Crystals, Burgers and Playfulness: The Origin Stories of Charlene Chandrasekaran and Dan Morris

For Charlene Chandrasekaran and Dan Morris, becoming creatives was destiny.

The long-term duo, and executive creative directors at The Or, were first encouraged to join forces by the late Tony Cullingham at Watford. It was inspired casting. The pair have gone on to make a name for themselves for brilliantly creative, wonderfully weird and high impact work.Passing through BBH and then Droga 5, work like Barclaycard's 'The Crystal Barn', and Rustlers' '80 Years of Torment' put them firmly on the map.

Now at The Or, Chandrasekaran’s sharp art direction and Morris’ sure-touch copywriting make them a complementary creative duo, which has helped shape their leadership at an agency famous for its unique and unexpected takes.

Recent successes for the pair include the 'Inspired By' brand platform for Asos, Taco Bell's 'See You Next Tuesday', and a streaming partnership called 'The Talk Squad' to raise mental health awareness with Harry's.

From film to playfulness, they discuss the influences that have shaped their work, and share how they are navigating leadership in a changing industry.

Creative Salon: What does creativity mean to you?

Dan Morris: To me, creativity is something that grabs my attention and entertains. It’s something that keeps me coming back to it. If I look at all things that I’m into and I follow – music, film, theatre – there’s something in it, a spark, which just captivates your attention, and you can’t stop coming back to it or thinking about it in your mind. That’s an important thing, and something we try to bring to work I’d say. I think it's about elevating the functional to the special – that's what I look for in things.

Charlene Chandrasekaran: If you look through my life, creativity has always been present. It’s always been a part of the things I do, and the things I gravitate towards. If you’re someone that’s drawn to the arts and problem solving, I think it has to be one of your internal values that you apply to everything. It matches up to everything in my life – whether its decisions, choices I’ve made at work or at home and how I spend my time. It's a massive part of who I am as a person. When I had my first child I found I was still thinking of ideas. I thought; 'that’s sick, I should just be tending to my child', but I couldn’t stop thinking. It’s something that flows through your veins, it’s either a part of you, or it’s not.

What role did creativity play in your childhood?

CC: My parents worked all the time. It was an era where you kind of got left home which is probably now not something people do. I spent a lot of time on my own, and my brother and I had quite a big age gap, so it made me very creative about how I spent my time. I was always making things. My parents always showed a lot of interest. I’ve tried to imbue that in my kid as well – not force him to be creative but put things in front of him so that he can express himself in lots of different ways.

DM: My parents often tell me a story that when I was in primary school they took me to a therapist because I was reading a lot for quite a young age but I wasn’t as good at other skills like maths. I think it’s just because I didn’t find it interesting. That’s when I was really young, around five or six, but I think it did pave the way for how I approached things going forward. When I look back at when I was a teenager, I would always do things like write little books or other things which other children didn’t necessarily do. I didn’t think much of it at the time but when you look back you see that it was a pathway for what was to come.

Were there any particularly inspirational people, or a particular moment that helped shape your path or way of thinking?

CC:  I knew I wanted to do something creative, I just didn’t know what. I was waiting for something to just happen, to get the momentum going. I remember a man came into my art A-level lesson and said something along the lines of ‘I working in advertising and that’s my car outside’. None of us were well off, we were working class people. We just looked out, and I don’t even think it was a good car but it led me to wonder what it was that he actually did. I started to unpick some of what his job was and what that entailed in the industry. Even at that point I didn’t really know but it propelled me to look into things a bit more. I knew I didn’t want to be broke, but I also wanted to do something creative.

DM: My story’s a little more straightforward. My dad, who’s not in advertising, grew up and went to secondary school with Tony Kaye and Paul Weiland and they were all a group. I knew about the industry from them and seeing what they did. So I had an introduction to what being a creative in the advertising industry is from quite an early age and although I think it’s quite a confusing job to explain, I was able to see what it meant quite early on. They were film directors by that point and then I saw their back catalogue of advertising and I understood that that skillset also applied. Film seemed like such a highfalutin, impossible thing to try and aim for, but this seemed like something where you could do that but also have a career that was stable-ish.

Your trajectory has been amazing, from a first job at BBH to Droga5 to The Or. How did you manage to get off to such a flying start?

CC: There was some serious scrambling in the beginning. Someone told us a horror story about looking for a job: they'd gone to six or seven agencies and no-one hired them. We thought 'Oh God, that's terrible', and then it happened to us. We got to a point where we questioned whether it was going to work out. But there was a lot of fortuitous moments that led us. I also think it's because we were quite tenacious. Even through the disappointment we said 'Okay let's try something else'.

DM: We were pretty direct at saying we wanted to work at the blue chip agencies where the work is going to be a high calibre. We weren't thinking let's just get a job. We knew lots of people that stair stepped their way up to good places but we took the slightly harder route. It was 18 months of uncertainty. Charlene was working at Debenhams, I was on Jobseeker's. There wasn't the placement schemes there are now. We were both living at home. In sequential order, we went to Publicis, BMB, Saatchi & Saatchi, Isabel, DDB and then BBH where we eventually got a job.

What makes you complement each other as a pair?

CC: There’s no point having two people who are the same. You want to bring something different to the table and see what outcome you can create. I think more industries even outside of this one should have pairings at the top. There’s so many people about whom you just think they’d be brilliant if they had someone who brought something else to the table. Then they could be challenged and have their ideas broken down and built back up again.

We’ve always had a relationship where we call each other out on things and I think that’s really beneficial especially in the world we’re in now. I find it helps to know the buck stops with someone versus a back-and-forth between people. There are definitely times when I think 'I can’t write this', there’s a better way of writing whatever I’m working on and I’ll consult with Dan.

DM: Definitely. Ignoring the financial constraints, I think it’s good to be challenged. I can’t think of anyone that we’ve worked with in our lives that’s equally talented at both. You can find some amazing people who have really good taste but having that innate talent is different, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone able to do both.

What was it that you wanted to bring to the creative industries?

CC: We just wanted to make good work, which might seem a bit of a novelty now with what’s going on in the world financially. But we’ve always chased good people and good work. That’s it. Everything else stemmed from there. We’ve always seized opportunities and said to ourselves, let’s see what happens, because we always knew that if we had a body of work we’d be ok.

DM: That’s exactly it. I think it’s testament to the fact that we’ve only been in three places. They’re all places that have been doing well and have given us access to good clients and good briefs. I think the career side of things comes more out of necessity as you go along and work out what you want to achieve.

How do you commit to yourself creatively?

CC: It’s a weird one, especially when you wind up having kids. Your creativity gets given to your offspring and you’ve got these wafer thin gaps to replenish yourself. But I’ve actually really started to enjoy going back to the basics of creativity: drawing nonsense and those kind of activities that my son wants to do. But alongside it, I can start picking things up again. In advertising, you can be pulled into technical drudgery, but I’ve really enjoyed taking him out to see art shows and doing all the things that he likes to do. Even in the way I describe things to him now, I'm much more creative than I was. And maybe going back to basics is a great thing for me, because it can get quite arty farty this industry, and you start looking at the same references. Now, I've just gone back to the primitive stuff, which is quite nice.

DM: It’s much the same in that when you’ve got a young kid you don’t always have a lot of spare time. I do try to watch a lot of films. Film, music, gaming are constants in my life that ebb and flow. I will say that I try to go to things with my kids that are culturally rich – we’d go and see My Neighbour Toturo and activities like that. We watched Flow the other day, which is the Latvian animated film that has just been nominated for an Oscar. I definitely try and seek these things out rather than just defaulting to say Paw Patrol.

Do you have a favourite piece of work that you’ve worked on so far?

CC: I’m going to put all my chips on Barclaycard ‘Crystals’. It was so weird and there are times when you think – how did that happen? It’s not one of those things that you can really sell. It was a simple concept that blew up into something bigger, more obscure and weirder. I don’t think we can take full credit for that because it needed a client that was willing to role the dice.

DM: The Barclaycard account was run by Alisa Copeland, then head of B2B marketing cards and payments at Barclaycard. The work is a very good example of something which you could have done in any number of ways. And they could have been very run of the mill, because it's basically a testimonial work for a bank about card readers. It's about as dull on the surface as it could possibly get, but their bravery to get the their actual customers and cast based on what was best for the film, and make something that was, I think, quite unique for for that category is a point of pride.

So, Barclaycard would also be up there but I’ll say something different: I do look back on the Rustlers work and I think that was just so fun to make and free in terms of being able to have a closer vision for what you wanted to achieve. Really those clients and accounts are gifts because you can’t do it without them. It was an incredibly fun process as well.

How would you describe your approach to creative problem solving?

CC: It doesn’t always work, but if there’s a brief we try not to get too confined. We park the brief for a bit and think where our minds would go if that brief didn’t exist. You only have that opportunity once because as soon as you’ve consumed that brief it really restricts where you can go. Sometimes people find the parameters helpful, but I think we’ve always had a mindset of there’s something more. The brief is there to strategically lead you but what if you went off somewhere else? Maybe it might end up somewhere better. This is something we’ve always done when we’ve worked on things and we’ve had great success so we think it must work!

DM: George R.R Martin said that among writers there are gardeners and architects. The gardeners plant the seed and will adapt and see where it goes accordingly. The architects lay everything out before and see it as the way it is. We're in the first category – I think you have to be fluid and see where things go.

CC: The time is so crunchy now that fluidity isn't always the appropriate means to get work done, but where we can we try.

What excites you about the industry now? 

CC: In a weird way the speed is sometimes a good thing. It’s not always something you have to push against. You’re able to tangibly see your ideas come out a lot quicker. And the opportunities that AI has given us means we can produce things at a much faster rate. It’s actually quite beneficial sometimes, but at the same time it has knock-on effects because of the speed at which you have to produce those ideas. I can’t see it slowing down. It goes against our natural instincts but sometimes not having too much time to think is a good thing because you can really kill an idea when you overthink things.

DM: I think it’s the breadth of opportunity we have with answering problems now. You had the days of long boozy lunches and coming back to look at your single line, but it was much more constrained as to what the answer could be: you had posters and print, and you had radio and TV but there was nothing outside of that. Now anything is an answer from making a play to creating a game, or making a dish in a restaurant. They’re all equally as viable. I think that’s really exiting for creative people, having that freedom of a blank page.

How does being part of Mother help you make the most of that blank page?

DM: I think having the trust to do those things is a really big thing here. And the drive to be the most creative you can be is always at the core of it, which is an amazing thing for people in our jobs. There's no guarantee on whether the things you try are going to be successful or not. If you're doing something new, it genuinely hasn't been done before, so you have no metrics for success. When get behind these ideas and think of them as a really important part of the business and go with it, it's an amazing thing to be a part of. Otherwise you end up being boxed in. That's something creative people have always disliked.

CC: People look at Mother and can't quite pinpoint what they're going to get, whereas there are other agencies where client's know exactly what they're going for – and people already have a perception. That offering can be good for some accounts but it's specific. Whereas, sometimes you feel that when clients come to Mother they're rolling the dice a bit. They want to see what else they can have, and I think agencies like this are a dying breed in this industry.

What are the biggest challenges you're facing around creative leadership?

CC: As creative people you’re encouraged to be quite infantilised from the beginning so all your quirks are encouraged as it’s part of your creative persona. Then you’re thrust into leadership and you have to park it and become sensible all of a sudden. There’s a new level of responsibility, and you’re not necessarily exposed to that until you’ve got the job. We're still creative people and we still want to get involved but you just have to step back and remind yourself it's not your time anymore. You've had your time. But it's also being able to spot the work versus create it – that's not always the easiest thing to navigate.

DM: We try really hard not to be creative dictators. The worst thing in the world is trying to guess what's in someone's head and trying to paint that picture. It's an impossible job. It's frustrating for everyone and ultimately you just end up creating the same type of thing. You want your team to have enough freedom to be able to express themselves through the work and do it on their own. Otherwise you end up with everything being our work. Finding that line between allowing people that freedom and stepping in is something we’ve had to work out along the way.

What do you think the industry can do to raise its creative standards?

DM: Something we could stop doing is adding a caveat for what’s good. It used to be that something was considered great or it wasn’t. If you have the caveat of 'this is really difficult but it’s good work considering that...', it’s not the best bar to set. It should be about overall greatness rather than 'you’re working within a lot of constraints and you’ve actually done well considering that', you should be asking how you can elevate that work to great. I think it’s just a very clear result of the times and people having fear. And I understand it but I think it would be great to get back to the sentiment of it’s great or it’s not.

CC: As an industry we’re at the mercy of clients. If the client says we wanted this yesterday, everybody has to work really late to deliver it. We don’t have enough boundaries anymore, we don’t have enough creative boundaries. Clients are asking for more diversity. This includes mothers, people working part-time, people with disabilities. But if you want these types of people to be part of your process and draw on their skillsets, then you need to make time for them. But any time a client says 'we need this now' there’s a culture of quickly churning it, whereas we should be setting a boundary which says this is the amount of time this work takes.

I just think we’re a bit subservient as an industry and that’s contributing to the mediocre-ness of some of the work that gets put out into the world. We're just so busy trying to solve problems really fast, just to make money. Obviously it's really hard, because, right now a lot of redundancies are happening in the industry. We have to be really careful about the toss up between being creative and making money, but it's an awful place to be.

If advertising was suddenly banned, what would you do?

DM: I’d create a Ponzi scheme. I’d invest all my creative energy into jazzing it up and making it alluring, but I’d be funnelling that money into the mortgage.

CC: I think everyone who works in this industry has moments where they think 'God I hate this industry. I'm bored. I'm done', and had fantasies about where they want to be. I’ve always gravitated towards something completely the opposite: something really low-key like dog-walking or something far away from people. You can get to an extreme place where you think 'I don't want to see anyone. I just want to be with animals.'