The Work That Made Me: Celeste Holt-Walters
With over twenty years of production experience, Celeste loves the creative and logistical puzzle that is production. She thrives at problem solving to create the most effective, smart, and creative work possible across all channels.
In her 10+ years working at Badger, she has been a driving force in the agency’s most impactful work, including the viral #WomenNotObjects campaign, Olay’s #MakeSpaceForWomen Super Bowl campaign and #NoKidsinCages - which received three Cannes Lions including a GOLD and SILVER in Media categories; and an additional SILVER in Design. Additional awards show wins include: ADC, The Drum, Andy, One Show, AICP, Clio, and ANA.
Prior to Badger Agency, Celeste worked at McCann NY and BBDO across a variety of clients including Verizon, Kohl's, American Airlines, Weight Watchers, Nikon, Gillette And Mars Candy.
The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…
Celeste> There are two music events that shook me as a teen and I still re-watch to this day with SO MUCH LOVE:
Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged concert and Pearl Jam’s 1993 MTV Music Awards performance.
I will never forget those…for the rest of my life. I was 13/14 and I was VERY into 90’s grunge rock (and still am).
During that time, to me, the definition of a really great band was a band that sounded as good live as they did on their albums - which often isn’t the case.
When I watched those concerts (and eventually saw PJ live in 1996), I was like, 'Oh my god', they sound so much better live!
At that moment, the power of music solidified for me. I can remember the feeling inside.
Of course, VS and Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged live album are my all-time favourite records to this day, but I think it's something about the realisation of how powerful music is that stayed with me.
I will never forget the importance of music in this job, the process of editing, putting the commercial together, and thinking of the end result.
Music became a really big deal in my life in the early '90s. And I feel like those performances were really big cultural moments for me and the music industry. They are real emotional shortcuts to remembering that exact time and place.
Maybe it was MTV in general….!!!!
The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…
Celeste> I wasn’t inspired to get into advertising by advertising. My path started in photography.
I got really into photography when I was in junior high school. My father had given me this Yashika twin lens reflex camera and I really geeked out over it. I carried a camera with me EVERYWHERE and then started taking classes at the Art Institute of Boston when I was in high school. My parents built me a dark room in our basement and I wanted to go to college for photography. That is how I got into this world.
During my four years at RIT, I realised that everything that led up to taking the picture and making the art (the research, the prep, the pre-viz, the trial and error…) was really what I was into. I didn't know what production was or that production was even a thing. At one point, I realised that taking the actual picture wasn’t what was fun for me: it was putting it all together. That is how I ended up in advertising!
Then my senior year I took a trip to NYC with my class. The point of the trip was to teach us that there are other interesting and valid careers out there within the photography industry that are beyond being a photographer. The reality of going to school for photography is that most of us are going to end up in fields adjacent to photography. During that trip, we went to Ogilvy and met with the art production department and that is when I realised that it was production that I loved.
When I graduated from college, my first job was in the art production department at BBDO.
And that’s how I ended up in advertising…By way of being a teenager who thought she wanted to be a photographer, but actually wanted to be a producer.
My first professional project…
Celeste> The first shoot that I did on my own was for Mars Candy. It was a tabletop stills shoot for a new energy bar. It was my first solo production. I remember having to make this oversized model of the bar which was foreign to me. I remember being late for the shoot and being mortified…I rode my bike and didn’t realise how long it would take me to get there.
The creative director was this brilliant person named Vann Graves. I was fascinated by him and by his story. He was a Black man and he was dominating the creative department. He was at BBDO for a long time, he joined the army, and then came back to advertising. He runs the VCU Brandcenter now. I remember him being extremely supportive and thoughtful in the way that he spoke to me because he knew that I was young and new and didn't really know what I was doing, but that I was really eager and soaking it all in. He was a great teacher and mentor, one I’ll never forget and always be grateful to.
The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…
Celeste> It really wasn’t one piece of work: it was the reality that there was just SO MUCH work that should be making us angry, but that we, as an industry, had become so desensitised to. Our ‘Women Not Objects' initiative and the deep research that went into bringing that project to life brought a lot to boil for me. It was a slap in the face of how horrific our industry was (and still is in many ways) and how desensitized I was to it. I woke up to it all and have approached my work differently ever since, more responsibly and braver in all ways.
The creative project that changed my career…
Celeste> Different things changed my career in different ways. A career shift for me was the switch from doing predominantly stills work as an art producer to doing predominantly motion work. I was at McCann and the production departments were very segregated. The head of the broadcast department started pushing for all of production to be one department and for all of the producers to be integrated and able to produce anything, regardless of the medium. There was a lot of pushback, but I was really hungry and constantly wanted to learn more and grow as a producer. I was asked to essentially be the guinea pig and, of course, dived at the chance! They pulled me out of art production and threw me in the water, working on broadcast productions for Kohl’s. Kohl’s was this massive retail account where in one production you were shooting an entire season - could be like 25 commercials. It changed my career in every way because I was no longer an art producer after that. I was truly integrated and I credit that opportunity and experience in getting me to where I am today: running a production department full of producers like myself. We wear all the hats and there truly is nothing that we can’t do!
The work that I’m proudest of…
Celeste> No Kids In Cages and Women Not Objects, hands down.
I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…
Celeste> The worst project I’ve ever worked on was in the beauty category, earlier in my career. It was the antithesis of the Women Not Objects campaign, and I’m proud to say that I would never work on a project like that again. I will not name names!
The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…
Celeste> There are so many!!
Olay | Quinta Brunson: Quinta is such a creative genius and it was so cool to have the opportunity to work with her and collaborate with her. We shot the TV campaign with Dave Meyers, who is a total legend, and the stills were shot by Dave’s mentee - an incredibly talented Photographer and Director named Mia Barnes. Whenever you are able to be in the same room as, and collaborate with, people at that talent level - it’s exciting and enriching.
Olay | Super Bowl - Our Super Bowl commercial for Olay was absolutely awesome…my first and only Super Bowl ad! Jamie Babbit directed the campaign and Janush Kaminsky DP’d. The entire experience was really a career high. The campaign featured Taraji B. Henson, Busy Philipps, Lily Singh, and Nicole Stott (retired NASA astronaut) and included fun stunt work and visual effects. The project was so rich and fulfilling in its complexity. It was one of those projects that flex your production muscles in challenging and new ways. It was an incredible learning experience: it was hard and it was SO FUN.
Clairol - There’s nothing more exciting than new clients! The opportunity to work on a hair colour brand in a way that is fresh, youthful (regardless of your age!), and socially focused (less focused on the perfection of hair and more focused on the way the hair makes you FEEL) has been soooo refreshing and sooo fun. The work looks so different from any other hair care brand right now - so much cooler and so much more emotional. It was a challenging and fun campaign to work on.
