Matt is first and formost a Creative Director / Art director. Recently at Saatchi & Saatchi Auckland Matt led the charge on the Lexus brand relaunch shooting in Tokyo. Matt, working with creative partner Simon Pound, was part of the core team that conceived of the current Telecom Tommy and Boris campaign; writing and art directing multitudes of TV, Radio, digital and press executions.
Our basic creative strategy is Engage – Inform and Inspire Response with a clear Call to Action. If you can generate interest through entertainment or utility then you can make something fly – but it needs the instant gratification ingredient. Without that all the social media in the world won’t help you. This is the kind of thinking that informed the breadth of very successful work that launched Axe from an unknown Brand in a non-existent category (deodorant body spray) to the fastest product to reach 100 million units sold ever (USA). The work won a whole slew of creative awards and most importantly and Effie for the impressive sale results.
Stories Beat Stuff was a truly social project through Contagion for Tourism New Zealand. Research showed that youth considering travelling to NZ, particularly from Europe and the USA, were deciding that there’s not enough fun to be had here. They could get a lot of great stuff instead. Tackling this reality head-on, we came up with a campaign that showed the truth that stories beat stuff, experiences are more valuable than possessions.
Matt: “I’ve always loved good animation ever since I saw Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards when I was a kid. I loved that movie. These days I’m constantly bedazzled by the likes of Pixar and particularly Studio Ghibli’s Miyasaki.” We love animating ads and games but now we are taking a step beyond into content creation by directing and producing a series of shorts based on Kaz’s Underworld daily comic strip. If the world at large enjoys watching them half as much as we’re having fun making them then the series should be a big success.
Games are complex things. There is the strategy, the game play, programming, Interface design, animation or perhaps a live action component, Illustration and or photography, prizes, backend management etc. The reality is no one shop is going to be excellent at all these things. Divide the job into a series of parallel productions each being produced by specialists. Most of our games are created by co-coordinating the various skills of multiple vendors. This method guarantees quality results and also timely deployment.
Matt started out into the world as a comic artist and illustrator and still loves to keep his hand in when the right opportunity presents itself. Currently Matt is regularly designing tees, fabrics and merchandise for Japans’ infamous Hysteric Mini for their ongoing seasonal collections.
The key to good identity design is to be able to clearly capture the essence of a brand and communicate that idea within the simplest icon or type flourish. For Serena Bass we didn’t want to just create a new logo type for the company we wanted to reposition them beyond catering as event makers or “Creators of Happiness” and capture a sense of their stylistic flair for the flamboyant. Part of the brief was that the logo should be an attractive t-shirt design in of itself.
Well every now and then anyway. Banners can be great! Particularly with Axe we’ve managed to attract some really impressive click through stats simply by really making an effort to make the banners entertaining and eye catching. At the end of the day girls (and boys) just want to have fun. So if you’re looking for creative, gag driven, animated or otherwise, stimulating banners – then do like Debbie Harry says an’ “Call me”.
Rub + Tug
Turd Polishing