Under pressure: How to be creative with fast turnaround work
Sometimes creatives are given weeks to nail a brief and mould a perfect campaign. At other times the client wants it yesterday. Mumbrella asked leading creatives to share examples of work developed at breakneck speed and to extraordinarily tight deadlines.
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Nick Worthington, ECD, Colenso BBDO
I remember a couple of years ago when one of our clients, Tourism Fiji, came to us in crisis after a cyclone.
What generally happens is that cyclones move away very quickly and Fiji gets back on its feet. That’s great, but the problem is there’s a tail for three months when the rest of the world thinks Fiji is still a disaster zone and people cancel flights.
Tourism Fiji just couldn’t wait for tourists to start returning, so we immediately jumped on a flight and thought right, what is the fastest possible way to turn this around?
After all, the hotels were open, the sun was out, and the bars full of beers and cocktails. So everything was ready – only there were no tourists.
We decided the quickest and most effective way of getting the message out was to do a social campaign. We called it Right Now in Fiji, which we then shortened to Fiji Now, and within 48 hours designed social posts from resorts featuring really beautiful images in real time.
They went out on Twitter and other social channels which showed Fiji was ready to welcome visitors and looking fantastic.
In addition, newspapers were still carrying images of Fiji as a disaster area so we took out full page press ads with a montage of the social posts.
It was a simple but a very smart, low cost and effective solution to an acute problem which was turned round incredibly quickly and had resorts booked again in record time.
Steve Coll, chief creative officer, With Collective
During the US and Australia elections, Fairfax wanted to demonstrate the value and quality of their news coverage under the brand campaign ‘independent news for independent thinkers’.
Our job was to create a series of provocative questions around the day’s news events to be in market within a few hours.
The daily process involved the marketing and editorial teams at Fairfax providing us with their top three news stories each day and we’d then sit down and write a series of headlines, or questions, to appear on billboards and in digital ads.
Our ideas would be approved within an hour, after which we’d put the artwork together in our studio. It was headline driven and we had a template which enabled us to move so fast. We also have a great team of writers who can turn things around very quickly.
We’d get the stories from Fairfax about 9am and the assets were live between noon and 3pm, so quite frequently I’d be driving home and I’d see one of the posters we had written that morning in the bus shelters.
It was advertising that related to that day’s news so had a high degree of relevance and as we all know, relevance is a great precursor to consumers remembering a message.
Michael Laxton, the very savvy head of marketing at Fairfax, was very keen to push the quality of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the provocative questions were designed to prompt people to read the paper and make up their own minds on topical issues. It was about selling the quality of that day’s news – the sausage, not the sizzle.
We also had lots of data and got a sense of what people were reading online, and what they were clicking on and were able to tailor ads that were high relevant to people’s interests.
These ads were a component in a campaign that was recently recognised for boosting subscriptions at the global INMA awards.
Dee Madigan, executive creative director, Campaign Edge
I remember one of our clients, Commonwealth Bank, coming to us after they had a surprise interest rate cut for home loans and needing something turned around very quickly.
They briefed us at 4pm I think it was, and asked what can we do to promote the new rate? In a few hours we had an ad on TV.
We came up with the simple idea of illustrating the rate cut by using a cake so we needed to get a cake made. Fortunately, we had a reasonable budget and when you can throw money at jobs you can get things to happen very quickly.
We also wanted to cut the cake and have the new rate written on it. But cutting a cake is always tricky, so we got a food stylist on set to make sure it was done well!
So we did an overnight shoot, got the necessary approvals and at 10 the next morning the ad was airing on TV.
We often have a fast turnaround at election time as we have clients who need to react to what political opponents have said during the day. So we often have to make an ad within 12 hours. With those we’ll try to have graphics ready and, where possible, use type only.
A lot of our work is issue-based so it doesn’t worry me in the slightest if we need to get an ad on TV within 24 hours, as long as we can buy the media spots.
Where possible though, I tend not to go back [to the client] the same day because when you solve a problem immediately you tend to come up with very logical solutions.
That’s fine but they’re sometimes not the best. You need to let the brief float around in your head for a while. Ideally that can take a week but often we just don’t get that amount of time.
I do get some strange requests. I did a speaking gig recently when the client asked me, as part of my speaking fee, to make two or three adverts for them and they would choose the best one to use for their marketing. They were literally asking me to make adverts for a speakers’ fee.
I said you’re kidding me right? No, I will not do that! I do that for a living! I think they were a little taken aback.
Tony Osborne, senior art director, The Shannon Company
I’ve worked with the Labor Party in state and federal elections and they really are immediate turnarounds. Events happen instantaneously and you have to respond. There is almost a war-room mentality.
Other than elections, one piece of work I remember was in the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004.
We had been doing some bits and pieces for Oxfam and I took a call from my boss Bill Shannon [founder of The Shannon Company] who asked if I was available to put an ad together straight away.
We worked on a script that afternoon and used actress Magda Szubanski who I think had a relationship with Oxfam. We did it almost in a news presenter style and Magna was so popular and so heartfelt in wanting to help – and that came across – that it got people’s attention very quickly.
People had obviously seen the footage of the tsunami and for us it was about getting that message out there and telling them how they could help.
We had a good relationship with a production company, were adjusting the script the following morning at the shoot and managed to get the ad to the TV stations that night.
Another I remember was about 15 or 16 years ago when I was at Grey Advertising. There was a big gas crisis in Melbourne where a pipeline had blown and no one had gas hot water.
One of our clients was Radox and we put an ad together in a couple of hours that appeared in the paper the next day. It was telling people to relax in a cold shower with Radox.
Normally when you have to turn something round very quickly it’s about being opportunistic, and you can have a bit of fun with a bathroom product or confectionary. The Radox ad was all about the brand. It wasn’t as if we were going to help the community by selling more Radox.
With Oxfam and the tsunami it was about empathy and how the community could help.
I enjoy putting work together quickly. You have to come up with ideas and you have to come up with them now.
The longer something takes, the more people have an influence, the more you think it over, alternatives come up, there are more suggestions….you can end up confusing yourself.
It’s great to just go ‘you know what this a great idea, let’s make it happen’. Coming up with ideas is why I am in this business.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of Magna Szubanski.
User ID not verified.
Hi Magda,
Mea culpa – that’s been changed now, thanks for flagging.
Alex – head of Mumbrella Bespoke
“…and at 10 the next morning the aid was airing on TV.”
One of the common pitfalls of a quick turnaround – relying on spellcheck to proof the copy!
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Hi AB,
You’re right – the perils of quick turnaround work indeed. Fixed up now – thanks!
Alex – head of Mumbrella Bespoke