A creative gem, a true all-round creative, Rebecca Carrasco is deputy executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney. She has received Best in Shows, Campaign of the Year, Client of the Year, Creative of the Year, an Asia Pacific Child Rights Award, a United Nations Award, Television Programming Awards, and had her own agency recognised with an Agency of the Year Award. She has also worked as the Head of Facebook Creative Shop for Australia & New Zealand, received an Australia Day Award for studies in Visual Communication, and begun a PhD on Ideas, which she says she will finish in another lifetime, or when both her children can feed and toilet themselves, whichever comes first.

At ADFEST this year, she is judging Audio Lotus and Film Lotus. Here are her insights about both…and more:

ADFEST Buzz: Radio advertising seems to have lost its prominence in campaigns? What do you think are radio’s challenges and opportunities? 

Rebecca Carrasco: It’s a bit like Puff, The Magic Dragon. We believe we’ve out-grown it. Understandably, we’re excited to have new platforms to put work through, but that’s all they are. They don’t make the work better. What makes any medium wonderful is imagination. We just need to revisit our older friends.

ADFEST Buzz: What makes a great radio ad? What makes a great ad film?

Rebecca Carrasco: The same thing that makes a good podcast or a good movie; an idea. What we want from the medium doesn’t change during the ad breaks.  

ADFEST Buzz: Film production companies have been struggling with smaller budget and tighter timelines. Do you think it shows in the work that has been produced in 2018-9 globally?

Rebecca Carrasco: We’ve all been struggling with smaller budgets and tighter timelines. The industry is evolving. I think the rise of social media content has created a perception that things can be done fast and cheap, and sure, they can. But there’s a time and place for everything, and we need to keep the objectives in mind when we delineate the course

ADFEST Buzz: Where does the TVC sit in the scheme (I mean, is it the hero, an add-on…) of most of S&S’s work? 

Rebecca Carrasco: Every brand takes its own approach toward engaging with the audience it would like to talk to, and media mixes are delineated accordingly. While there may be a lot of interest and activity in new media, large audiences are still drawn to TV, so it’s an important part of the mix for most big clients. 

ADFEST Buzz: What are the rewards for you of awards?

Rebecca Carrasco: When it comes to building brands, ideas are what stand between love and hate. They can transform businesses, because they have the power to make the audience feel part of something. But they’re also hard to make and scary to buy – after all, a great idea is usually something that hasn’t been done before. While many are conceived, only a few are given life, and sadly, many more of those aren’t delivered with the scale they’d need to thrive. So to me, award shows are a place to showcase a better way of doing what we do, and to celebrate the ideas that liberate us all from banality.

ADFEST Buzz: What assets do you think you bring to the judging room?

Rebecca Carrasco: My point of view, delivered honestly.

ADFEST Buzz: The Neighbourhood is the Publicis Groupe’s Power of One agency model encompassing expertise from across the APAC Groupe to service Campbell Arnott’s. What are the major challenges – or things that you’ve had to learn working across cultures for The Publicis Neighbourhood.

Rebecca Carrasco: We’ve all had to learn to really understand and value what each business contributes to the process, and what they need for their part to work. I know that seems like a base thing to say, as we’ve all been in prior arrangements where we’ve worked with other companies within a client’s agency roster, but this is really quite different. We are one. We have to listen as one and respond as one. The solution only works for the client if it works for all of us. Before you can approve an idea, you need to be sure it has the potential to come to life in new and different ways across the various arms of The Neighbourhood – to offer up potential that everyone is excited working to, right through to media and PR. And when you have to put other sets of priorities up front with what would usually be your own, it does change the way you see things.