Things I wish I could tell my father
My father was dead against me getting into advertising. He thought I would make a good lawyer. Ironically he died before I got my first agency job and now looking back I have some things I wish I could tell him today about what I feel proud of:
I got my first agency job by offering to work for free as a junior copywriter. That was Saatchi & Saatchi and it was 1995. They started paying me a salary after my first two weeks. It did take me more than a year to get that break and I am proud of myself for not giving up.
I got my second job in the country’s best agency, not because of the quality of my work in my first job but only because they needed somebody to transcribe English ads to Afrikaans. After a few months I proved myself enough by taking chances on open briefs that I was moved into a main concept team.
I tried to start an “innovation consultancy” before I knew what it was. I failed miserably but I was driven by an overwhelming sense that advertising creativity could be used in wider applications than just campaigns. That is what eventually got me interested in the world of service design and innovation and primarily why I joined Boondoggle in 2016.
During 2014/2015, I worked in house at one of South Africa’s top retailers, mainly to create a campaign for a collaboration between the brand and global superstar, Pharrell Williams. The part I am the most proud of was developing a creative platform that was able to link Pharrell with whatever they were oering: from fresh salmon to khaki chinos. Working with him and his team, shooting in LA, London and Cape Town, was both a nightmare and a delight and a privilege that made so many other things in my career from then on seem easy.
During my career, so far, I’ve lived in five different cities in four different countries and been fortunate to lead creatives from many countries including Japan, China, India, the US, Europe, Africa and South East Asia. In every experience I learnt that creatives are the same but also different. And that diversity equals strength.
I’ve worked with and learnt from some best people in advertising and have been lucky to be involved with campaigns that won everything from gold Lions, Eurobest, Epica and D&AD to the most obscure awards that are really just designed to stroke people’s egos.
In short, I came from nowhere, was blessed with a naivety that made me push on. I have been lucky to be mentored and guided by the right people at the right time. I made many mistakes and was fortunate to learn from them. It’s been a career that let me see the world, have experiences that I could never have dreamed of as a lawyer and it allowed me to meet some of the most interesting people in the world. People who would also make good lawyers, engineers, doctors or even rocket scientists.
These are all the things I wish I could tell my father.
