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NEWS
THURSDAY / JUNE 19 / 2014
The truth about universal storytelling is that there are no universal truths SEVERAL “top guns of storytelling” came together at the McCann Worldgroup/The Paley Center For Media seminar yesterday, treating delegates to a spirited debate on how, and why, creative ideas travel. Steven Moffat, head writer for Doctor Who and Sherlock’s most recent incarnations, said there were no magic ingredients, but that “bucking trends” and having passion for your creative vision was vital. Moffat does not believe in mixing cultural messages in an attempt to be universally relevant. “We weren’t frightened to be British,” he said. “We know Britishness is very sellable. And we didn’t use research in order to work out a success story — we all know that research is only a useful tool for finding out what would have been a good show last year.” Gale Anne Hurd, producer of AMC drama The Walking Dead and the creative force behind
DRAMAFEVER’S SUK PARK: “HARD WORK, GOOD GUT AND FLAWLESS EXECUTION”
box-office hits including The Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss, said she had spent a lifetime “imagining dark futures” as a diehard fan of speculative fiction. For Hurd, success lies in “taking something that could be silly and treating it seriously through characters people can relate to”.
Gareth Neame, producer of UK period drama Downton Abbey, said success starts with a “very familiar premise” and being able to “pitch the idea in one sentence”. Suk Park, co-founder and coCEO of DramaFever — the largest online video site for the distribution of international
televised content — said entertainment was “a gateway of culture” and television “a machine of empathy”. He added: “Great content is a combination of hard work, good gut and flawless execution. It will rise to the top on a global scale if it has culturally relevant narratives.”
Hearing it for R/GA and Beats
BEATS’ OMAR JOHNSON: “A RELENTLESS PASSION FOR TRUTH”
INTRODUCING the R/GA seminar, Building A Billion Dollar Brand, Bob Greenberg admitted that he was obliged to change the name of the event. “Since we planned this, the deal with Apple has been announced
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so, in fact, we are now talking about how to build a three-billion dollar brand,” said R/GA’s chairman, CEO and founder. “R/GA has been working with Beats for three years now and it’s been a hugely important
relationship for the agency,” he added. Greenberg then left the stage to Beats Electronic’s executive vice-president of global marketing, Omar Johnson, and R/GA London’s vice-president, managing director and executive creative director, James Temple. “Truth is at the heart of everything we do,” Johnson said. “We have a relentless passion for truth wherever it may be — because truth always ends up being the answer.” Beats came about because Dr Dre wanted to create headphones that were able to reproduce music as it is supposed to be heard. When he co-founded the company back in 2008, he famously commented: “It’s one thing to steal my music, it’s
another to destroy the feeling of what I’ve worked on.” Less famously, but no less significantly, Dr Dre told Johnson that he wanted to create a revolution. “That was quite a challenge,” Johnson said. Johnson also admitted that the brand does not pay the majority of celebrities to wear its products: “We couldn’t afford it. We do work with a few select partners, but people like Lil Wayne, LeBron James and Britney Spears choose to use our products.” Commenting on R/GA’s relationship with the brand, Temple said: “They are with us every step of the way. It’s a very different way of working to being given a brief and expected to come back with some ideas.”
LIONS DAILY NEWS
WHY COURTNEY’S WORTH MORE DEAD THAN ALIVE ESTERDAY’s GREY seminar featuring Courtney Love revealed the rock star, actress and writer to be contradictory individual, equally at home playing raucous rock as reading Euripides. “When I get writers’ block, I tend to dive into science,” Love said. “In fact, last time it happened I got into string theory and numerology. Focusing on something totally different helps me to break out of my impasse.” Interviewed by Grey New York’s president and worldwide chief creative officer, Tor Myhren, Love also confessed to being extremely ambitious: “Competition really drives me. I hate it when someone writes a line that I wish I’d written. For example, PJ Harvey wrote a song called The Last Living Rose, and the opening line was ‘Goddamn Europeans’. It’s brilliant and I just wanted to crush her.” Love also touched on the topic of artists and what they are worth — which for some is more when dead than alive. “It’s a given that musicians and artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat are worth much more when they’re dead,” she said. “And it’s been estimated that I would be worth 10 times more if I was dead. But the experience of being an actress showed me another side of this, because actors most definitely are not worth more when they’re dead. So when you’re working on a film, especially with a big budget, they give you everything you need to make sure you stay alive — at least until the film’s finished — whereas rock starts get all they need to die.”
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COURTNEY LOVE
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