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JURIES : KATRINA ALVAREZ-JARRATT, ECD, TBWA\AUSTRALIA: “IS IT INTERESTING? IS IT CLEAR? DOES IT MAKE ME FEEL SOMETHING?”
Katrina Alvarez-Jarratt is one of a rare group of creatives who slides seamlessly from art director to copywriter. Now as an executive creative director, she straddles both, while also overseeing the creative excellence of her teams. It’s no mean feat. She has spent her career to date at top creative agencies in Australia and New Zealand, beginning at Y&R followed by Clemenger BBDO Wellington before moving to Australia to join Clemenger BBDO Sydney and now TBWA\Australia where she has spent the last two years. She has been chosen to join the jury for Commerce Lotus, Media Lotus & PR Lotus at ADFEST 2023.
Why and how did you get into advertising? What do you know now that you wish you’d known starting out?
I was always a creative kid. I loved art, I loved making up stories and I loved performing long winded, improvised plays - with a ragtag troupe of neighbourhood kids, cousins and my sister - that no-doubt bored the pants off my poor parents. So, advertising seemed like a very good way to do keep doing all of that as an adult. My path into the industry was very traditional via design school, and I was lucky enough be hired straight out of that course by Y&R Wellington.
I think I wish I’d known then to be a little braver, and a little more confident - both with my thinking and also with the way I held myself. But perhaps those things only come with experience.
You are a national AWARD School co-head. What do you think are the most important characteristics, skills or abilities for a young creative to have and develop?
Well, there are the obvious things, like understanding what an idea is versus an execution and being able to share that idea with other people in a way they can understand. That’s I guess the basics of the job – and it’s much harder than it looks.
But there are other skills and characteristics that will serve you very well. The first is empathy, both for the people around you but also for the audiences you’re trying to reach with your work. The second is curiosity, which is basically the super crucial bit that will help you be more creative. And lastly courage, because creativity is a deeply vulnerable practice, and it takes guts to try new things every day.
A healthy dose of ‘bounce-back-ability’ doesn’t hurt either.
What are the greatest assets an ad campaign can have?
When we create work there are three questions we ask – Is it interesting? Is it clear? And does it make me feel something? If it’s not interesting, straight out the gate you’re stuffed. If no one pays attention to what you’re doing, then you might as well be doing nothing at all.
Is it clear is a reminder that we are not artists, we have things we must communicate and while we work at the sexy end of business, we are still working in business. And finally, does it make me feel something? That feeling can be anything: joy, disgust, sadness, love. I think sometimes clients are tempted to only allow only happy feelings – but that can be misguided.
What do you think makes a media campaign great?
Real consideration of the audience. Who are they, where are they, what do they think and feel? It goes back to having real empathy for them and then speaking to them in a way that they’ll run toward. I’m also a massive fan of new and unconventional media choices. It’s a space where you can really be playful and experimental.
What work are you most proud of – and why?
I’m super proud of the work we’ve just made for Consent labs - #Classify Consent, which is a movement to add a © for lack of consent to films and TV shows depicting just that. It’s a really important issue and our clients are doing such incredible work in consent education in schools across the country, so it’s great to be able to help them educate people outside of the classroom as well.
I am also so proud of our campaign for mycar, R (Return) Plates, A plate to help drivers return to the road after a traumatic incident. Again, a really important issue that touches on how as a society we seem to be ignoring the mental health of drivers, road rage and bullying on the road. And It’s also exciting work to me because It’s non-traditional work and it’s work that goes beyond comms and typical advertising, instead it creates more of a total brand experience for people to interact with. Our ultimate aim is to make this a nationally supported plate and we’re in the process of gathering support from the automotive industry to lobby state governments.
And of course, I also love PLAY NZ, a campaign we made during lockdown for Tourism New Zealand. Essentially, it’s a gamer “walkthrough” of the country and it was streamed live on Twitch. It’s always great to be able to help your country out, but I’m also so proud of the team that brought that to life, the attention to detail and craft on the 9-minute film was intense. On top of that, we were in isolation and across time zones, so just a mammoth team effort we should all feel proud of.
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22 March, 2023
