What was the original problem you were trying to solve?

Emma: It was probably not a problem, it was an opportunity.

Starburst were putting out work that went against Chuppa Chup, trying to find the point of difference between Chuppa Chup and Starburst.

It is true that those lollipops have a bigger fruit flavour than Chuppa Chups.

Did your idea start with a product truth or a visual thought?

Emma: Definitely started with the product truth, that it has a big and powerful flavour, and the idea came about the guys playing around with the most creative way to say strong, powerful, and then came up with this concept.

What was your involvement in the campaign?

Emma: My involvement would be, the team get briefed by the suits and the strategists, and then I, as the creative director, meet with creative teams quite frequently along the way.

They show me 20 ideas to start with and we might go, ok that idea is interesting, go with those three, or we go there’s nothing here, let’s think about this differently and how we can come at it from a different angle.

Let’s imagine they have three weeks on this, I meet with them after a few days to see how they’re going, so lots of check-ups along the way, right up until they present to the client.

My job is to pick the three strongest ideas to take to the client, show the client three different ones, then we say what our preferred one is and hopefully the client picks the one we like as well.

How did you present the idea in the first place?

Emma: This one was mocked up in our studio.

You kind of have to be careful with ideas at the first stage that you don’t make them look too final, because you don’t give yourself anywhere to go.

They started as illustrations, showed the client the illustrations, and then used Mac operating systems in the studio to make them a bit more life-like.

Does this campaign reflect your creative taste?

Emma: Definitely.

The beauty of this idea has always been how super simple it is and the visual does so much of the heavy lifting.

I love how you look at the visual, you see the stick, and then you go down to the bottom right-hand corner and see the tag which makes the whole idea make sense.

I love how the lollipop stick is such a focal point of the ad and it’s such a strong branding device.

Do you think the industry rewards creative ideas like this at the moment?

Emma: I do.

I think, not to sound cynical, but it’s harder to do work like this now than it’s ever been, because this brand and client at this particular stage was a great client who just wanted simplicity and was rewarded by approving ideas like this.

Now our clients are under much more pressure and want to put more and more information into things.

Now they might have wanted a headline.

This has no headline, no price, no subhead to say why the flavour is so strong, not overcomplicated.

This work still feels wonderful today but it feels like clients want more and more information in things and are less up for showing their brand as the most simple way of appearing in the world.

What advice would you give a junior creative trying to sell an idea like this to a creative director?

Emma: Well first of all, the simplest of ideas like this a good CD will recognise straight away, but it also helps to maybe put together a bit of a mood board of really simple ideas that you found.

It sets the tone with your creative director.

Ok we have come at this with a really simple point of view, we wanted to show you a few ideas we were inspired by, super simple.

Put that out on the table and look at this, and then show your idea.

You have to get a CD’s head into this world.

That’s also how we help clients see what’s coming, by showing them great examples in the category.

Show some great confectionary ideas just to show the client where the bar is for what you about to show them.