If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

About a year ago I was listening to a podcast called The Plot Thickens. The subject was the messy production of the movie The Bonfire of the Vanities. As the story unfolded I realised that the format – a documentary of a subject told over several episodes, with interviews featuring the participants – might lend... Read More

This is the sixth episode of my series of podcasts about the great David Abbott. This one is called ‘David’s Department’ and explores what it was like to be a creative working under David. I'll link to the episode here, but you can also find the whole series on Soundcloud.

Good morning. Apologies for the recent silence of this blog. WordPress lost all my data recently, so that had to be sorted out. We got most of it back, but if you’re wondering where a few of the more recent posts have gone, they have vanished into the digishpere, never to return. A shame, as... Read More

Anthony is many things: comedian, journalist, DJ, presenter, author, pilot, maker of excellent roast potatoes, and, of course my next-door neighbour (find out all about him/hire him here). But he is also a top-level voiceover artist, who has lent his vocal cords to such clients as Nike, Lego, Samsung, Kellog’s and Disney. Here’s his Nike... Read More

So I was watching this video the other day: …and I found myself in violent agreement with everything Tim Lindsay was saying. There are lots of questions advertising has to ask itself right now. The industry is in a state of disrepair: financially straitened, endlessly splintered and trying to find its place at a time... Read More

The second part of my chat with Paul. iTunes link, Soundcloud link, direct play button:

Paul would be far too modes to say this, but if you watched a brilliant ad from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, there’s a decent chance he had something to do with it. As one of the founders of Gorgeous (2.0 – Chris Palmer had already been running a pre-Paul Gorgeous for a... Read More

I used to collect movie posters. I still have a few favourites, but in the end I ran out of wall space and it seemed a shame to keep so much great stuff rolled up in a cupboard, especially if someone, somewhere might really want that foiled Kill Bill One-Sheet I tracked down, or the... Read More

This is the third and final ‘people who were heavily involved in the Blackcurrant Tango ad’ series: my chat with the client, David Atter. (Episode 1 with director Colin Gregg can be found here. Episode 2 with copywriter Chas Bayfield can be found here.) Just in case you’re popping by at some random point in... Read More

This is the second in my series of three posts/podcasts about Blackcurrant Tango, apparently one of the most beloved ads of the last thirty years: You could read the Colin Gregg post, or read this repeat of what I said there: I put this up on LinkedIn and it caused a massive, affectionate response. So... Read More

I’ve been putting up great ads from the 90s on LinkedIn. It started as a snarky attempt at pointing out how ads used to be better, and that even ads from 20+ years ago would be better than the ‘best’ of today. One of these ads was the wonderful Blackcurrant Tango ad of 1996: It... Read More

Stephen was the 25th employee of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which means he saw it grow from a very good agency to the best in the country in a few short years. After a stint on Audi he became the first account guy on Levi’s, so we talked all about that. If you grew up in... Read More

Rich and I started in advertising at the same time in the same place. He won a Cannes Gold in his first year. I was laid off. Now we’re back together having a delightful chat about those intervening 24 years. He’s a top bloke, and still has those great creative chops, as evidenced by this,... Read More

Jean-Louis is the Chief Strategy Officer of The Concept Bureau. (Slight aside: I wonder why job titles are sounding increasingly military.) I asked him on the pod because ‘strategist’ is becoming a very common word in advertising-adjacent job titles. Jean-Louis is a Brand Strategist, so what does that mean, and what is a Creative Strategist,... Read More

Rob McFaul is the founder of an organisation called Purpose Disruptors: A network of advertising insiders whose goal is to create a visible, large scale, bottom up movement within the industry, that will act in solidarity to meaningfully tackle climate change. I’m very, very interested in this subject. It’s both immensely interesting and immensely intractable.... Read More

This is my attempt to make sure the podcast adds to the iTunes feed. Fingers crossed…

I loved chatting to Trevor. We’d never met before, but he was a warm and lovely fella. His first Tango ad broke the mould, as popular with kids in playgrounds as it was with award jurors. But then there was the weird, pervy Apple Tango ad. And the weird, pervy Pot Noodle ads: as popular... Read More

At last! Paul is one of the people I’ve most wanted to interview. He’s arguably been responsible for more classic advertising over the last 30 years than anyone else. Whether it was for Stella, Nike, Playstation, John Smith, John West, Adidas, Levi’s, Scalextric, Olympus or dozens of others; with a very talented art director or... Read More

So here’s the second episode. Thank you for your patience, and thanks to Paul for his.

  Here’s my chat with Matt Follows, an award-winning creative turned mental health professional and coach. After 20 years as a writer/creative director at places like W+K, M&C Saatchi, Clemenger and Naked, he left the industry to retrain as a performance psychologist, psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist at King’s College, London. He’s now been working in this field... Read More