'Creativity Matters' Podcast: Mark Perkins, Creative Director at W
Welcome to the first ever Creative Moment
podcast. Hope you enjoy it, if you do please do leave us a decent review
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We’re going to be interviewing some of the UK's most successful Creative Directors over the next few months - so welcome to the show.
This week I'm thrilled to be catching up with Mark Perkins, creative director of W Communications. If you look at the most famous consumer PR campaigns in the UK over the last 10 years or so, most of them (not all) have come from a very small number of PR creatives, (probably less than 10) and Mark is undoubtedly a member of this pretty unique club.
Here is a summary of what Mark and I discuss:
- How Mark showed the power of creative persuasion at a young age by getting his parents to buy a dog!
- Why Mark learnt how to be shouted at when he worked at The Sun as Kelvin Mackenzie's runner
- How Mark turned away from a career in journalism to a career in public relations
- Mark tells us about his first PR job - in a windowless office, with a boss who was having a breakdown and smoked 80 a day!
- How he managed to get a job at The Red Consultancy despite a car crash interview by writing an assessment of his interview performance to the then ceo
- Why Mark almost left public relations in search of greater creative freedom
- How his time at Cow PR shaped the rest of his career
- Why Mark believes he sees things through a different lens
- How his time at a startup has changed his approach to work
- Why Mark left creative shop Cow to go to the more corporate MHP
- Why Mark, while he was at MHP, wanted to “knock Mischief off their perch.”
- How the multiple award winning Christmas Tinners campaign almost didn't get included in the pitch for the Game account
- Mark talks us through the genesis of The NHS Missing Type campaign
- Mark tells us why he believes the potential for creative public relations is so huge
- What 2 questions all creatives need to ask when they come up with a campaign
- Why speed and agility of the idea is now critical
- Mark asks whether the story has become more important than the art in creativity
- Why clients now want more ideas for spend
- How modern technology has made it easier to bring an idea to life
- Where Mark gets his creative ideas from
- What Mark believes is the role of a creative director
- Why brainstorms don’t normally result in high quality ideas
- Why creatives must forget about the brand and think about the audience
- Why Mark links entrepreneurship and creativity
- How to apply discipline and rigour to creativity, not jazz hands and wacky ideas!
- Mark identifies his top 2 favourite creative campaigns that he’s worked on - and the worst campaign he’s ever worked on