Nick Worthington’s D&AD Diary # One

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Nick-Worthington-dandad.jpegNick Worthington, creative chairman of Colenso BBDO Auckland, is at D&AD in London as President of the Creativity for Good category. Here is his first report, exclusive to Campaign Brief

The festival opens its doors to the public today and the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch has a wonderful creative vibe.

 

It’s a warren of a building and it’s easy to get lost amongst the floors of post-industrial white paint and pillars.

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 1.09.05 am.pngThere are little posses of jurors going about their business with a wonderful intensity.

 

There is a lot of work up for everyone to see and some of it looks fantastic.

 

Walking around is like falling into the D&AD annual and getting lost in the work.

 

I’m President of the Creativity for Good category.

 

I must admit this is the category I wanted to judge, mainly because it feels like this is the future of the industry.

 

No longer is there a divide between doing good and selling stuff.

 

Now the brands that are doing good are doing great business.

 

We’ve got an insights presentation in an hour or so, and the headlines will be that more young people coming into the industry don’t just want to learn how to sell stuff, they actually want to work on stuff that does good in the world, so for us to keep on attracting the best minds, we need to be attractive.

 

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 1.10.18 am.pngMany moons ago we had the pro-bono and charity work to make us feel good about what we do.

 

And there was an apartheid like segregation between work for charities and work that does good business. That divide has dissolved.

 

Toyota’s work using their vehicles as beacons to extend mobile coverage in remote areas of Aus is exactly the kind of work that blends the two.

 

Meet Graham (although classic public service work and not a brand) got a round of applause when we showed it.

 

And the charity work for Headspace Reword, that uses a Google Chrome plug in to highlight words or sentences that could be cyber bullying as you write felt on the money too.

 

There is great work from all over the world, from brands, public service and charities, from products, service innovations and advertising and marketing, but it would be fair to say Aussie seems to have more than their fair share in the running.

 

I hope there was no unconscious bias at play here – with Laura Jordan-Bambach, David Nobay, Ali Hanan and myself all either born in, or working in, this part of the world we did stop for a moment to consciously check.

 

Screen Shot 2017-04-27 at 1.10.11 am.pngThe future of this category is exciting and so is the future of the industry if enough brands come forward to tackle some of the toughest problems society faces.

 

Last year Ban Ki Moon – the General Secretary of the United Nations- challenged the communications industry to help solve 17 of the world’s biggest problems.

 

We are seeing the early shoots of growth in this area and the chances of more brands coming on board seems strong.

 

As Keith Weed – Global CEO of Unilever – revealed, “our brands with social purpose are growing twice as fast as those without”.

 

So doing good isn’t just good for the planet, it’s great for business.

 

The editor of The Drum asked our jury for a one word answer to the question, “Could advertising make the world a better place?”.

 

The answer was a unanimous yes.