A trio of some of Australia’s biggest creative minds have revealed what they believe is missing from the creative industry today during a panel discussion at Cairns Crocodiles, with one admitting the real issue is “staring at us in the face”.
Speaking to a packed room, Chemical Brothers’ Adam Smith , #1 New York Times bestselling author Tigest Girma and Didi’s CMO Tim Farmer, unpacked the frustrations they have with the current state of creativity, marketing and storytelling.
Smith, the acclaimed director and visual artist often referred to as “the third Chemical Brother”, admitted his biggest frustration with the creative industry is a lack of risk-taking and a failure to let creatives truly “do their thing”.
“When I’m directing an actor and line-reading to them, it just doesn’t work,” he said.
“Some people do that, but you don’t get the performance you want.”
“I want to be surprised. I want happy accidents to happen. I don’t want this certainty because it’s constricted and doesn’t allow things to flow.
“It creates damage and stops those things.”
Smith said it is crucial not only to empower creatives to take ownership of their work, but also to seek feedback from the right people.
“It can be amazing, because you tend to get so lost in a project,” he said.
Reflecting on a concert film made for The Chemical Brothers, Smith explained that while the record label, management and band all believed the project was complete, he knew it still was not quite right.
“I went to see a friend who was working at the BBC at the time, a brilliant man,” he said.
“I said to him, ‘Please can you watch this and give us some notes?’”
“He said: ‘Look, you’ve got two amazing things about this film – your audience power and your vision. You need to push that more.’
“He actually said to make it weirder.”
Smith said that feedback became a turning point.
“That just gave me this empowerment of, ‘That’s what I need to focus on’,” he said.
“That’s what I’m also trying to do with actors, or those in costume, or whatever department it is. I’m trying to empower them, get the right people involved, and allow them to do their own thing and be free.
“Then you get something amazing.”
While he acknowledged the challenges that come with large budgets and commercial pressure, Smith said creative industries still need to embrace experimentation.
“It’s risk-taking. You don’t know how until you get it right,” he said.
“I understand that’s really hard when there’s loads and loads of money being spent, but you have to take the punk approach and accept that not everything is going to work.”
Tim Farmer admitted one of his biggest frustrations with the creative industry is how marketers underestimate audiences.
“I think we treat people like idiots sometimes as marketers,” he said. “We turn off our real brains – but if people are interested, they’ll look you up and figure it out.”
“You see it in airline ads where the woman in the dress smiles at you, but your bag’s overweight and security are assholes. It’s not real,” he laughed.
“You also see it in car ads. It’s not a family car ad unless there are three packs of Shapes and sports shoes in the back. It’s just treating us like idiots. I wish we would stop doing that.”
Farmer also referenced comments made at last year’s Cairns Crocodiles conference, by independent agency SICKDOGWOLFMAN.
“Jess Wheeler from SICKDOGWOLFMAN said, ‘Best in class is mediocrity’, and I love it,” he said.
“His point was that if we’re all best in class, we’re just regressing to the average.”
Farmer warned the rise of AI and automation means the industry is at a turning point.
“The robots are coming, guys, so I think we really need to ramp up the creativity and push the boundaries,” he said.
“Marketing’s already losing influence in the boardroom, and it will continue if we don’t. It’s a crossroads for our industry.”
When asked what the industry should do to navigate the challenge, Farmer’s answer was simple: “Listen to your agencies.”
“Stop ignoring your real brain when you go home,” he said. “It’s staring at us in the face, but we’re hiding behind the wrong numbers and the safety blanket sometimes.
“Take a risk for your own personal career. Just take the risk every time you have the chance to.”
Meanwhile, Ethiopian-Australian author Girma said her biggest frustration sits squarely within the publishing industry, particularly around diversity in fantasy storytelling.
“The glaring issue is specifically around fantasy storytelling and the lack of diversity,” she said.
“We don’t have a lot of Black girls reading epic fantasy stories or tales, and I come at it from the angle of wanting to fill that space.”
Girma reflected on growing up in Australia reading paranormal romances and fantasy novels where she rarely saw herself represented.
“It was always one type of character that I would be reading about,” she said.
“So I grew up longing for representation in every sort of book I could pick up.”
When she began writing her own stories, Girma said she wanted to create fantasy worlds where Black girls could exist beyond trauma narratives.
“I didn’t want it to feel like a biography,” she said.
“I wanted Black girls to be in the fantasy balls dancing. I wanted them to be on dragons slaying monsters, because fantasy is a desirable thing, and I want us to be in those spaces.
“Why are we always in the non-desirable situations?”
Girma said while the publishing industry still has work to do, recent cultural milestones have helped create opportunities for more diverse fantasy storytelling.
Films like Black Panther and books such as Children of Blood and Bone helped crack open the genre for a new generation of voices, she said.
“All those little cracks happened in the publishing sphere, which allowed my Black vampire book to slip through,” Girma said.
“So I’m really glad that it’s changing, but those frustrations are real.”
