I am Jacques Gross. A 37 year old creative from Johannesburg with 14 years of working experience. I started out as an Art Director in the advertising industry and very quickly found myself wielding a very meticulous eye for detail -  labelled as a perfectionist by my peers, but I'd just consider myself very particular - and proceeded to rise up to Creative Group Head  (Head of Art) level and later on, Creative Director.

 Creative by day and astronaut at night – just kidding, it’s always night time in space – my interests include but are not limited to: cultural insights, art, music (both music production and performance as a dj), humans, beautifully crafted things, photography and videography, having 300 browser tabs open at once and a healthy disregard of the notion that curiosity can kill anything at all.

Design

Coming from a NDip Graphic Arts - VUT with no prior work experience I landed a position at one of the leading advertising agencies in the country, Metropolitan Republic. My first couple of weeks there were a massive learning curve since I quickly realised that I hadn't followed your traditional 'ad school to ad agency path' that my peers had. However within the first three months of employment I received my first Loerie Award finalist for a television commercial that I had shot, edited and conceptualised. I realised that my role at the agency was more akin to a marriage between conventional design practices and broader conceptual thinking rather than that of a traditional Agency Art Director. Embracing this new world of conceptually developing brands and then executing them from a design informed standpoint I developed an approach which carefully considers every facet and touchpoint of a brand and its role from a design perspective to ensure that it speaks to the larger brand idea and philosophy. Executing this thinking has taken me from developing and overseeing logo and layout design, sound design, product design, packaging design, web design, user journeys, illustration, live events and activations, photography and even production design. 

MentorSHIP

Having spent the last 4 and a half years at King James II - a small agency which has grown to one of the top medium-sized agencies in Africa - my day to day duties expanded over and above the conceptualisation, presentation and execution of campaigns to include the growth and mentorship of creatives (from interns and junior level creatives up to middle and senior level creatives). Thus resulting in my promotion to Group Head - Art Direction followed (after 9 months of employment at King James II) along with Creative Director (after another 12 months). My mentorship focussed on two areas: 1 - Design, layout and technical skills; and 11 - Conceptual thinking and brand development with a focus on audience experience and journey by honing in on human insights and behaviour.

Ad agencies are strange places when it comes to building, shaping and producing great creative talent. The vibrance, energy and diversity that they harbor cultivates and accelerates creativity, but at the same time they are extremely unforgiving, stressful, hostile environments geared towards meeting deadlines whilst producing highly creative work. This kind of environment pushes creatives to their absolute limits and leaves very little room for growth and creativity, nevermind it being counterproductive and unsustainable. Therefore it became clear that the approach to successfully nurturing and growing creatives is to ensure that the skills garnered under pressure (coping with stress, creating magic with very little time or resource, meticulous attention to detail, never say die mentality) have to be balanced with the freedoms that come from exploring unrestrained thinking and following alternate creative pursuits. 

COnceptual thinking / Strategic Creative thinking

In the last decade - being fortunate enough to work on both large and small brands, local & international clients and consumers ranging from low income levels right up to the upper class - it has become clear that successful work taps into consumers mindsets by way of highly relatable human and cultural insights. The identification and moulding of the aforementioned insights (within the scope of core values and business objectives of a brand) along with meticulous attention to detail and sharp focus applied to the execution of pieces goes to create highly resonant, shareable work. This approach applied to single pieces of design or large multi-faceted campaigns affords brands the definitive edge over their competitors. It’s also imperative to note that creativity for creativity’s sake or ethereal reasons is not as effective in today’s environment as was the case a couple of years ago. Nowadays the need to apply creative thinking has expanded to every stage of a product/campaign journey, and has become paramount to a brand's success.  

Key achievements of creatives under my mentorship include:

| Internal promotion of junior creatives to medium level within 10 months

|  Junior creatives going on to fill medium level positions at some of SA’s most successful advertising agencies.

|  Growing 3 creatives with no formal ad school training into highly capable and employable junior creatives.

|  Mentees achieving 3x Loerie Awards finalists in 2015

|  Mentees achieving 6x Loerie Awards finalists in 2016

|  Mentees achieving 4x Loerie Awards Finalists in 2017 (Achieved within the first six months of junior creative’s employment)

|  Mentees achieving 3 Pendoring Award finalists in 2017

|  Mentees achieving 2017 Luerzers Archive Entry

Just making it happen

I often find myself asking: "why exactly are we here again and why are you busy learning how to operate a water bottle filling machine?" The answer is actually pretty simple. If something needs to be done and there's no other way than getting your own hands dirty to get to an end result then I'm usually the one doing it. I suppose I just love being involved in new things and always asking: "What's that? How does it work? Could it work for me? This thing looks fun. Great I'll go google that." This attitude I firmly believe is what has gotten me to where I am in my career thus far (my first week at my first agency job was spent learning how to use Adobe Illustrator from scratch and edit videos whilst picking up some chords on guitar to help with a tv ad soundtrack).

2017

CRISTAL AWARDS [Gold] 

Kwése Great Escape TVC

CRISTAL AWARDS [Gold] 

Saxonwold Shebeen - Innovative use of Social Media

CRISTAL AWARDS [Gold] 

Saxonwold Shebeen - Best use of Promo & Activation

CRISTAL AWARDS [BRONZE] 

Siemens Him, Her & Me  - Craft certificate: Branded Entertainment

Ciclope Awards

Kwése Great Escape TVC

Cannes Lions Finalist

Kwése Great Escape TVC

Loerie AWARDS [Finalists]

Saxonwold Shebeen Live activation and events

Siemens Him, Her & Me TVC

Kwesé Great Escape TVC

2016

Loerie AWARDS [Finalists]

Metro FM Mic Drop TVC

5FM Live Loud Integrated campaign

2015

Loerie Awards [Craft certificate] 

SABC 3 Real Comedy - Radio 

2014

2013

Loerie AWARDS [Finalist]

The Aveng Group 200 Days - Print

2011

Loerie Awards [GOLD]

MTN Ayoba - Integrated Campaign

2008

Loerie Awards [GOLD]

MTN Free Ad - TVC

Loerie Awards [SILVER]

MTN Free Ad - Integrated Campaign

2007

Loerie AWARDS [Finalist]

MTN Fingers - TVC