Mother London: Samuel Payne Lecture

Today at Camberwell College of Arts we had a guest lecture from Samuel Payne of Mother advertising agency. The agency is responable for most of the good ads you see on TV.
With studios in London, New York, Buenos Aires & an award for agency of the decade under their belt. It seems they are pretty much untouchable at the moment.
Below is an interview with Sam on his responsibilities at Mother & within advertising.


Interview:


Do you have one specific title at Mother? Or is your role within the company reasonably fluid to what sort of brief you are working on?

The make up of people & roles are generally pretty fluid & sensitive to each project. No one is precious about been delegated a ‘title’ when working one briefs, we’re more concerned about working in a diverse team of people with transferrable skills.

I mean, my mum still isn’t quite sure what I do. She knows I work in advertising, but as a creative it’s often hard to articulate what is in my head to those 97% of ‘normal’ people out there…..it’s something I’m struggling with.

With that in mind, how do you feel about focus groups?

Hah, focus groups have the amazing ability to make everything really average. I don’t really understand how you can trust the integrity of an idea with five strangers in Milton that have no value for what you’re pitching to them.
There’s a cultural thought process you can engage people with, but generally people from business backgrounds aren’t aware of creative sensitivity.

So if you’re not a big fan of focus groups, do you have any alternative methods of measuring the success of the work you’re producing?

Yeah, of course! Yeah use algorithms, facebook, we read tweets that have been hash-tagged about us. I don’t see many other agencies measuring the reactions or success of their work but it’s something that at Mother we are really conscious of.

You paint this picture of cultural activity, as the audience gets savvier towards what you’re trying to do, do they become less responsive?

Okay so when making buying choices, people tend to spend more time thinking about the matrix of what they know about a brand or any emotional attachments they feel they have to a brand’s heritage, almost as if they have grown up with them.

Website:
www.motherlondon.com