5 Minutes with… Wayne Deakin

The first thing you notice is the big hair. Then the big grin. And once you start talking, the big ideas. Meeting Wayne Deakin, a self-described ‘big idea swashbuckler’, is a lesson in the virtues of curiosity. Now an ECD at Jam and The Engine Group, the Australian creative has worked everywhere from San Francisco to Singapore and has even found time to cram in a Masters in cognitive psychology. His viewpoint – like his personality – is expansive. LBB’s Laura Swinton caught up with Wayne to find out more.

 

LBB> What was it about Jam that's so unique? What attracted you to it?

WD> I’ve been there for just over two years. What attracted me to come to Jam was the fact that my whole career has always been a case of ‘what’s next, what’s next, what’s next?’ I think I’m a bit of a travelling Wilbury at heart. I grew up in a hippy commune, I’ve got weird parents. It was in a part of Australia where there was nothing to do apart from surfing, so anything new and different was always a shiny bright light. That stuck in my DNA. I’ve always wanted to find out what’s new. What attracted me about Jam was going somewhere that the rules hadn’t been written. 

 

When I started with Jam I was first creative there and now we’ve got a fully-fledged creative department and we’ve won all sorts of awards. We’ve gone past the start-up mentality into the next phase. For me, because I bridge two roles, ECD at Jam and ECD at Engine Group, allows me to broaden what I do.

 

I’ve always been about the idea not the channel, and I sometimes think the industry is structured around what’s best for the industry rather than creating an idea that the consumer is going to be interested in. If that’s a naked man running down the street with a sandwich board, so be it. If it’s a cinema commercial, fine who cares? If you want to blow up a building and make a film out of it, great! I think Jam is in a really nice place now. We’re embracing this philosophy that we’ve come up with called ‘ideas that spread’ – no pun intended! If you look at the agencies that are doing interesting work now like Droga5, Sid Lee and 72andSunny, I’m not saying we’re in the level that they are but I think we share the same approach. We think about the impact of the work and how it’s going to spread rather than ‘let’s stick it in a pre-determined media channel and hope people get attracted to it’.

 

LBB> How does Jam and the rest of Engine interact?

WD> Jam is the social and digital element of Engine. Some clients just work with Jam, and others work across the Engine model. My role is a less traditional one. At Engine what I’ve been tasked with is working with all our agencies from Synergy all the way through to Mischief, which is consumer PR, Slice experiential, and Jam the digital agency and I help bridge the gap. Whether we’re working on an Engine client or a Jam client, we can pull in other people to work on projects and I can join the dots. I work with WCRS as well. What’s nice is that I can wear many hats and see the bigger picture. That’s what attracts me to my role. It’s all about the idea.

Although I worked at big network agencies like Saatchi’s and Leo Burnett and Euro’s and have a big history of traditional advertising, I moved away from that to digital and social. I think things have come full circle now, it’s no longer about ticking boxes and putting yourself into a rigid category. What even is advertising nowadays? It’s about what people talk about down the pub, what friends share with each other. That’s what’s important.

LBB> You’ve written quite a bit about this idea that we’re in a ‘post-digital’ or even ‘post-advertising’ era…

WD> I think the solution doesn’t always have to be so prescriptive. You’ve got to ask ‘what is going to connect people?’ That could be technology. We did a ‘Sky Share’ app, for Sky, which is the first Facebook-connected EPG. You go on Facebook and see what TV your friends like and record straight through Facebook based on a social recommendation. It’s mad, right? That’s a creative solution. Or it can be a beautiful film that people want to share. But it’s less about creating a campaign that’s superficial and it’s about actually doing something, capturing it and sharing it.

 

LBB> What attracted you to advertising in the first place?

WD> I’ve done all that stuff because I’m very restless and I get bored very easily. I’m a little bit of a nerd. I’m a copywriter by trade but I’ve always been interested in the mind and how people think. I grew up in a small town in Australia, a little surfy coastal village where your options were limited to becoming a fisherman. I remember seeing ads on TV and thinking that the people in them looked really cool and got to do so many wonderful things. I was sort of creative, I painted and was surrounded by a family of mad people. I’m not a he-man Aussie sort of person. I sort of fell into advertising by default. 

 

I applied to the AWARD School and did really well at that and won a few things. I got a paid job for a really great agency which is now called BCM. I worked under a guy called Bill Bristow who was like an Australian Mad Men character. I worked for loads of famous people who taught a lot. As a junior copywriter it was all about radio – radio is the hardest thing to write and that’s how you learn to hone your craft. The agency put me through college at the same time – a working apprenticeship which you don’t get these days. Back in those days you had to earn your stripes. When I worked at George Paterson Bates, which is the other big Australian agency, there were people there like John Fawcett, who were really hard task masters. You really learnt your craft. 

 

That’s the thing that still sticks with me today. Regardless of how deconstructed the industry has become, the common thread is still craft, whether that’s in filmmaking, or art-direction or writing. For BNT magazine I did a review of a couple of ads and the thing that struck me was that most of those ads were let down by craft. 

 

LBB> So what are your thoughts on the shrinking production budgets?

WD> Agencies shouldn’t let that happen. I think the other core thing is that I’ve never had issues with an ‘us and them’ mentality. The way I’ve always worked has been in partnership. If a client can buy into a really great idea, they can see the level of skill and craft it takes to deliver that idea, then it’s a no-brainer that they should invest in it. The agency should be protective of their craft. It’s what separates us from sweatshop work. Craft doesn’t have to be million pound shoots with RSA directors – it can be simple, elegant writing. The thing that gets me, I suppose, is that I’m still a writer. It’s not about the flashiness of the production, it’s about the idea and how these production values add to the idea. You can’t dress up a shit idea.

 

LBB> Is it harder for people stand up to clients to defend their ideas now? 

WD> I think it’s harder to stand up. A lot of young people are put into jobs where they haven’t had the mentoring or the guidance or the responsibility. The various creative directors I worked under allowed me to have the freedom to be able to stand up for my ideas and be taught how to do that in a constructive way. A lot of creatives just throw their toys out of the pram. What’s the point? You’re never going to win an argument that way. You have to work with the people in a way that makes them feel they own the idea as much as you do and together you’ll be making great things. I think that’s the key to making great work. And luck!

 

LBB> Talking about the younger generation, how do you nurture new talent and juniors at Jam?

WD> I’ve taken a lot of people who haven’t come from traditional backgrounds. I think with Jam I’ve taken people from some pretty weird backgrounds and different cultures. I’ve worked all over the world – Singapore, San Francisco, Europe, London, Sydney. We’re a global society now and an agency’s staff should reflect that. 

 

Developing young talent is really key. I was lucky enough to work with some great people who helped me produce great work and win awards, so I want to give something back. I think an ECD needs to be able to provide time to nourish the next generation. If you don’t you’ve got no right to complain. If you’re not putting something back, don’t complain about it. 

LBB> You’ve done a masters in cognitive psychology – when did you do that and what motivated it?

WD> I took a bit of time out and went back to university. It was at a phase in my life when I was probably working and studying and burning the candle at too many ends. I don’t even know how I did it. I’m interested in the psychology of what makes people click. There’s a little bit of a planner in me, but I’m never going to do pie charts and statistics. 

 

I think the behaviour side of things is interesting – especially nowadays. Just think about the digital devices we have and what makes people connect to things. That’s what really spurred me on. I’m so glad that long form content has come around because it’s about getting into people’s heads and instilling something that connects people with a brand and a message. There are things that you can use, like semiotics, to trigger people’s thinking. Good creatives do some of these things intuitively but there are other less obvious things too. You don’t have to be a scientist or have a masters in order to do that, but it helps.

 

It also helps with defending ideas. If I’m up against some smart arse client, I find I can reference things, pieces of science. They think ‘why is this mad creative guy coming out with stuff that actually makes sense?’ I can defend my ideas and it’s been really useful in the past. I’m a great believer in wanting to learn. I’m sure I’ll be one of these people who, when they’re 60, decide to go off and do a masters in something completely new. Probably something totally useless. Knowledge is great.

 

LBB> Also there’s an argument for getting out of the advertising world for a while…

WD> That’s what I always say to the guys. If you’re sitting at a desk, you’re never going to come up with great ideas. Great ideas come from conversations you’ve heard, people you’ve bumped into, experiences you’ve had…. life. I agree with John Hegarty when he says creative shouldn’t wear headphones. Spot on. There are so many stories that can happen in a five-stop tube journey. If you’ve got your head down in your iPad, how are you ever going to come up with great ideas? Some of the best people I’ve worked with haven’t even started out as creatives. They started as people who have had weird jobs and have brought life experiences into what they’re doing.

 

LBB> Which recent projects have you been involved in that you’ve really enjoyed?

WD> The Companion Stories for Samsung have been really nice. The brief there was the launch of a new phone that essentially can become your digital companion. We didn’t focus on the digital, we focussed on the companionship. The phone took a back seat to the storytelling and the people are real people we found. They’re not advertising created characters, they’re real people who have done interesting things. There’s Grandma Mary, the Grandma of Rock, for example. And the latest one is about a woman who lost her husband to the Thai tsunami. The brand is along for the journey rather than having a bright shiny light shone on it. That’s where the rise of YouTube content is really interesting.

 

Another project that’s been really good fun is the work we’ve done with Tesco mobile. We’ve been working in partnership with the guys from Tesco to try and turn the brand around and turn it into something people are talking about. We were putting out tweets that got ten thousand retweets, which is mental.

 

Check out Tesco Mobile's Real Time Contortionists here

The whole campaign about real time creativity. I think that’s going to be a key influence in the future. Real time creativity. I know people started to get a sniff of it with Oreo at the Super Bowl, but I think we’re going to find more reactive, interesting ways of connecting with people. I think the creative industries will need to adapt to be able to produce content that is reactive. We don’t live in a world where we wait six months for something to come out. Look at what’s happened to magazines – we live online now, that’s where we get our information. It’s going to be hard to bring craft to this 24-7 world, but it’s just a different kind of craft. There’s still a place for great storytelling in that, but there’s also a place for reactive content that lives and breathes.