Chris Birch and Jonathan Parker of VCCP on Finding Creativity in the Most Ordinary Places

Simple ingredients often lead to amazing campaigns

Chris and Jonny are joint chief creative officers of VCCP London. They have worked with Cadbury and Virgin Media O2, among many others.

We spent two minutes with Chris and Jonny to learn more about their backgrounds, their creative inspirations and recent work they’ve admired. 

Congrats, as their team devised Muse’s newly-crowned Ad of the Week, reimagining Freddie Mercury and Queen as Cadbury bars.

Chris and Jonny, tell us … 

Where you grew up, and where you live now.

• Chris: I grew up in Leeds. Now I live in Highbury. 

• Jonny: The Camp on the River Don. But I live in Sussex now. 

How you first realized you were creative.

• Chris: When I was six, I made my mum a clay hedgehog. Everyone else in my class put spikes on their hedgehog. But I made a hedgehog with stripes down its back (which I thought looked like spikes) and everyone said: “They’re not spikes.” I responded with: “They are very much like spikes.” And then I showed my mum, and she said: “What a strange hedgehog, I love it.” I still look at it in their house and think: “Looks nothing like a hedgehog.”

• Jonny: I was crap at sport and math but good at drawing.

A moment from high school or college that changed your life.

• Chris: My fine art tutor told me there needed to be meaning behind my paintings. I didn’t understand what he meant. And thus a shallow advertising career was born.

Your most important creative inspirations, and some recent stuff you love.

• Chris: I loved adverts as a kid. Kia Ora’s “Too Orangey For Crows.” Milky Way’s “Red Car/Blue Car.” Tango’s “Orange Man.” More recently, I have fallen in love with the work of this painter, Caroline Walker. She does incredible portraits of new mothers in seemingly very ordinary situations but they are anything but. If anyone wants to buy me one let me know.

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• Jonny: My kids really do inspire me. A 6-year-old and a 13-year-old see the world so differently than us old buggers. They find creativity in the most ordinary places. They create magic and wonder from an old Amazon box and a roll of Gorilla Tape. They remind me that the most simple ingredients can create the most amazing of things.

A recent project you’re proud of.

• Chris: Made To Share for Cadbury. Which went out a few months ago.  

• Jonny: “Daisy vs. Scammers” for O2. It’s a genuine piece of work that got talked about the world over by real people. That’s what it’s all about. And what Chris said obvously. Beyond proud.

Someone else’s work you admired lately.

• Chris: Progresso Soup Drops. A soup you can suck on. 

• Jonny: There’s so much work out there that’s inspiring. But I really loved this. A joyous, very British celebration of broken Britain directed by Steve Rogers (an Aussie) for Coinbase. 

A mentor who helped you navigate the industry.

• Chris: Angus Macadam and Paul Jordan. So many tidbits I still use to this day: “It only takes a second to score a goal,” “No skateboarding grannies,” “You only have to be a dickhead one day a year,” “Buy the flight, then work it out”—that sort of thing. And Jim Thornton, who gave me my first job purely because we were: “Entertainingly bad at it.”

• Jonny: Tony Cullingham, Darren Bailes, Jim Thornton and my mum.

What you’d be doing if you weren’t in advertising.

• Chris: Working in Strikes Garden Centre. 

• Jonny: Still hopelessly trying to be an artist.