On My Radar: Emma de la Fosse

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

I’m rewriting the answer to this question because I’ve just seen the new Sainsburys’ Christmas ad Mog’s Christmas Calamity (below). (On Facebook, as it happens, so I was treated to the three-minute cut.) Judith Kerr’s wonderful books provided the fuel for bedtime stories for both my sons and even though they’ve now outgrown them, the books still sit on the shelf having survived many clear outs.

The Sainsbury spot captures the cat’s character brilliantly and the commercial feels very much like reading one of Kerr’s own stories. Warmth, humour and charm are there in abundance and while the ad has a moral tale at it’s core, you never feel that it is deliberately pulling too hard at your heartstrings. After all, stuff does go wrong at Christmas and people do all gather round to help. (Last year my neighbour’s oven broke, so she borrowed ours.)

Credit to the animators too; after a while you forget that Mog is CGI and the boundary between live-action and animation becomes deliciously blurred. Apparently the ad is accompanied by a book of the same name (on sale at Sainsburys, obvs) which will go to raise money for a charity. So the ad is also helping a worthy cause. But do you know what? For me it’s enough that it’s a great piece of hugely enjoyable TV advertising, a true Christmas blockbuster.                                               

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

I should lie and say something cool and trendy, however, the websites I use most are for grocery shopping and banking and travel.  It’s terribly unexciting but I do most of my day-to-day stuff online. I have done for years. Unfortunately I am always ‘falling down the rabbit hole’. Something will catch my eye and I’ll end up on Etsy looking at vintage fairy lights or Derelict London’s fabulous site (below) pouring over the routes of hidden rivers or photographs of long abandoned tunnels.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

A bicycle.  I’d been searching for ages for a lightweight, upright ‘Dutch’ style bike in preparation for our move to Sea Containers House in the New Year. On my way home on the bus a couple of weeks ago I passed a bike shop. In the window, was a Dutch bike with a hastily scrawled sign on it: “Cheaper than on the internet!” Sold.  The power of advertising.

Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

Facebook for keeping abreast of what friends and family are up to, and Twitter for getting up-to-the-minute ‘proper’ news. I post on Twitter more than FB but posting can be quite addictive so you have to exercise a bit of self-restraint. I’ve seen people become so obsessed with updating their status and curating their own brand, that they ignore their friends sitting next to them. It’s interesting to see that some artists are now asking fans to put their phones away during concerts so they can just enjoy the moment without feeling the urge to record it.

What’s your favourite app on your phone and why?

Waze. The interactive, crowd sourced, motoring community mApp.  I love the idea that motorists can be the key to keeping the traffic flowing by sharing info. I even look at it when I’m not going anywhere. That’s really sad. I am a bit of a map nerd.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

The Great British Bake Off. Is it the great silverback himself? Or is it the mental torture of the technical? Goddamit. Nobody can seem to explain why a show about baking is such compulsive viewing but I’m going to give it a go: Bake Off is Britian’s favourite telly (no I’m sorry, it’s official – look at the viewing figures), for the same reason Midsummer Murders has quietly raked in millions. It’s just the right balance of nail-biting nerves-meets-comfy undemanding telly in pretty surroundings.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

Alan Parker’s very first film Melody; which has a soundtrack written by the BeeGees. It’s a whimsical love story set in London in the early 1970s. It re-unites the two stars of the musical Oliver - Mark Lester and Jack Wild. Wild plays the tearaway, Lester the shy schoolboy who falls for his classmate Melody. Don’t expect anything particularly deep or art-house; it’s just a lovely thing to watch that makes you feel happy. Sometimes that’s all you need from a film.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

Inspiration strikes all the time. I’m not a calm, measured person whose thoughts and ideas evolve slowly over time, ideas pop into my head every 10 minutes or so. I keep notebooks at work, by my bed and in my bag.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

The industry has changed completely.  When I started working in it we made adverts.  We made telly ads, print ads, radio ads.  That was about it. Now ideas can take many different forms. The answer is just as likely to be a new twist on a client’s packaging as it is to be a 30-sec spot.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

Talk less. Do more.  Clients and agencies spend far too much time and money in meetings and workshops. I’m a big fan of the content model; make five ideas, run five ideas, see which one works best, roll it out.  It’s cheaper, faster and you’ll get a much more accurate picture of whether its going to have the desired effect. Plus you’ll all be making more stuff and that keeps clients and agencies happy.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

I’d have to say OgilvyOne. If I hadn’t joined, my career would have progressed at a very different speed and possibly in quite a different direction.

There are three reasons why; the agency produced work at a phenomenal rate, much faster than any other agency I’d worked at. This meant you could build a new portfolio in six months. They give creatives a very free reign, so you could find yourself coming up with all sorts of new and unexpected ways to solve a brief. Lastly OgilvyOne was one of the very first agencies to properly get into digital, very much ahead of the curve.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know…

After knowing me for many years some of my friends will suddenly realise I have different coloured eyes. They can be quite indignant about it, as though it’s a secret I’ve kept from them.