Ellie Jones + Avani Maan’s LIA Diary: Days 1-4

DDB Sydney junior creative team Ellie Jones (near left) + Avani Maan (far left) represented Australia at the 4th annual Creative LIAisons at LIA in Las Vegas. Here’s their report, exclusive to CB.

The valuable life lessons began as soon as we landed in the US, when Ellie accidentally got into the driver’s seat on the left hand side of the cab.

We arrived at the SLS hotel in Las Vegas and met the 100 other young creatives who had arrived from around the world for Creative LIAisons, to learn some stuff and lose some money. One attendee from Detroit was pretty impressed by the fact we could speak English.

Day 1 and 2 were spent in lectures with a line-up of amazing speakers each with a different perspective on the ad industry. Here’s a few of our top picks.

Best Audience Interaction

Chris applied his experience as an improv comedian to advertising. He got a bunch of attendees up on stage for an improv exercise at one stage, which quickly went downhill.  

He talked about the difference between a stand-up audience – who are coming for a perfectly rehearsed, flawless performance, and are prepared to complain if they don’t get it – and a standup audience – who really want the night to go well, are really invested in it – especially if they’re the ones who suggested ‘banana muffin’ in a banana muffin related skit.

Clients in creative presentations are the improv audience. You are presenting to people who really want your idea to be great. And they’ll be more likely to think it’s great if you find something they’ve said before, and weave that into the idea. ‘We saw on the brief that you said banana muffin. We thought that was genius. So we wrote this banana muffin script based on your suggestion.’

Best Therapy Session

Ted came to LIA not to judge but just to talk at the Creative LIAisons. He gave us a very targeted speech about our ‘tribe’ – the 2% of ad people he’s met who ‘give a fuck about advertising, and who will do anything to make it great’.

This tribe has to be resilient to ‘an avalanche of negatives’. Clients’ fear, critics in the industry, pointless and destructive link testing – there are a lot of hurdles to making advertising great.

But there are also positives.  Being part of a group that values originality is something to be proud of.  Not all creative industries do. Hollywood, for example, survives on reusing old ideas. He’s right. You would never hear an ad being presented like ‘It’s Volkswagen Lemon meets Cadbury Gorilla’.

He rounded up with a Q&A session where people started getting pretty honest about everything they found difficult about this job, and whether or not the positives outweigh the negatives. He told us all to hang in there. If you listened closely, you could hear the sound of 100 young creatives falling in love.

Best Catchphrase

Amir gave us his ‘Do this or die’ speech, on steroids.

Even though the industry is going through a period of change, the best way for advertising to survive hasn’t changed. It is the same as it was in DDB’s famous ‘Do this or die’ print ad. ‘If we play tricks with the truth, we die.’ He reminded us how important it is to be honest and relevant to the real world. He told us to ‘stop bullshitting around’ and warned us, as young creatives, about perpetuating the ad world’s culture of self congratulation.

Day 1 wrapped up with dinner and a chance to meet the LIA judges. On Day 2, we had dinner with Amir, DDB Latina president Juan Carlos Ortíz, and the rest of the DDB network Creative LIAsions participants – from Chicago, Stockholm, Mexico and London. It was great to sit around a table with people from a network that is so big and yet still feel like part of the same team.

On Day 3 we sat in on the LIA award juries. We were split across metal discussions for three categories. For lots of us, this was the most useful part of the programme. We sat around the outside of the room as the judges discussed and awarded this year’s winners. After hearing from a few of the speakers over the last couple of days about everything that’s wrong with advertising awards, it was great to see them talking over which work was worthy. We took a few key things out.

Lesson #1 – It’s hard to win metal. Shortlisted work is really good work.

Lesson #2 – As one of the attendees put it, ‘It’s good to know the judges’ bullshit filters are alive and well.’ They were looking out for proof that the work had real impact in the real world, and that it actually solved the problem set in the brief.

Lesson #3 – Your case study should work like a great ad itself.  It has to do a hard sell, but it also has to feel sincere. Like any ad, it shouldn’t talk down to its audience – it should assume they’re intelligent people who are going to notice if you’re rolling a turd in glitter. But the emotional impact of the video also made a big difference. Case studies that told a human story, or left the jury laughing, or were just plain beautiful, got the judges in a much more receptive mood than bland, soppy, or used-car-salesy ones.

We had the evening off, so we tried to cram the whole Vegas experience into one night. New York New York rollercoaster, check. Gambling, check. Seeing a show, check. (The Book of Mormon was fantastic.) Girls dancing in cages, check. Buying a giant hipflask that says YOLO on it, check. Bellagio fountains… were no longer running at 5am. We saw a beautiful sunrise over the strip, had a powernap, and headed to another day of lectures.

The keynote speaker was Daymond John, founder and CEO of FUBU. He talked about how to create a successful brand, sharing his rags to riches story – from sewing hats at home and selling them on the corner, to creating a multi million dollar empire.

It included the best ad hijacking story ever.

His speech wrapped up what has been an intensive and invaluable week at Creative LIAisons. Daymond signed off by telling us to define our own personal brand, summing ourselves up in two to five words. A task for the plane ride home.