Pushing boundaries and winning prizes

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Maggie Mouat's hair was stuck to her head and her dress was barely decent. She was on stage, collecting an award.

"It was soooo embarrassing," she gulps.

Mouat had travelled to Australia for a television awards show.

To save time her hair had been pinned up in New Zealand and during transit it matted firmly to her scalp.

Her dress, the only outfit she had packed, had shrunk in the last wash. But she had just an hour to get ready.

The former Saatchi & Saatchi art director downed the champagne, held her head high, kept her shoulders low and celebrated yet another accolade.

That night she received Best of Show, an addition to an extensive collection.

Tick them off: on the international stage, she has collected six Cannes Lions, nine Clio awards, three One Show awards and three appearances in the D&AD Annual - a showcase of design run by British Design & Art Direction.

Locally, there are five Effie wins, including Best in Show, and more than 50 Axis Awards.

Mouat's creative team created the Anchorville campaign: that won Best in Show at this year's Effies.

The advertising industry covets awards. Winning at the multitude of international festivals is high praise indeed.

Some in the industry dismiss the seduction of awards but Mouat is not immune. She calls winning awards her career highlights.

"It's cool when your peers think your work is cool," she says.

Young creatives cannot ignore the importance of winning awards. "But they're not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you do good work for your clients."

After 14 years at Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington, where she met her husband Gavin Bradley, Mouat is starting work next month at the city's other advertising powerhouse, Clemenger BBDO.

She and Bradley, who was Saatchi's creative director before he left last year, married two years ago on the remote Shetland Islands, in a church where 40 years earlier Mouat's parents had exchanged vows.

Mouat's departure comes after a tough time for the agency, which last year lost some high-profile accounts.

Its morale was boosted in May when it won the transtasman Westpac account.

Mouat simply says she has left because she doesn't want to work there any more. "I'm not harbouring any bad feelings but I'm totally over it."

It's a flat departure after more than a decade of grind but Mouat is philosophical. She looks back on being part of a team that made a significant impact on the world stage.

"Saatchi was like a drug. We were all on a high from setting goals and achieving them. It was a time when we didn't have the words 'nothing is impossible' formalised into corporate positioning documents. We didn't need to. We simply believed that was the case."

The creative shop in New Zealand's windswept capital was at its heights during the 90s.

It produced work lauded throughout the world and became a magnet for international advertising talent.

Saatchi & Saatchi was named in the top 10 agencies worldwide by industry magazine Advertising Age and it created epic television advertisements promoting itself.

"We were often accused of being arrogant," says Mouat, "but I can assure you we weren't. We were the most ordinary extraordinary bunch of people you could imagine."

Mouat credits a culture that fostered risk-taking.

"It was understood by clients that our job was to push the boundaries, take them out of the comfort zone."

She believes the trend turned when the business was sold to Publicis, part of an international network.

"The power base shifted," she says. "The focus shifted. There was an expectation that we should fit an international model ... the conversation shifted from the work to the money."

Clemenger creative director Philip Andrew says Mouat will be an excellent addition to the agency.

The Clemenger culture is based on generosity and nurturing young talent and he expects Mouat to fit in quickly.