Gearóid 'Ged' Carroll Interview(s)
Viewpoints about Creativity
In a few words, can you tell us who you are what your job title is?
My name is Gearóid Carroll, most people call me Ged. I work as a strategy director on a freelance basis. I have worked for a number of creative and advertising agencies, as well as a couple of spells inhouse.
What word would you best use to describe your office’s culture? Give us an example
Great ideas and insights can come from anywhere, it's about respecting that tenet.
If you were stranded on a desert island and could only use one app., which app would it be?
Apple's podcast app or Newsblur to stay informed.
If you could choose three ads from history that you didn’t work on and add them to your portfolio, which three would you choose? Explain why
Gearóid 'Ged' Carroll:
- 1 BreathAsure - George Kennedy ad (1996). The UK agency adapted the US ad by adding at the packshot the following voiceover 'despite of this advertising, BreathAsure has become the #1 breath fresher in America.' It nailed the cultural difference, added authenticity and was memorable.
- 2 BMW - the ultimate driving machine (1981). The ad campaign made fast but poor handling cars from a German car company sufficiently desirable that in the space of 20 years they outsold major American manufacturers. And they did a really good job on audio branding way before Intel.
- 3 Nurofen See My Pain. Classic piece based on the insight that healthcare professionals have problems understanding the degree of pain experienced by women patients. My former colleague and friend Lee worked on it and it's a fantastic piece of work.
What is your opinion on the growing trend of agencies getting involved with developing products for clients?
Can you watch this case study for Hammerhead Navigation and tell us your thoughts on the product and the campaign?
Agencies strategic currency is in insights and the creative currency is the idea and how it's manifested. There have been some great examples like Goodbody & Silverstein's cover that attached a Sprint 5G dongle and held an iPad - showing how 5G's data speeds could be used, when it wasn't immediately apparent.
But industrial and product design is a skill in itself. Very few clients have it right at the centre of their products consistently - even Apple makes the occasional turkey.
Hammerhead is built on a good insight about the need for glanceable directions for cyclists, but the execution would struggle in the urban environment, for instance on a roundabout with multiple exits like Old Street in London's tech start-up centre. This might be because the time to go from insight to product was too short and the design wasn't sufficiently pressure tested. Great products also need iterations: we think of the iPod 5GB as a design classic now, but the iPod experience that was ultimately successful didn't happen until the second generation. It was a similar experience with the original iPhone. Large corporates like Unilever have a series of go/no go gates in new product development that helps refine a product, yet there is still a massive product launch failure rate.
Product development needs to be focused, for instance I couldn't understand why the development team didn't integrate their product with navigation software like Citymapper or Waze rather than building their own version?
The insight clearly shows that the need for Hammerhead is there; but I'd want to have the product percolate and emerge in a much more mature state.
But industrial and product design is a skill in itself. Very few clients have it right at the centre of their products consistently - even Apple makes the occasional turkey.
Hammerhead is built on a good insight about the need for glanceable directions for cyclists, but the execution would struggle in the urban environment, for instance on a roundabout with multiple exits like Old Street in London's tech start-up centre. This might be because the time to go from insight to product was too short and the design wasn't sufficiently pressure tested. Great products also need iterations: we think of the iPod 5GB as a design classic now, but the iPod experience that was ultimately successful didn't happen until the second generation. It was a similar experience with the original iPhone. Large corporates like Unilever have a series of go/no go gates in new product development that helps refine a product, yet there is still a massive product launch failure rate.
Product development needs to be focused, for instance I couldn't understand why the development team didn't integrate their product with navigation software like Citymapper or Waze rather than building their own version?
The insight clearly shows that the need for Hammerhead is there; but I'd want to have the product percolate and emerge in a much more mature state.
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