Polaroid’s Patricia Varella chats long-game strategies, imperfection and that anti-AI viral campaign

In House is a new column from It’s Nice That where we go inside the workings of major brands, agencies and companies shaping the future of the creative industry.

Sometimes, a creative campaign perfectly captures the moment. When Polaroid launched the Flip camera last summer, its ads paired lo-fi imagery with lines like, “AI can’t generate sand between your toes” and “How much of your camera roll do you really remember?”

Amid feverish AI noise, the campaign’s celebration of IRL went viral. This summer, Polaroid doubled down.

New lines include “Dance like nobody is recording” and “Go jump in some water before the data centers drink it all up,” which was emblazoned across a billboard installed on a Coney Island beach.

Again, it went viral. When Polaroid creative director Patricia Varella returned from a digital detox holiday, her phone blew up with hundreds of messages. “It was a bit scary,” she admits, “but also very exciting.”

Patricia joined Polaroid in 2022 after a career with ad agencies like Ogilvy and Sid Lee, and brands like G-Star Raw and Bugaboo. We sat down to discuss the success of these campaigns, knowing when to take a risk, and why in-house creativity is a marathon, not a sprint.

RA: So you need to push back on the brief?

PV: Yes, you need to ask why? Why exactly are you asking for this? That’s how you gain trust from your internal stakeholders, making them understand that you are fighting the same battle.

As creatives, we are problem solvers. When you understand the problem, it’s easy to come up with a solution.

RA: What was your vision for the in-house agency at Polaroid?

PV: When you’re working in agencies, you’re more like a sprinter, and you have to act really fast. I see working in-house more like being a marathon runner. You still have to move fast, but you are connecting the dots and building things which you’ll see the results of in the long term.

I convince my team to focus on the long-term, to know that everything they do is building towards something greater.

RA: Does that mean hiring people with a specific profile, or personality, to work in that way?

PV: You need people who are good at working in teams, who understand the purpose is greater than yourself.

In an agency, your role is really defined. Here, you have to enjoy jumping between things and recreating your job. And I tend to hire people that are better than myself. That’s the best formula. My art director is the designer I wanted to be. My writer is the writer that I wanted to become.

RA: What do you look for in the agencies you work with?

PV: A deep understanding of the brand’s potential future challenges. It’s easy now the brand narrative is in place – everybody wants to build on that. We get all these emails saying, “We have an idea based on your brand narrative!”

I’m like, we’ve got ideas. The most interesting thing is what comes next.

RA: Copy plays a big part in this campaign – what’s the process for coming up with lines, and how do you decide which ones make the cut?

PV: This year we had a formula. They had to contain the enemy – call out the consequences of over-digitisation. They had to have some irony, and they had to have a smart point of view.

We wrote about 50 lines, and then we ended up using six. But the lines that made the cut didn’t necessarily fit our formula. The ones we chose were the ones that created a physical reaction – that gave us goosebumps, or made us smile, or made us laugh. We felt if a line provoked those reactions in us, it would resonate with other people too.

RA: You also installed a billboard on a beach. That feels like one of those ideas that someone suggests in a meeting, everyone laughs, and then it gets forgotten…

PV: Exactly – you just think about all the reasons why it’s not going to happen. But somehow our amazing teams and the agency made it work.

The media strategy was a smart component of the last campaign. We put those messages where the conversation was happening, close to the Google offices and Apple stores. I think that was part of its success.

This year the concept was there, but our CEO and CMO asked us if we could push it even further, and make it even bolder. This campaign is claiming the best of summer is analogue. So what if we put the message actually on the beach, where we want to inspire people to put down their phones?

RA: And for this campaign you also paid creators to go offline?

PV: We had to tick all the boxes, right? We’re asking people to drop their phones, so would we then ask influencers to generate digital content for us? What if we asked the exact opposite? What if we paid them not to post for a while and connect with their analogue life?

RA: It feels like with this and the billboard on the beach, the team is willing to keep following where the core ideas take them?

PV: Yes, I think you're right. We actually had this idea – asking influencers not to post – during the Polaroid Flip campaign last year. It felt a bit too much then. But the advantage of having a small team is that we keep on recycling ideas.

This year, we felt like we had permission to keep building on it, and make it a bit more disruptive. If we are going to be bold, how do we do it in the right way?