Strategy‘s Creative Report Card is back – this time with fresh perspective. We’re diving into the minds of the CRC’s top creatives and strategists to explore how they work within their craft and think about the future of advertising. Over the next week, we’ll spotlight the Top 5 individuals across the CCO, CD, AD, CW, Designer and Planner lists through bite-sized Q&As that reveal their creative processes, industry predictions and working philosophies, among many other things.
Today we’re looking at this year’s Top 5 copywriters. Earlier this week, we shared insights from the Top 5 CCOs, CDs, Planners and ADs. Visit our CRC website for all the lists and check back tomorrow for more.
#1 CW: Geoff Baillie, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch”, “Heinz Can’t Unsee It,” (image below) “Smack for Heinz,” “Slow this ad,” “Heinz AI,” “Heinz Tattoo Label,” “Heinz LVII means 57” and “It Has to be Heinz” for Kraft Heinz
What will future writers need to do differently to stay ahead?
“I think you have to become more than a writer without forgetting how to write. Throwing yourself into other aspects of a project, like the presentation, the edit, the press outreach, will sharpen your writing. Because it helps you to see the full shape of an idea. But you still need the fundamentals of wordsmithing clever headlines and scripts.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“‘Can’t Unsee It’ – a collaboration we did between Heinz and Deadpool & Wolverine – gave us a great opportunity to scale up. But we had to maintain the Heinz tone within the broader worlds of Deadpool, Marvel, Disney, Ryan Reynolds, all that. So it was a balancing act to nail the tone, keep it entertaining and cut through the clutter.”
#2 CW: Jordan Darnbrough, Rethink
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Coors Lights Out” for Molson Coors || “A Little Taste of Hell” for Philadephia Cream Cheese
What’s quietly shifting in how we define great copywriting?
“I can’t pretend to know what great copywriting will be like in the future. We could all be writing in 1’s and 0’s. Who knows. But maybe considering the past can help to see the future. Sure, it may feel like the Earth is radically shifting beneath the feet of copywriters, but the definition of great writing hasn’t really shifted all that much. All of the greats kind of just repeat the same thing a little differently. They’ll say something like, good writing is entertaining. Or that it hooks you. Or that it’s startling. I don’t see how anything the future has in store for us will ever change that definition. We’ll just have fewer characters to do it.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“I’m going to pick ‘Heinz Chip Dip.’ For this, the challenge was a tall one. How do we bust the belief that ketchup only pairs with certain foods? We had to rethink how people use the iconic sauce and disrupt their deep-rooted associations. We landed on a simple truth: fries and ketchup make perfect sense, but not chips, even though they’re both fried potatoes. It didn’t make sense to us, so we launched a new occasion for Heinz, reintroducing this over 100-year-old condiment in a new way. We even did free samples in a grocery store… for ketchup. So weird. But new products like that don’t happen overnight. It took months of hard work from the whole team, creating everything from the ads themselves to getting it sold by Walmart. It’s that hard work that no one sees.”
#3 CW: Ryan Chiasson, Angry Butterfly
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Next to Stok’d” for Stok’d Cannabis
What part of the creative process do you secretly love, and what part still tests your patience?
“You know those annoying times when an idea just won’t come together, and it drives you insane? I hate those times. But I also love them. The feeling of creating something new — the kind of idea that’s never been done before — is what makes this job fun. Our ideas get shot down all the time, and it takes a pretty thick skin to roll with the punches and think of something new. Concepting or writing on demand doesn’t always lead to the big idea, let alone a decent one. Sometimes it’s a nugget of something on a morning dog walk or a middle-of-the-night one-sentence scribble. And when you finally smash through that writer’s block with a giant sledgehammer and watch it crumble? That’s what I love.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“Our ‘Next To Stok’d’ campaign really pushed us to think outside the lines. Cannabis advertising has so many restrictions, and if you add the media company’s filters on top of that there’s a pretty small sandbox to play in. We knew we had to find a loophole that was still legal to pull it off. So, instead of advertising the cannabis store’s products, we advertised their neighbouring businesses with covert callouts to cannabis. What made this all come together was total trust from our clients at Stok’d, a killer production team led by Nimble Content and a push from our own agency to make something disruptive. We cried a lot, but it was mostly from laughing so hard.”
#4 CW: Sara Radovanovich, FCB
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Runner 321” for Adidas || “Inployable” for the Canadian Down Syndrome Society (CDSS) || “Ticket to Dream” for Air Canada
What part of the creative process do you secretly love, and what part still tests your patience?
“Secretly, I love the sell. I love getting people excited about the work, helping them see the vision and convincing them to take the leap with us. The thing that tests my patience most? Telecaster feedback. Why can’t they just be cool??
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“Our ‘Ticket to Dream’ Olympics spot for Air Canada was actually very research-heavy to make sure it was authentic. When we showed it to the athletes my heart was racing at an Olympic speed. Then I saw everybody was crying, so I started crying (partly out of sheer relief).”
#5 CW: Megan Kras, Publicis (formerly Dentsu)
What campaign(s) landed them on the CRC:
“Inflation Cookbook” for Skip
What part of the creative process do you secretly love, and what part still tests your patience?
“My not-so-secret love is research. Creatives are chameleons and I get excited when I get to work on something I know little about. Cue the internet rabbit holes. Chats with armchair experts. And more empathy than my therapist knows what to do with. Understanding what makes people tick is my happy place. My patience is officially tested when the fear of specificity leads to work that is less insightful. I believe that speaking to one audience in a meaningful way is more effective than creative that appeals to ‘everyone.’ That’s the hill I will die on and the tattoo I might get.”
What recent work pushed you creatively, strategically and even emotionally?
“Our campaign for 4 Nations Face-Off was a massive team effort. As the sponsor of Team Canada, Rogers wanted to get Canadians excited about the first best-on-best hockey tournament in over a decade – with a new name to boot. Rivalries. Canadian Pride. Sponsorships. What’s it called again? So many messages, so little time. Yours truly became an overnight hockey fan and helped craft a campaign faster than Connor McDavid past the blue line (probably not). What you didn’t see was Sportsnet throwing epic clips from Team Canada’s win into a mostly-finished commercial that aired within minutes of the victory. Thanks Sportsnet!”
