Q&A: Interview with Andy Wright, Creative Director

To celebrate National Creativity Day, we caught up with Andy Wright and his creative process, thoughts on the industry and on his creative career so far.

Can you tell me about yourself and your role at Dupree International?

Simply put, I work with internal staff and external contributors and suppliers to create, plan and deliver a strategic vision, on brand, for clients.

How did you start out in the creative world?

After completing my degree course in graphic design, I then went onto work for the publishing giant EMAP (now Bauer Publishing). I worked in various roles in-house at EMAP creating various work from marketing to advertising projects, both for internal and external clients. This gave me an understanding of the creative principles across a broad spectrum of disciplines. My career path stretched out from there.

If you could give someone one piece of advise to wanting to get in to a career in creative media what would it be?

There’s is no easy route. You can’t fake it. If you’re thinking of entering this world and getting a foot in the door, let alone making a career out of it, you’ve got to let it become your life. You should be thinking about some aspect of creativity all the time. Surround yourself with like-minded people and explore your collective thoughts. Constantly look around you, keep your ears open and absorb anything and everything that could at some point be a part in a jigsaw you aren’t even aware of yet. Finally, understand as many principles to producing work as possible. The more guidelines you understand the more rounded you become.

You’ve worked with a vast array of brands and industries. What has been your stand out favourite campaign to work on and why?

Phew, it’s a bit like asking which is your favourite child. Some work comes with the kudos of working on ‘that well-known brand’, other work comes in the form of sleepless nights and successful out-comes. But I guess the real memorable ones are the pieces of work that a, stand the test of time and b, always get a ‘satisfactory smile’ from the new viewer for the first time.

What is the most interesting creative brand campaign you’ve seen in media from organisations and brands other than your own?

1960-80’s VW advertising – produced by the then agency DDB. The first ad agency to bring copywriters and art directors together to form a creative team. Arguably the dawn of great, modern ‘creative’ campaigns.

Most successful creative idea that you’ve had in your career?

Again, a tricky question. As with my favourite campaign, a successful creative idea can be judged on multiple levels. I guess from a client’s perspective we produced a campaign and the whole of his UK adventure clothing stock was sold out within three weeks. The design of a ‘off the cuff’ brochure, that secured the agency I was working for 5 years of further business. My personal measure is that the creative achieved and then surpassed its initial goal rather than the aesthetics.