Radiating the right ad brand aura

By DITA DE BONI

Everything about Jill Brinsdon screams cool, cool, cool.

In offices delicately perfumed with aromatic oils, littered with demode furniture and gently pulsating to Madonna's Music, one of the best-known creative individuals in New Zealand advertising sits back and surveys her fledgling enterprise.

Striking out on her own after four years as creative director for the Bates Palace, Ms Brinsdon has established Radiation in central Auckland.

"I guess I don't see Radiation as an agency," she says. "It's never going to grow up and be an agency - it's an inspiration organisation."

She insists that the title is not an example of advertising puffery.

"We're working with companies to make them more creative and compelling places to work - helping them capture their own unique brand attitude and identity."

Translation? "Brands without ads. Fantastic new area."

Ms Brinsdon will not comment on her departure from the Bates Palace, but perhaps the event demonstrates that she is, indeed, ahead of the pack.

In April New Zealand's fourth-largest agency lost Ms Brinsdon, before several other key staff. Chief executive Noel Browne was sacked a couple of months later, clearing a path for Andrew Stone's Generator agency to be backed into the Australian-owned network.

Ms Brinsdon told news media at the time that "you won't shut me up," then promptly stopped talking and went underground to start her new project outside the glare of an intensely inquisitive industry.

A staff of up to 14 Radiators has emerged. Clients are not freely discussed but pedigree is important to the success of the enterprise.

Caltex's "Mystery motorist," Starmart's "Need it now" and Clear's "The difference is Clear" are some of the later works in the Brinsdon portfolio, which spans up to 15 years.

She says that her new business is trying to deconstruct the highly structured ad agency culture she has long observed.

"I've had the idea [of getting out of the agency environment] for a couple of years, really - watching global business take a different shape and agencies struggling to deal with those changes.

"What I kept seeing and hearing from clients was that more and more 'one size cannot fit all.'

"The problem with agencies can be that once they start to grow, they become quite departmentalised and linear.

"It was difficult to create a genuine hand-made solution for clients within that structure, where a client briefs an account manager, who briefs a planner, who writes a plan and then reports back to the account manager ... and so it goes."

Ms Brinsdon sees a new breed of marketing directors and managing partners emerging - young(ish), interested in the brand and wanting to be right in the middle of the decision-making process.

"It is crazy to lock out smart clients, because the creative process can be, and should be, entirely collaborative.

"Yet many agencies have that baton-passing process and lock the client out."

Radiation was an idea gleaned from advertising solutions businesses overseas, especially in Britain and the United States, picking up on their move towards multiskilled staff, more client interaction and more targeted, tailored solutions.

Can involving the client more closely in the process absolve the agency from some responsibility of a campaign gone wrong?

"In a normal agency, I could not dream of having a relationship with clients the way I do now, where I am very closely involved with the way the brand feels and smells.

"It certainly doesn't absolve us of any responsibility. If anything, the buck stops here."

One controversial service offered by Radiation is a "campaign audit." Under this, the company can be hired to look over a campaign commissioned from a large agency before clients commit their final "adspend" dollars.

Will that cause ripples with old colleagues?

'Agencies are going to have to deal with stuff like this; that's the way things are moving."

Other issues agencies need to deal with, she says, are the high salaries of creative directors and an unhealthy obsession with creative awards.

"The best creative people are brilliant and frighteningly well paid, but they are necessary because they are the engine of an organisation.

"The trouble is, a couple of years ago [their skills] were accessed once a week, because we were all busy making TV commercials and building brands.

"But that's not the case any more. Ads are often brought in from overseas.

"In the meantime, agencies still have the issue of how they are going to charge for a hugely expensive job skill."

To counter salaries of anything up to $250,000 for an experienced campaign creator, creative teams are being trimmed and appointments made internally, she says.

"But [for best value] a client should look for evidence of multi-skilled people."

Another problem is that a huge percentage of creative people are also overly geared to creative awards.

The friction comes when art supersedes the commercial imperative of the work, where clients can become suspicious of a logo that has not been used large enough or the branding recall power of a beautiful montage.

"It is important to have creative awards, but it is also important to give them a context. Agencies must celebrate their success in other ways. The final judge will always be the consumer."

In an industry with a creative top rung still dominated by men, the question of women and their place elicits a wary sigh.

It turns out the reticence has something to do with a statement given to the media some time ago which included reference to an intimate part of the female anatomy.

But the mother of two says her sex brings some advantages to the job - "I certainly know that having children gives you a greater empathy with others."

While female creatives tend to still be outnumbered, "we've got lots of exciting women creatives coming through now, and I hope some of them end up in charge of the playground."