Fu’aad Kasu, creative director at Duke Group

Can you tell us about your career in the creative space?

Yeah, I guess I could. It’s now about 13 years of this stuff. Still no regrets. Nine years in Johannesburg and four in Cape Town. I started as a very young art director at Joe Public and now being creative director at Duke.

It’s such a great career; it’s probably the only job where you’ll never do the same thing twice in any given day. You get to think up cool sh*t for TV ads, social films, radio and even print (no, it’s not dead) then sell it to a client and actually make it!

How did you get into the industry?

Well, it wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to be a surgeon, but I failed Maths. And then a pastry chef, but was teased a lot and being an Indian male in the kitchen back then wasn’t that encouraging (Not by my folks, they were supportive with whatever I chose).

My dad brought home a careers book and because I always enjoyed being creative, in the kitchen or with school projects, graphic design stood out for me. I never knew anything about art direction, just graphic design. I needed an art portfolio to get into AAA, but government schools in most of the Indian areas didn’t offer art. Still, I managed to find an art teacher in Lenasia who taught me everything. I submitted my stuff and was accepted.

I specialised in art direction and three years later I was awarded Student of the Year. While most of my friends all ended up with jobs from their internships, the agency I was at, wasn’t hiring. I dropped off a CD (for the Ama 2000’s, that’s a compact disc) and a printed-out portfolio (yup, one with a black plastic binder and acetate cover) for Liezl at Joe Public and, well, that’s where it all began.

You were selected to create the Loeries campaign. How did this come about?

The Loeries approached Duke, and it was an opportunity we couldn’t let go of.

Were you given the power to come up with the concept, or were you given a brief? Tell us about this.

A little bit of both. We were given a solid brief and we needed to follow on from the last few amazing campaigns. The concept was generated by us at Duke and I was the creative director on the campaign.

What was your inspiration?

Our people actually; everyone in the industry, be it a client, creative, account management or a director. We’re all in this creative field in some way or the other.

It’s for the people who don’t stop, who don’t give up, who keep pushing for better.

What was your creative process? What creative methods did you use?

It was a lekker one. The entire creative studio at Duke all came together for one big brainstorm. I feel like sometimes the best ideas come from a mix of different creatives all sitting together conceptualising and bitching about why Adam Sandler still makes movies.

Our writer, Leon van Rooyen, wrote a series of anthemic headlines that would act as a rallying cry to the people fighting the good fight. We then asked said people of the industry to send us portraits, which our talented illustrator Elio Moavero beautifully transformed into depictions of them fighting the good creative fight. This included everything from tentacles wielding baseball bats, troops waging war against bad briefs and an angry Thesaurus Rex. The goo oozing out of them is that fight inside us making its way to the surface.

Tell us about the meaning behind the message.The proof of creativity is in our fight, it’s something all of us love, hate and live for. We kinda are suckers for punishment, we give so much of our energy to what we do, project after project. With all this Covid stuff and working remotely etc. we’re all faced with new challenges. We all need to work twice as hard and fight even harder for great work.

The reason is simple – we wouldn’t want to do anything else in the world with our 26-hour day.

What does #fighthegoodfight mean to you?

For me, it’s simple, just keep fighting for cool creative work.

That idea that you’re too afraid to present, or you think it too crazy is probably what we should be doing and making.

Make the work cool enough that your mum will share it in the family WhatsApp group.