CreativeMornings with Anna Dean
Friday 24th June, 8.00-9.30am
Studio One Toi Tū
Gaze and eye contact are simple acts, but when our attention transforms into vigilance, we begin to notice things that weren’t immediately obvious. We might notice an extra space in a paragraph or details within the texture of the page that weren’t appreciated. When we turn our eyes to the government, healthcare, traditional education or public transportation, we realize how broken everything is; it makes you wonder how the world stays intact. The difference between those who make change and those who don’t is the difference between pointing at something and saying it’s broken versus pointing at it and saying, “I am going to fix this.”
Our speaker this month is just that type of person. Two years ago Anna Dean changed the name of a capital city. No small feat but Anna knew a major play was needed to make New Zealand wake up to the mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows. David Farrier described her as a ‘marketing genius’ for her work on this campaign and in 2015 Anna became the first New Zealander to be selected for the prestigious Power to the Pixel programme. She attended this lab in Scotland with 30 other digital story-tellers from around the world.
She is the film industry’s go-to for digital strategy and promotion and her ability to make the right noise with the right people is highly regarded in marketing and branding circles. Most recently she was the Digital Strategist and Sponsorship Manager on Hunt for the Wilderpeople, now New Zealand’s number one box office holder.
At the end of 2015 she formed Double Denim, a lean, new-school agency, hacking the big agency model with marketing maestro Angela Meyer.
Anna is going to be exploring this month’s theme of ‘Broken’ by taking a look at the systems around us which appear to be past their use-by date. She’ll talk on the personal experience of being completely and utterly broken (as opposed to ‘failing’), what caused this, and how she’s doing her bit to make positive change. Her talk will touch on the concept of ‘Pale, Male, Stale’ and the power of women in the economy thanks to social media, connectiveness and what this all really means.
It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.
