Behind the shot: The making of Emotive’s CCO announcement
Emotive's new CCO Gavin McLeod
Emotive boss Simon Joyce wanted a simple but memorable way to mark the moment the agency welcomed its first-ever chief creative officer.
Earlier this week, the creative agency announced Gavin McLeod’s appointment. He joins Emotive from Chep Network, where he was national CCO. Working closely with head of earned creative Jessica Cluff, who came on board earlier this year, McLeod will drive the agency’s creative output as it doubles down on “fame”.
Rather than staging a polished headshot to accompany the announcement, they opted for something that “feels a little more Gav” and a little more Emotive.
Sharing a behind-the-scenes look on Linkedin, Joyce said he’d been asked a lot whether the photo was AI.
“This video proves otherwise (Just some solid retouching by the incredible Julian Wolkenstein – although he couldn’t resist adding a touch that makes it look just AI enough to get a laugh),” he wrote in the post.
Skipping the stiff poses and corporate gloss, the team instead chose to shoot against the backdrop of the beach, paying homage to the Emotive HQ at Sydney’s Coogee Beach, a place that’s long been a source of inspiration.
Joyce previously told Mumbrella that having the office in Coogee wasn’t just to “be a cool creative agency by the beach”, but to have it be a beacon for creativity in the community.
The shot is less about formality and more about invoking feelings from the audience as an extension of the agency’s purpose: creating ideas that change how people feel.
In fact, its purpose is something the agency has also doubled down on this year, especially since undergoing a visual rebrand tohhelp evolve the business.
“We want to make the purpose louder,” he told Mumbrella in June. “We’ve been working our socks off for a long period of time, and we’ve outgrown our brand identity. We weren’t doing enough to celebrate our purpose.”
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