#PitchGraveyard

Head of Illustration Nicki Field talks us through some of our favourite jobs that just didn’t quite fit the bill. Featuring projects and pitches that were never meant to be, from Burger King’s re-brand to Kiehl’s holiday campaign. Enjoy!

Nicki:
As a production company, part and parcel of our job is sharing the excellent work produced by our talent and celebrating the client partnerships that make it happen. As anyone else in the business knows, the work that makes it out into the wild is only ever a portion of where our time is really spent. Pitching, testing, treating, are all such a huge part of the big creative machine.

Being an agent or rep, we are facilitators. We work hard to find opportunities for our talent, to nurture enquiries to fruition and give time to creative problem solving with clients, to really untangle the task and work out how best we do this together, to find a way to ‘make it happen’. As anyone operating within this industry in the last few months knows, this is no mean feat. As production constraints rise, so does our creative challenges and as ever, the competition hots up.

There’s nothing quite like seeing a campaign or piece of work you are hugely proud of out in the world. That TVC that finally proves to your Granny what you really do, or the billboard that you walk past on a daily basis, weirdly knowing that you had a part in what’s up there.

But this got us thinking… what about all the work we dearly love that never makes it out there for real? Sometimes the thinking and development involved in a pitch can stretch an Artist’s or Director’s muscles in a new way. A creative can see a glimmer of something that a talent hasn’t realised just yet and teases it out of them with clever and astute direction. Or, everyone loves the pitch outcome, but a budget gets pulled or an up-top decision maker throws in a last-minute curveball, all this despite the greatness of the work. There are so many reasons aside from the ‘just not quite nailing it’ – which also, let’s be real – can happen. So we thought, how about celebrating some of our favourite work that never quite made it?

The rebrand that broke design Twitter – JKR & Burger King
JKR NY right now are on fire. The work coming out of there is tip-top design work of the highest order. The Burger King identity released earlier this year, pays a homage to the company’s heritage and is a deliberate sidestep away from its ‘petrol station’ predecessor.

Of course, we love it when a creative team or a studio embraces illustration with as much love as we give to it, creating a seamless integration of artwork into the fabric of a brand. Therefore we adore Cachetejack’s final assets, but at the same time, we can’t help be curious knowing what might have been with these earlier tests by Alva Skog.

NIKE Ekins
Sneakerheads will know this, EKIN is Nike backwards and is a term for the brand’s product and brand experts. For NIKEs 2020 gifting, they sought to personify their EKINs with a family of 3d characters.

One of the things I enjoy the most about my job is when artists deliver on a brief (amplified by an intense pitch deadline) and you realise how much you love their magical brains. The final set of EKINs created by Colin Ozawa are so perfectly wonderful. Yet we’ve still got a lot of love for the designs explored in the treatment by Eva Cremers and Design Lad.

KITCHEN x Mini-Cheddars.
The one that got away. Real sadness here and I’m okay (now, just about) with saying it. Seeing the newly released TVC on Friday in a slew of Gogglebox adverts, there was a very real pang. Yet you know what, it’s truly great. We can say that and still be sad that we didn’t quite get to be the ones that made it. Especially when there’s mood-films with great soundtracks, an adventure time-esque theme so truly akin to George’s (head of KITCHEN) sensibility and vision as a Director, plus beloved character development like the above.

Such great, great creative from the agency met with pure enjoyment. Alas. What will be will be.

Design Lad x Kiehls Holiday.
An oldie but a goldie. Little did anyone know that as the rest of world is desperate to forget Christmas and is settling into the New Year and nearly in Spring, Ad-land and brands are already deep in thinking about the next one. Forget Christmas in July, it’s Holidays in March. Working alongside the wonderful creative team at Kiehls in New York, Design Lad was invited to pitch in 2019 on Kiehls Holiday 2020.

Sadly, it was not meant to be, but the exercise that Design Lad took in his development with character design has been a joyful journey. Ask many artists to name a brand that truly celebrates Artists and Kiehls will be it. From past collabs from Kaws, Andy Rementer, Kate Moross to Jeff Koons plus many more greats, all from the amazing eye and creative guardianship of their in-house creative team. It is truly a cherry-on-top kind of brief.