Campaign Brief Q&A with DDB Melbourne ECD Psembi Kinstan and Deputy ECD Giles Watson: “We’ve become an awesome mix of big, iconic network brains and a ‘start-up’ approach”

Over the last year DDB Melbourne has bucked the trend of network agencies and expanded rapidly ranking #2 in last year’s Campaign Brief ‘The Work’. DDB Group Melbourne ECD Psembi Kinstan (above right) and recently promoted Deputy ECD Giles Watson (left) chat exclusively with Campaign Brief…

It was a successful year for DDB Group Melbourne over the last 12 months; new wins, new talent, lots of new work. Share with us the update.

Psembi Kinstan: It’s been a big two years. When myself and the current leadership team started, we launched a simple vision, ‘to create the best work and have the best time of our careers’, and that’s dictated every decision we’ve made since. We’ve been able to show up with smart ideas and win the right sorts of business for the agency’s ambition including Funlab, Peroni/Asahi/Vodka Cruiser, Movember, AgriFutures, Dabble, Made by Dyslexia, Government work, and Coles through co-launching its bespoke agency Smith St.

The collective of the DDB Group in Melbourne has tripled in headcount and we’ve been able to invest in an unfair amount of great talent.

Some recent work we’ve noted, including Porsche Taycan Arcade, Coles Great Lengths for Quality, and Movember Mancestry, seem like a big departure from the house style of DDB over the recent years. Has this been a deliberate choice?

Giles Watson: Actively trying to chase a “house style” sounds like an incredibly restrictive process that would ultimately lead to bland work… which sounds rather dull. We’ve been trying to avoid having to be like anything. Instead, our focus is on building exciting work that’s only true to what it needs to be – that can build bigger, distinctive worlds for our brands.

We’ve become an awesome mix of big, iconic network brains and a ‘start-up’ approach, that gives us the freedom to continue Bill Bernbach’s original philosophy of creating emotionally-charged ideas for our clients, but now they’re showing up in lots of different places.

PK: We’ve made a very deliberate choice to craft brand worlds and creative platforms for our clients that make each of them feel unique and immediately recognisable. Coles’ ‘Great Lengths’ is perhaps our best example of that, it’s an infinitely repeatable idea that allows us to push the executions to be more and more effective on each outing; whether that’s in film or in-app experiences.

Craft is something you talk a lot about in trade press, tell us more about your philosophy there?

GW: Advertising has become a vacuum of similar aesthetics, styles, tone of voice, casting….and there’s lots of work out there that just looks terrible, or worse, completely generic in a sea of sameness. Craft is what makes our clients stand out. It’s a word we can use as an excuse to take a step back and make decisions that are only about making the work better – and it needs to touch every part of the project.

PK: We’ve also made a deliberate choice to employ very senior people for their craft ability. To the detriment of the Australian industry, in many agencies there’s typically only one way to progress your career as a creative, and that’s to become a CD and then ECD. But the truth is your ability to manage teams and businesses aren’t the same skills creatives are trained for or motivated by. That’s why we have very senior incredible creatives in specific craft roles, such as James Cowie as Creative Partner and Head of Copy and Adam Hengsterberger as Head of Craft. They have different specialisms and roles to our equally excellent Creative Directors, Rebecca Morriss and Cameron Trollope.

DDB Group has multiple specialist businesses within, from Mango (earned media and PR) to RAPP (transformation and precision) and Smith St (Coles’ agency), how does this all come together?

PK: We have the same creative vision and one large and very talented creative department that all believe in the power of big emotive ideas, no matter where they show up.

Sometimes those ideas start in an earned media idea, like Vodka Cruiser ‘Cannoisseurs’ or Porsche Taycan ‘Arcade’, or in a piece of technology, like Movember’s ‘Mancestry’, or within mass awareness comms, like Coles’ ‘Great Lengths for Quality’.

GW: But all the ideas we are proudest of use all our specialisms and crafts. Mancestry was a product/technology idea to begin with, but it took our earned media specialists and social team to help it gain traction, our brand storytellers to create an incredible campaign around it, our strategy/precision team to make the UX seamless, and our craft team to make every part of the idea look as good as any agency in the world could make it.

Our specialist businesses help us go wherever the client’s business problem is, but no matter the problem, creativity is always the answer.