On My Radar: Mary-Sue Masson

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

I loved the SYDNEY Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras online film, The Big Deal. Great script, cracking performances. This film walks that tricky line between funny and touching. Not an easy thing to pull-off. I suspect our Aussie’s cousins are well qualified to do this. (On the subject of lines, the big old bra’s hanging from that washing carousel is a nice touch).

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

I like ‘It’s nice that’ as it covers interesting stuff from all different creative disciplines. I have friends who are in art, fashion, design and architecture so I like to see what’s happening in their world.

My husband was the lead architect on the New Design Museum so I loved being kept up to date with ‘It’s nice that’ posts, (This was a great source of info as he was so knackered by the whole process he never wanted to discuss it at home). Oh, and The Deliveroo/Netflix combo is hard to beat on a Friday night.

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

I recently bought an extra Sonos speaker to add to our growing sound system. This caused much hilarity after I found my mum staring at it; when I asked what was wrong she asked me where the ‘tape’ went. And a Dyson Handheld V8, I whip that beauty out at the merest hint of a crumb to vacuum anything from the furniture and my kids to my mother.

Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

Instagram; I am naturally drawn to the visual. I love photographing stuff I find interesting/funny (I live in Hackney, so it can be a daily occurrence). There was a bloke cycling along the road yesterday on a Unicycle, phone in one hand, Tesco carrier bag in the other, acting all casual like, ‘yeah this is me, this how I roll…’. I find this sort of thing amusing. Annoyingly, he was too fast, I missed that one.

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

Google Maps. Or I might be found wandering around somewhere in Surbiton.  And Blinkist, which has 100’s of non-fiction books condensed into 15mins of interesting stuff, (which I promptly forget after another 15 minutes, but some gems stay with me). It's great for the bus or Tube.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

I got into Mad Men quite late in the day. The set design, Don Draper and the design-classic furniture are all a treat for the eye. I find the amount of fags and booze consumed in a working day highly entertaining.

The characters are brilliant, I especially love Peggy’s journey as a lone female creative in an all male dept. I worked as part of an all-female creative team in an all-male dept in the early 90s, (we once walked into our office to find it had been ‘decorated’ with sanitary towels), so I can relate to her character.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

This is a tough one, as there are so many films worth seeing for so many different reasons, I got it down to two. Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves. Pretty gloomy stuff set around the oil-rigs of the North of Scotland. It was the first time I saw Emily Watson whose performance was so authentic it blew me away. This film stayed with me for a long time afterwards. 

And I also have to throw in 12 Angry Men, purely to remind us all the power of an incredible script and great performances. Set almost exclusively in one location, a hot, sweaty jurors room. A gripping film.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

Chatting to one of my local mum mates in a bar last week. She told me a funny story that is going into a script I’m working on, (I’ll change the names). I generally find people inspiring for all sorts of reasons.

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

There is, finally, far more diversity in advertising, casts are getting closer than ever before to reflecting the society we actually live in, (as supposed to the narrow spectrum of white, middle class, heterosexual, pretty, thin and no older than 32).

Stand out examples are Dove’s campaign for real beauty, Malteser’s and Channel4’s diversity campaign, and also This Girl Can which blurs the line from Advertising to activism. Despite some cynicism, I think this trend of using brands to help promote positive change is a great thing.

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

Despite many positive changes brought about by the ad industry, (see above), it still has a way to go to change attitudes among its own. I hope it won’t be too long before myself, and other women are seen as directors as supposed to ‘female directors’. Do people often ask for a treatment by a ‘male director'? It's ridiculous.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

Leaving ad-land to work for the BBC was one of the best moves I ever made, although the change in culture was quite a shock. I went in with layout pads and magic markers, but after some brilliant training and hands-on production experience I came out with a full understanding of how to get those ideas onto screen.

Then from BBC To CD, Trevor Robinson OBE (too many acronyms?). Trevor embraced the fact that I write and direct so we’ve made some great campaigns together, including Haribo. He was very cool with flexible working, which made a huge difference to my career when my kids were younger. Trev is something of pioneer, I think the first to set up a combined agency/production company when he founded Quiet Storm over 20 years ago. 

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

Lemmy of Motorhead taught me to play snooker as a kid. (He was a regular at The Portobello Gold in Notting Hill, where my Aunt was the landlady in the late 70’s/early 80’s).

I sometimes went to stay there with my cousin, Donna, at weekends. We could never understand why all these people had his name, “LEMMY’ in studs on the back their jackets, we would point out to them that wasn’t actually their name. (He never told us he was a rock star, he was just a nice man who gave us the time of day).