Can agency experience make you a better ad director?

Hey Pete. It’s Pete here. Future Pete. 2026 Pete, to be exact. Let’s not spend too much time on the logistics because the whole thing falls apart pretty quickly.

You’re reading this in early 2015. You’re living in New York. You’ve somehow managed to turn a kid from Perth into an ECD at 72andSunny, which basically means you get paid more than you should to argue about the historic trends of vodka and the evolving behaviour of gamers.

Advertising, by the way, is exactly as good as you think it is. The people are great. The work’s fun. You’re right to enjoy it. There is, however, the small matter of wanting desperately to be a director. How hard can it be?

Turns out, pretty hard. We’ll get to that.

 Work hard, give a shit, be nice to people. It’s not a sophisticated business plan, but eleven years later it’s still holding up. Luck helps too.

Right now, though, you’re spending quite a lot of time on set watching the director and thinking about how you would’ve done things differently.

Take the curtains… Remember that shoot a few weeks ago? The director lost the better part of an hour changing a pair of curtains in the deep background because, for a brief but surprisingly intense period of the afternoon, the curtains became extremely important. Someone from the art department appeared carrying more curtains. Meanwhile you were sitting there thinking, nobody is ever going to notice them. We’ve got fourteen shots left to get.

A few days later you sat in the edit. Nobody mentioned the fucking curtains. And not because they’d eventually chosen “the right ones”. This gave you an irrational amount of confidence.

Above: Novosel helmed a droll spot last year that imagined NBA Champion Stephen Curry's interview for the role of Performance Advisor.

The sensible part of your brain keeps reminding you that you hired that director because their reel was perfect, that one film was rad, and the client liked that they had loads of Instagram followers. You, meanwhile, directed a few skateboard videos in high school and recently called the curtain situation correctly. These are not obviously comparable qualifications.

Still, with the particular confidence that comes with being a creative director in New York, you decide to go for it.

First step: buy a lot of coffees for anyone willing to sit down with you (also… switch to decaf after midday).

Everyone offers a slightly different version of the same advice: go make stuff, take the jobs, call in favours. At this point, twelve degrees of separation is still a connection.

Don’t be precious. Push the work. Bring fresh ideas. Write pages of alts. Then know when to stop.

What takes you longer to realise is that there isn’t one path. You’ll spend far too much time reverse-engineering other directors’ careers, as though somewhere there’s a correct sequence of spec ad, music video, small commercial, slightly larger commercial, Cannes Lion, big house in Venice Beach. Nope. 

There’s just your way. Which, as it turns out, mostly involves being you: work hard, give a shit, be nice to people. It’s not a sophisticated business plan, but eleven years later it’s still holding up. Luck helps too.

I know. You hate hearing that because luck sounds like the one variable you can’t control. But you kind of can. Do the work. Meet people. Send the third follow-up. Keep doing those things and luck has a funny way of finding you.

Above: Stills from Novosel's directing work, (left) Houseplant Presents... How to Ingest Cannabis with Seth Rogen and (right) Liquid Death, Keep the Underworld Beautiful campaign.

Anyway, here’s the thing I really wanted to tell you. Those years in advertising end up being one of the most valuable parts of becoming a commercial director. Not because they teach you comedy. Or how to rewrite in the edit. Or how to keep your face completely still when a CMO says something you fundamentally disagree with and everyone in the room turns to look at you. They teach you empathy.

When a creative team sends you a script, you see the weekends they gave up, the presentation they thought they’d blown, the note they hated but somehow made work, the late-night rewrite that finally unlocked it. You’re looking at weeks and months of someone’s time. It’s worth remembering, because every commercial you say yes to comes with an invisible contract; with yourself, the agency, the producer, the client, your crew. Somebody else is paying for that KFC commercial. Somebody’s promotion probably depends on it. Somebody cancelled dinner seven times to get that script sold.

Don’t be precious. Push the work. Bring fresh ideas. Write pages of alts. Then know when to stop. Your job is to make the best version of the thing they hired you to make, on budget and on time. If you want to make art, go make your short film. (You do, by the way. It leads to our first feature I’m prepping as you read this.)