CB Hot Suit Takes: Lee Lowndes, CEO, Daylight
CB Hot Suit Takes is our new Q&A series for extremely busy CEOs and senior leaders across the industry ~ covering careers, creativity, challenges and the song that sums it all up. Next in the hot seat is Lee Lowndes, CEO, Daylight.
1. What made you get into advertising?
I had a lecturer at Vic Uni who put a question to me in second year that I’ve never forgotten: “Do you want to be on the creative side of creativity, or the commerce side of creativity?” I chose the latter, and that was that.
I walked straight out of uni into a role at DDB, then headed to London, and what’s kept me motivated ever since is the variety.
Multiple industries, multiple mediums, and the constant challenge of how creativity can multiply outcomes for organisations and brands. Working with crazy people who care way too much about the detail (which is great) and the reward of seeing something you’ve sweated over getting shared with the world. That combination never gets old.
2. Which piece of work are you most proud of?
Throwback to my time with The Monkeys in Melbourne, working on a campaign for Asahi was truly memorable. The idea was protected from start to finish; the original script and storyboard had to go through so many hurdles, but the final output was exactly what was sold from the beginning. The production craft of this was incredible; working with Genevieve Triquet as EP and Marco Prestini as Director was a dream.
The second is a campaign for the Global Traditional Medicines Centre as part of the World Health Organization we recently worked on at Daylight. The brief was to build global awareness of traditional medicine practices as a complement to contemporary biomedicine. We shot in 16 countries, 12 languages and produced 28 films, capturing stories of healers, health experts and indigenous people from all over the world. Literally the most incredible brief that had the teams working round the clock, but in the end it was such a beautiful body of work to go out into the world.
3. What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role right now?
Oh, so many things, where do you start? I’m always a bit of a realist. Shrinking budgets against increasing demand. The pressure to do more with less is relentless.
The lines between concepting, prototyping, creativity, development and strategy are blurring fast. That can be genuinely exciting, but it raises hard questions. How do you protect expertise while enabling teams to move quickly and thoughtfully?
How do you help younger talent develop real critical thinking when everything can be answered for them instantly? I worry about that and am constantly trying to evolve how we approach that internally.
4. What’s the most recent thing you’ve learned — professionally or personally?
Nothing is more important than health and family.
A few of our team members at Daylight have navigated some really hard personal and health challenges over the last year, and watching how people have shown up for each other has been pretty amazing to see.
It puts everything into perspective. At the end of the day, protecting the things that matter most, that’s what it’s really about, and being genuine and thoughtful as you go about it.
5. What song best sums up your career so far?
Maybe, Alanis Morissette – Hand in My Pocket. Everything always feels a bit ironic, but what it all comes down to is that everything’s gonna be fine, fine, fine.
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