#Newsmaker: Colin Loughlin appointed senior creative editor at Nice Shoes

With over a decade of experience, Colin Loughlin has built an impressive portfolio working on a number of notable projects for agencies including Ogilvy, Grey, Y&R, McCann, BBDO, Wunderman Thompson, Droga 5 and DDB with brands such as Verizon, Nike, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, State Farm, HP, Pepsi, Tic Tacs, Classico, The Gap, Express, Coach, Rolex, Volvo, Mercedes Benz and Alexander Wang.

Colin was first introduced to editing when interning at a local news station. In this fast-paced environment he discovered his love for storytelling, and the important role of the editorial process. As an editor in NYC, Colin cut his teeth at Whitehouse Post. From there, he landed a role as editor at Alldayeveryday post house where he first worked with Nice Shoes EP Tara Holmes and was instrumental in collaborating directly with iconic brands such as Express, Alexander Wang and Pepsi.

Congrats on being appointed to the role of senior creative editor at Nice Shoes. How do you feel about it?

It’s an amazing honour and privilege to be part of a great team with such longevity. The studio just celebrated 25 years in the industry and that speaks volumes. I’m really engaged by the vision the leaders of the company have, and as an editor, I see so much possibility to help in defining and streamlining workflows, and opening up to new clients and avenues of work. Being able to work closely with other creatives, colourists, VFX artists really helps improve the creativity of any project.

How and when did this come about? When do you take up this position?

This came about just as 2020 was wrapping up. It came about after years of successful collaboration with the Nice Shoes team, and discussions with our EP Tara Holmes about how we could grow our editorial team - not just in the immediate future, but long term. Tara and I have a relationship that has spanned our entire careers, from when we were both starting out until now. At one point, she was my executive producer at Alldayeveryday, and that experience ultimately led to us reuniting at Nice Shoes. We’ve always loved working together and collaborating and felt this was going to be the next great step in our creative partnership.

What will your new role entail?

Overall leading projects as a creative editor - working with our clients to help them mould their story while working closely with the rest of the Nice Shoes team of creative directors, VFX artists, colourists and producers. Being part of a team and being able to pass things back and forth with such ease has really elevated the projects we’ve done together.

In addition, I’ll also be mentoring our junior editors and looking out for staff that comes up and has an interest in editorial. Nice Shoes has a rich history of strong mentorship programs for colour and finishing, and it is great to be part of heading one up for edit.

You have over a decade of experience. What are some of your notable achievements?

Maintaining relationships with clients through the years.

It’s been really important to me to keep in touch with my clients. They’re people I love working with, and that helps to keep the work at the highest level.

Through such a long career I’ve been fortunate to connect with people who I’ve developed rapports and shorthand with, so when we kick off a project it’s that much easier to get going on knowing what each individual team is looking for.

What do you love most about your career, the industry and what you do?

I’m the youngest of five. My father was a banker and he always thought one of us would go the business route. But none of us did. We all took some form of creativity. I’ve always loved that about the industry I’m in.

Every project is always different, something unexpected with a new challenge to solve.

You’re given all this footage that you need to combine in a room full of people with different opinions, styles, and techniques. And at the end of the project you bring something together that everyone is thrilled to have their name on. There’s so many possibilities based on what shots you choose. So much opportunity to sculpt these stories. Then you get to see it on TV - maybe you get a little PTSD about the problems we had to solve, but mostly you’re just happy to see your work onscreen or on the internet.

In your career, you've worked on a number of projects for agencies. What's your 'creative' recipe?

The one thing I’ve always done, and learned through working with other editors, is that you want to make sure you’ve seen and organised every piece of footage shot. People are relying on you to be able to mould a story with everything that you have and if you don’t ingest and digest, then you’re not doing your job in contributing to that process. You need to know every answer to every question a client may have about that footage. It’s the number one thing you can do to contribute to the creation of a successful spot, in a timely manner.

Do you think Covid-19 has impacted the quality of creative work? If so, how?

If anything I’ve learned how to do things a lot differently, which I think is even more creative than we were doing before.

The creativity has only gotten better with Covid - because people are solving problems they weren’t encountering before, and I think people are going to take these lessons and use them as a benefit to improve their creative process.

Have we all had to figure out new office spaces? Yes. But that’s helped to figure out how to structure and value your workday, and your after work hours more than before.

I think the way brands advertise has seen a tremendous boost in creativity. They’ve had to adjust their messaging in response to a global pandemic, social issues, and a divisive election.

It’s probably been harder than ever before, but so many have been agile in how they produce their advertising and stay relevant to consumers.

Then you add the production and post aspects that I mentioned before, and you have an advertising and marketing industry that’s been injected with a tremendous amount of creativity, agile in both messaging and production to communicate with their audience in more meaningful ways.