Celebrating the creative potential in us all

How can we encourage all Australians to celebrate their creative potential and use it as a powerful force for good?

Late in 2021, we were approached by the National Gallery of Victoria to design a campaign on the theme of ‘creative potential’ to compete for Australia’s highest national accolade for contemporary design, the Rigg Design Prize. For 2022, the prize features eight outstanding Australian practitioners in the fields of Advertising and Creative Communications.

In their brief, the NGV acknowledges that advertising and design now permeate every facet of our lives and have the power to change the behaviour of people and society. As we enter ‘the Creative Age’, the world needs creativity more than ever to respond to increasingly complex and challenging situations. With our campaign we needed to convince Australians that creativity is something to be valued and embraced as a powerful force capable of influencing and shaping a better future.

First, we created four teams including everyone in a wide variety of roles within our studio – not just the ‘creatives’ – to come back with ideas on the brief. The diversity of thinking generated was a testament to the creativity inside all people. This led to the insight that creativity doesn’t just happen in creative teams in agencies. Everyone has great ideas.

Based on this, we knew we needed to create a campaign focused on unlocking the creative potential inside us all. A campaign that could champion creativity, generate ideas, and encourage every single Australian to exercise their creative potential.

Our campaign, ‘Any Ideas?’, poses questions to all Australians, and asks everyone to look inside and find the creativity that lives inside them to help solve some of the biggest issues our world faces today. By offering thought-provoking questions and building a social and digital platform to house responses via a website and Instagram profile, we created a tool to encourage mass creativity with purpose. We engaged our friends and partners at Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund Australia, B Corporation, ACON, OzHarvest and more to be involved in the campaign. A bill poster activation around Melbourne built awareness and intrigue, taking the exhibition out of the gallery and activating it on the streets, encouraging participation from all walks of life.

‘Any ideas?’ isn’t a campaign to observe, it’s about participation, and is built on the theory that no idea is a bad idea. Responses from the public are collated and shared with participating organisations, with the aim of making real and lasting change. The campaign democratises creativity, asks people to come to the table with ideas, then collates and shares them so they can be put to real use to move us forward. It’s about challenging, provoking and championing the creative potential inside us all.

The campaign draws on a raw, glitchy, almost undesigned aesthetic. It suggests an unfinished, ongoing conversation— that these issues are still work in progress. Almost a blank canvas, a bold pixel-inspired font ensures that attention on is always on the message. That our focus is on the ideas, not visual decoration.

We’re thrilled to be part of the most prestigious design prize in Australia and absolutely humbled to be one of eight finalists whose responses are on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia for the Rigg Design Prize 2022 exhibition from 7 October 2022 to 29 January 2023.

With tens of thousands of people through the doors of the exhibition, over 14,000 people reached on Instagram, and hundreds of ideas generated, we excitedly anticipate the conclusion of the campaign in January. Then, we will collate and share Australia’s creativity with our partners at Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund Australia, B Corporation, ACON and OzHarvest and more.