I have no surname

What’s with factory hands (read 'creatives') who apparently only have a first name?

Last year, my Production Manager (big shout-out to Diz) and I trawled through campaign brief to see how many Creative Directors have no surname. We found that 4 individuals of about 20 mentioned in the publication were so cutting-edge that they had become the archetype for their given name. Pretentiously, now it would seem it is only a requirement of others past, present and future who share their name to be burdened and branded with a surname. After all, I suppose, the original must be differentiated from.

“Hi, I’m John, pleased to meet you”

“John, you mean, THE John!?”

“No, no. Sorry, my fault. I’m not John, I’m John 12045 – I didn’t mean to mislead you.”

“Oh, well, nice to meet you anyway John 12045. I was so excited for a second there, I thought I was going to meet a genius!”

“Yeah, it happens all the time. John sure was a visionary. There’s no way I could ever match his accomplishments in Advertising. I’ve come to accept it though, now I’m content to just keep working away at my new quantum physics theorem.

“Yeah, must be so hard to live in someone else’s shadow”

We found this so utterly repulsive, arrogant and piss-funny, that we decided to create our own fictional Art Director – Manu.

Manu is Spanish. He'd accpeted an exchange role in Australia in order to reignite his passion for advertising. Back home, he'd become despondent. He'd won all the acclaim there was to win, and spent most of his time searching for the perfect awards cabinent...a search that was futile - Manu is a design genius and no cabinent would ever meet his standards.

Once in Australia and away from his awards, on some days Manu chose only to communicate with those who could speak the north-eastern Spanish dialect of catalan – those who couldn’t were obviously intellectual pigmies and therefore had no right to converse with Manu, or indeed, view his work. They plainly wouldn’t understand, and it would be an insult to Manu's superior intelligence to lower himself to their level.

Manu only ever worked on any given project once. He would inject the creative genius required, then pass it on to the juniors after refusing to accept a clients request for changes.

Manu is a tortured soul, a genius, an archetype.

Introducing, Manu...