pressure doesn’t feel any different compared to when I started in marketing. I feel like I’ve had a gun to my head for 10 years,” she joked while speaking at an event in Melbourne for The Growth Agenda.

Chief marketing officer of Australia Post, Amber Collins. Photograph by Arsineh Houspian

Ms Collins, who says she brings a very strong commercial lens to the marketing department at Australia Post, said despite her role as CMO, the answer wasn’t always about advertising and this is where she tried to put tension back into the system to push different thinking around what the answer to a challenge might be.

“There’s always pressure. It hasn’t come off and while nine times out of 10 people may jump to doing more marketing, sometimes you need to say ‘Hang on, before we start doing that let’s just go back, think about the product, how people are accessing it and the innovation in the UX before we do that’.”

She recalled the “most frightened” she had ever been was at Coles ahead of big promotions such as Little Shop, which involved the launch of mini plastic collectable toys such as popular groceries and snacks with accompanying trolleys and baskets.

“I’d be thinking, ‘Is it going to be the greatest disaster? Am I going to ever get a job again?’ Those were the thoughts and the sort of thing that frightened me then, but generally nowadays I feel like I know the brands, the agencies and our partners know the brands really well and I don’t put the brand in a compromising position.”

Panel discussion

Wildly popular, the 2018-launched initiative was a huge success with consumers scrambling to get their missing items and opportunists selling the toys online at inflated prices. After ­Little Shop 2, the promotion ended with CMO at the time, Lisa Ronson, saying it no longer aligned with the supermarket’s sustainability ambitions.

CMO of Tourism Australia, Susan Coghill, shared the sentiments around pressure, adding as much as you could de-risk a project or new ad campaign by doing your homework upfront, the fear before a campaign launch was very real. “I’ve been scared – absolutely. I definitely have sleepless nights about stuff but if I’m not scared, then I’m perhaps not pushing it far enough?” Ms Cog­hill questioned.

In a cluttered category such as tourism, which is even more competitive as more countries re-emerge from lockdown, Ms Coghill said Tourism Australia wasn’t just entering the same competitive landscape as 2019 because it was “much fiercer”.

With both Australia Post and Tourism Australia making headlines and winning awards for ad campaigns, there’s no doubt great advertising exists in Australia.

However, also speaking on the panel, CEO at TBWA Melbourne and Adelaide Kimberlee Wells said she wanted to see more marketers take bigger risks.

During the panel, Ms Wells urged other marketers in the room to think about when they last felt fear before a campaign.

“I ask this because certainly over the course of the last couple of years, the level of creativity – perhaps at the risk of my own ­detriment – but I think we’ve become better at admiring medi­ocrity and we need to change it,” Ms Wells said.

“That’s a change that we have to step into together. We have to be prepared to push further than perhaps we have in the past.”

While there might be time, cost, strategic and sometimes relationship consequences to pushing further, Ms Wells said “solid, strong creativity should feel ­uncomfortable”.

Co-founder and group CEO The Monkeys and lead at Accenture Interactive, Mark Green, CMO at Australia Post Amber Collins, and CMO at Stake Bryan Wilmot.Photograph by Arsineh Houspian

Co-founder and group CEO of ad agency The Monkeys and lead at Accenture Interactive, Mark Green, noted he had a more positive view on the work in the Australian advertising industry, saying the market punched above its weight from a creative standpoint and citing examples of globally renowned work such as tourism Australia’s Crocodile Dundee campaign.

Adding that science could sometimes override intuition, Mr Green said if you were strategic, set up strong foundations and you knew what the brand stood for then that gave you permission to be more creative.

“I’m very optimistic about the work that’s being made in this country and the opportunity for creativity to influence business,” Mr Green said.

“We’ve got a really big opportunity for strategy and creativity to inform business outcomes in new and different ways more than ever before.”

PIPPA CHAMBERS