It's safe to say the creativeXpeople team at Synergy Group has an envious workspace.
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It's the type of office that looks so fun it makes you consider a career change. A miniature Thor's hammer and a xylophone live on the meeting table. On the wall is the type of mural you'd expect on a Mambo-style shirt from the 1990s. Sitting alongside their slew of awards is a red LEGO kombi van. And taking pride of place amongst said awards are three Gruen Transfer trophies.
Luckily there is still space for at least one more, with Canberra's creativeXpeople set to appear on the ABC television show's election edition, Gruen Nation, this week.
Hosted by Wil Anderson and featuring advertising insiders Todd Sampson and Russel Howcroft, the two-part series will uncover all the tricks of the trail that politicians use to snag your vote. And as always, two agencies per episode come on to try to sell the unsellable.
While creativeXpeople has previously taken on "impossible briefs" such as convincing people that cheating is part of our DNA or that Australians should get behind Halloween, this may just be the team's most challenging pitch to date. They've been asked to unite all Australians, no matter the result of the upcoming federal election.
"Every year we always take the brief seriously. It's fun and it's the impossible brief, but we start by taking it seriously and by going OK, what if we did do that?" creative director Jason Perelson says.
"And you start to piece those pieces of the brief together. So what is unity? And what [does] 'regardless of the election outcome' mean? Because that's a weighted statement. That means everybody. That means people you vehemently disagree with."
When the brief first comes to mind, it's easy to jump straight to an Australia Day lamb-style ad that revolves around the democracy sausage. And the creativeXpeople team did play around with some of those ideas. But they also wanted to do something that had a little bit of substance to it.
And it turns out that Gruen Nation also liked that approach because of the three scripts submitted to the production team ahead of Wednesday's episode, the one that was given the go-ahead was the advertisement that tried to make an impact.
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"We've taken an approach that pretty much ignores the election altogether and just says, what do we as Australians need to do to unite regardless of our views, regardless of opposing views?" Perelson says.
"What do we need to do in terms of those hard issues around systemic injustices across all sorts of races, genders, ethnicities, orientations? That's what we're trying to produce at the moment, which is also the hardest one to do. But challenges are fun."
And here we were thinking that the timeline alone is challenge enough.
While creativeXpeople knew they were taking part in Gruen Nation in January because the show's air dates revolve around the election, they didn't know the exact dates until the election was called.
Even then, Gruen is a tight turnaround. A normal Gruen Transfer season will see participants receive the brief four weeks out from the airdate, giving them two weeks to submit three possible ideas, and two weeks in production once it's been approved. This time Gruen Nation sees creativeXpeople get three weeks to film and edit their entry.
"The process is no different to standard TV commercials. It's just accelerated - it's quick decision making and you have to have a strong sense of the idea that you wanting," Perelson says.
Gruen Nation is on ABC on Wednesday at 8pm.
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