Andy Flemming on Working with Ricky Gervais and the Power of a Confident Brand Identity
Andy Flemming left England in 1992 for the shining shores of Sydney, starting his advertising career at Chiat as a writer.
After a few years in Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore were calling his name, where he worked as a copywriter at BSB Hong Kong and a senior writer at Bates CHI&Partners.
Moving back to Australia after his time in Asia, Andy found himself in Melbourne where he was a senior writer at George Patterson Partners, before becoming deputy creative director at George Patterson Y&R.
Eventually, he travelled back to Sydney shores. Andy spent the next 15 years working as M&C Saatchi Australia‘s group creative director.
Today, he is still enjoying the sunny Sydney harbour as the creative lead at 72andSunny. During his career he has worked on iconic campaigns for brands such as Optus, Google, Tourism Australia, Apple,and Comm Bank.
LBB> Judging from your LinkedIn profile and website, it is evident that you’ve always been a creative. Tell me about the first time you realised that you were able to turn your creativity into a career, or was that the plan from the get-go?
Andy> I knew pretty early on that I wanted to write, and it was probably inevitable as I devoured books to the point where my school had to buy more in like a junior Shawshank Redemption. I loved poetry in particular, which had to remain a closely guarded secret if you wanted to keep your teeth in an English comprehensive.
To me, it was like precise engineering with each word carefully chosen. Once you understand poets like Wilfred Owen, Tennison and Seamus Heaney you can write and write well. I still tell students to drop their phones and read if they want a decent career. It’s worked for me.
LBB> From London to Hong Kong to Singapore to Australia, what have you found stays the same and what are the biggest differences?
Andy> Advertising is fundamentally the same no matter what country you’re in and people are just as likely to ignore most of it. The Singaporean is exposed to just as much bad work as the Australian or the Brit and they tune it out until it becomes just white noise. If you don’t stand out you can have the greatest product benefit in the world and nobody will care.
Of course, there are cultural differences, but that’s why advertising is the best gig in the world as you have to really immerse yourself in a culture to learn what they are. I miss the elegance of Asian work. They craft in a way that I think we’ve forgotten how to. I also miss the tight-knit community. And the food. Obviously.
LBB> You have worked on a number of iconic spots and campaigns, particularly with Optus, Google, Ricky Gervais, and The Whale Song to name a few. Each spot is completely unique, how do you go about remaining true to a brand’s identity while exploring new ideas? What is the most important thing you need to know or understand about a brand in order to achieve success like those above?
Andy> Optus ‘Yes’ was always an amazing platform to work for as it was a statement of difference and positivity. It meant we could play with techniques and narrative. The word ‘Yes’ sat beautifully at the end of the Ricky Gervais stuff as it did at the end of the Idris Elba monologue for the Premier League. In that case, the idea was ‘Yes is screamed by every single fan after every single goal, so who better to bring you the football than Optus?’
CommBank was designed for total creative flexibility. We could use animation, illustration, film, songs, whatever. As long as we stayed true to what CAN was all about, we could approach the work from wherever we wanted. I think this is one of the fundamental tensions in our industry right now - how can you remain true to a brand’s core values while giving yourself room to move creatively?
LBB> At 72andSunny, what has been the project you are most proud of? What were the challenges and what were the triumphs of the project?
Andy> I have all sorts of favourites. We made a stunning film by an Oscar-winning animator for Ilume, the Taco Bell work is consistently different and fun and Google is a great example of how we could connect a functional, global tech giant to the emotion and importance of Australian sporting culture. But it’s bigger than that. There’s a consistent quality that comes from having some hugely talented people from some of the world’s best agencies in one place.
The hierarchy is much more level so we can argue passionately and the best work always wins. That’s about as elegant a system as I’ve found and it’s working for us. There’s also a casual, human vibe at 72 that means we can be more ourselves in meetings and the clients respond by doing the same. I think that when you leave the corporate stuff at the door and talk like people, anything’s possible.
LBB> Finally, what do you believe it takes for a brand to be successful?
Andy> The world is absolutely full of advertising. We’re at peak advertising. We’ve made this monster that begs us to click its little banner and hides the ‘x’ to make it more difficult. We’ve got multiple channels and every human being with a camera can make content that’s cleverer than ours. So we’re up against it right from the start.
I think we have to think more like content creators and less like endless lifestyle reflections of who a brand thinks we are. That means having more fun and making what we’d want to see ourselves. And to many people, that’s ‘taking a risk’. To be honest, if we only looked at what we consume ourselves we’d understand how to make any brand famous overnight. But hey, what do I know?
