Have your say: The Best of Perth 2010

Our December issue (out now) has our annual review of the best work done in Perth over the past year, as seen by some of the town’s creative directors.

Here’s what caught their eyes (and ears).

Do you agree? Or is there something you think they missed?

Malcolm MacLean, 303

The HBF ‘Your health is all that matters’campaign was done in 2009, so I can’t mention it here in this Best of 2010article. And I certainly shouldn’t waste valuable word-count by gushing abouthow this category-breaking work was so deserving of the awards bestowed. Oreven say that, without taking anything away from Kurt, I thought more kudosshould have gone to Ronnie Duncan for the strategic leap.

In another nice strategic leap, Cooch’swork for Transperth elegantly showed how we could get 100 cars off the freewayby turning them to public transport. The ‘Transformers’ spot is world class,yet the animation came from Leederville. What a fantastic job by Paul and theteam at Double G.

Catching my eye online was an amazing piecefor Police & Nurses Credit. The banner ad, rather than going over-the-page,scrolls right and pushes the TheWest.com.au’s page out of the way altogether tolet visitors play a full screen game of ‘stop the evil Eastern States bank’sHummer’. Stunning bit of programming there.

Also online, Longtail’s ‘Zoom’ banner forDale Alcock was a treat for the eyeballs and unlucky to miss out in the onlinecategory at the PADCs.

And, for dialling up the entertainmentfactor in what must have been a very dull brief, you have to saluteMarketforce’s ‘Andre’s Designer Touch’ promotion for The West Australian. Thecasting of Jimmy James was inspired and it was nicely shot by Sam Barrett,probably on a shoestring budget. It was a big hit with the peeps at home and Ieven noticed that some kid started an Andre Facebook fan group. Nice when thegeneral public is spontaneously doing your social media!

Ron Samuel, Cooch

Not a lot of greatness around this year(the HBF campaign was last year so please don’t email). There was some goodstuff – very good even – but not great. It made me think that perhaps good isthe new great which would mean that shit is the new good. This makes sensebecause there was certainly a lot of that stuff around.

The work that I heard people talking aboutwas the Coffee Chill Man Up campaign. Certainly not a new strategy but very welltargeted and executed. I like to wear orange shoes so I’m not the targetaudience.

The work for Mrs Mac’s was aimed at thesame target. I think that this was a very significant campaign for Perthbecause it was digitally driven and it was big, something that we will see moreof so people need to know that we can do it.

The digital components that drove thiscampaign were well thought out and executed. Judging by the number of commentson Youtube it was certainly viewed a lot, although the topic of most conversationswasn’t really about pies, if you know what I mean.

It was a brave campaign because it didchallenge some of Mrs Macs core brand values and there is a risk that some ofthe components could offend those who are the major influence for future pieeaters – mums. However, there’s no reward without risk in our industry so Ireally hope it worked.

The Fresh Digital work was fresh, verynice.

The big disappointment was outdoor, again.Not the ambient work, like Rare’s which was good (old good not new good), butthe traditional supersites and 24-sheeters. What is going on here? Why areclients paying for such bad work? Why do they think that it works? Who do theythink is looking at it? This is a great opportunity for creative folk to stealthe show and do something really great, not the new great though.

Mark Braddock, Block (Mark was asked to comment on the year in design)

Forget award shows and league tables, forme the best way to judge where a city is at creatively is to go into a café orpub and check out the posters. This is a measure of grassroots creativity.

If the creative scene in a city is hotthere are plenty of bands, festivals, galleries, boutiques and plays that needpromoting and they certainly don’t have the money to be going to largeragencies. So they ask their mates to do them a poster. And when things aregood, creatively speaking, a scene develops and you have a great feedback loopof young creatives doing interesting work.

Looking at the walls of our cafes this yearit would appear that we are on the verge of a creative revolution in Perth.Every week there seems to be another great poster out for another creativeevent.

Tracking down who is doing what is notalways easy – the transient nature of the media means that work disappearspretty quickly – and it certainly never makes it into award shows where theentry fees are probably more that the budget for the whole job.

The William Street Collective has to be applauded forthe role they have played in this over the last couple of years. Perth, for thefirst time, has a focus for a young creative scene.

And publications like Cut and Paste and King BrownMagazine havegiven this scene an outlet.

I think studios like Nude – not to beconfused with Naked – are the formalised face of this. Their work for the Fremantle Street ArtsFestival was a particular standout.

I have been a big fan of Studio Bomba for
a while now andthey continue to do great work. The launch of their own-brand Mitchell & Dent isa monument to their love and commitment to the craft of letterpress printing.

The local, national and international pressthat the girls have garnered for their work is testament to their incrediblehard work.

And on the more experienced end of thespectrum, Public Creativehas taken the Turner/REB/Chemistry tradition to a whole other level. The internationalrecognition that their packaging has received is well deserved.

So why should we care about this “smallstuff” in a year in which a Perth agency picked up a Silver Lion?

Because if the grassroots are there thenthere will be a tickle-up effect as larger agencies start exploiting thistalent. And this talent has the potential to put Perth on the map in a way thatit hasn’t been before. I think the next few years are going to be exciting onesfor Perth creativity.

Brett Wheeler, Rare

What’s the best work of the year?

I find it difficult to remember anything.To me the year was dominated by the goings on behind the scenes in Perthagencies rather than the work they produced.

I remember Perth’s largest agency seemeddetermined to downsize, debate raged over TV production moving east, a foundingagency partner pulled up stumps, Perth’s most awarded account arrived at thenleft its agency within a year, as did a high profile head of art.

An agency decided it no longer required itsonline offshoot, yet did require the services of an ECD from over east. ‘TheKats’ moved and continued to be able to do no wrong, whilst Chuey and co timedit perfectly and moved east. Then the Perth industry celebrated the PADC’sdecision to award the photographer of the year to a Creative Director.

And just when I thought the year had endedwith the lovefest that was ‘The Bott’ wedding, I discover Perth’s highestprofile creative is out of a job to be replaced by two blokes in a triumphantreturn to their home town.

No wonder I can’t remember the work. Or I’mspending way too much time reading the CB blog. I can however remember a fewads about an elephant and a house made of matches that I quite liked.

Have a great Christmas everyone.

Adam Barker, Gatecrasher

Well, it was one of the driest years onrecord in WA in more ways than one. However, while the state wasn’t delugedwith great campaigns, there were a few very nice pieces of work that stood outfrom the crowd.

Josh and Rikki did a great job of keepingthe Perth Zoo radio campaign going strong. It’s such a versatile and extendableidea, there’s every chance they’ll be back again next year with Perth’s bestradio spot.

Another standout was the Mrs Macs CrustyChallenge campaign, the perfect way to get tradies engaged online. Slightlysexist and ageist in some ways, but the idea and the strategy are so right forthe target audience, I reckon they get away with it.

And, as we’re here to talkabout the stuff that stood out most (and not necessarily the biggest or mostchallenging) I have to admit that one of my favourite campaigns of the year wasthe PADC Call for Entry. Very strong, very right.

(Craig’s photos were brilliant too, butthat’s maybe a discussion for another time.)

Drew Ridley, Ad Impact

The Mrs Macs ‘Crusty Challenge’ byMarketforce has achieved some milestones no other campaign has in Perth. Theeasy way out for an online comp would have been to just have 25 words or less.However the time and effort given to this campaign has delivered someinteresting stats and intangible benefits for Mrs Macs.

• The first interactive broadcast onFacebook.

• 20,000 people simultaneously logged on atthe start of the ‘Crusty Challenge’.

• It set a world record of one interactionon Facebook every 42 seconds throughout the duration of the challenge – beatingthe previous record by a minute.

• The most number of simultaneous livewebcam streams on a website for an online campaign.

• Viewed by over 1,000,000 people onYouTube.

It just goes to show that here in Perthdigital can be on a level playing field with the rest of the world. We justneed to be brave enough to give it a go.

The Office of Road Safety ‘Safer Vehicles’tv spot by Marketforce is memorable for me. Especially as I am about to be aDad for the first time. We found watching that ad made us question what we weredriving at the time and persuaded us to upgrade to a safer vehicle. A big shiny4WD.

The other Office of Road Safety ad is‘Breathe’ radio. I’m sur
e everyone will agree a strong idea, a believableperformance and magic production from Brad at Soundbyte, make it a powerful andemotional 30 seconds.

Craig Buchanan, The Brand Agency

It was only a few frames in when I knewthis was likely to be good. The sound was stripped back, the lighting wasgorgeous and the acting was subtle. It had me.

Q – was the idea going to be as good as thecraft?

A – absolutely.

Then I got that little tinge of jealouslyyou get when another agency does good. A mixture of ‘I wish I’d done that’ and’good on them, that’s awesome’. So my pick for this year goes to the questionand answer spot for AA out of Gatecrasher. Lovely, simple, clean ideabeautifully made.

To craft to the point of ‘gorgeous’ is nofluke, it takes vision, hard work and pure talent. I can hear the conversationright now, ‘we have to have Allan Myles DOP this, is he around?’. Not to takeanything away from the director, but if you have Allan Myles on your crew listyou’re on your way to a lovely looking spot. But all the best lighting, gradingand camera moves mean nothing without a great director putting all the piecestogether. I was lucky to work with Grant Sputore recently and he’s a class actthat will continue to develop as a genuine top director. He’s has a real feelfor subtle direction and works with actors incredibly well and that reallyshows with these commercials.

Now I know the whole Question and Answerthing has been done before but Gatecrasher have put a fresh spin on it and comeup with an original, emotional and impactful campaign.

Will it win awards?

Well I gave up predicting that years ago.It deserves to in my opinion, but more importantly, this is a campaign thatsimply deserves to be seen. With the right media spend it would simply work.

I’ve only seen it on the CB blog and onGrant’s reel so that’s disappointing if it doesn’t have a decent media buy butthat’s no fault of the people who created this wonderful campaign.

Couple of other things I liked this yearwas Andrew’s Anzac Day Lotteries print and Guy and Julia’s ‘Breathe’ radio.