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Year in Review: Steph Creasy, Digital Arts Network

1. Favourite local campaign that isn’t yours

BagVote. This one started out incensing me as New World didn’t offer a ‘no bags’ option. However, full credit, with consumer pressure it changed its approach.

Having the supermarket giants taking a leadership stand to ban bags is something New Zealand should be proud of. Other countries have done it, we can too.

2. Favourite campaign that is yours

We collaborated with nib to design an improved user experience for their health cover online quote and buy. We proved (again) that you can deliver exceptional conversion and business results by bringing human-centered design to the table.

Our continued work with ANZ on their staff facing digital experiences; having branch staff hug us to say we have improved their daily working lives is extremely rewarding. And we won a Best Award for the impact it has had at a customer and business level.

3. Favourite international campaign

Monument Valley 2 from UsTwo. Proving that games can be beautiful, mind-bending, and meditative, and that great digital design goes beyond functional into delightful.

4. Least favourite campaign

The TOP party. Some progressive ideas delivered poorly.

5. Your own biggest success

Taking the helm at Digital Arts. Successfully shepherding and nurturing our team of incredibly talented people to continue to be the best user experience and digital team in New Zealand.

6. Most significant launch/innovation/thing of the year

Tesla for daring to fix Puerto Rico’s power problem, sustainably.

7. What should be un-invented?

Plastic – for the obvious mountains floating in our oceans but for the more significant shift in our behaviour. We’ve lost the art of reuse and fix and instead purchase more and throw out without hesitation.

8. Lamest trend

Eyebrow obsession; large, feathered, braided, squiggly.

9. Best brands

Netflix. Airbnb. Tesla.

10. Best stoush

Trump vs …

11. Heroes

Locally, Jacinda. For reviving humanity, warmth and authenticity in politics. For bringing New Zealand back to a sense of pride in our values. For believing that through collaboration around a common goal a disparate set of voices and agendas can come together with positive intent to tackle some of our most wicked problems.

Globally, Rose McGowan. For initiating a Twitter-storm, calling out Jeff Beszos and raising her fist to expose the scale at which women are confronted by imbalanced power situations that impact their careers, their lives and their self-belief.

12. Villains

Trump. I’ve done all the emotions with that guy; ridicule, horror, anger, and now just a deep fear and sadness.

13. What died in 2017?

Hope that big-media or big-platform will bring us anything other than identity politics and echo chambers.

Salman Rushdie in The Golden House is infinitely more eloquent; “In our age of bitterly contested realities it is not easy to agree upon what is actually happening or has happened, on what is the case, let alone upon the moral or meaning of this or any other tale”.

But, with hope, I see the rise of individual investigative journalists who are using the accessibility and the platforms of our age to reach more and more people with more nuanced and deeper analysis.

14. What’s the biggest mistake marketers will make in 2018?

I’m encouraged to see more ‘listening’ by marketers and brands; more customer engagement, more research and more understanding. There is a constant danger of failing to use those insights to drive better decisions and execute to reflect them effectively. And worse, failing to integrate ‘listening’ in an always on way.

15. What’s the most Black Mirror/sci-fi horror thing likely to happen in the near future?

 Fifteen Million Merits (Black Mirror)

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