Franki Goodwin — Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi London
Franki talks to TheNextGag about how she went from a being film specialist to an ad woman, how movie marketing should evolve and her collaboration with Gorillaz.
Franki Goodwin is a Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi London in the UK.
Franki leads a double life as a Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi London and as CBO of Western Edge Pictures and the Gennaker Group — a group of independent Film Production and Finance Companies.
Having graduated with a first class degree in Visual Communication from Glasgow School of Art, she started her career as a Graphic Designer, then Art Director, working on campaigns for the UK’s leading Brand and Viral Agencies, alongside movie campaign work for Distributers, Financiers, Sales Agents, Cinemas and directly with independent Film Productions. As digital media evolved in the early 2000’s, so did her role and her first company Franki&Jonny — a boutique brand and digital agency for independent films. They pioneered early integrated content and social media campaigns and won many awards, including a BAFTA interactive and a bunch of D&ADs. As a result Franki was recently was named by the prestigious awards outfit the FWA as a ‘Digital Pioneer’ for her work in this period.
Her move into advertising happened in 2013 when she joined Saatchi & Saatchi — bringing unique digital expertise and storytelling skills to an integrated advertising role working across clients such as Marie Curie, Asda, Chelsea FC and Deutsche Telekom. In 2016 Franki won 9 Cannes Lions for “Sea Hero Quest” — the world’s first game to plug into Dementia research, which was then named as top 10 campaigns of 2016 by Creative Review and Campaign.
THENEXTGAG: CAN YOU TALK TO US ABOUT HOW SEA HERO QUEST CAME TOGETHER ?
FRANKI GOODWIN: In this day and age, it’s not enough for brands to say they create good products. Deutsche Telekom wanted to commit to doing more, to developing a world-changing idea and connecting their brand, audience and their technology to a real world problem.
So we created Sea Hero Quest. For us, it was about identifying a problem we thought we could solve. We had the idea to harness the 3 billion hours people spend gaming globally each week to crowdsource data for scientists. Once we teamed up with leading experts from universities across the world, and journalists and charities, we hit on the perfect experiment to amplify a route to early diagnosis of dementia via a game that would gather brain data from everyone to understand the way the brain navigates. Then it was the ‘simple’ task of creating something fun, entertaining and scientifically viable and getting people to play it. Which they did. 2.5 Million of them.
TNG: HOW DID YOU TRANSITION FROM THE FILM INDUSTRY TO THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY ?
FG: Lloyd Salmons brought me on board when his company joined the Saatchi & Saatchi network. I wasn’t looking for a job as I was building up the Western Edge Pictures film slate but the opportunity to work at the most famous ad agency in the world was too intriguing — I never imagined that it was even an option with my eclectic CV. We had similar stories in that Lloyd and his partner, Ant, had started out specialising in music marketing, whereas I had been a film specialist so he wasn’t worried about the transition. It was like learning a new language and once I was fluent I was fine.
Ultimately ideas are ideas, people are people. Film has the luxury of being something people want to discover, compared to insurance or toothpaste but I think that drives complacency and a lot of formulaic work so I was keen for a new challenge. Saatchi & Saatchi London, and Kate Stanners in particular have been incredibly supportive of me being able to run my film company alongside. It’s a brilliant balance and it’s safe to say after winning 15 Cannes Lions in three years and this year being on the Promo and Activation Jury at Cannes, I’m totally hooked.
TNG: CAN YOU SHARE WITH US YOUR UPCOMING PROJECTS ?
FG: The next project from Deutsche Telekom which we launched in April was Magenta Unleashed — a Partnership with the Gorillaz. We found a clever way to combine AR technology and green screen to turn Deutsche Telekom’s brand colour into a media channel and helped to launch their new album. We also got to work with Jamie and Damon to bring the Gorillaz to life with human bodies for the first time in our spot which was a huge leap of faith for them. I’ve got a great George ‘Back to School’ campaign launching very soon and some very exciting stuff for Direct Line, building on their success from this year in Cannes with Fleet Lights.
It’s still shocking and strange how few female creatives and directors there are in the creative industries.
TNG: DO YOU FIND THAT WOMEN ARE STARTING TO HAVE A BIGGER ROLE IN THE FILM AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES ?
FG: I think the stats suggest that the amount of creative roles in both advertising and film are incrementally rising but the discrepancies are still shocking. I’m lucky to have an amazing role model at Saatchi & Saatchi in Kate Stanners and to be able to champion female directors like Alice Lowe with my film work, but it’s still shocking and strange how few female creatives and directors there are in the creative industries. It was incredible to sit on a 50/50 jury this year at Cannes and not feel like a minority voice for once. We just have to keep making work and raising female profiles so young girls identify themselves with those roles and not, as Alice puts, with solely being the ‘mid-wives of creativity’. (We’ve used a lot of pregnancy metaphors recently, for obvious reasons.)
TNG: HOW ARE YOU INVOLVED WITH THE PREVENGE MOVIE ?
FG: I am an Executive Producer. My company financed and produced the movie which was written, Directed and Starred Alice Lowe (Sightseers) whilst she was 7 months pregnant. I also oversaw the UK and US publicity and marketing campaigns — I even roped in a brilliant Saatchi creative Sophie Browness to work with Alice and I on a stunt to promote the movie which featured on Funny or Die.
TNG: DO YOU THINK THAT DIGITAL MEANS THAT MOVIE POSTER DESIGN SHOULD EVOLVE ?
FG: The static poster will always be a huge part of movie marketing as a huge percentage of people still choose a movie from the cover or the poster online or in the foyer. I think the internet has driven evolution as you now get so much fan-art and fan-poster interpretations that extend the life and visuals of the film. We’ve always had moving posters — they’re called trailers — but I think the evolution needs to come in the formulaic way movies are marketed and their stories are told, which as I’ve said is driven by complacency in part. My time running Franki&Jonny was all above evolving the movie campaign, extending the world of a film and making more of the assets created whilst on set. It happens much more than it did when we started out so we were on to something.
TNG: WHAT WAS YOUR FAVOURITE MOVIE FROM LAST YEAR ?
FG: Nightcrawler / Hell or Highwater (not sure of the official years of each)
TNG: WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO GO ON SABBATICAL LEAVE IN AUSTRALIA AND JAPAN IN 2009 ?
FG: I had been running a boutique entertainment agency Franki&Jonny in London for almost 10 years, having moved here and taken my first design job straight out of Art School and I had basically forgotten to travel or take any time off at all. It was a quarter-life crisis of sorts — I was totally exhausted and uninspired and I knew I needed to do something about it. So I booked some flights and worked the rest of it out with my clients and business partner. The overwhelming reaction was support and encouragement. The Australia / Asia bit was a holiday. Japan was about meeting interesting digital creatives, finding inspiration and ideas and coming back fired up to work!
TNG: WHAT WAS THE IDEA BEHIND MADEMOISELLE LONDON ?
FG: After the sabbatical, I moved to Paris on a whim and met a writer — Katya Jezzard — who had done the same thing, at the same age a few years previously. We wanted to create a sort of ‘Bridget Jones in Paris’ narrative that would also act as learning aid for people learning English / French. All the dual text books we found were really dry so we conceived this poetry / illustrative format for a book and gave her an brutally honest, ‘warts and all’, British voice that was quite shocking to French audiences. We found in Paris especially there was still a very conventional female narrative and a lot of pressure to be perfect and ladylike. We basically rebelled against cool, classy French girls and momentarily became cool ourselves, it didn’t last of course but we had lots of fun throwing parties in odd venues in Paris to sell the book.
Franki Goodwin
Creative Director
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