Samira Ansari Escaped Iran. She Isn’t Scared of Industry Chaos

​Samira Ansari is used to being creative against a backdrop of chaos. Grey New York’s current chief creative was just 12-years-old when her family escaped a revolution in Iran and fled to Australia.

“I watched my parents employ very creative tactics -- you've all seen the movies -- to get us out of Iran,” she told the room at an Advertising Council Australia lunch this week, on her first trip to Sydney in 30 years.

“We travelled through Japan and landed in Australia, in the suburbs of Melbourne, where I grew up. So you can say that navigating chaos was very instrumental and it was a backdrop to my formative years.”

Speaking to LBB after her keynote address as this year’s AWARD Awards jury president, she said the industry is “a little static right now and it’s frozen in place”. Humans choose between fight, flight, or freeze, and “protecting, protecting, protecting the bottom line” is a freeze response -- it doesn't lead to creativity or growth, she argued.

“Right now, because the economy is so screwed up, people are scared and there's nothing worse than being frozen,” she said.

“As a child, I made my own entertainment. There was no television. There was a war going on. My dad went bald over a year. I had to use my creativity to entertain myself. And now as an adult, I thrive in chaos because it doesn't scare me. I see opportunities. And I want the industry to do the same thing. You can't keep doing what you're doing. It doesn't work like that. That is not life.”

She’s one of a number of native Aussies who have returned to its shores in recent weeks to inspire the industry. David Droga, Australia’s biggest advertising export, joined Samira at the lunch event to claim agencies “quite like a shitty client who doesn't trust them because it gives them an alibi for everything being mediocre”.

And Dentsu Creative’s global creative partner, John Mescall, recently travelled to Auckland and Melbourne to speak at a marketing conference and university lecture hall. He told LBB creatives need to follow the problem, and reflected on his 12 years away from Australia. "When you leave a place, you stupidly expect it to remain in stasis until you come back," he said. Samira has been out of the market for 23 years. Does she feel similarly?

“I think I idealise Australia as the land that gave me my fresh start at the age of 12. When I talk about free health and education and all the things that have allowed me to be the person I am, I love it and I sell it to people.”

She used her time on-stage to draw parallels between parenting a toddler -- she has a five-year-old, “neurospicy” daughter -- and being a CCO. Both require her to pick her battles, listen even when it’s gibberish, prioritise patience, and understand the importance of play. The only constant is change, she told LBB.

“So why are we so afraid of it? Throw yourself into it. And chances are you will rise with more confidence, with more gusto, with more ideas. You'll feel younger.

“I wish I had a kid so much earlier, and the reason I talk about my child is because it was the thing I was afraid of. And when I did it, I'm like, this is fucking fascinating. It's made me feel younger, I have more gusto for life. I still have ideas and grandeur about changing life and changing the future. And now I have this kid that I have to usher through all of that. That's life. Your heart's pounding because you're alive.”

The industry has changed drastically since she started her career as an art director at cummins&partners in the late ‘90s. From there, she went to Y&R in Melbourne, before jetting off overseas and never returning home. She spent a few years at Saatchi & Saatchi in Paris, and in 2007 relocated to New York, where she’s worked at JWT, TBWA, Leo Burnett, Johannes Leonardo, FCB, Deutsch NY, Ogilvy, and Grey. She’s a little jealous of today’s juniors, she admitted to moderator and recruiter Lea Walker, and “the way they prioritise themselves”.

“But I also think they're missing out on all the fucking cool shit that we did. When we were obsessed with each other, we were obsessed with the environment that we were in. It was fun. It was funny. I drank at work. I slept at work, I stole toilet paper and milk and champagne from work.”

The trip home has reminded her of Australia’s scrappiness, and the region’s ability to creatively punch above its weight.

“It's kicking fucking ass,” she said of the local market. “It upsets me when people say it's not, because I think it is. If you look at the independents, and it's happening everywhere, there's so much talent here. And the layers of complexity are less lethal. I think you can make change more easily here than you can in the bigger markets.”

Ultimately, she echoed David Droga’s assertion that creativity, and creative thinking, is immensely powerful, and even more valuable amidst volatility and change. Marketers trying to captain brands through choppy waters should therefore rely more on their creative partners to answer the biggest questions.

“Creativity is a disease, right? You can't help it. You're a creative person; you sweat it, you breathe it, you're obsessed with it,” she said.

“So throw them at your business problem. They will solve it because that is what they do.”