I saw this picture which reminded me when I was a junior art director, I remember I was sitting on a couch in the creative department and a brief came in were the project manager said there's a brief for Woolworths, the problem was, it was a small space ad and even smaller budget.
I remember the look of horror on one of the 'star award winning' creative’s who responded: 'You have to be F'king joking I can't do anything with that, the budget's crap and anyway they'll be doing a TV spot soon, so I'll work on that'
Now this was a turning point for me as I could have thought the same way, but at that stage of my career it wasn't really an option so I put my hand up and said I'll work on it, lots of glares from all the other creative’s followed. (I think I broke the creative code at that time which was don't be too keen. So hear I was, this eager grinning kid with his hand up offering to work on it.
I wasn't trying to impress, I just looked at it in a completely different way than the 'pros' at the time. To me this was a challenge, like a test to see if I could work in a more constrained environment.
The ad was produced and the following year I got my first creative circle award for a print ad for ‘best use of small space’ The idea was for blank cassette tapes(yes it was that long ago) and the idea? The ad was completely blank with a tiny headline that read: Blank tapes at Woolworths only 4.99.
Some things that I learned from this:
1: Always treat every job as an opportunity.
2: Never become complacent and keep the creative fire in your belly.
3: Learn the rules and then break them.
4: You can win awards with bugger all time and budget.
