Dami Sidharta, Chief Creative Officer, M&C Saatchi
Dami’s career spans over 15 years with some of the biggest agencies like Leo Burnett, Dentsu and BWM Sydney. He’s been on the stage and in the gutter, been in a winning streak and lost countless pitches, been a judge at D&AD and a witness in court.
When you saw the brief “Stop Child Marriage,” the one that made you win gold in Switzerland at the Luum Awards, how did you feel?
The brief came as a shock to the whole team. We knew that some people in Indonesia got married quite young but we thought it was more of a cultural thing. To find out that a lot of kids were forced into marriages at an age as young as 9, just so the parents can get away from financial responsibilities was eye opening. And that’s why we did what we did.
What is the creative process like to solve such complex strategies for topics that are as controversial as the one in question?
We knew from the get go that we need to get people to feel what we felt when we read the brief. The shock, the disgust. We need to open their eyes to the problem. The question was “how?”. So we focused on that. The team came with a whole lot of different storytelling, different media. When we arrived at the solution we think was best for the brief, we then pushed it some more to achieve two things. First is to simplify, so that the execution can be very sharp, very easy to understand. Second is to somehow put the audience in the story. To make them the protagonist of the story who can alter the fate of these kids. And that’s how we ended up with a film you watch with your eyes closed.
Which is more demanding, brand advertising or socially awareness advertising?
Both have its own challenges but I would say that doing campaigns for brands are more demanding. With social awareness, you can almost just focus on the problem and finding the best solution to it. Budget can be a challenge to most social campaigns but that’s usually it. Working on brands, there are more to it and sadly most of the times the challenges are not directly related to the brief itself.
How do you inspire your creative teams?
There are a lot of ways to do that, but mostly I rely on two things, A nice chat over drinks, and getting things done. When we chat, we mostly talk about a lot of random things. The movies we just watched, the books we read, personal experiences, stupid things we found on the internet, etc. A lot of these things are the things people feel strongly about and that somehow worked very efficiently to spark something and open up new possibilities. By getting things done, we can see the result, the impact, the trophies, and that inspires our people to get even more things done.
To what extent are advertisers part of these creative processes?
Advertisers have always been part of the creative process, for better or worse. But our work is only as good as the people we work with, and that includes the clients.
What has this year been like for M&C Saatchi Indonesia?
2021 has been both taxing and fucking awesome. The whole working from home is still a big challenge, especially for an agency that grows three folds and hiring a lot of new people. But despite that, results has been awesome. We won a lot of big businesses and won a lot of awards including Indonesia’s only Cannes Lions this year. It all thanks to our people who gave everything they got for the cause.
What plans do you have for 2022?
We grew a lot in 2021, hiring more people than what we have so we’re moving to a new office that can accommodate them all. With the new fire power, we hoped to do and achieve more next year. It’s gonna be fun.