Jake Legge

What if the worst ad agency in the Pacific was tasked by the New Zealand Government with the mission of getting kiwis to travel safe? Washout Media is a wannabe-viral marketing startup destined for failure when they take on the brief from the buttoned-up bureaucracy. The desperate SafeTravel boss Clark has placed his unconditional faith and budget into the Washout Media team, linking his fate with theirs as they plunge into madness and an inescapable creative darkness that somehow gets thousands of views.

As a creator I like to stretch boundaries, and from the beginning of this project I was very keen to give this campaign a surreal outrageous feel. This was an interesting task as our client was the government agency SafeTravel, meaning we found ourselves butting heads at times. This provided a valuable lesson when it comes to negotiating with clients. We came from two very different head spaces but after lots of conversations and ideation we came to a middle ground which made both parties happy.