On My Radar: Juliana Cobb

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

I’ve seen a lot of really intriguing ideas out there; often, they’re the kind of ideas that are more like these big, non-traditional, one-off, disruption-type ideas. And I love those! But it’s harder and harder to find full-blown, actual campaigns that carry the same impact. So, at the risk of sounding biased, the New York Times campaign made the biggest impression on me. (Yes, it’s a Droga5 campaign, no, I had nothing to do with it – much to my dismay!)

The reason it was so impactful was that the work effectively shook us up and commanded our attention without a lot of bells and whistles. In fact, it was that discipline of restraint, that commitment to keep it stripped back and firmly committed to the visual language of the NYT itself, that made it so powerful. It was simple. It was bold. It was making a clear point that, frankly, at the time, people in America deeply needed to hear.

The last spot, which aired on the Golden Globes, didn’t even have audio clips. Just the words. But those words – so carefully chosen, and so thoughtfully built up, give you chills. “He said, she said” will never mean the same thing again.

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

It’s funny, but nowadays, I don’t think of my time as being spent going to websites so much. Because these platforms are all being so brilliant at bringing their content to me. Apps, social posts, emails, and the like.

I love the New York Times, speaking of the above. I love Medium. I’m a sucker for Colossal, Lost At E Minor, It’s Nice That, and Flavorwire, which offer awesome brain candy and serve as great sources of inspiration. But I spend an inordinate amount of time – like we all do – on YouTube.

In many ways, YouTube is the Internet. Everything awesome about the Internet, you’ll find on YouTube. Cat videos. Amazing human stories of love and compassion. Amazingly stupid people doing dumb things, hilariously. A six-year-old playing a David Bowie song. David Bowie playing his last concert. You’ll find apology videos and rant videos. Hit songs from the 80s and songs that still haven’t found their audience.

YouTube is my drug of choice.

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

It doesn’t have an Apple on it. It’s a complete Sonos sound system. Music is so important to build a vibe at home. We’re never in silence. (We live in New York, so this is kinda critical – if you don’t make your own soundtrack, the city will give you one, and you may not like it.)

I can’t stand wires. And I can’t stand the gimcrackery of carrying little jamboxes from room to room. So, finally, we got the whole Sonos kit and caboodle and I love it. Using a brilliant app on your phone, you control the whole thing wirelessly – which playlist, whether to go to Spotify or iTunes, or even which rooms to play it in. “She shall have music where she goes.”

What’s your favoured social media platform?

Instagram. It’s easy on the brain – and the eyes. I’m a writer, but even I know a picture is worth a thousand words. They’re like little windows into people’s worlds – yeah, sometimes they’re excruciatingly curated and perfected, but that’s all part of it. We know the language of Instagram and we love it anyway. I really am going to love your selfie because you really DO look fine, and I know you know that, or you wouldn’t have posted it, but I’m not going to not agree just because I know the psychology of it. You know?

From Beige Cardigan and Fuck Jerry to National Geographic and NASA, it’s a visual record of life on earth, in millions and millions of little images. Plus, I have some photographer friends who use it quite a bit and I appreciate seeing the things they’re dabbling in aside from the professional stuff. I almost feel like I’m getting a more intimate sense of them, and where they are in their heads, through this ‘throw away’ forum instead of the gallery show or the shoot.

What’s your favourite app on your phone?

I’m not one of those people who has the latest app for everything on their phone. In fact, I harvested a lot of apps off my phone in the past year or two. I hated the clutter. I found that – barring a few favorites – I treated them like cheap toys at Christmas: played with them for a few minutes then set them aside creating another obstacle to scroll past to get to what I really want.

So, a consistently favoured app is one that unlocks the door to a million different cultural conversations and can serve any appetite at the press of a button – my podcast app. I’m a podcast nerd, addicted to Pod Save America and binge-listening to each season of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History each time it comes out.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

Just finished Black Mirror, season four. It is beautiful. It is so brilliantly conceived. I love seeing how they’re going to take some aspect of life that’s familiar to us, then weave a narrative that takes it to the nth degree so the familiar goes to a very, dark, unfamiliar place. It’s like the future you could never imagine, but rooted in something just relatable enough that, chillingly, you suddenly accept the feasibility, the closeness.

Each episode is directed by someone different. So, the look of the film, the feel of it, the personality of it, ALL changes from episode to episode – you step into a different world each time. The attention to detail, the brilliant production quality, the storylines - oh the storylines – I would give anything to grab a coffee with show creator and writer Charlie Brooker.

What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?

I think everyone should have seen Get Out. And if you didn’t, do it. Now. It was the most original movie that came out of Hollywood last year. It was more artfully and intelligently conceived than anything else I can recall. I loved that I didn’t have my footing, I couldn’t see what was going to happen next, through most of the movie – but in a way that I trusted, wholly. I trusted in the story and I felt caught up in it, not thrown by it. The writing was great, the performances were unbeatable. I’ve never seen a movie that came out as a genre movie – horror/psychological thriller/etc – but that at the same time, and equally effectively, made a point about race in America. [director] Jordan Peele is a genius and one to keep an eye on. I hope the Academy gives him his due.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

I was on Spotify. I noticed they had just imported every Shazam search I’d ever done and turned it into a playlist. I was freaking out, it was such a cool idea! I remember a Modest Mouse song on there that must have been from 2007, perhaps?

As I was marveling at the awesomeness of that Spotify playlist, I stumbled across a track totally unfamiliar to me, had no idea what it was, but when I heard it, I got chills because I realised it was the perfect music for a spot we were just finishing up. Totally unexpected, totally weird, not the kind of thing you just happen to brief the music house on. But so, so perfect.

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

This is an expected answer, but also the most salient. There weren’t many women above the level of creative director when I started (in 2002).

There still aren’t as many as there should be, but the list is growing – and agencies are getting better at figuring out some fundamental stuff that gives women what they need to keep growing in their careers. And when they do, the agency benefits from their expertise and loyalty. And the younger women coming through and just getting started, they have a role model to set an example for them: establishing the reality they can be there one day, too.

I never felt slighted because I was female, but I know none of us were as aware of the symptoms of bias as we are now – no one was talking about unconscious bias, ‘Lean In’ didn’t exist, there was no spotlight flipping the argument on its ear. Everyone thought women needed to act more like men in order to succeed. That’s wrong. We need to let people act like themselves if we’re ever going to get the best from them.

"If we’re going to be effective at joining the cultural conversation in a relevant way... we have to find a way to bring more people in from different backgrounds." 

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

Cost of entry. Not many people can afford ad school. Or art school. Or universities with fancy Mass Communication programs. And that means legions of creative people with innate talents will never find their way into an ad agency. They may not even learn of advertising as a potential career.

But if we’re going to be effective at joining the cultural conversation in a relevant way – let alone trying to lead it – we have to find a way to bring more people in from different backgrounds. The halls of the agency need to look more like the people on any American street.

We’ve started an internal program at Droga5 called D5in10, which is a 10-week course in advertising that is only open to people who aren’t from the industry and who aren’t from ad school. We have students of all ages, from all walks of life. And it sounds altruistic, but it’s actually self-serving. We get first dibs on fresh talent plucked from a place no one else is looking.

And as more agencies are aware of this need, I bet more agencies will launch similar programs. I’d love there to be basic advertising programs at two-year colleges with free tuition.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

I feel lucky that I’ve worked with not only talented people, but generous people, kind-hearted people. People with integrity. That seems like a rarity in advertising, but it isn’t. I found myself drawn to the people who weren’t typical ‘ad guys’. Meaning, people who were outside the typical profile of a creative. I loved the geeks who came from remarkably specialised digital frontiers, or the socially awkward people who weren’t ‘smooth’ but thought in really cool ways, and the freakishly smart ones, who maybe didn’t write the perfect five-word headline, but, oh man, they were brilliant creative problem-solvers who could give you awesome ideas for a spot or a campaign platform

I valued what I’ve come to call ‘outsider thinking’. Ad schools have been great at training new generations of thinkers, but sometimes it homogenises that thinking. Outsider thinking can give you something entirely new, unexpected. And this can come from simply a different background, a different perspective – which is why the conversation about diversity in advertising is so critical.

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

This is a great question! I’m pretty open, so people know my deal pretty well. But this story just came up the other day – so here you go. When I was three-years-old, I sought refuge with the Dalai Lama in Nepal. Not by myself, obviously. It was the late 70s and my mom was making the pilgrimage with some friends, so my older sister and I were (reluctantly) in tow as we hoofed it up the mountain. I regret that I don’t honestly remember much of the experience – I’m told he performed the Black Crown Ceremony.

But apparently, as part of your meeting with the Dalia Lama, he goes inside your head and gives you a special Buddhist name. I have no idea what name he gave me, neither does my mom, but I kind of love the idea of His Holiness wandering through my three-year-old head. I wonder what he saw there. Probably food. I had a huge appetite when I was little.