Carolyn Watson is a Melbourne-based freelance copywriter who achieved some LinkedIn fame with her unique and original ‘Life CV’ post.
In a wide-ranging discussion, Carolyn and Ellie talked about why she wrote the post and what she was saying about the experience of being a freelancer in the current climate, what needs to happen for agencies to work well with freelancers, the fine line between copywriting and strategy and why she describes herself as a stubbornly strategy-first copywriter; the limiting impact of personalisation on great communications; the threat, effect and opportunity of AI in copywriting; the effect of world pain on advertising industry pain; and her feminist perspective on the recent Campaign Brief Creatives list.
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For me, the television shows were just the things that pushed the ad breaks apart. When I was a kid, ads were really fun and entertaining and sometimes better than the show I was watching.
Transcription:
Ellie:
Hello, my name is Ellie Angell, and welcome to Managing Marketing, a podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
And remember, if you are enjoying these podcasts, please either like, review, or share this episode to help spread the words of wisdom from our guests each week.
Now, today, I’m joined by Carolyn Watson, who describes herself as a stubbornly strategy-first copywriter for hire, which I love, and who is also, the co-founder of a new consultancy, Strange Cattle, something that we’ll no doubt discuss in the next half an hour or so.
But welcome, Carolyn, and thanks so much for joining me.
Carolyn:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m delighted to be here.
Ellie:
You’re more than welcome. Now, I want to start, because we haven’t known each other long.
Carolyn:
No.
Ellie:
The story of how we sort of met each other. It was only recently that you wrote what I thought was a brilliant LinkedIn post, which I’m referring to is your life CV, which kind of went a bit viral on the platform. And it was really powerful. And to me, it was making more than one point about our industry.
And for those of you who haven’t seen Carolyn’s post, she writes this brilliant human CV of herself, of her life, and the things that she’s been through in her life to make the point that really only human beings can write that stuff and copywriting is something that should be valued.
Have I got that right? I mean, talk to me about why you wrote the post.
Carolyn:
You have, but I think so much of the time with creative work, we do something on instinct and then think about later why it worked.
So, really that was something I wrote at about one o’clock in the morning. I’m lying in bed and I don’t know what happened. I was probably close to a dream state or something, and this thing just tumbled out of me.
And when I read it back in the morning, I thought, that’s something I need to share. And then right at the end, ended up adding that line about, this is my curriculum vitae. I studied Latin in high school. So, I love words and their Latin roots, et cetera. And I realized that that meant the course of my life.
And that’s what I’d written was this river of experiences. And I mean, when we are hiring for creative roles or any role, it’s really easy to reduce people to a set of data points.
I mean, now, with AI being involved in recruitment, et cetera, it’s going to be looking for keywords and not one key word in my post would be picked up as something that it was looking for.
And yet, those are the experiences that make me who I am. If you took any one of them out, I would be different. So, they’re the things that would make me valuable and human and able to look at a brief and think, “What would a human do?” That’s really the sum of it.
Ellie:
Well, it certainly highlights your ability to write.
Carolyn:
Thank you.
Ellie:
Because I mean, I do a bit of writing myself, but I was just blown away by just the way it has been written. I’m even more impressed when you say it was just a kind of, “I was in a fugue state at one o’clock in the morning. It just came out.”
Carolyn:
Yeah, true. It was really just, I was in a state of flow, which anyone creative understands.
Ellie:
Yeah, indeed. When you get into that zone, it’s-
Carolyn:
Just comes together. Yeah.
Ellie:
How has AI … what’s your perspective on AI? Let’s talk a bit more about that, because as a copywriter at heart, it does affect you.
Carolyn:
Yeah. I mean, I see people panicking and I’m not someone who’s like, “Yay,” about AI, but I also, think it’s a baby. Like we can totally outrun this thing at this point.
The point being that I think that we really do need to cling to the idea that I would like AI to drive a robot back to vacuum my floor so that I have time to write rather than it write so that I have time to vacuum my floor. And I think we just need to keep hold of that.
Also, and I know I’m going to sound a lot like I think it was Plato that got really upset about pencils, but I just think that it’s the memory and the thinking. We don’t want our brains to atrophy. There is something we need to keep thinking.
We need to make sure that we are not resorting to something because it’s easy. I don’t think people are doing that yet, necessarily. I mean, there’s always been, and there will always be, pardon my French, but crap work. And those that want to buy crap work by pushing a button, having AI write it, they’re welcome to have that.
But that’s not going to work for every business that really wants to cut through and have a brand story. I mean, I’ve tried using AI to help me. I know that there are people that swear they’re getting great results on strategy and things like that.
Personally, I haven’t cracked that. I feel like if you are getting great results strategy wise from AI, you’ve probably already cracked the brief. And that’s why you’re able to do it rather than it’s cracked it for you. That’s my perspective. But I’m not worried at this point, I have to say.
Ellie:
I love the concept. And I’ve seen that concept before that it’s about helping you to vacuum your floor, not the other way around.
It feels to me like it’s a — I mean, marketing’s obsessed with bright, shiny new things. But this does feel like more than that. It feels like a bit like the dawning of the internet again, but where it’s like, it’s here to stay.
But to your point, it’s how we choose to adapt to that and how we choose to actually utilize it, as opposed to just rushing to press the button.
Carolyn:
It hasn’t grown up yet. We don’t know what the future case uses will be at this point. A big value of mine is compassion. My only real concern at this point is that we’re feeding this baby on the internet, which is hardly the best example of humanity. We’re feeding it this constant stream of everything. And I just think it’s risky.
But then again, who gets to decide what is good content?
Ellie:
Of course. And good content is a relative concept. Like you say, I mean, some people are quite happy pressing a button, getting what we would think of as crap content but it’s working for them.
Carolyn:
Yeah. Well, what makes it good?
Ellie:
What makes it good? We’re getting all philosophical.
Carolyn:
I know.
Ellie:
We’re going to get off the topic here a little bit, but look, it really is interesting. I think a lot of people do feel under threat. A lot of people feel, oh my God, I can’t keep up with this.
I kind of like your confidence in what you’re saying. I do like your confidence. And I like the confidence in your post in the My Life CV. It kind of, yeah, only a human could write this.
Carolyn:
And the one thing it will never be able to do is be human. There are so many examples of human … I mean, I hate when people say the word insights because there are so very few insights for real, but interesting nuggets of information.
I mean, I know this is getting way off topic, but for my purposes, I can’t have chips in the house. Because if I buy chips on Sunday, they’ll be gone by Monday. So, I call chips in my house Monday chips. You can’t come up with that if you’re an AI person, but you could probably run a campaign on that little interesting nugget of information.
And what makes it relevant is not that specific example, but the emotion that it invokes in another person. Oh, I’ve been there. I’ve not been able to trust myself around chips or whatever it is. And that’s the stuff it just can’t do. It’s not capable at least yet.
Ellie:
And I’m with you on the chips. Don’t come around my house on a Sunday, because-
Carolyn:
Oh my gosh.
Ellie:
Actually do, because [crosstalk 00:07:36].
Carolyn:
I’ll get rid of them. I’ll save you from yourself.
Ellie:
No, absolutely. Okay. So, I mean we are getting a bit off topic there, but it is a really interesting conversation and it does link to strategic thought. And I’ll try not to use the word insights. It’s a word that is often misused. Very true.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone describe themselves as a strategy-first copywriter. And tell me, what’s your extended definition of that? How have you applied that over the years? And also, I’m interested to hear about Strange Cattle in that context.
Carolyn:
Cool. Well, yeah, I have to be really careful to make agency people really understand I realize and understand I’m not a strategist because I understand that’s a very specific, very important role within agency culture.
The difficulty for a copywriter like myself, who works primarily as a freelancer, is that I’ve often found myself working with businesses, particularly big, but small B2B businesses that don’t have a marketing department. And if they do, it’s the office manager that posts the social posts.
And there’s just really nobody there to make that link between long term versus short term. They’re very sales driven. They’re looking at a quarter results rather than building a brand.
So, often they’ll come to me for a tactic, like, they’ll say, “Oh, we want a website. We want a brochure. We want a trade show booth idea,” whatever it is.
And I’ve kind of got to get them to go, “Okay, let’s just zoom out. What do you need people to believe about your business? And how can we make that stand out in the market?”
And so often the USP has been, “Great product, excellent service.” It’s like no one wants a bad product or shitty service. This is not a position that you’ve got here.
For me, a position should always have an equally attractive opposite. So, that they’re not there yet.
So, I’ve had to actually convince them to go back to the beginning and say, “Let’s start over a fresh sheet of paper. Who are you?” And then let’s get that to filter down because a good idea will express itself anyway. As a website, as a social post, as something under the cap of a bottle, whatever it is.
I’ve seen ads on cricket as armpits for Rexona. Like you can put it anywhere. But you have to have that something for people to hang onto.
Because brands help people buy, they help them make decisions. They de-risk purchases. They protect businesses against price sensitivity. You need to have one, even if you’re a B2B brand. So, that’s sort of been my experience often as when I’m working.
Ellie:
But it sounds like when the marketing department’s not there or the agency’s not there, you are fulfilling essentially a strategist role. I mean, you started by saying I’m not a strategist but then you went on to just-
Carolyn:
I suppose. It’s hopefully a confidence issue. I just don’t want them to think I’m getting above myself. But yeah.
Ellie:
No, that is actually a really interesting thing because I wanted to talk to you as a freelancer and as a copywriter in this industry. And my view of it is that both freelancers and copywriters are often treated quite negatively in this industry. I don’t know whether that’s your perception or not, but it is a real skill.
Carolyn:
Yeah. It’s an interesting place to find yourself in. I mean, mine was born of necessity. I find it very difficult to engage in the workplace in a very full-time, bumps in seats kind of a way. So, that’s why I’ve done it.
But I think it can make me seem difficult to work with because I insist on choosing my hours or can’t make it to a particular meeting, et cetera. That’s on me. I mean, there are plenty of freelancers who are prepared to and able to do that. But you’ll never really be part of the team in an agency environment, which is, you can understand that.
But something I think is really important to the creative process is collaboration. And collaboration is really different from cooperation. And it’s hard to get that collaboration relationship when you’re a freelancer.
Unless, I mean, things are always about conditions. And if someone can create the right conditions for that to happen, it doesn’t really matter if it’s on Zoom or if it’s in-person, or if you’re part of the team regularly or not. That’s cultural, there’s a whole lot of factors at play there.
Ellie:
And talk to me about Strange Cattle. We might as well get … this podcast is not about getting the plugin, but I just love the name. Talk to me about Strange Cattle.
Carolyn:
Oh, it’s very lovely thing to say. Well, Strange Cattle’s something my dad always says about humans. It’s like always strange cattle.
Ellie:
Oh, okay, great.
Carolyn:
And basically, the idea that we’re all part of a similar — we’re part of the herd in the sense that we’re all humans, but we’re all different. And I think that’s something that …
So, I’ve created this consultancy with my partner in the US, David Moore. And we’ve tried and worked in other ways before. We had Kingswood & Palmerston previously, but we decided to refocus and rebrand because what we’re doing now, so different from K&P that it’s like, “Yeah, I think we just need to shelve that.”
So, Strange Cattle’s going to be very much more about basing things in human truths, which I know everyone says. But also, taking things offline, because I think there’s so many people focused in the online space, but what if you could be the one person that made someone look up from their phone?
There’s all this space out there. And it’s not to say that it’s not driving digital. It’s kind of like throwing rocket fuel on your digital strategy, because I think digital’s been so very focused on one-on-one and personalized things.
Which I think if you understand how advertising works, you start to go, “That’s very limited.” I think we’ve missed fire there in some ways as an industry focusing so hard on that.
What we really need to do is create niche fame for our clients, even smaller ones. They can invest in broader media, offline things, more traditional kind of approaches.
They’re still valuable, and yet people aren’t really understanding why and how they can be showing up in that way. So, that’s kind of going to be the focus and very much strategy driven of course, because that’s my thing.
Ellie:
Of course, well, that’s your favorite words. No, look, I hear that entirely. I mean, there’s a massive debate in the industry about that and digital personalization from a media dollars, a media buying perspective, as well as from a creative perspective or not a creative perspective.
And it’s interesting that some of the earliest applications of AI have been dynamically driven advertising. Written advertising has come from that exact kind of, we’re going to make it personal, we’re going to make it one to one. And people have seen on its own, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work.
Carolyn:
It can’t. I mean, if I went outside right now, and I had something I wanted to tell a whole bunch of people, I would not go up and talk to everyone, tap everyone on the shoulder one by one, and tell them.
I’d find a high spot and I’d shout out to the masses and not care if there were people hearing it that didn’t need to hear it. It’s like they will self-select. But I think it’s got to be more about relevance rather than personalization going forward.
Ellie:
Let’s talk a bit about the culture of the industry. We were just having a chat offline before. I won’t reveal some of the things we were talking about, but I’ve already said I was interested to talk to you as a copywriter, and as a strategist, and as a freelancer.
And I know this is happening, but it is very relevant right now, is that I want to talk to you as a woman in this industry with the ..
This thing that has happened just the other day with the creative list from campaign being entirely men and the foray that’s caused, rightly so, in this industry. I mean, for me, that was a kind of, what were you thinking moment? But it’s caused a foray.
But we also, seem to be fighting fires on a number of fronts. We talked about AI eating away at human creativity or how that might be managed. Challenges in the way freelance talent is treated.
There’s ageism, there’s the ever-persistent stain of misogyny, I think is the way I would describe it. We’re seeing that come through. And the frustratingly slow process of enabling a truly diverse workforce to exist and thrive. And I count myself as a part of that diverse cohort.
Do you think that there is a cultural crisis? Is that too strong a term? Is it just something that we haven’t solved and we just need to keep working on? Or are you frustrated as well?
Carolyn:
Oh, of course, I’m frustrated on so many levels. I think it’s kind of like when someone’s really freaking grumpy and you sort of stop making excuses for them, realize they’re just a grumpy person.
But I mean, it was funny because Zoe Scaman, and I don’t know if you know her. She released quite recently, almost in concert with this campaign incident about mothers in the industry and how hard it is for women to stay in the industry once — and it’s not even really just once their mothers.
I mean, women just happen to be the people that take on family life and all the pressures that come with that, regardless of what your family looks like. And it continues as well as you end up caring for aging parents, et cetera, et cetera.
So, you just don’t see women at those higher levels of management and leadership in that world, or really a lot of other industries as well.
But it’s just not compatible of life to have to be up in the office to all hours or come in on weekends and all that sort of stuff. Which that’s the myth of shy at day and night. And if you don’t come in on the week on Saturday, don’t come in on Sunday and all that stuff. It’s just not compatible with the reality of most women’s experience.
And so, it’s understandable in a way how it ends up there, but it’s not okay. And is it a crisis? I think we’re just paying more attention to these things. I mean, I could be wrong here, but I feel like COVID really kicked the scab off a lot of issues.
We started to see Black Lives Matter happened at a similar time, and I think that really started us thinking and looking and talking about things more. So, it’s easy to feel like these things are worse, but I think it’s more that we’re just maybe looking at them for the first time.
And even so, I think there’s still women that would sit me down and say well, we’re not really talking about it either. Like we’re not talking about it enough. And when we do, I think we’re admiring the problem more than really coming up with ways to solve it, which is a shame.
Ellie:
Yeah. I mean, I think with this particular thing in campaign, it’s resonated around not just the lack of opportunity or that there aren’t enough women in these places, but there’s a little lack of recognition for the women that are there.
And there’s been a couple of comments. Jane Caro is one of them on LinkedIn who said, “Look, I was talking about this 30 years ago.” And this sort of snail’s pace of adaptability. I mean, instead this thing being adaptable, but it just seems to be … you’re probably right, it’s not a crisis as such, but these things still happening in 2024.
Carolyn:
It’s appalling.
Ellie:
It just blows me away.
Carolyn:
Yeah. But I guess the problem is that the people that get to make the decisions, it’s not a problem for. So, unfortunately, they’re not going to get up and move off their own butt.
And the fact is that businesses are psychopaths like the entity of a business. It’s really only interested in its own success. And I think there’s a misunderstanding and a misperception that … and this is probably true for ageism as well. There’s a never-ending supply of young people coming into the industry.
And if you can’t be in a seat, or if you’re too expensive to pay because you’ve sort of become so experience, et cetera, you can command that higher rate of pay, you are infinitely replaceable.
Ellie:
Ageism is a massive issue, and one that’s started a backlash about ageism as well in the industry. The other thing that strikes me about ageism is that the younger people coming through and all due respect to them, and they’re brilliant young people coming through-
Carolyn:
No shade at all.
Ellie:
Much more au fait with AI, much more au fait with those tools, probably using them more. What human element are you losing in the experience of age in the context of AI? Is a question mark and something that worries me a bit, honestly.
Carolyn:
Yeah, no, it is. I think that these issues also … one thing I was thinking about in the drive on my way here was the fact that it forces a lot of us to build our own table. That’s what I felt I’ve had to do for myself. If no one’s going to offer me a seat, build my own table out of scrap wood, et cetera.
But the problem with that then is that even for yourself, you kind of view that table as a bit crap because it’s not going to be the same as some French polished, beautiful thing that’s been around for centuries or whatever. It’s really hard to view that success.
I mean, it’s a huge thing to do to build your own business, to build your own table. And yet we look at that and go, “Yeah, but I really wanted to sit at that table.”
Ellie:
Oh, look, I mean, take the table and analogy is a good one. Also, I mean, I’ve got a lot of reclaimed furniture in my own place. It’s reclaimed wood. And I love its imperfections. I love its uniqueness. I love the fact it’s not highly polished. And I love the fact that it still does its job. It just does it a different way. And I’m stretching the analogy to break, but that’s-
Carolyn:
No, but I get it, it’s really an attitude that we have towards, or that I’ve clearly got towards build my own thing. And still having this grief and not having participated in that old school agency experience.
Ellie:
But I mean, you’ve worked with agencies and we did talk a little bit about it, but I’d really like to unpack a little bit more to focus on the advertising and ad agency bit for a sec. Because I know that you do more than that.
But what have you seen that represents the best and worst practices in how you have been engaged in the creative process as a copywriter?
Carolyn:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I think it really does, again, harp back to that cooperation versus collaboration thing. I mean, so often as, I weirdly end up working with a lot of overseas agencies, so there’s no way for me to go into the office unfortunately. Feel free though if you want to bring me over.
I work with an agency in UK. I work one with California. And it’s very much a relay race. Like they pass me something.
And just the few occasions where I’ve gotten to work with say, an art director and you’re passing that idea back and forth and each of you’re making it better, that’s a very different experience from being given essentially a box to fill. Whether it’s like, write this web copy, write this ad.
So, often I’ve been given a brief where it talks about the size of the banner. It’s like, “Do you know what a brief is?” That’s crazy. But they’ve been really good.
I think the good practices that I’ve seen particularly impressed me was the one in the UK that I’ve done some work with is great at skilling up the person that’s going to have to sell the idea up, recognizing that it’s often not the decision maker, which is kind of weird in a way.
I think one thing I got to chat to Margie Reid think about recently, and I was really impressed with the fact that they let their creatives near the client meetings. And I just think that’s really different and unusual.
And I get it. But what it does is encourage that collaboration between the account person, and the creative, and the client. Everyone knows what the goal is. I mean, they are diametrically opposed in a way, the goals of each department.
I mean, the creative person is trying to create something for the audience, the account manager’s trying to create something for the client. So, you trying to get everybody on the same page is unusual, but like why aren’t we doing it that way?
Ellie:
Well, Margie and Adam, those guys have been very upfront about that. And taking a different approach. And I’ve seen their work and seen them in pictures and stuff like that.
And you are right, it does make for better process. It costs more money to have more people in meetings. That’s the sad issue.
Carolyn:
Right. That’s the setback.
Ellie:
And from a client perspective. Right?
Carolyn:
Yeah.
Ellie:
And not all agencies feel comfortable putting their, in quotes, creatives. And not all account leaders do either because they feel it’s on their turf. And you’re getting into all this stuff that has been in agencies forever.
Carolyn:
Yeah, absolutely get that. I do think that billing, like the way we bill for time and trade time for money is an issue in the industry. And you’re seeing people trying out new models for that. And there’s a lot to be learned about different pricing, pricing for value.
Blair Enns does some great work around how agencies could consider pricing things differently. And I think it would be great if more agencies looked into his stuff. I just think it giving people more ways and different ways of working with you freeze up the idea of who can be in a meeting, or-
Ellie:
TrinityP3 has been a proponent of this for a long time. Particularly output based pricing, which takes the emphasis away from input of hours and towards the value of what you’re creating.
And means that the agency can spend one hour or a thousand hours on it, but the value of the output is the same. And that immediately removes, although, well, we’ve got to charge you 30 more hours for the ECD sitting in this meeting.
Carolyn:
Absolutely. I mean, an idea can be come up within 15 minutes in the first meeting, or it can take forever.
Ellie:
Or it can take forever.
Carolyn:
And why should you be penalized because you’ve had that inspiration? And also, what’s an idea worth? That’s just-
Ellie:
That’s right, what’s an idea worth? But we also, take, I mean, there’s a devaluing and then there’s a sort of a lack of objectivity with cost input base because you’re essentially paying — on an hours in project basis, the agency is essentially incentivized to be inefficient because the more hours they bill, the more money they make.
Which is a fundamentally flawed when you think about it, but we’ve been doing it forever. I mean, it’s the way it’s always been.
But yeah, I’m certainly with you and we’ve written articles and posts and stuff about this for years and years. Clients are often very at high bound. And these things can be hard to implement, and I think a lot of the time it gets put into the too hot basket, which is a shame.
Carolyn:
Yeah, it is.
Ellie:
But I’m definitely with you on that. And I mean, it is kind of a segue, current state of advertising in Australia. I’ve read a lot of your posts now. I spied on you a bit on LinkedIn. And I love you. You strike me as both forthright and you’re pretty observant as well.
And everything we’ve talked about sort of does talk to the current state of advertising in Australia. What needs to change? I mean, just from a pure creativity point of view-
Carolyn:
From a creativity point of view, I think-
Ellie:
How strong is what you see coming out right now?
Carolyn:
Yeah. I think it’s pretty much everything we’ve spoken to now.
Ellie:
Yeah, probably or maybe we just … yeah.
Carolyn:
I think time becomes a real issue for people. I mean, the more work you can get through the door, the more you can … and agencies operate on such skinny margins as well, that high volume of work, but it reduces the time that creative is able to spend working on an idea. That’s an issue.
I think there’s a lot of fear, and I don’t know that this is Australian specific, but I think fear has become such a scourge in business generally. It’s the chewing gum that is gummy up the wheel of progress in so many ways.
And there’s just this reticence to take a risk in a creative sense. I’ve read a lot recently, I’ve become interested in the idea of transcendental experiences, which sounds very highfalutin but we are hardwired as humans to seek those out. Things that are just outside our comfort zone.
And I think a lot of ads now, well, there’s two things really. People think that no one’s going to spend time to solve the — you give someone a tiny puzzle, take them right up into the edge and then let them take that last leap.
And they don’t trust readers to do that because they think of it being on a phone, and they think of it in the scroll. And I’m sure that that’s because we are no longer thinking of it as a wider campaign.
I mean, in an ideal world, that person’s seen a social post, they’ve seen a digital ad, they’ve seen a billboard, they’ve heard a radio ad. It’s part of a landscape of things. And we’re hopefully giving them many opportunities to grasp that little puzzle, but we don’t think of it that way anymore.
It’s very much an anxiety about people don’t read and people won’t get it. And so often you end up with a line in an ad that reads like the line from the strategy brief, because we just haven’t pushed past that, pardon me, but mediocrity of just the say it straight. We haven’t reached past that to say great.
And I think I go on about this all the time, but I think advertising needs to reclaim its status as entertainment. Because when I was a kid — and I’ve grown up loving ads, I know that sounds really nerdy.
But for me, the television shows were just the things that pushed the ad breaks apart. When I was a kid, ads were really fun and entertaining and sometimes better than the show I was watching. You definitely would not say that anymore. I mean, they give us the option to skip them.
We so don’t value this thing that we do, this thing that we make, we give people the option to go, “I don’t want to participate in that. Skip.” I just think that sends a real message to people about ads generally.
Ellie:
I think there’s all sorts of things wrapped up in that. Lack of confidence in this industry and the creativity. That’s a really interesting concept. We sort of have become slaves to the convoluted lives of the consumer to a certain extent, options to skip. And I think it says a lot to how much better TV is now, than it was.
Carolyn:
Absolutely.
Ellie:
I think ads don’t have a hard time to keep up with just how good TV — well, some TV has become.
Carolyn:
Yeah. You’re not wrong.
Ellie:
But you’re not wrong either. Ads were memorable, ads were entertaining, ads were pieces of true content as opposed to as you say, sort of lines coming strategy brief. And that has a lot to do with courage of the client.
Carolyn:
Oh, definitely, yeah.
Ellie:
And it has a lot to do with creatives who just know they’re on a hiding to nothing by doing something seriously out there and who just conform to the norm. Which is challenge. I’m struggling to think of really stand out work in that regard in this-
Carolyn:
Yeah. I think I’m not anti-data by any stretch, but I think we also, need to come wind that back and get to a place where we realize data tells us what has happened. It can’t tell us what’s possible.
And when we can measure what we think is everything, we end up relying on the things we can measure instead of really remembering there are things that are really important that we can’t. And I mean, I’m not remotely anti data. I think it’s a great place to start from a strategy point of view. I just don’t think it’s everything.
Ellie:
No, no. Well, the reason I smiled there as you was saying it, is I was kind of thinking about the eye word there, the insight. The lack of lots of facts, no insights that come out of that process, I think is another challenge. But we could be talking about this all day.
Carolyn:
I know, I know.
Ellie:
Look, it’s not a solvable thing immediately, but I think a lot of the things you touch on, talk to us sort of almost like a cultural shift in the industry to-
Carolyn:
I think so.
Ellie:
… change the way we think and believe in ourselves and in the advertising space.
Carolyn:
I think we’re in a lot of pain right now, because I think the world’s in a lot of pain. Generally, like we we’re in a state of change and change is always really uncomfortable, but it’s that discomfort that’s going to make us change. So, it kind of makes me hopeful.
And I do think that hang on to hope and being inspired is going to become really, really important because when we lack hope, we stop working together.
And I think we need to bring back that sort of, we’re all one team, like advertising as an industry doesn’t need to be at odds with itself. It can start to work as a team, but that really does take having that sense of hope that things can change.
Ellie:
Because you’re right. And I see that particularly with the macro issues facing the world. We are in a crisis.
Carolyn:
We’re in a lot of pain right now.
Ellie:
We’re in a lot of pain as a world. And economic pain is included in that. I mean, my clients are all marketers and I see it a lot. I see the pain, I see the hesitation, I see the fear. Just a basic fear of keeping their jobs. I see the lack of courage, understandably so, that implies.
I see CEOs getting more and more involved in decisions that they really shouldn’t be involved in. And there’s a sort of, it has echoes of trust and insecurity on the part of the c-suite as well as the marketing leads and all of that impacts what agency can do. Talking just about advertising, all of that, and marketing more broadly, all of that impacts.
But I do want to finish on hope because why not?
Carolyn:
Hope is the place to go.
Ellie:
Neither of us are Barrack Obama, but he used that word pretty well. I think you’re right. The hope is lacking right now. That’s not to say we can’t get it back though.
Carolyn:
Absolutely, yeah. I think we just need to focus on inspiring each other and coming together to do what we love. I mean, it’s not like we are going down minds here, like making ads, it’s meant to be fun.
Ellie:
No, that’s right. We’re not saving babies. Correct. We’re not neurosurgeons. And look, I keep on trying to finish this discussion and then we go on another tangent, but it is true.
There’s something in that sort of, we need to take ourselves seriously but we also, need to wear that lightly. I think we do have that sort of being at war, as you say, with ourselves half the time.
Carolyn:
Yeah. It’s slowing us down, it’s sucking us changing.
Ellie:
Just like we maybe just need to just take a bit of a step back and realize that — and remember, not realize, remember that we’re not down minds and-
Carolyn:
Yeah. The best creative comes out of a state of play. We need to get back to a place where it’s playful to be at work doing this work.
Ellie:
Well, I hope that you can make all of those positive influences with the work that you do. And I wish you every success with Strange Cattle.
Carolyn:
Thank you.
Ellie:
It is been a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you about all these things, and so thank you so much again for coming on.
Carolyn:
Thank you for having me. It’s an honor and a pleasure and a delight.
