Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake and ‘Like a Girl’: The Work That Made Kim Pick

For over three decades, Kim Pick has created change-making work for both global commercial giants and critical government clients via leading agencies in London, New York, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand.

A former journalist, she turned to copywriting in Sydney – and still looks for the story in every assignment.

Since 2018, she has led creative across VML New Zealand’s Auckland and Wellington offices, specializing in both transformative social marketing and behaviour-change communications, as well as creativity that drives brand-building and commercial results.

Kim sat down with LBB to look back on her career and her first job in advertising and her work with Cool Charm

The ad/music video from my childhood that stays with me…

Kim> Oddly, the answer to this is … nothing. I was raised in remote New Zealand and for some time, lived off the grid on Kawau Island, without roads, power, phone, or TV, attending school by correspondence. Throughout my childhood, we never had a television (we had a piano, books, or the great outdoors for entertainment).

Despite (or perhaps because of) this isolation and lack of access to popular culture influences, I’ve never lacked for inspiration or been afraid of a blank sheet of paper.

The ad/music video/game/web platform that made me want to get into the industry…

Kim> The ad that made me want to get into the industry wasn’t a great ad, or even a good ad. It was just the ad that made me discover writing ads was a thing.

I knew I wanted to write. And to me, writing meant journalism. Until one day in Sydney, I looked over the shoulder of someone writing an ad for Sally Hansen nail polish.

‘What are you doing?!’

‘I’m a copywriter. I’m writing copy.’

‘How do you do that?!’

‘You go to AWARD School.’

And so I did. Even then, I didn’t understand the job. Until my AWARD School tutor, David Droga, who later hired me at Saatchi London, said, ‘No, stop writing copy, start writing ideas.’

My first professional project…

Kim> Straight out of AWARD School, I walked into the then-Australian Agency of the Year, with a handful of damp photocopied pages of my work, because it was raining and I didn’t know what a portfolio was. Creative director David Bourne, peeling the damp pages apart and drying them out on his desk, asked me if I knew how hard it was to land a job in advertising.

I said no, I did not. He hired me.

My very first project was a full-page newspaper ad for the Queensland Expo. There had been massive build-up and hype around the expo, but now it was nearly over, and sponsor IBM wanted to congratulate the people of Queensland and say how proud they were to have played a part. I wrote that down and the ad won silver at the New York Festivals. I still have the award as a paper weight on my desk. I’m judging New York Festivals at the moment and wonder what the judges saw back then. Dunno.

The creative work that I keep revisiting…

Kim> I love the interplay between the writing of Roald Dahl and the illustration of Quentin Blake – a collaboration which is sadly now out of print (another reason to visit second-hand bookshops).

Quentin never repeats in his visuals what Roald has written but creates a complementary or even interstitial frame that adds something new each time. It always reminds me that pictures shouldn’t repeat words but complement them. I have a signed Quentin Blake on the wall, a pen illustration he did for New Zealand author Margaret Mahy, and I look at it often.

The piece of work that made me so angry that I vowed to never make anything like *that*…

Kim> I remember hating (Hating, HATING!) some work by artist brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman. It was grotesque, violent, paedophilic! I was incensed! But then my husband (artist and creative) Wayne Pick said, ‘Well, first consider the intention of the work; what response do they want from you?’

So now when something makes me angry, or even just gives me pause, I challenge myself on the intention and why it’s triggering. And think about what my response is going to be.

For example, when asked to do a lingerie ad for everyday wear, my response was to do a lingerie ad with the talent doing everyday things like chopping firewood and putting out the trash. And when asked to do a campaign for a girly alcopop with the tagline ‘come out to play,’ my response was to have Rapunzel picking the lock on the tower with her own hairpin and rescuing herself and Cinderella not running away at the chime of midnight, but dancing till dawn in her rags.

The piece of work that still makes me jealous…

Kim> I’m jealous all the time of beautiful, powerful ideas that sit, unnoticed, in plain sight until someone reveals them – like the little girl in the tale of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes*’ (who is my favourite hero by the way).

Always: ’Like a Girl’ (2015)

I still remember the gut punch and shame I felt, because I was guilty of saying ‘like a girl’ too. How had I not noticed, until a little girl told me?

It was a simple truth, dropped like a bomb.

The creative project that changed my career…

Kim> The creative project that first changed my career was Cool Charm. The leading deodorant in Australia at the time was Mum, with the slogan ‘I can’t get by without my Mum.’

In response to that, my art director Liane Costello and I ran hard in the opposite direction and concocted this heat-haze fever-dream about a woman who rescues a sweaty shirtless guy in the desert by cooling down his radiator with her roll-on.

We fooled around in the grade, making the sky crazy green and threw on a gritty distorted soundtrack. And it worked like a Cool Charm. The product flew off the shelves, and they had to airlift it from France to keep up the demand. We won a slew of awards and got headhunted relentlessly.

The work that I’m proudest of…

Kim> I’m proudest of any work that moves things forward and makes an impact on culture.

But a big one for me was writing the global ‘Love the Skin You’re In’ platform for Olay, which was a turning point for the beauty industry, and a precursor to Dove ‘Real Beauty’ in reframing how we talk about beauty. It launched at a time when airbrushed perfection was the norm in beauty advertising and girls as young as 13 were being cast as talent for their ‘aspirational’ skin quality. Isabella Rossellini had just been retired as the face of a beauty brand because she was ‘too old.’

We took a stance on that and launched ‘Total Effects’ for Olay with an actress in her 40s, Glynis Barber. It became a UK and global number one bestseller and made Olay a billion-dollar brand.

Even though the campaign we wrote for inclusive beauty under ‘Love the Skin You’re In’ never fully rolled out, the guidebook was written.

I was involved in this and it makes me cringe…

Kim> Much of my earlier work makes me cringe. Things that date badly. Or feel disposable. Probably could have thought more about who might be offended by this Christmas bus ad for safe sex. But on the flip side, it did remind more people to wear condoms during the festive season.

The recent project I was involved in that excited me the most…

Kim> David Hockney was asked what his favourite piece of work was, and he said, ‘Ask me tomorrow.’

I get excited about any work that makes a real difference, gets people talking, and lands in culture. When any concept surges on social, or headlines the news and gets that earned media, it’s exciting (in a heart-in-the-mouth rollercoaster type of way).

Projects like:

Having Harry Styles take part in the New Zealand Census and making it a global cultural moment (as well as increasing youth interest and participation).

Turning hep C from a taboo topic into a mainstream conversation by raising a middle finger (and raising positive testing rates 1,000%).

Turning an open letter into an emotive book to help end cervical cancer.

The journalist in me is still there, along with the mantra: ‘Don’t tell me the ad, tell me the press release.’