JWT global creative head Matt Eastwood says Australian ad industry more supportive than US
Australian adman Matt Eastwood, who is chief creative officer at JWT has said Australia is a more supportive creative community than the US.
The former DDB Australia national creative director, who was appointed to the global role with JWT in June this year, told US trade magazine AdWeek that his “biggest pet peeve” about the US industry is its lack of community support.
“That we are kind of down on each other, which I find frustrating. I don’t know if it’s an American thing or not, but in Australia, there’s definitely an advertising community that all supports each other. In Cannes, you see Australians celebrating other Australians winning, which is great. I would love to see that more in the U.S,” he said.
Speaking on his goals for the next 12 months in the new role, Eastwood said he hoped the agency would believe it could do more and hopefully it could do better at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
“To have instilled a belief in the agency that we can push ourselves harder than we ever have before and a desire to want to do that. Right now probably some people look at where we are and think, “Well, that’s where we are because that’s who we are.” I always believe that you can be more than you are just by applying passion. And I don’t know if it’s going to be in time for 2015, but I would like to see us do better at Cannes.”
Eastwood moved to the US in 2010 to take on a role with the DDB New York office.
Awards, awards awards. Earth to Matt, an important part of your job is helping clients grow their business.
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@ Fraser – on the money.
It is amazing how many ECDs manage to write full opinion pieces and get through entire interviews without mentioning results or clients. It is quite literally awards, awards and more awards. Occasionally a ‘clients should be more brave’ thrown in for good measure.
As an ex-agency guy and now a client, it is little wonder clients are not as brave as agencies would like when some high-profile leaders of the ad industry are clearly so self-interested.
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Good luck. Maybe should have read this?
http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/opinion/1310711/
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Another CCO that yap’s on about awards and celebrating awards with his peers.
And the clients all yawned and continued to shift their business elsewhere…
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Why does he want awards? Because awards are a measure – yes admittedly subjective, but nonetheless the best measure we have – of quality. So all he’s saying is he wants the company’s product to be better quality. Something wrong with that? No.
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@ McNulty
Congratulations on being part of the credibility problem.
Sales are the best measure of ‘quality’.
Awards are nothing more than a nice aside.
To illustrate, would you describe Coles advertising as ‘quality’? It’s well branded, impactful and sells a heap of groceries for them. But I am guessing you are one of the many in the industry who openly deride it.
Do you think Coles Execs or The Wesfarmers board think it’s quality? Of course they do.
The ad industry will always struggle for credibility and a ‘seat at the table’ with the senior exec team when their interests are clearly so divergent.
It’s time for the industry to do some growing up.
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Great campaigns that get good results win awards.
Awards don’t make great campaigns that get good results.
Shit campaigns that get results are annoying. Coles is a great example of that.
The public f*cking hate it. And it costs Coles millions. Which I’m sure the Coles Execs and the Wesfarmers board, if they went to a smarter agency that could save them millions in media spend, would definitely be interested in.
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