Why Down-Under's On Top

Chris Hunter, Executive Creative Director Draft Australia and Draft New Zealand:

I often rack my brains trying to figure out why NZ does so well! A few thoughts:

Firstly, the actual work is very good – in New Zealand’s case, amazingly so for a country of only four million people. I think that’s partly because in the Antipodes, we don’t feel the weight of tradition so much. Marketers and consumers are both receptive to new ways of looking at things: the culture is more fun-loving and less formal.

Also, particularly in New Zealand, we don’t have the demographic and cultural diversity of older and larger countries such as the USA. Target markets are more distinct, and that helps to keep things single-minded and powerful. It also makes it easier for white middle-class judges to get their heads around the work at awards time!

Our target markets are also smaller, so there are fewer big data-driven campaigns. The financial sector doesn’t dominate the NZ direct marketing landscape as much as it does in the Old World. (On those campaigns, given the scale and the numbers at stake, tried and tested methods tend to be used – methods that don’t fare well in awards.)

Client companies have fewer ‘layers’: the person you’re presenting to is very often the decision-maker. So you have a better chance of selling in the work.

And then there’s the dearth of big clients in New Zealand. They’re fiercely fought over, so there’s no room for agency complacency. Awards are part of that tussle: they’re seen as ‘bragging rights’. Although most clients are not particularly interested, many agencies put a lot of money and effort into winning metal.

I wouldn’t discount the language angle, either. English is the global language of judging. Could we be missing fantastic work coming out of other small countries, simply because it’s lost in translation? We all know about 'Cyriel (84) Needs a Job' from the Belgian agency I DO, but there must be others.

Wayne Pick, Executive Creative Director, TEQUILA\Auckland:

It’s great to see Antipodean work recognised by Directory in this special Issue. We’re certainly very proud of what we’ve achieved in the region though I’m sure there’s more – much more – to come.

What makes us different, I think, is the fact that we are a small country at the bottom of the world. It’s a case of smaller clients, smaller agencies, smaller budgets. What this means in a marketing environment is that almost everyone on the client side knows almost everyone in the agency.

There are obvious benefits in having shorter distances between the CEO and his creative people. Beyond that, there are important implications for the whole briefing process. We’re not so much doing a job for The XYZ Corporation as for Hugh or for Jonno. Under those circumstances, you take on a greater degree of personal responsibility for the work than you might do elsewhere.

Here in New Zealand we have a 'No.8 Wire' mentality. In the early days, when a farmer had a problem, he’d make it, mend it or adapt it with No.8 Wire. That spirit of ingenuity - and appreciating ingenuity - is a fundamental part of Kiwi nature.

We don’t just like creativity for its own sake; we acknowledge that it builds business. In fact, we have a top-down approach to creativity here with Government and the financial institutions valuing and supporting the creative economy.

Dave King, Creative Director M&C Saatchi Sydney:

One of the key reasons that we’re doing so well in this part of the world is the fact that almost every single budget that we get now has got to have measurable results. Gone are the days when the clients wanted to have a nice ad that their mates could see. It’s got to generate results. As such, the whole direct methodology – the thinking to make sure that there’s a sale – comes into big campaigns a lot earlier. A lot of agencies don’t have just 'direct' people. At M&C we have creatives who can work on everything – mainstream, digital etc.

What this country has done brilliantly is the integrated story. If you look back to Y&R’s Jim Beam work, that had everything – TV, audio-visual, ambient, the hardcore direct mail piece. People have worked out that to do well at Cannes and other international awards you have to have those multiple elements. And Australia has done well with that – look at Stolen Glasses, LYNXjet, British Council on a smaller scale.

Clients have to take a huge amount of credit for what’s going on in Australia. Here marketers like the fact that they could do well with creative as well as with results. That legacy of success is something that not just the creatives and the agencies care about, but the clients too. The other benefit for us on the direct side is that, unlike the states where a small sell could be millions, for us a small sell could be less than 1,000. If a small campaign goes wrong here, the ramifications are much less than they would be in the US or probably the UK.

Rivalry is another factor. There’s a huge amount of rivalry between creative departments here. Take Dylan Taylor at BMF. He used to be our boss, now he’s a mate but he’s a fierce rival, and so we really care when we do better than BMF at ADMA, Cannes, Caples and other awards.

So, why are we more creative? Because we like beating our mates, have good clients that like winning awards and want to keep winning awards, and we have fewer layers than you find in the states or the UK. Finally, and I say this as a Kiwi, one of the factors for New Zealand is that it is a creative place in its own right, with a culture of having a crack at creative pursuits – whether that be making your own films, doing your own art, whatever it might be - and this rubs off on the agency environment where people are more willing to just to have a go at doing new things.

Dylan Taylor, Creative Director, BMF:

The question as to 'why Antipodean creative is on high?' is tricky one to answer with any degree of confidence. The question has shades of the eternally problematic ‘does my bum look big in this?’ (No one ever wants to answer that.) Anyway, the reasons are quite simple: how high is the high? What’s causing it? And how long will our creativity remain attractive in the eyes of the world?

Okay, so on the 'high' front, Australia and NZ have certainly left base camp. There’s been a fantastic success rate at Caples, Cannes, ECHO and D&AD over the last eight or so years. Now agencies and campaigns are consistently appearing in the top 10 in the world in the Won Report (thanks Patrick). In the beginning it was ANZ work, and the like from Kiwi banks, that got us noticed. Virgin Money was probably the high point for financial services. Now it appears that the integrated campaign is winning with LYNXjet, Stolen Glasses and Whinging Poms standing out.

What's causing it? Well probably three things: Firstly, structurally a desire to produce great work in any medium. Agencies are shifting themselves into more integrated shops as media becomes more fragmented. Secondly, smaller markets mean quicker turnaround of work. Thirdly, an innate desire to prove that those down here can beat anybody on a world stage: cue the Australian cricket team.

But how long will it last? Well at the moment it appears a golden period after a record number of big winners at Caples, but Cannes is around the corner and the ECHOs, so who knows where the next big winners will be coming from? Whatever happens I think we’ll still be seeing a lot of tanned behinds from Australia and New Zealand swaggering their way up on stage.

Matt Shirtcliffe, formerly Creative Director AIM Proximity, New Zealand, now Executive Creative Director, Proximity Canada:

There is no one single reason as to why such good creative work comes out of New Zealand. There are several things that I am going to touch on.

The first of these, most importantly, is alcohol. Kiwis brew some fantastic beer, and it’s part of our identity to consumer thereof. And great ideas come from that. We forget them all by the time we get back to work but it’s a marvellous process to go through.

A bit more seriously, the next thing to touch on is clients. New Zealand's population is made up of a little over four million fantastic people. Because it’s a small market, when we’re actually dealing with clients, we’re not necessarily dealing with a huge number of people. That, for creative work, is a really good thing because it means that we can sell to the people who have the authority to sign off on the work. If you can sell to them, the chances of the work going wrong on its journey through a large organisation are significantly diminished.

A third aspect is the degree of risk. It wasn’t until I went to the John Caples awards and judged them a few years ago that I realised just how large some of the mailings overseas are. They’re just enormous – millions and millions and millions. We’re not used to the size of those campaigns here. Because we do smaller campaigns numerically, the cost of something going wrong is therefore less, which I think fuels an appetite for risk.

A fourth factor is to do with integration, and how we do integration. Below your nose and above your chin is the most wonderful piece of technology ever invented. It’s the mouth, closely followed by the ears. When we get those technologies working in harmony together, when we have a meeting and all just sit around one table and talk ideas, wonderful things happen. The best way to have integration is to have people with different spheres of influence all sitting around together working on the one campaign.

The last point I have to make is to do with irreverence and how well that can work for work. You only need to look at our recent campaign WestiePac for Westpac Bank and also for Haunui Farm - where we created a fake society called S.P.E.M and sent out large horse-sized condoms - to see how irreverence can work so powerfully for campaigns. But it can only work well if you are dealing with a culture that generally appreciates, understands and responds well to an irreverent sense of humour. And I think naturally Kiwis and Aussies have a lot of irreverence in their life generally.

Matt Eastwood, National Creative Director/Vice Chairman, DDB Worldwide:

Throughout my career I've been lucky enough to work in three of the world’s greatest cities - London, New York and, of course, Sydney. And, whilst each market has its own unique characteristics, there’s something about Australia that doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s the reason why Australia punches above its weight creatively. And always has. For me, it’s simple. Relationships. In Australia, a Creative Director can have a direct relationship with the client CEO. In my case, I can usually get the CEO on the phone at any time. I can ask them to reconsider, or simply consider, an idea that may be quite adventurous. And because they know me, they trust me.

That, unfortunately, is often not the case in New York and London. Client organisations are bigger. Hierarchies are larger. And CEOs are often kept at arm’s length from Creative Directors. Coming up with an award-winning idea is hard no matter where you are. But getting it across the line is probably simpler in Australia. Sure, there’s still a lot of crap. And clients that ‘don’t get it’ are universal. But in Australia there’s a culture of collaboration and, more often than not, a common goal of doing great work.