Talentspotting: Meet the nation’s next generation of mad men and women

“It is always a pleasure to celebrate young talent who could be the future creative leaders in our industry,” says Katherine Ryan, programme director, IAPI. “It is the reason IAPI puts so much resource into the Cannes Young Lions creative competition, as well as the Eurobest young creatives competition, which takes place shortly in November.

“There are some wonderfully talented people ambitious to get into the advertising industry. IAPI hope to nurture them, provide training and inspiration. And if we do that, the future looks bright.”

Here are four to watch:

Conor Marron, Boys + Girls

Monaghan-born Conor Marron hadn’t planned on a career in advertising. “I planned to study film after school, but when I spoke to a guidance counsellor, she suggested the career opportunities would be better in a wider media field. So I changed to Multimedia at DCU,” he recalls.

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In his second year, someone from Rothco, the Dublin-based advertising agency, came to talk about creative advertising. “That was it. From that moment I was locked on to advertising.”

Marron took a master’s degree in advertising and creativity at TU Dublin and participated in Upstarts, a training and mentorship programme run by ICAD, the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design, before doing an internship with TBWA\Dublin.

In 2020, he was shortlisted for the Roger Hatchuel Academy at Cannes Lions. Then, in 2021, he received a Chip Shop Award from industry magazine The Drum and in 2022 picked up the ICAD Greenhorn Award for rising young talent.

Marron joined Boys + Girls, a leading independent agency, 18 months ago.

“As an art director, I’m heavily involved in developing the concept for a campaign. We get the brief, the business problem, and me and a copywriter will think about what the message is the client wants people to take from this advert,” he explains.

The reboot of Skoda Legends, a series of artworks now on display at Dublin Airport, is “my baby”, says Marron, who is currently working on a campaign for RTÉ 2FM. “One of the things I love about Boys + Girls is that it’s not hierarchical, if you can do the work, you’ll be given the work. And my superpower is that I’ll never say no.”

Film director Ridley Scott famously started out in an ad agency, but Marron is happy with his choice. “I love the industry. It’s where I want to be and what I want to do. Now it’s just a question of how far I want to push it forward.”

boysandgirls.ie

Matthieu Chardon, Bolt by TBWA\Dublin

Matthieu Chardon is a creative Swiss army knife. Director, photographer, cinematographer and Studio Builder, with a passion for telling human stories. But when it came to getting into advertising, the Frenchman took a highly creative approach.

Chardon came to Dublin on an Erasmus programme while studying business in Paris. He chose Blanchardstown IT because it had a photography and videography department, both of which he loved. In the end, he ditched business studies altogether to focus on them.

“I moved to Ireland because I felt this country gives young people a chance to work in the creative sector. As studying it, is respected here.”

To get his hands on equipment and pay the rent, Chardon took a job in a call centre for camera maker Nikon in Dublin. One of the perks was that he could borrow equipment at weekends. Chancing upon a water balloon competition in Merrion Square, and videoing radio presenter Ray Darcy getting soaked, provided his first opportunity.

“After that, Today FM called me every month to shoot videos,” he says, which ultimately led to a full-time job with them, Newstalk and Aidan McCullen, where Chardon directed documentaries in Norway, French Guyana, Rwanda and Nepal.

He moved to advertising agency Publicis Dublin as a video director, where he won an ICAD Greenhorn Award for best new creative talent. While with Publicis he was also charged with building a 40sq m studio, working with a carpenter and overseeing the project himself, helped by his friend photographer Amy O’Sullivan.

Last year he moved to TBWA\Dublin to build a state-of-the-art 150sq m studio, called Bolt. “It was my dream to build a creative playground with bespoke unique tools I created for it with the help of my team.”

As head & creative director of Bolt by TBWA\Dublin, Chardon has directed and filmed campaigns for the Ministry for Justice, the United Nations Migration Agency, Transport for Ireland, Breakthrough Cancer Research and Google. He has received numerous awards for the studio in less than one year of existence.

“We are very proud of our studio success, and this is largely due to TBWA for believing in it and our dream team’s synergy: Yvonne Caplice, business director; Leah Byrne, creative studio assistant; and Megan Brady creative producer,” he says.

“What I love most about my work is cinematography, to create striking visuals that give emotions to people. I moved to Ireland because I felt this country gives young people a chance to work in the creative sector. In some countries only law, medicine and business are really seen as respectable professions. In Ireland, creativity is respected too.”

tbwa-dublin.com

Eva Redmond, Core

Having loved studying psychology at UCD, Eva Redmond was at a crossroads when she graduated. “Psychology is a path that can be very academic. I wanted to do something practical,” she says.

It was at that point that she discovered creative advertising. “For me it’s about trying to solve a problem and understand how people behave.”

Redmond did the master’s degree in creative advertising at TU Dublin and took part in the ICAD Upstarts programme. “It is a really good practical experience and a brilliant way to get a feel for the industry.”

Today she is an art director with Core. “Getting to know different agencies let me figure out the type of work I admired, and I built a portfolio with that in mind,” explains Redmond, who was one of IAPI’s Cannes Young Lions winners in 2019 in the print category and who last year picked up an ICAD Greenhorn award for new talent.

Among the campaigns she is most proud of is a print campaign carried out for Ireland’s national autism charity. As I Am, which features school, social and workplace settings as mazes, illustrates the additional difficulties autistic people can face navigating through life.

“We got great feedback for it, but particularly from the autistic community, to say it really resonated with them,” she says.

While many creatives fear the blank page at the start of a job, it’s the part Redmond enjoys most. “My favourite part is the ideas stage, having to come up with something new. I find it really exciting. To me it’s having a problem to solve. I also love the fact that you’re always working on something new, no campaign is the same. Every brief is an opportunity.”

onecore.ie

Helen O’Higgins, In the Company of Huskies

Helen O’Higgins was always making things as a child. This led her to study at Dublin’s National College of Art and Design, where she specialised in fine art print and etching. From there she worked as a cake designer for four years.

“Everything I was doing was very analogue,” she says, explaining her next move: to study graphic design at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. This was driven by a desire to get to grips with digital creative technologies. At the same time, she opened an online shop for her art and began working in illustrations.

Having graduated from Ballyfermot, O’Higgins began looking for a career as opposed to a job. With a little digging, she discovered the role of the art director in creative advertising.

She too signed up for Upstarts. “It really hones your presenting skills and gets you in front of people in the industry when you are starting out,” she explains.

That led to an internship at Havas Dublin, before moving to Folk Wunderman Thompson, and most recently her current job as an art director at In the Company of Huskies.

Among the campaigns O’Higgins has worked on is one for Food Cloud, a social enterprise that matches leftover food with charities. “Food waste is a personal bugbear for me, so I was excited to work with Food Cloud who were as invested in the idea as we were.” Her executions featured a polar bear standing on mouldy bread and a rotting orange for a globe.

It may have taken her until she was 30 to find her career, but her clients are benefiting from all the creative experience she has had to date.

“A lot of excellent people in the industry come through the master’s in advertising and creativity programme, so you can feel a little on the back foot and self-conscious not having a formal advertising education and all the terminology. But, having overcome that, I can see that all the different creative experiences I have had are really beneficial to my practice now.”

inthecompanyofhuskies.com

Ireland: Where Creative is Native

This IAPI initiative promotes Ireland as a Centre of Excellence for the commercial creativity industry.

In Ireland, being creative is second nature; world-renowned for its writers, artists, poets, musicians and all-round change-makers. These talents spill into the commercial creative world of advertising, design and communications.

IAPI believes there has never been a more opportune for the sector to grow its international reach. For brand owners looking to launch into the European market, Ireland is now a viable and agile alternative, aside from being the only English-speaking country left in the EU.

No longer do brand marketers seek creative expertise abroad as they know they can work with the global best right here in Ireland. Domestic and International brands such as An Post, AIB, Vodafone, SuperValu, Allianz, Nissan, Lidl, Jameson, Diageo and Toyota and many others are creating world-beating communications using Irish creative and media agencies.

Discover IAPI’s Creative is Native initiative at creativeisnative.com