In defence of small machines: tiny budgets and tight deadlines drive creativity
Following his move from Droga5 in New York to become ECD at CHEP Network in Sydney, Paul Meates has some observations about the ‘smaller machine’ that is the Australian creative industry.
New York is a big machine. After spending a decade there grinding away at Droga5, I decided it was time to come home. Now a month in at CHEP Network in Sydney, what has surprised me the most is how easy it is to appreciate a smaller machine.
It’s because our industry is small that we feel like we have something to prove. And as a younger brother, I get that. My older brother often jokingly refers to himself as the “Number One Child”, or to me pejoratively as the somehow inferior “B2”. As a result, there’s an innate drive in me to beat him, to punch above my weight, and the same is true for our industry.
We are driven to beat the rest of the world, in spite of what we see as an unfair playing field. We are up against opponents who have more money and more time. So, we resort to more creativity, our greatest asset. But it’s the smaller budgets and faster timelines that I’ve come to realise aren’t always such disadvantages.
