New Zealand: Nick Worthington; Hands On Down Under

Nick Worthington, 49, is creative chairman of Colenso BBDO in Auckland. Born in Britain, he moved to New Zealand in 2003 to head up Publicis Mojo before switching to Colenso. After nearly three decades in advertising, he has established two key theories about devising a successful campaign. The first is that 90 per cent of the ideas generated by creative teams are rubbish, and it’s essential to keep pumping them out.

“When you’re working and you keep doing things and you don’t think they’re good, you can get into a downward spiral really quickly,” he says. “But you have to just keep on going until you find something that you’re really excited about.”

Secondly, if you’re judging the merits of a piece of work, award it either 10 or zero – nothing in between. In Worthington’s view: “When you’ve been in the business a long time, it’s pretty much how you respond to work. If you’re debating whether it’s any good or not, forget it, you’re in that middle ground and it’s no use being there.”

Bloody-mindedness pays

Worthington’s original plan was to be a graphic designer. Raised in an ‘idyllic’ village in Oxfordshire, he left school at 16 and went to work for a building firm. “It was great because I got a pay cheque and Fridays off – to do A-level art at the local college.”

A foundation course in art and design at Banbury School of Art was followed by admission to Central Saint Martins in London, one of the best art colleges in the country. “The principal at Banbury said, ‘You have to be realistic. You’re probably not going to get in.’ Out of bloody-mindedness, three of us applied and all got in, which was brilliant.”

Saint Martins in the early 80s did not encourage its students to go into advertising: “Most of the people who taught at Saint Martins were fairly purist designers, and advertising was still kind of barrow boy, slightly dirty and vulgar,” Worthington recalls. However, through a visiting lecturer, he became entranced by advertising’s “speed of thinking; it was about idea generation... whereas with the graphic design we were really focusing on the finished execution.”

The turning point was a placement at TBWA. “We were just blown away by the energy in the building. If they won a piece of business they all stopped work and drank champagne in the middle of the day. Then somebody had a good idea but they were drunk. And in the morning, everyone said, ‘that’s a great idea, let’s sell it to the client’, and they did.”

Sense of release

The TBWA placement led to a job with Symington and Partners: “It was so different. They were old school, so we got a bit lost, to be honest. We were aware that all the advertising in the world that we thought was awesome came from BBH.”

Before Worthington could decide to leave, he and his creative partner, John Gorse, were fired. “I was at home in Oxfordshire on Christmas Eve and there’s this phone call from the agency. It was like: ‘We didn’t wanna spoil your Christmas, right, but don’t come back in the new year.’ All the bloody family were going: ‘He got fired, this is terrible,’ but honestly my mate John and I just had this sense of release.”

Back in London, the pair spruced up their portfolio and were hired by BBH. “We started making the right ideas and producing them in the right way because we had people to help us and we ended up looking like pretty bloody good creatives.” Their work included Levi’s Creek and Drugstore – two of Worthington’s favourites: “When I look back, those are the ones that are close to 10 out of 10.”

After 10 years with BBH, Worthington moved to Abbott Mead Vickers and began working with Paul Brazier (now the agency’s ECD). Christmas holidays were spent scuba diving and crayfishing in New Zealand, where his wife’s twin sister was living. In 2003, that connection sprang into life when Worthington was asked by David Droga to join him on the Publicis board: “I said: ‘If I went anywhere I’d go to New Zealand, but there’s no Publicis there.’ He went: ‘Yes there is, it’s called Mojo.’ So we came to NZ.”

An early campaign at Publicis Mojo was for Speight’s beer: “The TV advertising wasn’t working, basically, so we said: ‘Speight’s comes from the South Island, it’s all about authenticity and ‘mateship’; what can we do?’” The answer was to pick up a pub and take it, by sea, to a ‘mate’ languishing in London. Says Worthington: “In New Zealand, you can move houses, they’re just on stilts, so why not a pub?”

Finding new digs

After five years with Publicis Mojo, Worthington upped sticks to become executive creative director at Colenso BBDO – just as the recession began. How badly has New Zealand been affected? “People in New Zealand think, ‘oh, it’s quite hard’. But I know people in the States and the UK, and comparatively, we’ve got away scot-free.”

These days, away from the hustle and bustle of London, Worthington clears his head by “riding my motorbike to work over the harbour bridge and chopping wood”. The New Zealand way of life – and its advertising industry – clearly suits him. “They seem to be freer and faster-thinking here. You give them an idea and some of the clients are more likely to go, ‘ah yeah, let’s do that’. There aren’t so many research groups and bits of data saying ‘we can’t measure it and it’s too dangerous’. It’s flying by the seat of your pants.”