Why creatives should stop chasing cool brands

"I’m about to make my best work." says Aaron Howard, co-founder and executive creative director at independent creative agency Ourselves.

That’s how I felt when I won the adidas football account. 

I’d hit the big leagues. The brand with the three stripes. A game-changer for our agency and for my career. I’d always loved the brand and had worn Predators throughout my distinctly average playing days.

Fast forward 18 months and I was burnt out with very little to show for it, apart from the air miles racked up from the numerous return trips to Herzogenaurach.

I had endured endless PPT deck building, a complex structure and complicated sign-off, limited to no access to their talent (15 mins with Messi was probably the highlight), with much of the work pulled last minute due to internal politics.

Never meet your heroes, they say. Maybe the same applies to advertising. 

I’m not suggesting you shouldn't work for the brands you love. I learned a hell of a lot and got a real kick out of it. But don’t expect it to be the most fulfilling or rewarding work you ever do.

Brands like adidas are desirable because they’re cool, fashionable, sexy and aspirational. But when that’s the case, what’s the role of the creative? The challenge is to not f*ck it up.

These brands have more to lose. Your job is to maintain. Change can only be incremental.

The real creative opportunity lies in brands and categories that were never on your dream client wishlist. 

The undesirable, ‘uncool’ ones. The ones in desperate need of reinvention or transformation. These brands provide a blank canvas: that gloriously daunting - but hugely exciting - thing for a creative. A free pass to unlimited opportunity.

Who would have dreamed of working on Old Spice prior to 2010?

It’s an obvious example, but a good one. An aftershave that reminded you of your grandad suddenly became relevant again with the now iconic "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign. Whilst other fashionable fragrances continued to pay actors inordinate sums of money to look off into the middle distance, Old Spice challenged the category norms and successfully turned the brand around.

The categories with low expectations are where the most difference can be made. 

Business insurance doesn’t get anyone’s heart racing, but Hiscox ‘Most disastrous campaign ever’ breathed life into a stale and stagnating sector.

Word of warning though. Our job is not to make these brands ‘cool’. Instead we must double down on what makes them different. Find what is true to them, and make the most of it. Make them relevant.

Take Ourselves' recent work for Cartridge People. The ink cartridge category is awash with red banners, panic-buy messaging and interchangeable retail ads; and it’s certainly not a ‘cool’ sector. Which is precisely why it was interesting to us.

Instead of doing what was expected, we wanted to highlight the people behind the ink purchases, and their interesting lives, in a way that felt different and intriguing. So we made a film that contradicted the category norms. Misty landscapes. Deadpan performances. People solemnly carrying printers through the countryside. The swimming costume-clad woman who refused to pay silly prices to print her wild swimming newsletter, or the business owner pushing her full-sized office printer through the countryside. It was strange, cinematic and completely unexpected given the product being sold.

This is not because we made printer cartridges cool. We didn't. We simply gave people something they hadn't seen before in a category where almost everything looks the same. And by connecting with the consumer and their concerns, we made the brand feel relevant. This is the opportunity. 

The less creatively ambitious the category, the bigger the reward for doing something distinctive. 

And there’s nothing more exciting in this industry than an ambitious client and a brand in need of reinvention. 

15 years after working with adidas, I still haven’t made my best work. But when I do, I know it will be for something unexpected.