D&AD: Making it into the good book

Matthew Bull, ECD of The Bull-White House NYC, reveals how he first looked at a D&AD Annual seeking a particular stimulation and found so much more…

“When I was a kid, my Mum, a TV producer, used to bring home pirated video tapes of great UK ads. At the time, all TV material from the UK was banned in South Africa, so these were precious little titbits we’d get, allowing us to revel in the humour of the country we were born in.

One day, she brought home a book, one that my art director stepfather seemed to, well, kneel to. After watching Paul Hogan’s Fosters commercials for the umpteenth time, I decided I’d page through that book, hopeful, like any deprived South African teenage boy, of seeing some naked women who didn’t have stars over their boobs.

Under these shameful motivations, I had the joy of consuming my first D&AD Annual. One doesn’t merely read a D&AD Annual does one? It remains one of the few times I have not fallen asleep with a book on my chest.

Most people in our business, regardless of their generation, will consider winning any accolade from D&AD an illusive quest. It was particularly difficult if you were plying your trade in South Africa in the 90s. We thought we weren’t allowed to enter because of Apartheid. Actually, we weren’t allowed to enter because we weren’t British (even though I was born there?) So we got a double jolt of joy in the 90s – the end of Apartheid, and the end of the British only D&AD rule.

It is impossible to explain to everyone how determined we were to create work that would be deemed world class – good enough to make it into the book of D&AD. My creative partner and I, Tony Granger, working for TBWA Hunt Lascaris, were almost obsessed with it. Then, one wonderful day, it happened. A TV commercial we had done was awarded an in-book in the international section of D&AD – the first South African agency to make it into D&AD. It’s not the biggest award I’ve ever been a part of winning, but it’s still the most meaningful.

There is much more to D&AD, of course. I’ve just started an agency here in New York, and, as we’re smaller than a politician’s brain, I’m back to sitting in front of blank pieces of paper trying to fill them with original musings, work that will earn our agency the respect of all. As always, I am looking to have a conversation with something that will inspire me to help create work that will inspire others.

Like every other day when faced with that page, I turn to the one companion I know will inspire me more than any other. A D&AD Annual. Today it’s the D&AD of 1986. Funny how something so old can still inspire one to want to be so fresh.