Bad Apple doing good job

Ad agency’s pushing the ‘bubble’

LOUD, colourful and nearly impossible to miss, the graffiti-covered facade of a Stanley Street, Port Elizabeth creative agency just screams Bad Apple. And that is exactly the effect Bad Apple Creative’s co-owner and managing director, Jennifer Lindridge, sought and achieved when she brought in a Durban-based graffiti artist to design the exterior wall at her latest business venture that “will show clients what our agency is all about”.

At 43-years-old, Lindridge has successfully accrued extensive creative and business experience to make it one of South Africa’s most competitive metropolitan creative hubs.

Having cut her teeth in graphic design at Trio Advertising – which was arguably Port Elizabeth’s leading creative agency in the 90s – the Collegiate Girl’s High School and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University-educated businesswoman went on to establish and sell another well-known design ad agency in Port Elizabeth, where she was hands-on and involved for more than a decade.

Following a five-year break from the industry, the Mount Croix resident was back in business in January last year, after she launched Bad Apple Creative in the heart of Nelson Mandela Bay’s vibrant food and entertainment strip in Richmond Hill.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States, the creative guru revealed that her return to the industry had been unexpected.

“I never intended to get back into the industry as I left because it had stopped being fun,” she said.

But after an old client approached her about a partnership, she reconsidered.

“I felt it was an opportunity I should grab,” Lindridge said. At just 18-months-old, Bad Apple already provides creative services to international, national and local clients.

These range from companies such as Arizona, USA-based Precision laboratories to Johannesburg freight company Kargo, Momsen Bikes, shopping malls and schools in the Bay and abroad.

Lindridge’s enthusiastic interest in graphic design and advertising was sparked by the late-80s American television series Thirtysomething, which featured an advertising agency.

“I’d always known without a doubt that I wanted to study art but I applied for other courses because my parents were not very approving of my career choice,” Lindridge said.

Lindridge then went on to complete her national diploma in graphic design at the then PE Technikon, where she graduated cum laude.

She said Bad Apple employed six qualified graphic designers, who put their extensive skills to work and brought to life advertising campaigns from pitch to billboard, an office manager and an account executive.

“We do traditional press such as adverts that go into newspapers, social media, website design, catalogue creation and packaging – in fact anything that needs a creative approach.

“Our clients approach us looking for something fun and different that pushes the bubble and a lot of the time we propose quite scary stuff.

“They prove to be very brave and are willing to run with that,” Lindridge said.

Among her biggest challenges was getting clients to trust the agency and its creative and strategic proposals.

“Many people feel advertising campaigns are very formulaic and that you just place an ad in the paper – but it’s not. It is all about the design.”

Advertising campaigns were about how you hooked and engaged an audience – “and that’s what we’re good at – grabbing attention”, she said.