The man who goes with his gut and gets complaints about that sometimes.
My instinct told me that Sam is a kind person when I first saw his profile online. Still it was a huge surprise when he accepted my asking for an interview willingly without any hesitation. When you climb up to a certain place in the career ladder and a random student out of nowhere calls for an interview for her personal project? I would dither for a while (maybe because I am a mean person) but for Sam, he smiled and firmly said “I would help you”, just like a bro.
Sam Mussa is an award-winning Art Director working at Ogilvy Canada for the last 3 years. He has left his mark on numerous successful campaigns such as Cadbury – Call someone you love and Dove Men+ Care – Take the time. Other than the information that you can look up online, to me, he is a kind of person who’s always on time, sympathetic ( he spared me an hour to do the interview in the middle of his vacation, like, really) and extremely humorous.
Describe yourself with 1 word only and explain why?
Sam: I would have to say “Curious”. I am genuinely curious on how things work, like, my mind always seizes up and tries to break things down to understand how is that even possible, how can I use it, what can I use it for. I always love experiencing new things, playing with new toys and trying out new stories.
Couple years ago, I started travelling just by myself. If I take vacations I'm usually a homebody and I stay in the city. I may go see a movie, may hang out with some people but that is, I don’t go anywhere but I made a big decision to go to NYC and then to San Francisco. I got lost in those cities. I didn’t have an actual plan. People thought it is a little bit crazy but for me, I just want to walk and whatever I find is whatever I find. I want to experience and understand how powerful curiosity is. I had no idea, I was like “hey! That sounds like an interesting thing, let’s do it, let’s see what happens”.
That allows me to be open and agile, allows me to accept change, embraces it and then uses it for power of good, be able to do stuff with it. I think curiosity is important.
So you are the kind of person that goes with your gut?
Yeah I was told that I used my gut too much <laugh>. Sometimes I have to give it a second think, think about it, logically structure it so that I can get someone on board but yeah, I am that kind of person.
Explain what does an Art director do in a way that even a grandma can understand.
It is kinda like what grandmas do. The whole purpose of our design is creating connection, easing human interaction and allowing human engagement so that they can respond. What you say and how you say it should be clear, accurate and interesting. You have to have an eye on and take care of everything. It’s similar to what grandmas do, they are great in creating warm, trustworthy and endearing relationships. They take care and keep everything together and you feel like you can always lean on your grandma.
The other simpler way to look at art direction is I come up with an idea with my partner, hopefully it is a good one, and now we have to make it look interesting and resonant so that I can stop you.
Or if you want a straightforward version: I make things that make people buy stuff and make it look good. <LOL>
My favourite misunderstanding about my job is “Do you do the newspaper ads?” and they point to one at the back of the newspaper where it’s just like “I need help on this, I am looking for that.” It is always those ads, not the good one that they flip to get to those.
You can only keep one tool and one software to work with for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I am gonna say an iPad which has a high capability, a very strong one. However, if i have a piece of paper and a pen to explain what my thinking is, it’s enough. But for this hypothetical situation, where shit runs out and no one gets stuff to replace, having a marker is problematic cause you’re gonna run out of ink very fast. So logically I think the answer is a tablet because it is everything. For software, I enjoy using some of the softwares that is developed for the iPad, they are more paintely, like ProCreate. That’s me doing illustration and writing my stuff. It’s handy and operates like paper so it’s great to jot down notes and sketch out ideas as well.
So you are the kind of art director that can draw stuff or can not draw?
I can draw a lil bit. I am a bit rusty, I think if I give myself a regimented practice everyday for a month, I can get back up to what I used to be. I had the ambition to do comic books. I remember I used to do a lot of illustration but that just went downhill because I spend a lot of my time in a day coming up with stuff for people, that after work, the last thing I wanna do is looking at a laptop trying to do something creative myself. It's still something I should do like carve out time for myself, I'll eventually get to it.
How does a day at Ogilvy Canada look like?
Ok, I try to figure out how to make it sounds very good in case somebody at WPP ends up finding your article and then “Waiiiit a minute! He said something terrible about a day in Ogilvy.”
So I am gonna wake up at 6:30, I’ma beat my alarm and then after that it’s just the question of does my willpower have enough energy to get me off the bed. That’s the issue cause I’m awake, but my body is like “We’re not going anywhere Sam but you are awake clearly.”
Then I leave my place at 7 – 7:30, I get to the office ideally by 8:30, it usually takes about an hour. That gives me enough time to maybe grab a coffee or a sandwich from one of the shops around us. Then I sit down, open up my email to see if anyone sent me anything last night cause I probably didn’t pay attention or I did but I ignored it. Then I respond as much as I can and if there’s still anything left over that I need to build, I use that time in the morning to touch up files, make sure the deck is in order. If I have to show something with the creative director, I just make sure everything is in good shape. If it is a clear day, we will have a lot of our stuff done.
At 10 AM, I will book a room or try to find a little area, maybe go to a coffee house to work on some ideas. We can work in the office, it’s fine, but since our office is an open space so it's a bit noisy. When we have a lot of things on our plate, we will go somewhere else. Usually, it’s just down the street, there are 5 coffee shops and a park next to Ogilvy, we just pick one of those. In the old office, we used to have our own space, so we will find a shared room, close the door to work and be able to put stuff on the wall. That way we were isolated. But the nice thing with the new office is it affords us to break away from the office for a little bit just to reset our mind.
During the working session, I will work with my copywriter partner and we will shift our mind from projects to projects. When we're stuck, we’d like to move on to another one, I find that it would help us to look at it with a fresher eye to see if what you had are still good or you can improve it. Then if I have a meeting, I will come back and attend.
What is the craziest idea that you have ever proposed to your client?
This is the one where I had to think about real hard, because I find that by the time you get to a client, it's no longer a crazy idea. It’s a great idea. It's just like there's a lot of rules and logic you put into it so it doesn't feel as “Hey! This is a crazy idea. May not work. Blah!” I feel that that kind of presentation requires you to have no real set up and just accept it for what it is. I don't know how many ads are made that way.
I think what you mean is like what is like the weirdest thing that I ever suggested? That would have to be what we did for Sugar Crisp and it was made. I wasn't part of the actual creation of the spout. It was made by a colleague at the agency but he didn't have an art director anymore when he came to the marketing phase so I helped him.
We needed to talk to gamers and the best way to talk to games is using other gamers. Maybe we could use some guys on Twitch or one of the streamers. The discussion went along and to the question that “does it matter if we use them or not, what if we just make one up?” From that crazy thought of “let’s just make up an influencer”, we actually did it. We created an unauthentically authentic game streamer who has his own channel on Youtube and Instagram. We developed content for those channels while selling the spout.
We did a lot of stuff to make sure that you can tell we are faking it but at the same time, try to be endearing about it. We even went that far of buying likes and followers from bots. It was a very fun experience. Then just shortly after it, Facebook and Instagram announced the policy of identification. So we were just in and out real quick but the result was very good. The sales went up even though before, it had been declining. So that that was the weirdest craziest thing I've ever done.
I have had stuff that is crazy and never got made. For me at that point, that is not the craziest idea that you are looking for, it’s just no one made it. I found that it is only crazy if it becomes a great idea and you can sell it to the client, and when you sell it to the client, it's not really crazy, it’s a great idea.
What is the 1st question you will ask when you receive a brief?
I think I would change every other day when I get a brief. For me, the question I ask myself is “does the conveyed message make sense as a single minded one?” Then if I want to confirm my understanding, I will externalize my question, starting with “Is it accurate if I say xyz” to see what parameter that I am playing in. It is efficient to understand what the brief is asking me to do and what I should do to answer it.
What was the brief for Dove Men+Care - Take the time?
Dove Men started to champion father. They released a video named “Dear future dads” and what they wanted us to do was take on another angle on that. They had a few ways but what they chose for us to work on was “what can we do with paternity leaves?”
Paternity leaves sounds great, I think everybody agrees on it but what we found on the data surprised us. The data showed that every guy was for paternity leaves, they loved the idea but that same pool of people, only 30% said they will take it. The social stigma that stops them is very similar to every woman. “How would they see me, what would they say, is my job safe, is my promotion in question, what are my coworkers and my friends are gonna say?” They face the same issue as well, on top of needing to take that time to recover. Life would be better if people stopped being mean to each other. But getting back to the point we wanted men to know that they are also a part of this time as well and that bond when you develop that early strengthens later on in life. They should not be judged for taking time that the government gives with their kids. It’s no brainer. That’s where we see our opportunity and the problem to tackle.
Tell me something about this project that is special to you.
There is one particular moment that I found endearing. It was with one of our dads, he told us he was at the time taking skating lessons. It was not for a random reason or an emerging personal interest. He was taking skating lessons because he wanted to somedays teach his daughter how to skate and his daughter was only 4 months old. I wish I had more moments like that one.
If there was a thing that you could choose to change in that campaign, what would it be?
There isn’t a lot that I would change other than I wish I had a couple more dads. I would love it if we had either more time with some of them or more dads who we didn’t necessarily feature in the documentary but for collateral material. The budget was actually very good and I am thankful for that. We did a wonderful job and it was well received.
Thank you Sam for joining this interview. I believe we spread the positive vibe and the can-do attitude to the readers. We are all looking forward to your team's next projects and wish you all the best.
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