Spirit W | Caught in a wave of creativity: D&AD's Laura Jordan

Laura Jordan Bambach brings together an experimental and innovative use of technological advances and digital media with a deep understanding of changing customer behavior and good old fashioned storytelling. She is a Co-founder and Director of SheSays – an international volunteer organization to encourage more women to take up digital creative careers, which operates in 15 cities worldwide. She is also the founder of Cannt festival, a weeklong alternative in London that runs along- side Cannes for those that can’t make the trip. Laura believes strongly in the power of great ideas, grown through focused collaboration to create amazing work. She’s also a trained taxidermist.

Adgully caught up with Laura Jordan Bambach, Creative Partner, Mr. President, D&AD to understand her vision and mission both on the personal and professional front.

Since she comes with a lot of experience in the digital space, and with the world going gung-ho over the new medium, when asked how does she see the efforts of the marketers and brands converting to returns (ROI and ROV), she said, "First of all I would argue that the digital space itself is not a medium, but a series of channels and technologies. But yes, people are really investing time and resource into executions of ideas that use digital platforms. When this is done in a way that makes the most of the media in question, the ROI is clear for all to see. For example the work of AKQA, in particular their collaborations with Nike, show that moving a traditional brand into a digital one can pay dividends."

Adding further to prove her point she said, "However, when digital is used as a by-product, or add-on, it clearly doesn’t work. It’s about using the medium that is right for the idea, and not shoe-horning it in. The benefit of a lot of technology these days is that you can see exactly where your customers are coming from."
According to her brand custodians are increasingly engaging with the brand in digital spaces and any company that is not seriously investing in an online capacity probably won’t be around in the next decade. It was difficult for her to resist the possibilities the emerging media could offer in the late 90s.

Elaborating more about her inclination towards media space and her greatest source of inspiration, she said, "For people with a creative mind, the opportunities are there for the taking. But it was seeing Simon Waterfall speak at COFA in Sydney, where I have both studied and taught, that truly inspired me. He had faith in my abilities and I got caught in a wave of creativity that’s still breaking today."

Macmillan Infi-Knit is her favourite work which turned a standard petition to government highlighting the issue of fuel poverty for cancer patients into a joyful knitting robot – encouraging more signatures and gaining a lot of press attention. It was a real labour of love.

Mini – ‘Ave a Word from 2006 when she was at Glue is another of her favourites.  It was one of the first interactive online films, and was a real achievement of its time.  The fact that it still stacks up against a lot of more modern work is a testament to its greatness.

Recently Barclays LifeSkills has been her proudest achievement, a cross-platform to help young people in the UK reach their potential and learn the skills they need to enter the world of work.  Its social, it’s been developed and is developing with the help of the students who use it.

Looking at the turbulent markets around the world, it becomes slightly challenging for the marketer to plan and strategize their spends and investment (with digital in focus). Sharing her views on this Jordan advises, "Spend in the areas that show you the best return. It’s easy to test the water in a number of markets or channels, and invest more in the ones which work.  I’m in favour of an iterative, agile approach like this, which, coupled with fast reaction times, can be scaled up quickly."
When asked to shell out a few pearls of advice to Indian marketers and brand custodians on the optimum use of the digital platform, Jordan expressed by saying, "Don’t forget that digital platforms are only of use if you can reach your customers through them. In the same way as television: don’t plan a campaign on one channel if all your customers are on another. The flip-side to that is with digital’s ability to drill down into data you can be really targeted with who you reach, so you can minimize wastage. Find out exactly what your target audience’s behaviour is, and make your brand a part of that."

Well, giving ages of hard work to an industry is in itself a big achievement. While being in the industry for so long the most unpleasant thing she has learned in her career is that there is still a lot of work to be done in getting female creatives (and other agency staff) to be as widely recognized as their male peers. In her opinion this is a problem in the UK and in India and is on the whole a worldwide problem. The most incredible thing that she has learnt is that there is great power in what we all do to influence and inspire others, and to work with brands on purposeful work can create amazing change. It can be a real force for good.
As a last piece of advice Jordan concluded to say "Step out to meet the boat, don’t wait for it to come to you."

Laura Jordan Bambach has consistently won awards for her commercial work, and has been honoured with personal recognition over 20 years in the industry, including being voted one of the 30 under 30 leaders in IT by industry leaders as part of the Fairfax Group awards, and the New Media Age Greatest Individual Contribution to the Industry Award in 2011. She has recently been named the Vice President of D&AD, to be president 2013-14.

She lectures and travels extensively, speaking on experiential/digitally-connected work and the cultural implications of digital society, as well as teaching dynamic lectures and workshops around new forms of communication and marketing, advertising, innovation and digital narratives in classes at major Universities and centres of excellence (including Hyper Island, School of Communication Arts 2.0, College of Fine Arts Sydney, NUA and the RCA).

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