303Lowe young creative team Dan Robinson + Scott Pritchett report on their time at Emergence Creative conference in Margaret River

303Lowe were one of several Perth agencies that supported this year’s Emergence Creative Festival down in Margaret River. Young creative team Dan Robinson and Scott Pritchett were delegates from the agency. Here Dan shares his highlights and Scott’s photographs.

Emergence Creative Festival 2015 was a first step into the world of professional development for Scott and me. It was a step we were excited to take, given that the festival takes place over three days at Margaret River in WA’s beautiful South West.

With nothing to compare the experience to, I can only say that it didn’t feel exactly like professional development, so much as personal development. While speakers spoke about their experiences from commercial creative industries, the insights they shared seemed to be about how to be better people as well as professionals.

For me, there were four main themes:

1.    Creativity is an exercise in being bold.

4.    Good creativity is disruptive.

At the base of all these themes was the notion that people should be at the heart of everything we set out to do creatively.

The first speaker on day one was Lee Hunter, Google Asia Pacific’s Head of Marketing and Innovation. Hunter located Google’s success in its culture of innovation. He noted that because Google started with engineers, there was positive attitude to problem solving that was fertile ground for innovation. Lee suggested the best way to innovate was to focus on one user.

The projects Hunter shared such as #ProudToLove, Project Loon and Project Wing were among others that had a basis in human values and the experience of the individual. He indicated that less successful projects at Google were a result of losing sight of the end user. On the subject of failure, Hunter suggested that innovators shouldn’t be afraid to fail but they should fail fast. He noted that true failure occurs when something goes for too long and you don’t learn from it.

Hunter also suggested we look for inspiration everywhere and concluded by saying Emergence was a “great example” of how we can build innovation in Australia.

Glenn Urquhart, Creative Director of Foxtel’s Lifestyle Channels, was another highlight of the first day. Urquhart also advocated finding inspiration around us and being “a sponge”. He spoke about the need to “understand us” in order to be good storytellers in the context of transmedia.

Urquhart’s presentation was an exercise in transmedia, which as he put it, sits between the ridiculous and the sublime. The presentation was a case of “the medium is the message”. The volume and intensity of slides, pop culture references, wordplay, memes and Urquhart’s unique style made for a transmedia transmedia presentation.

Day two started with surfing lessons at Margaret River Mouth Beach for those who could make it, given the festivities to launch Colonial Breweries’ Small Ale the night before. Never having surfed before, the experience of looking down the face of a wave was an unexpected thrill and another highlight for me. Failing fast, I managed to snap my borrowed board in half in the rough conditions. Two locals who gave me the shakka hand signals made me feel slightly less sheepish. I want to believe it’s because I looked “pretty gnarly” rather than a rank amateur but it probably wasn’t.

Later that morning, Kylie Robertson from Penguin Books Australia, spoke to us about disruptive storytelling. Robertson has the challenging yet exciting job of bringing the printed word into the digital world. She spoke about the importance of locating the essential aspects of a story–“Story DNA”–and using them to create unified narratives across platforms. For Robertson it was important to focus on people and let their needs dictate the mediums. She spoke about the power of screen culture to bring us together and shared fascinating examples like Lyka’s Adventure and DIAL-A-STORY.

Creative Directors, Ben Couzens and Jim Ingram from Cummins and Partners then had the floor, speaking about commercial creativity. As an art director and copywriter team, their insights were particularly interesting to Scott and me. They framed creativity in an advertising context as problem solving and shared ideas on how to make good work happen. It was great to hear the challenges they had faced and overcome to make amazing work for Schweppes, CGU insurance and Bonds among others.

These were my favourite bits of Emergence 2015 but by no means are they exhaustive (although the experience certainly was exhausting). Over the three days and four nights there was certainly a range of engaging creative experiences for all and a fair bit of socialising thrown in as well. The AmpUtheatre closing night party at Driftwood Estate was a prime example. And to top it all off, everything occurs at amazing venues against the backdrop of one of the most beautiful regions in WA. Be creative, be bold, and go check it out.