The necessary quest for perfection
Industry’s Obsession with Perfection
Talon’s Innovations Director, Richard Simkins, comments on how a session on Innovation and Creativity at AdWeek Europe highlighted an industry rightly obsessed with perfection.
Yesterday I had the privilege of saying a few words about our #OreoEclipse work at Adweek Europe with Matt Sanders, Managing Partner of PHD. We were invited by Cristal Events to present the work alongside some of their other award winners of last year.
Josh McCarthy (Senior Brand Manager of Ballantine’s) and Anna Rose Kerr (Havas Work Club) presented their astonishing work on developing the first whiskey glass that works in zero gravity, for use at time when we’re all space travellers. Olivier Larrous-Carreras (MC Productions) presented their stunning content demonstrating the effect gravity has on ageing for Dior. Duan Evans ECD of AKQA presented the life-changing work they have done for Nike Rise in China and the Philippines. All great work, check it out.
Apart from the surprising celestial / gravitational theme that ran throughout one thing landed loud and clear. Each of the four campaigns demonstrated an unwavering strive for perfection. Ballantine’s year-long development and collaboration the Open Space Agency; Olivier’s painstaking frame by frame optimisation to ensure no special effects were needed; Nike’s desire to make their unique LED basketball court as accurate and as responsive as possible; and of course our focus to ensure the DOOH eclipse was executed and captured in perfect synchronicity with the eclipse overhead.
That such commitment to the cause should result in effective, ground breaking and award winning advertising campaigns is, I feel, no coincidence. Nobody got very far with a “that’ll do” approach to their work. Perfection takes more effort, and sometimes isn’t achieved, but if you aim for the stars you might just reach somewhere very exciting indeed.
