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Originally from the US, Alexis Champa has honed her creative career in NYC, working at the likes of R/GA, Mother, KBS, Havas and Virtue Worldwide with iconic brands such as Airbnb, Sour Patch Kids, Ritz, Trident, Samsung, Target and Google Chrome. Currently, Alexis is based in Berlin, where in the past years of her career she’s worked at Granny Berlin, before joining Media.Monks where she now is the digital-first company’s executive creative director. In her role she works with YT Shorts, Google Chrome, Allianz and Siemens. 

Person

I find it hard to describe my personality but I would say the way I see myself would probably be kind, curious, outgoing and probably a little weird. However, I have been described as Beaker from The Muppets and been told I remind people of Fran Lebowitz. Two huge compliments, but drastically different references.

I like to see the world as full of possibilities. It’s easy to fall into the habit of only seeing what is visible but I love digging into new experiences and topics. There is so much to learn from what's around us.

When it comes to thinking about creativity, part of me wants to say innate, but I think that greatly devalues people who seek to learn a craft. I personally think my creativity started from an early age, but it would not have gotten me where I am today without investing in it, and building and developing it.

I very firmly sit between both introvert and extravert. I am an introverted extravert. I love to socialise, get out in front of a group and set the path but I also really just love to sit in the back of the room and let the more outgoing folks drive the moment.

I don't feel great about routine. Having a routine is nothing I have ever done before. I have always just sort of done what needs doing when it needs to be done. Something about 'routine' feels a bit soul crushing for me. I’m more of an 'on the fly' kind of person, which works pretty well considering things change constantly and since I don’t feel a need to be beholden to routine it allows me to just go with the flow.

When it comes to creative ‘stuff’, I'm absolutely more interesting in exploring. I love the fine arts but also I have recently been really into site specific interactive pieces. Film is great, but seeing how creative problems can be solved in different mediums is far more mind expanding for me. Being able to see narratives told in non-narrative ways really inspires me in my day to day.

Product

I think something is truly creative when it makes you really think about what it’s saying. It reminds you of something that you’ve seen or happened in your life, it shows you something in a way you never thought of it before showing you a completely new perspective, or it simply elicits an emotion. As far as criteria goes, I don’t think you can ever approach creativity in such a binary manner. You need to be able to look at it in that moment, and see what it needs to do and go from there. I don't think criteria has shifted or evolved over the years.

The creative campaign I am most proud of is an old one, but many years ago while at VaynerMedia, we created a sitcom for Swedish Fish called Treadin’ Water. Think Friends, but the storytelling was 'at the speed of social'. We had an ensemble cast, including an enormous Swedish Fish, and episodes were 50 seconds give or take. Our target audience wasn’t spending a lot of time engaging in longer form social content, so we gave them entertainment at a length that would keep them engaged. They were quick, quirky, and honestly super off beat. It was a blast to make and produce, and on top of it, we ended up creating one of the weirdest TV commercials from some B-Roll I’ve ever had the pleasure of conceptualising.

I think as an industry we have become obsessed with the mid and lower funnel marketing instead of upper-level communications. There was a time when advertising was interesting and entertaining, and I have seen a real shift towards product focus/sales focus. I might work in the industry, but I am also a consumer and am constantly being targeted and I have noticed in my personal life, the ads I get served are all about buy now here, product benefit over brand, and at super high frequency. As a consumer this is exhausting. I love when brands just want to be entertaining, leaving me with an emotion, a story, a joke, truly anything but sales. I would love to see brands start to return to this. I mean, it’s what, 16 years later, and Berries and Cream still haunts me in the quiet moments. Good marketing sticks to you, and we aren’t being sticky enough as an industry right now.

Process

After we get the brief done, and I do my own due diligence, I go for a walk, or just leave the office and do everything I can to not think about it. Is it counter intuitive? Maybe. Has it helped me solve every brief I’ve ever worked on? Absolutely. I firmly believe that lived experience helps us come up with smart and interesting solutions to creative problems. When we base work off of real-life moments or experiences, we create work that resonates with others.

There’s no ignoring how much Google Docs have helped this process, but I am such an analogue fan. Notebooks are my preferred method. 

Techniques that I don't gel with are the group brainstorms. I don’t think I have ever been in one that ended up having good output. The amount of work that needs to be put in from a moderator standpoint to have a productive brainstorming session is unsustainable and uninspiring.

Even though I am constantly coming up with ideas, I like to start every project as a blank sheet. Usually if I have something stored away somewhere it never just works for how I need it to so it evolves.

Collaboratively is always my preferred way of working. We are in a field where we don’t create work for ourselves and others only make our output better, which is why I much prefer projects to be collaborative.

Working collaboratively is so important. Having a different point of view to help show you something from a different perspective always helps get past those tricky bits. When you’re working with a group, where you might be helping someone else with their process

I don’t think work is ever done. Being done is sort of a false friend. At every stage of a project, done has a different definition. All we can do is be sure we don’t work something to death, or work the magic out of it in pursuit of done. I think we can all start to be ok with the concept of ‘done enough’.

Press

I grew up in a suburb of NYC in Connecticut and I owe every bit of my creativity to my mom. She would entertain my insane games of playing pretend where I essentially just read a script of what was going to happen, as well as take me to museums and plays at every chance regardless of how old, or young, I was. I think the one thing we did that really opened my eyes to what creativity could be was when we went to see the Matisse Retrospective at MoMA in 1992. I remember almost every piece of work I saw that day. It really opened my eyes and has really stuck with me all this time.

I made it a point to be a student of our industry. I didn’t go to ad school, so I had a lot to catch up on. I also have had the pleasure of working with people, who loved to share their craft to help me hone my own.

I work best in chaos. The more briefs on my desk, the better my output gets. When things are slow, I start to doubt the quality of the work, I doubt the idea. I need to be moving forward to make sure I’m not working until it’s nothing just for the sake of 'working'.

The best advice I can give to clients who looking to get the best out of the team is write us a great brief. By great, I mean be clear about the objective and be honest about what can actually be done. We can’t accomplish every business objective in one campaign or piece of communication. I would also ask that clients be open to conversations, much like how we work internally, collaboration makes the work strong between client and agency.

I think we need to allow our teams the space to live their lives and experience things. Work life balance has always been such a hot topic, but the reality is, without it, we start to create things in vacuums devoid of context to real world moments. How can we expect ourselves to be the arbiters of culture if we don’t allow our teams to even experience culture outside agency walls.