New York, Defiant and Daring

There’s no shortage of great culture-shifting, conversation-starting work out of New York. But under the city’s bright lights there’s no margin for error. Fear of failure isn’t the only challenge preying on locals’ minds: there’s an uncertain political climate, immigration issues, talent-poaching and rapidly rising costs. Yet, thanks to its fierce spirit and fearless outlook, the city is facing down these challenges with creative panache. 

From the Statue of Liberty to the Empire State Building, New York isn’t short of imposing and iconic sights. Since April, though, there’s another landmark that every tourist – and many a local too – has been queuing up to snap a selfie with. The bronze statue of a young girl, hands on hips and with her head defiantly thrown back as she squares off against the charging bull of Wall Street, might be small of stature, but her impact has been enormous.

Created by artist Kristen Visbal and unveiled on International Women’s Day, Fearless Girl has been the subject of countless headlines, think-pieces and tweets. She’s been hailed as a feminist icon, a modern art masterpiece and, despite a legal challenge from sculptor Arturo Di Modica (alleging she has “hijacked and violated” the artistic copyright of his Charging Bull statue), she continues to stand.

And perhaps most interestingly of all, she’s a piece of advertising: part of a mould-breaking campaign dreamed up by McCann New York for asset management firm State Street Global Advisors, to highlight their commitment to seeing more women take up leadership positions. Unsurprisingly, Fearless Girl is expected to clean up at creative festivals this year (much like the agency’s virtual reality bus ride for Lockheed Martin, Field Trip To Mars, did last year) and most likely at effectiveness awards too, having generated a staggering US$7.4m in earned media according to a Bloomberg report.

In short, Fearless Girl represents the kind of advertising that New York does best: work that Jay Benjamin, ECD at MUH-TAY-ZIK HOF-FER New York describes as “designed for people, not for awards shows; work that shifts culture”. Nor is this an isolated example of brilliance: speaking to industry insiders, the feeling is that, in spite of the uncertain political climate, in spite of rising costs, in spite of competition from Los Angeles, the New York market is flourishing.

“It’s a good moment for the industry here,” says Javier Campopiano, CCO of Saatchi & Saatchi New York. “The general level [of creativity] is high,” agrees Tom Murphy, co-CCO at McCann New York. “It feels like New York agencies are finally done worrying about the distinctions between traditional, digital and social, and are now just focussed on making things that move people.” It’s a sentiment echoed by Alfonso Marian, CCO at Ogilvy & Mather New York: “The campaigns that come out of this market are big ideas that are channel agnostic, so they have a strong global aspect.”

He references Amnesty International’s campaign, The Refugee Nation, which captured hearts and minds across the world – and helped change attitudes to refugees – by creating a meaningful new flag (in an orange and black design inspired by lifejackets) and national anthem for the refugee team at the 2016 Olympics.

Empire states of mind

Production folk are equally chipper. Though spiralling costs are making it harder and harder to shoot among the skyscrapers, and the majority of production companies are now based in Los Angeles, with only satellite sales offices located in New York, the creative standard of the boards coming out of NYC is high, says Ben Davies, EP at Furlined. “The East Coast creative community is always pushing the boundaries to find fresh interpretations and executions of conceptually driven work.”

Jackie Kelman, founder and EP of Park Pictures, reckons Los Angeles no longer has the creative upper hand over its East Coast neighbour: “I think it’s pretty evenly split.” As one of only a handful of bi-coastal production companies that still operates a full office in New York with executive producers on the ground, 2016-17 has been “a good year” for Park. “A lot of the conversations we’re having with agencies and brands are about going into a longer form. We’ve seen that brands do want to tell stories,” reports Kelman, with a case in point being The Wolf, their web series for HP Studios starring Christian Slater.

Park is well positioned to take on those crossover branded content/entertainment projects thanks to its small but prolific independent film division, located one floor down, which has produced dramedy feature Other People, and indie drama The Hero in the past year.

Branded content and entertainment is also something that Brooklyn-based production company m ss ng p eces has been doing very successfully for over a decade, and this past year the company has moved further into virtual reality, with a first-of-its-kind VR sports documentary about the 2016 NBA finals, and a VR game for Deutsch’s latest WATERisLIFE campaign, Hidden Dangers, which turned river parasites into monsters to help educate children in developing countries about unsafe drinking water. VR might be “the latest iteration of the company”, says co-founder Ari Kuschnir, but ultimately he, too, sees the industry’s future in terms of big, cross-channel ideas. “It’s now just about being the best storytellers across every medium, and not getting too caught up in specific mediums and being too specialist.”

A healthy local VR scene is all part of New York’s transition from traditional old brick-and-mortar city to something much more tech-forward. MTZHF’s Benjamin points to recent investment in start-ups via Bloomberg, coupled with the fact that tech companies like Google and Facebook have opened offices in the city, as evidence of this changing landscape – “Much like California before us, we now have those tech partnerships right at our door.”

The last wave of New York start-ups – the likes of Tumblr, Foursquare and Vimeo – emerged around a decade ago, and R/GA New York’s CCO, Chloe Gottlieb, feels the time is ripe for a renaissance here. “Through our new Ventures arm [which is dedicated to innovation] we meet with a lot of start-ups and what we’re hearing is that San Francisco is almost saturated, but there’s still a lot of opportunity in New York,” she reports.

“It’s exciting to think of the big platforms that are going to be born here.” She’s also enthusiastic about the agency’s own innovation capabilities, such as the colour-correcting technology they created for Samsung’s Billion Color Film campaign, which lets you watch TV in, you guessed it, a billion different colours.

Life in New York isn’t a rainbow-hued existence though: as any insider will tell you, the city is a hard taskmaster for people and companies alike. “Everything’s fast. The pressure is on. This is a city where you have to make it, it’s tough,” says Dave Canning, co-ECD at new boutique agency Joan. It’s increasingly expensive as a place to live and to run a business. And it can be downright depressing at times. However, as Erica Pressly, associate creative director at Droga5 New York, points out, it’s a productive kind of “misery… which creates a friction in life that gets articulated in interesting ways”.

Why did the creative cross the road?

New York continues to exert a magnetic pull on creative types, and the number of agencies keeps on growing, with small shops like Joan – and even smaller creative collectives, such as John x Hannes – joining the fray alongside established independents and network agencies. As one of the biggest markets in the world, there’s demand for all shapes and sizes of agency – “It’s not bad to be big here, and it’s not bad to be small here, either – as long as you’re dynamic and creative and forward thinking,” reckons MTZHF’s Benjamin. Though for every newcomer, there’s inevitably an outgoer; the Martin Agency’s New York office is the latest casualty.

It’s not just other creative agencies in competition with each other in this crowded marketplace, points out R/GA’s Gottlieb – media companies, publishers and tech platforms are all here vying for similar opportunities. While that’s challenging for individual companies, it’s good for creativity overall. “It’s a very dynamic market. Everyone has to raise their game and add value to brands more than ever,” she says.

It’s a similar story when it comes to talent. As Joan’s co-founder, Jaime Robinson, notes: “The huge challenge for New York… is the fact you can go across the street and get another job.” And that other job need not be at an ad agency at all – it could be at a start-up, or one of the tech giants. However, for those agencies like BBDO New York, a “global boutique”, which boast what global CCO David Lubars calls “reverse polarity” and regularly lure talent from the likes of Google, the benefits of this creative cross-pollination are huge.

Discussing the vagaries of the New York market from his global vantage point, Lubars says the sheer visibility of the work presents a challenge. “It’s a very hot spotlight here, because anything you do, everyone knows about it, so people who come here have to be cut out for that. There’s no, ‘Oh, that didn’t work out, so nobody’ll know about it.’ But the cool part is that when you do something good, everyone knows about it too.” And while BBDO NY’s clients have mostly been happily basking in that spotlight thanks to creative, inventive and conversation-starting campaigns, some brands have been left scrabbling around for the dimmer switch.

Take Pepsi, which, just weeks after Fearless Girl was unveiled, scored a stupendous own goal with its controversial Live For Now campaign [above]. Created with the aim of projecting a “global message of unity, peace and understanding” the spot sees celebrity influencer and model Kendall Jenner join a protest march (for what, we’re still none the wiser) and neatly defuse the whole situation by handing a can of Pepsi to a cop on the front line.

Within hours of release, the campaign attracted widespread derision and accusations of trivialising social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter. It was promptly pulled, with Pepsi issuing a grovelling apology for “missing the mark”.

There are plenty of lessons to be drawn from Live For Now (for many, the fact it was an in-house effort vindicates the need for creative agencies), chief of which, says Ogilvy’s Marian, is how New York, as one of the biggest markets, needs to be able to adapt and react to what’s happening in society. “You can see campaigns that lead social issues and behaviours, and others that don’t manage it,” he adds diplomatically.   

Certainly, in the current political and social climate, it’s natural for brands to want to be part of the conversation but, cautions Saatchi’s Campopiano, “they need to be saying something smart or meaningful. Otherwise they’re just diluting the conversation.” While the Oscars and the Super Bowl were peppered with politically charged campaigns, Saatchi & Saatchi New York opted for some beautiful branded storytelling for Walmart, enlisting Oscar-winning directors to helm short films inspired by store receipts and a stained-shirt stunt for Tide. “[Those campaigns] are not trying to save the world,” says Campopiano. “I’m not saying I don’t want to save the world, but there’s a right moment, and right brand to do it.”

Creativity trumps Trump

Spring has sprung when shots visits New York, and skyscrapers cast their long shadows into the bright April sunshine. But there is one shadow in particular looming over the creative industry: a potential tightening of working visas, which would impact the diversity of talent that is the lifeblood of the city. After all, for an industry doing global work for global clients, having a global perspective and mix of nationalities in-house is vital.

To walk along any street is to navigate a melting-pot of cultures, nationalities and backgrounds: New York is, after all, America’s original immigrant city. As John McKelvey, one half of John x Hannes points out, the diversity within a single subway carriage is like a Central Casting session. It’s worrying to think how Trump’s proposals to “totally transform” the H-1B working visa programme might affect the local creative and tech industries (large numbers of staff at companies such as Google are employed on this type of visa). An executive order was signed earlier this year, but at the time of this issue going to press, the outcome was still uncertain.

Be they green card holders or NYC born and bred, every member of the creative community shares the city’s plucky attitude – and they are fighting back with their best weapon: creativity. “Trump has galvanised the industry, there’s almost a new grassroots movement going on,” reports Mike Rigby, ECD, R/GA New York, whose agency has responded with projects such as GoVoteBot, a smart piece of tech that streamlined the voter registration process, and Alternative Facts, a spoof card game inspired by presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway’s infamous phrase.

Droga5 New York cut through the fake news babble with their The Truth Is Hard for the The New York Times – the publication’s first brand campaign for a decade – which harnessed the power of black and white typography in a simple, hard-hitting message: “The truth is hard. The truth is hard to find. The truth is hard to know. The truth is more important now than ever.”

For Droga5’s Pressly, this is just the start of a groundswell of creativity in the Big Apple. “After the presidential election, there seems to be more of a sense of community here. I’m sure that will affect creativity, and I’m excited to see how.” Whether it manifests as a Fearless Girl or a simple piece of print, the work – like the city itself – will no doubt continue to surprise, challenge and inspire.