STUFF FROM THE LOFT - Dave Dye

If you've ever wondered how reliant creatives are on their producers, count how many are married to them.Lots.Including me, my two creative partners at Campbell Doyle Dye and dozens of friends. Psychologists say we seek qualities in a partner we don't have ourselves.To create more complete children.So right brainers, who come up with the theories, need left brainers to help turn them into reality.Yvonne Chalkley has turned more crazy, impossible, can't-be-done theories into reality than anyone.After watching her ads, you could be forgiven for thinking each came with a blank cheque for production and a guarantee that the creatives had final sign off.Obviously, neither were true.How you navigate between the differing demands from the client, agency, film production company and creative team I don't know.Don't compromise and the script may not get made.Compromise too much and the script and it may not be worth making.And here's the really weird, spooky thing - I can't find anyone who's ever heard Yvonne raise her voice.Or say no.I asked her to explain.(She said ‘yes', obvs.)This is the first episode edited by Parv - thanks Parv! (What were the other guests- chopped liver?)

Imagine a day where you don't own a computer, and you lose your phone just after breakfast.We used to live like that.Every damn day.With virtually no access to information.Researching how to be better at your job wasn't a thing.Advertising people didn't do podcasts or post articles about their work.True, there were books, but not many.Aside from awards annuals, the main two were ‘Ogilvy On Advertising' and ‘Bill Bernbach's Book'.Occasionally you'd photocopy an article from Campaign, Creative Review or Direction magazine.Dave Trott's ‘How To Get Your First Job In Advertising' was the most useful.I had a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy.The text was so faded and broken up it looked like an old religious document.Which it was in a way.It's still great. (I've attached a copy below.)Later, The Copy and Art Direction Books turned up.They were a revelation – good creatives explaining how they create.(If you haven't read Richard Foster's piece do, you'll be a 9% better writer after reading it.)We have the opposite problem today; too much.But it leads to a kind of inertia.A bit like living next to St. Pauls, you put off visiting, because you think ‘it'll be there tomorrow, next week, next year'.The other problem is who is or isn't worth listening to?LinkedIn if packed with people aggressively telling you exactly how to create ads as good as the ones they… like.At the other end of the spectrum are people like Dave Trott, George Tannenbaum, Brian Burch, The Behind The Billboard guys, Rory Sutherland, Ben Kay and many more I'll be embarrassed tomorrow that I forgot to mention.And Steve Hudson.He posts a series called The Power Of Advertising on LinkedIn where he breaks down his (and Victoria Fallon's) ads from nose to tail.From brief to air.What's great about it is the work.A lot of teams have a style or preference, Steve (and Victoria) don't.At least, not that I can spot.What links Audi to Anti-Smoking to One To One to Levi's to Kingshield other than they're all great?The weirdest thing about our chat was realising how short their creative career was.10 years.They took it very seriously, which lead to some great work, but maybe some bad decisions too.Hearing about Steve's career was a bit like watching a horror film.Instead of shouting ‘LOOK BEHIND YOU!' I was shouting ‘DON'T RESIGN TO HEGARTY!' or ‘STAY AT ABBOTT MEAD!'.Anyway, it was a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

Creating is different to managing.Creators try to break rules, managers set them.Creators look inward, managers look outward.Creators are introverts, managers are extroverts.Not 100%, but most, AMV/BBDO once Myers Briggs tested their creative department.The results came back - fifty people were rated ‘I' (introvert), one was ‘E' - the creative boss (Peter Souter).I's are ‘more likely to be successful in careers like writing, science and art'.Makes sense.“I's are predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things. Give an extrovert a problem and they'll share it with others, give it to an introvert and they'll ‘go into a cave alone to solve it'.(Try finding a cave these days. In Soho. Nightmare.)Today, creatives are often described as being “on the spectrum”.Whether their diagnosis is right or wrong, it's true, our brains are wired differently.It's fine when they need someone to look at a problem from a new angle.More difficult when they need someone to play the role of manager.That dark, cosy cave is swapped for bright, stranger-filled boardrooms.Primarily to pitch, possibly the furthest distance from that cave.You may be told to ‘have chemistry' with six strangers from the world of moist wipes.Or to present your funniest ‘jokes' to some folks about to spend £6m persuading the public that their product has isn't a cake, as its name suggests, it's actually a biscuit.It's an adjustment.Some adapt quicker than others.I found it tough.In the early days of CDD, clients having just left after a pitch, Peter Mead looked up at me and sighed “You should've seen David Abbott present creative work”.Heartbreaking.What did Abbott do?How did he present?I'd love to have seen him present creative work.But agencies rarely invest in training or mentoring, they lob you in and hope you can swim.It's like telling a footballer to “Put this helmet and shin pads on, you're now a Cricketer'.How do you make that transition less record scratchy?I thought it'd be helpful for those about to go through it to have a bit more understanding of where they're headed.To do this, I managed to pin down someone who knows more about pitching than anyone else; Martin Jones.He's sat on both sides of the table - he ran new business at the biggest agency in Britain at the time; J. Walter Thompson,then ran the biggest intermediary in the Country for the last thirty years; The AAR.Personally, he's run over a thousand over the last thirty years.It's meant that he's seen every agency and senior person pitch.I've known Martin since Arsenal's Invincibles team, over the years he's given me endless advice, but hearing him talk about his experience was a revelation.If you have anything to do with new business; listen, you'll be better at the end.Hope you enjoy it.

Whatever happened to funny ads?Have clients stopped buying them?Or have agencies stopped writing them?They used to dominate the ad breaks.Humour was the first tool you reached for after being handed a brief.Why? Well, as that Poppins women says ‘A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down'.Actually…did they dominate ad breaks?Maybe I've slipped on my rose-tinted specs again?I reach for an old D&AD Annual.Randomly, I pick up 1991's.34 tv and cinema ads featured; 28 were funny.Of the 28, the most awarded were for Barclaycard and Red Rock Cider.They feel slightly odd today.They aren't ‘advertising funny', they're actually funny.In a way that I can't imagine them popping up between Bake Off?I don't know whether it's because they don't take the product very seriously? Some even make fun of it. (Imagine; making fun of the very people who pay the bills?)Or maybe getting bigger laughs than the programmes that surround you feels like bad form?Like you have aspirations above your station.I decided to do a bit of rudimentary desk research, discovering that humour is still surprisingly popular.The public love it, apparently.Much preferring it to being lectured to or bullshitted.So why the lack of funny ads?Even ad testing companies are urging us to produce more.(Yes System 1, I'm talking about you.)In an effort to better understand this humour thing, I went straight to the Chairman of the Board, the Grand Fromage, the Capo di Tutti Frutti – John Lloyd.Not only did he shoot both the campaigns above, he'd spent two decades beforehand producing the funniest stuff on tv, including Not The Nine O'clock News, Blackadder and Spitting Image.We had a lovely chat, hope you enjoy it.

“A lot of people on your podcast became creatives by accident.”Someone messaged me this last week (after listening to four of them back-to-back).I got me thinking; why do creatives become creatives?I'd divide them into two groups.The Lifestyle Brigade™ - attracted by the trappings. (Nothing wrong with that - it's why most people go to work.)And the Expressionists™ - attracted by putting a bit of themselves out into the world.A point of view, an observation, a joke, whatever.Like 90% of creatives, they're likely to be introverts.Advertising, for them, is the conduit to a wider audience.It's not like creating a widget in an ad factory, it's much more personal.Their work reflects the values they live by.They don't find it helpful to patronise, bullshit or lie when talking to people day to day, so they don't do it talking to people via pixels or ink.Dealing with humans on a regular basis, they've found logic, facts, humour and honesty persuade harder.So these are the tools the reach for most often.Nick Cohen is one of the best examples of the Expressionists™.It's hard to think of anyone who's leaned harder into the ‘honest' tool.Nick has just written an excellent book about his fabulous experiment - Mad Dogs and Englishmen.It's a joy.It made me want to get into advertising all over again.We had a great chat about the book, the agency and honesty in advertising.Hope you enjoy it.

So far, I'm about eighty podcasts in.If someone tells me they listen, they usually follow up with ‘that Frank Lowe one's great' (or ‘sick', depending on their age).I always ask why, but never get a clear answer.They just like it.It was enjoyable to record too, but I left wondering whyhe'd barely mentioned Lowe Howard-Spink.As if he'd only ever worked at CDP.Which was a shame, CDP had been amazing, but they weren't my era.Lowe's was.By the time I'd snuck into advertising the cool agencies were the new ones – GGT, BBH, AMV and the agency that carried Frank's name.Year after year, they won big awards for big clients.Stella Artois, Vauxhall, Tesco, Heineken, I could go on.So I will – Lloyds Bank, Reebok, Weetabix, Gordons Gin, Parker Pens, The Mail On Sunday, Condor, Castella, Tizer, Ovaltine, KP, The Hanson Trust, Birds Eye, Smirnoff, Coca-Cola – they were huge.And all of those clients won awards.And, unlike CDP, they started opening or acquiring offices across the globe.But it wasn't always this way.In 1981, only months after opening their doors, they were in turmoil.Totally dysfunctional.Having swiped a big chunk of CDP's senior talent, they didn't have a plan or structure of how to use them.Who over-saw who?Did anybody over-see anybody?Who was Creative Director?Dave Horry? Alan Waldie? John O'Driscoll? John Kelley? Alfredo Marcantonio? Or the recently added former CDP superstar Geoff Seymour?They found that too many creative leaders meant they had no creative leader.Six months in, Horry, O'Driscoll and Kelley walk.On the way out the door, they advise Frank that he needed a Creative Director and it should be the least-known and youngest of the breakaways – Alfredo Marcantonio.Suddenly, things started to work.We talk about why and the rest of Marc's career, hope you enjoy it.

I​ u​sed to like Tesla​s, I nearly bought one.​N​ot any more.Obviously it's ​still a great product​, but it's an Elon Musk company.And his purchase of Twitter, ​and subsequent flooding of my feed with his ​thoughts has put me off him.​​I choose not to give my money to a multi billionaire who whines everyday about how unfair the world is.I want best product for the least amount of money, but who I buy it from counts too.If I like the company I​'ll give the benefit of the doubt, if I don't, I'll swerve them.I suspect I'm not alone.But most creative work is judged as if it's being consumed by a cyborg, only logic and facts, as if 1% more of this or 3% less of that will win the day.Rarely factoring in what people may think of the company.I guess it gets you talking about brand advertising and that's indulgent and squishy isn't it?Not like hard sell – that makes the money, doesn't it?Paul Feldwick gives a different view in his excellent book ‘Why Does The Peddlar Sing?'.And unlike most books written by people about themselves……it's unvarnished.It focuses on the famous Barclaycard campaign; from the first pitch to the last ad.If you'd have asked him why the campaign was successful back then, he'd have pointed to the key messages, like the free travel insurance.Now, he he has a different view ‘Rowan Atkinson​. People liked him and that rubbed off on Barclaycard.'And the messaging underpinning the ads? ‘Well, an ad has to have a message, otherwise it just feels a bit weird?'I​ really enjoyed chatting with Paul, hope you enjoy it too.P.s. The peddlar sings to attract and enchant people, it increases sales.

A muffin company wants to make more money.It's hard to increase their current customers weekly muffin intake - so they need add some new ones.To flip muffin fans who aren't choosing theirs, they need to tell them about their company or muffins that will get them to try one.And tell them in a way that gets their attention.But the first thing they need to do is choose who to speak to. An ad agency?A design company?Branding agency?Packing firm?Social media experts?Behavioural scientists?Media agency?I could go on.And on.Is it helpful to muffin companies out there to slice ‘communication' into so many tiny specialisms?Some ad agencies dabble in design, some designer companies do the odd ad.But why is it so segmented?Essentially, we're all working with words and pictures to create personalities.Michael Johnson has always straddled that line, the last 30 years running Johnson Banks.And straddled it well, picking up every creative award going, for design and advertising.We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.Dx

I've just finished watching ‘Coco Chanel Unbuttoned'.Not only did I discover Coco wasn't her real name (Gabrielle), I discovered her philosophy.Pre-Coco, high end fashion used the finest, most expensive materials, like silk, lace and satin – a visual display of one's wealth.Coco chose instead, the basic materials she'd grown up with, poor and in an orphanage.Like jersey, previously used to make men's underwear, she used it to make dresses.She did the same with the tough, knitted stripey material favoured by sailors, called tricot.The flared pants of sailors were the inspiration for her trousers for women.Strong Scottish tweeds were cut to make petite cocktail dresses.The white starchy collars and cuffs worn by waitresses were repurposed, becoming chic.And all in black and white.(The colours worn by the nuns from her childhood.)The look was dubbed the genre pauvre (the poor look).Copying Coco Chanel's designs today would be very backward looking, obviously, but copying her philosophy wouldn't be.What would inspire the genre pauvre today?Workman's materials have changed, today you could say they would be nylons, plastics, hi-vis and rubber moulding.A collection of clothes that repurposed those materials could hardly be backward looking.It's the difference between thinking and execution.In advertising, the two seem to have fused together.Something old must be old fashioned, and everybody knows old fashioned is bad, obvs.Take that old duffer Leo Burnett, what the hell could he teach us today?In the forties, his agency was nicknamed the ‘Critter Agency' due to their tendency of creating characters for their ads – The Jolly Green Giant, Tony The Tiger and the Marlboro Man to mention but a few.Look at these ads today and you'll be hard-pressed to find any relevance to your day job.Some are un-run-able.But look at the theory behind them and it's a different story.Leo believed advertising wasn't a high engagement business, it was an impressions business.And if you are working with such a small slivers of attention, using a visual symbol for the product would help people become more familiar with it, therefore becoming more likely to pick it up when they see it in stores.Not a bad rule for advertising, particularly social media, as their impressions seem to be the slightest.And for all you cool kids who say 'I never look back, only forward' ; try getting inspiration from the future.It's really hard.For the rest, check out 'Selling Creative'.A great book outlining the fifty advertising giants on whose shoulders we all stand on.Written by Mary Warlick, who, for the bulk of my time in the business ran the One Club, so it's not only thoroughly researched, it has the benefit of Mary actually knowing most of those giants she writes about. (She didn't lunch with Raymond Rubicam, but other than that...)You can pick up a copy of Mary's book here, here and all good bookshops (and a few bad ones, to be fair).We had a lovely chat, hope you enjoy.

Carling's 'Dambusters'.Fallon McElligott's Lee Jeans.BMW's 'Birth of A Notion'.Saatchi's Dunlop'.Webster's Hofmeister Bear.Lowe's Heineken.June Whitfield's Birds Eye.Hegarty's 'Levi's Russia'.Alka Seltzer's 'Lifeboat'.Etc,Etc,Etc.

1 and 2?Well, it came in at just under four hours.Tell me about it? I tried cutting it.Maybe I could've edited out the pre-directing bit? Lost the chat about growing up; the nine months in walled hospital room with one wall missing or the time he appeared on national tv as a puppeteer.Or cut the bits about his endless list of non-directing jobs?Maybe trim the stuff about his previous bosses?But his previous bosses are people like Gerry Anderson and Ridley Scott.And his pre-directing jobs were every single job you can think of that's related to making films.Except directing.It's why his directing was so good; on set, he knew what everyone did and how everything worked.As Roger puts it ‘I had the longest apprenticeship in the world'.A polymath, I think the kids call it.Not only has he got a crazy amount of great ads to talk about, he can remember all of them, the problems and how he solved them.The result is that my oldest interviewee talked for the longest time.The, after recording, he spotted a bus to Islington, he waved goodbye and ran after it.He's 89.

There are many ways of writing ads.Simply stating that your product is good.Giving evidence that it's good.Or making people feel that it's good.Ai could spit out versions of the first two pretty quickly, but it'd struggle on the third.That last category requires a bit of psychology, observation and an understanding of what makes people tick.Bill Bernbach put it this way “It took millions of years for man's instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own.”So if, for example, you're Porsche, you could state that your cars are terrific, you could make people aware that every new 911 now comes with a 12-speaker sound system as standard, but saying ‘It's like children, you can't understand until you've had one' makes them seem so much more desirable.John Stingley wrote that one, plus another bunch just as good.A lot of his work doesn't get into the nuts and bolts of a product, it steps back from the detail and talks about how it relates to you, like Windsor Canadian Whisky – ‘Fortunately, every day comes with an evening'.I caught up with John recently to pick his brain on this stuff, hope you enjoy it.

Roy Grace may well be the best ad guy you've never heard of.But you'll recognise some of his Volkswagen ads below, created at DDB between 1965 and 1986.Whereas most creatives will lean towards a particular medium - Roy was as good in print as he was in tv.Many creatives make their names on one, great account, like a Nike or Volkswagen, Roy did great work across everything; from J&B Rare whisky to Alka-Seltzer, from Chanel to SOS soap scrubbing pads, from Land Rover to IBM computers.Most creatives create their best work with one partner - Roy did great work with dozens of different partners (leading to the phrase 'everybody did their best work with Roy, Roy did his best work with everybody').Scroll through the work below and some of it may strike you as a little basic, especially compared to todays CGI extravaganzas.Take Mobil oil; tin cans on an empty table tops.It doesn't appear very 'creative'.But next time you need a motor oil, my money says you'll buy Mobil.Even if you didn't like the ads, you'll just think it's the best oil.Forty years after they were made.He left DDB with his writer Diane Rothschild, to set up Grace & Rothschild.Shortly after, they hired a young writer called Allen Richardson.Allen went on to create a lot of great work of his own, a large chunk of it at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in their golden years.But Allen has just created different - a website about Roy.Not a post, A SITE!I caught up with Allen recently to ask what the hell was he thinking?(https://davedye.com/2023/04/24/roy-grace-site-with-allen-richardson/)

In 1969, fourteen years after the first commercial aired in Britain, colour arrived.The bar was raised.Ambitious ads could now go beyond the over-lit, creakily acted black & white output from adland.Ads, well, the good ones, started to look like they could've been snipped from a movie.But they were still pretty formal.A couple of years later, a young producer decides he wants to stop producing ads and start shooting themRather than chase the formal perfection, Adrian Lyne sees it as an opportunity to play, experimenting with film and lighting.Pushing and pulling it into places other directors tried hard to avoid.It meant his ads don't look like theirs.Too much lens flair.Too out of focus. Too much camera movement. Too slow.Too quick.Too bright. Too dark. Too grainy. Too close in. Too far away.They looked great, but he made those writing the best scripts nervous 'Sure it'll look great, but would he shoot the idea?'It meant he shot more for JWT and McCann's than BMP and Collett's.To say some of the scripts he shot were slight would be ridiculous, an outlandish over-claim.But the public doesn't see the scripts, just the films.And the films are great.They'd leap out from the plodding competition either side of them and making you feel something.The mood is always seductive, but real, like the best moment of a day.By the end of the seventies, the elements that made Adrian's ads look different had been adopted by the mainstream, a bit like high street fashion stores borrow from the experimental Parisian Couture houses.Even CDP embraced capturing a vibe with visuals and music rather than a storytelling with ads like Fiat Strada ‘Robots' and B&H ‘Iguana'.But by that time, Adrian was shooting his first movie; Foxes.He followed it with Flashdance, 91/2 Weeks, Fatal Attraction, Jacobs Ladder, Indecent Proposal, Lolita, Unfaithful and last year's Deep Water.We had a lovely chat, hope you enjoy it.

When I put these blogs together I build up a file.Work for every client goes into a file, that goes into the appropriate agency file, the agency are numbered so that they come chronologically.It sounds a faff, it is a faff, but the only any way I can do it.Anyway, the last file is generally 'P.R' - all the news clippings, interviews and pictures that the individual has accumulated over the years.It helps me get a sense of the interviewee. If you've lead an agency like CDP, I'd expect about 15 to 20 bits.Dave's contains three bits, an ad where he appears with seven others (he looks like he's been  forced at gun point to be there), one that isn't about him, but he's quoted and one where he picks his favourite VW commercials.P.R. just isn't his thing.It's why they call them 'Ridley Scott's Hovis commercials' not Dave Browns.Even though Dave wrote nine.'Hill' gets all the headlines, but watch them all; they're all great.We had a lovely chat, hope you enjoy it. 

Leap before you look.That's written on the back of Michael's business cards.He prefers instinct over logic; everyone can access to logic, so they all end up in the same place.At Wolff Olins he took a brief to rebrand a paint company, now most would end up with rainbows, peacocks or some colourful iconography.Not Michael.He chose a fox, because 'the owner reminded me of a wily fox'.When Bowyer's needed a new logo, Michael went with a solution that combined illustration and photography 'because it had an amateurish feel, as if Bowyers had done it themselves'.Michael is one of the the most thoughtful designers you could meet, I loved our chat, I hope you enjoy listening to it.

You can't advertise if you can't attention.You can't get attention if you don't stand out.You can't stand out without being different.You can't do different if you think the same.If you think different you're likely to be different.Being different is a problem to agencies.A BBH Planner once complained ‘the problem with this place is they can't accommodate black sheep'.Equally, I doubt TBWA embrace disruptive people to create disruptive work.Why hire people who challenge the rules, avoid the easy option and argue their case?The work.Horry is different.Smart.Disruptive.Funny.But because he thought different, his work stood out, so much so that I can remember seeing most of it as a kid.Forty odd years ago.Penelope Keith answering the question ‘How does one spell pence?'A voiceover at the end of an ad saying ‘Made with prime porky worky', can you be that irreverent?I can remember the whole cinema laughing at the Silk Cut ad, ‘Garrison', (be careful when you watch it, it was for a 1976 sensibility).Then there's the 2 minute Fiat Strada commercial, famous after one day.I could go on, but the works below, just look at it.We had a great chat*, hope you enjoy it.(*The China phone system let us down a bit, not the crystal-clear sound quality we'd get if we could've done it at Wave Studios.)

Ad agencies often claim to have no set style, that each campaign is created from scratch, bespoke for every client.It may be true for the mediocre ones, but not the great ones.Nobody used to confuse the work of AMV, BBH and GGT.The same with Wieden, Chiat and Fallon.Today, stick me in front of a tv and I'd fancy my chances at picking the Droga5.Or spotting the Uncommon on a tube platform.Because although ad agencies use the same ingredients, like chefs, they favour some more than others.We fight the idea of having a certain style in our business, ‘I thought that was one of yours' can feel like a slap in the face.Why?Most creative industries embrace it.Architects aren't chosen because they have no particular style.Clothes aren't bought because the designer covers the whole map.Does anyone confuse Quentin Tarantino films with Wes Anderson's?No, that's the point, their style is the attraction.Their philosophy, which has been honed over the years by everything they've consumed, the films, tv, magazines, conversations, experiences, comic books, even ads, that's what you're buying.It's the same with good Creatives.They have likes and dislikes, that creates a style.If asked you to spoof an ad by David Abbott, Tom McElligott, or John Webster, you probably could, because you'd recognise their patterns. Cabell Harris is the same.Whatever the agency or size of budget, he manages to create work that feels personal.Quirky, human with a hint of mischief.Take his One Show 1997 cover, (for my money – the best awards cover annual full stop).One Show Annuals are highly coveted by creatives, sometimes too coveted - getting coveted out of offices and are never seen again.Cabell came up with a great solution: a thief resistant cover.So dull it repels would-be Creative thieves.He spoofed a giant science book - The Giant Book of Spores'.Brilliant insight.Brilliant idea.Beautifully executed.We had a great chat about this and the rest of his work, and, by the end, I was even pronouncing his name correctly. (Cab-ell, not K-ball.)Hope you enjoy.

Whoever it's with, whenever I do these podcasts, some personal link seems to turn up.Something I'd forgotten or been unaware of - Paul Weiland was once my landlord, I judged the One Show with Gerry Graf 15 years earlier, David Holmes drew a poster for me 25 years earlier.This isn't like that, this time it really is personal (isn't that the Jaws 2 strap line?).Malcolm and I started out together; he'd shoot pictures for free, I'd write ads for free.The stuff we created helped us inch forward in our careers.When I finally got into my first good agency (SPDC&J), my new boss Mark Denton said 'it was all that extracurricular stuff that got you hired'.I hope you enjoy it.

The first drawing I saw by R. O. Blechman showed a boardroom table full of people trying to brainstorm.In 6 stages, it showed different people having an idea, the ideas were represented by various forms of lighting, from tiny lightbulb to lamp with shade to a massive chandelier.In the last frame the boss at the end of the table comes up with an idea, it's represented by a miniscule lightbulb.Brilliant observation, very funny.I also loved the naive style of the drawing.It looked like a note one naughty child would pass to another secretly in class.Drawn in a hurry because they were excited.The apparent lack of craft means it feels personal, human.A master draftsman like Leonardo daVinci couldn't improve it.He'd kill it.Over the years I became more familiar with Blechman's lines.Often referred to as a nervous line.Countless ad folk have copied it - Alan Parker, John Hegarty, Gray Jolliffe and dozens more, including me.It just looks so easy (try it).You'll find you can draw squiggley lines in the shape of a person, but they feel like those chalk outlines the police draw around bodies; dead.Bob's not only feel alive, they conjure up multiple personalities with endless emotions.Often with a couple of dots and two or three lines.It's like some kind of magic trick.And whereas most artists get smoother, slicker and more polished over the years, Bob chose to move in the opposite direction - his line becoming more broken and juddery with each year. (Come to think of it, didn't Picasso take a similar route?)This distinctive style meant you could spot a Blechman from the next county.But more important than his lines are his ideas.They cover the map, from the big, weighty issues, like politics and death, to the kind of every day minutiae Seinfeld would go on to cover.His observations are as relevant today as they were decades ago.They're about being human.And whereas the styles of many of his contemporaries timestamp their work, Bob's human, anxious lines don't date.Now 91, Bob still sends a cartoon to the New York Times every week.We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

‘I've just done a Volvo ad with no car in it, it doesn't get any better than that!'Those were the first I heard on day one at AMV/BBDO.It was the Art Director's way of saying 'it's good here'.I appreciated the intent, but thought it was weird.Who cares if the ad has a car in it? Is it a good ad?But that's how a certain group of creatives think.For them wins are - running an ad word-free, securing hot director X to shoot their ad, getting the word 'dick' approved in a headline, keeping a logo as small as it was on the initial rough, and yes, whether they can avoid showing the product.Those kind of things can be helpful, but they shouldn't be the goal.But, to them, they're just doing their job, which they see as being creative.Innovating.Breaking rules.Going crazy.‘Fucking around with shit'.Being lead by what's new, different and of course, their own instincts.Clients are viewed as obstacles. Research is for dullards.They often create interesting work, but not much of it runs.Why? ‘The client bottled it!' or ‘The agency rolled over'.Maybe if they were called 'Communicators' rather than 'Creatives' they wouldn't feel the need to appear so damned creative all the time?Instead of spending all their waking hours with their noses in Japanese animation, Dutch deconstructed typography or surrealist photography, maybe they'd offset if with subjects linked to communication? Rather than just look forward, maybe they'd look back at what worked, what didn't and why?Maybe they'd ask people outside the creative department what they thought?Maybe they'd see data, psychology and research as helpful?There are people in creative departments like this, I've worked with them.Tom & Walter, Rich & Andy, David Abbott, John Webster, they tend to do better work than the first group.But if you feel your gang is the first group, check out the trailer by South Korean animator Seunghee Kim for her film 'The Realm of Deepest Knowing'. It's cool.If you feel that second group is more you, you may enjoy this chat with Orlando Wood.He's the Chief Innovation Officer at System1, where he forensically observes links between advertising, psychology and the creative arts.We chat about his findings on what's working, not working and why (which have been published with the IPA in two volumes; 'Lemon' and 'Look Out').Hope it's useful.

Should Liverpool win the Carabao Cup this season I'm sure they'll be happy.But it'll be a bonus.Their goal is to win the Premier League.Or maybe the European Cup.Creatives used to view Creative Circle Awards in the same way; delighted to win one, but their eyes were fixed on D&AD.Or BTAA.Or Campaign Press.Or Campaign Posters.Or The One Show.Or, a bit later, Cannes.In fact, my first ever advertising award was a Creative Circle Gold for radio - great, but I'd happily have swapped it for an ‘in book' at D&AD.But, they did have one thing going for them - their annual.It wasn't like the other annuals.The idiosyncratic way that they chose juries meant they featured an equally idiosyncratic batch of ads.One year they decided a single person should judge a whole category. (The year I won my gold for radio, fortunately the judge was Derek Day, arguably the most astute judge of radio on the planet. Thanks Derek!)Another year they decided that all judges had to be under thirty.They managed to rid the juries of those pesky award winners and Creative Directors, but to be fair, it again guaranteed that annual had different work in it than those other annuals.So it was worth a look.By 2006, with entries down, they could no longer afford to print an annual.As a registered charity, they only exist is to shine a light on the best British advertising has to offer, without an annual that light is going to be significantly dimmed.So why would agencies, who have finite awards budgets, continue to enter?It was a difficult question.What to do?What to do?A bald man with a twiddly moustache walks into frame ‘Ere, I'll have a go…let me run it!'

'We want a Patek Philippe!'.I'm told intermediaries hear that phrase on a regular basis.The problem is, most ad agencies can't do it.Most are unable translate the signals and nuances of the world's of premium and fashion.It's why the majority of advertising in those categories is produced in-house.But that's not perfect either, they may capture the right vibes but they rarely create anything with substance.They rarely position a brand or create long-term adverting campaigns.Much of it being indistinguishable from the editorial that surrounds it.One agency has operated in the sweet spot between the two; Leagas Delaney.Over the last forty odd years, they've produced long running campaigns for everyone from Harvey Nicholls to Porsche, from Garrards to Pictet, from Dom Perrignon to Harrods.Patek Phillipe is a perfect example.The advertising has the right look and feel, which is gently evolved year on year, but for the last 27 years it's been based on a single thought; 'You never own a Patek Phillippe, you merely look after it for the next generation'.It's why people now ask for a Patek Philippe - they want a property that lasts.So I thought I'd ask Tim how he goes about creating a long-term campaign for a premium brand.Rather than a scattershot of brands I thought it would be more helpful to focus on the detail of one, I chose Harrods.Full disclosure: I used to work on Harrods at Leagas Delaney back in the 90s.Every square inch of the agency's walls were covered in ads, not digital print outs - expensively framed high-end proofs.A walk up the stairwell, from the basement to the top floor, was like flipping through the last ten D&AD annuals.On the 4th floor, outside my office, was the Harrods campaign.As much as we admired it, it wasn't the kind of work you aspire to do when you're in your 20s.Who wants posh, elegant and timeless when you could have punchy, different and cool?At the time, the ads seemed too mannered-  'Dare we suggest this', 'May we recommend that'.Why be so snooty?Why not be chattier?They also seemed to have this kind of 'knowing' tone, one said 'Prove the Beatles wrong'.(Every time my partner Sean would walk past he'd give a different interpretation - "What? Strawberry Fields isn't Forever?", "So...You can hide your love away?" or "She didn't come in through the bathroom window?".)Then there were the sale ads; they didn't change for about fifteen years.Same headline in ever media channel.Same photographer year after year.The only thing that changed were the shots. (Which were basically products shots.)I remember Tom Carty scanning that wall, taking in all those sale ads, from ceiling to floor, then reading the headline 'There's only one Harrods. There's only one sale'.After a beat, he added 'There''s only one fucking ad!'But as you clock up the years, your goals change.Crazy, cool and punchy are no longer the North Stars.They maybe be for one brand, but not every brand.People put a variety of personalities in the same shopping basket.They may buy a science fiction phone and put it in a case made by a 200 year old leather company.They may juice from a kooky, knockabout start-up and wine from pretentious, unfriendly wine company.So you start trying harder to create work that reflects the businesses personality, not your own.You avoid the temptation to starting from scratch every year (because it's fun), putting your energy into building and refining what you've started.Nurturing it.Because long-lasting campaigns are far more valuable than endless short-term firework displays.They should be listed alongside the rest of a companies assets, like warehouses, machinery and staff.How much is 'Just do it' worth?Or, getting back to Harrods, how much is 'There's only one sale'?35 years after it was written, it's still running (albeit in a bastardised form).So how did it start?

Finally!Not exactly hot on the heels of Part 1 - it's been eighteen months.I wonder whether the fresh-faced, pre-pandemic Rory would've answered those questions in the same way today? The last eighteen months have probably changed us a bit.Just a reminder, the questions I asked back then were built around the idea of a new agency, as these are, like 'how would you hire?', 'what kind of atmosphere would you want?' etc.But rather than ask them in an open way, like that, I thought it would be more interesting to force a choice between polar opposites.For example - Hire well-adjusted or misfits?Obviously, being a marketing podcast some subjects were unavoidable:The savviness of the Knesset.The carvings of Grinling Gibbons.The cunning of Harris tweed.The fate of Billy Batts.And of course; the importance of elves.Y'know, the usuals.  Nevertheless, it's Rory - so worth a listen.

“Hello Dave,We've not met before. I'm an ad creative too.I felt compelled to write and tell you how much I'm enjoying your blog. I've learnt loads. (Now I've started writing this email I feel a bit silly!)Anyway, keep pumping your stuff from the loft out into the ether.It's wonderful.Thanks,Oli.”I got that email in 2013.I wondered where this charming young man went to college or was on placement, so I googled him: ‘Partner and Executive Creative Director at Anomaly.'Before that Creative Director at Mother.Before that – Wieden + Kennedy (where he'd won a pencil, the yellow one, for one of the coolest ideas of that year; The Kaiser Chiefs album launch.)What an unusually modest guy?Since then I've worked with Oli a few times (once on the Virgin Trains campaign below) he was just as modest and charming as he presents himself in that email. (Listen to the podcast if you don't believe me.)But what I found and what I love about Oli, is whatever he touches – multi-million pound ad campaigns, complaints letters or tweets, his humour, intelligence and humanity come radiating out, like he literally can't help himself.Psychologists have a term for it – ‘Talent'.(We had a lovely chat, hope you enjoy it.)

When I started out, lunch with my old writer Sean would end with ‘Right, let’s shift some product’. It was irony, of course. It’s rare for creatives talk like that. If you’d have asked me at that time about the performance of one of my ads, I’d have given you a ton of awards data, but nothing on sales. To be fair, awards won are what creatives are salaried on, not units sold. And if you’ve ever sat on an awards jury you’ll know that it’s not exactly a scientific process - do the assembled bunch of people like your ad or not? Having won a few awards I started being given more responsibility, meeting the people who paid for the work I was entering; clients. Consequently (if you’re a human being) you find you don’t want to let your new friends down and, to quote our Prime Minister, ‘Spaff all their money up the wall’. So I became more interested in shifting product. Also, as time moves on you become more aware that it is your actual job. It doesn’t mean you start doing dumb, hard-sell, uncreative work; the qualities awards juries look for in work are exactly the same as those needed to get your ads noticed by the public. Simple is better than complicated. Interesting is better than dull. Beauty is better than ugly. Funny is better than worthy. But those are all executional, what does change is the strategy you adopt or the creative route you pick. Because your criteria is to get the uninterested to notice and act. And one thing you find if that’s your goal - you become more open to media choices. Suddenly, the most unfashionable channels can appear exciting. Direct Marketing was THE most unfashionable form of advertising ‘The shit that folds’ is how Steve Harrison described the popular view at when he joined the business in '85. He went on to prove that it didn’t need to fold or be shit. His DM came in the form of water-coolers, carpet tiles, even a barge on the Thames. Trojan objects that made their way into places that an envelope could never dream of penetrating. Some are like Banksy stunts. Even the stuff that did fold was great. (See the Times Newspaper summons and Court Security pre-opened letter below.) What they have in common is that they’re impossible to ignore and they persuade you the product is very good. It sounds so basic, so simple. But name the last ad that made you believe that? I’ll wait. One that made you consider, just for a moment, parting with your cash? Still waiting. In his new book ‘Can’t Sell, Won’t Sell’, Steve breaks down why. From the social and economic backgrounds of the people populating agencies to the political beliefs of those awarding them, Steve prosecutes the case that advertising has stopped selling. You may look through the work below, much of it from the ‘90’s and noughties and feel that the media landscape is different today. If you do, let me introduce you to Bill Bernbach ‘It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more to vary. It is fashionable to talk about changing man. A communicator must be concerned with unchanging man, with his obsessive drive to survive, to be admired, to succeed, to love, to take care of his own’. Cheers Bill. (Oh, and next time Bill, it’s ‘changing person’, not ‘man’, it’s 2021 FFS!) We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

There may even be another one, along with Paul Burke I’m trying to track down the 100 best radio ads. (If you have any send them in.) But onto this one, one of the surprising joys of doing this blog is unexpected things that turn upon my doorstep. Proofs, agency brochures, old DVDs, all manner of ephemera. (Or ‘crap’ as my wife calls it.). It’s lead me to post blogs on David Abbott’s BT Pitch, Fallon McElligott’s Rolling Stone campaign (thanks for the tear-sheets Brian Burch, posting soon), and this one: ’21 Years Of Radio Advertising’. A one celebration of the best of the U.K’s radio advertising, it includes advice and reflection from some of its best practitioners; Tim Delaney, David Abbott, John Hegarty and more. Interestingly, it says on the cover ‘Commercial Radio. It’s time has come.’ I wasn’t aware of that in 1994. I have no idea who sent me this, whoever you are; thank you. For the rest of you; enjoy.

‘Remember how seriously we all took it? Not that we took ourselves seriously or that we didn’t have fun, but we just tried so, so hard to make great work. It may be chip paper to most people, but we’d really sweated every last detail. Even on the bad ads, we'd stay lat trying desperately to improve them. Like we were on a mission. It seemed so important.’ I enjoyed chatting to Mary. Although afterwards, I must confess, I was a little irritated; why on earth had she never set up her own agency? Or run her own Creative Department for that matter? (And why wasn’t that one of my questions?) She was born to do it. She’s such a clear thinker, funny, ballsy and confident, as you’ll hear. Also, and this is often gets overlooked - in 1987 Mary picked up the coveted Whitbread Most Promising Beginner Award at The Creative Circle. Hope you enjoy it.

Many of you won’t recognise that name. You won't find it attached to tweets about how hot his latest campaign is next to a picture of his latest lunch; he doesn't do social media. You won't find his agency in any new business tables; they only handle three clients at a time, so tend to have long client relationships. You won't find their scripts in any production companies; they direct them in-house. This is because, when, 23 years ago, the goal for his new agency was that the clients should be in the limelight, not the agency. While I've heard many say that kind of thing, I've never seen anyone actually do it. They gave themselves an undercover name; The Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co. Then disguised the outside of the agency like a run-down seafood operation, just to throw off any potential clients who happen to be in the area. And just to be awkward, he changed his name from Dick to Rick Sittig. You won't find either of them in any of advertising's Hall of Fame's. Which is weird. Because between them they’ve done some of the best, most famous, longest running ad campaigns ever. Jack In The Box, Joe Isuzu, the Energiser Bunny and the Nissan Pathfinder to name but a few. So at the risk annoying Rick by bringing on some unwanted adulation - if anyone out there works for the One Show, Art Directors Club or Clios; come on, induct this man immediately. It’s embarrassing.

That's not a mistake, it's my attempt to graphically warn you that this podcast ends abruptly.
 The idea was that I'd grill Rory on some of the issues facing our business today.
 He's easily one of the most thoughtful, smartest guys in our business, just check out some of his quotes below if you don't believe me.
But rather than ask softball questions that were too broad, I thought it'd be more interesting to make it binary.
 Forcing a result.
 I framed the questions in terms of hiring for a new agency.
 For example, would it be better that people felt relaxed and comfortable in the office or fearful? Should we prioritise diversity over ability? Would misfits be more valuable in developing work than the well-adjusted.
That was the plan anyway.
 But, firstly, I wasn't at Wave, I was on away territory (Sea Container’s House) so I didn’t have control over the tech and interruptions.
 Secondly, I asked a warm up question to get the ball rolling - ‘What is Advertising?’.
 I’d imagined three, four, maybe even five minutes before we got to the interview?
 Wrong.
 Fearing we wouldn't get to any of the pre-prepared questions, we abandoned it after 45 minutes.
 The upside is that it lead us down some interesting avenues, the downside was that you’ll hear a record scratch type ending as a lady kicks us both out of our room.
 Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed recording it, hope you enjoy listening to it.

Pick up any New York Art Directors Club Annual from the sixties and you can feel the heat coming off the pages. The Writers are using words previously confined to conversation, the Art Directors are trying to find new ways to present the information (‘Creating new pages’ as Helmut Krone put it.) Then, the seventies. A whole different story; the experimentation and energy appear to have dried up. True, there are still lots of good thoughts and lines, but in terms of how it's presented the search for 'a new page' seems to have come to an end. Maybe it was agreed at some Annual General Art Directors meeting that Art Directors should stop pfaffing around, decide once and for all what a god damn ad should look like! If it was, the look they settled on was this; All headlines should be set in a bold serif font. Squeezed. (In the spring you’re allowed to use initial caps for each word.) Underneath the headline should be a photo (the more serious the better). 100 words of copy should be divided into two columns and placed under the picture. Put a logo bottom left. Job done. It's odd, because the job of an art director is to set a distinctive tone and get attention. To do both, you have to create something that looks different from the norm. All companies aren't the same and unusual get's more attention than familiar. As the '70's ended so did the Art Direction lockdown. Art Directors began to play again. One of the leading players was Gary Goldsmith. Take a look at his VW Rabbit ad from 1981. It looks nothing like an ad, let alone a VW ad. Or his Chivas Regal Christmas ad. Where's the lovely photograph of the whiskey they had in the previous 200 award-winning Chivas ads? Giant letters turning up at all angles? Copy out of a brightly coloured box, a box printed in a 5th colour (it added $1m to the cost of production). What the hell was he playing at? I guess that’s the point, look through the work below you can feel the joy of a human being communicating to others. He'll hate me for saying this, but as a small child I used to look through the One Shows to find Gary's work. Each client would always have its own distinctive look. If the clients were premium the ads felt premium, if the clients were more basic the ads felt more basic. Every campaign had a bespoke look. The only thing they had in common was that they felt intelligent and playful. I had a great chat with Gary, hope you enjoy it.

When you start out in your advertising career, Pentel in one hand, Macbook in  the other, you seem to be surrounded by good work. Awards books are choc-a-bloc with it. As you go on, year by year, you seem to see less and less. For example, the first D&AD Annual looked at probably had an 80/20 ratio of good to bad. 10 years later those percentages are likely to have flipped. As you move on you become less swayed by awards, famous names or cool agencies, you now have 10 years of data to compare any new idea to - Is it as fresh as A? As funny as B or, actually, isn’t it just a reworking of C? It’s hard not to. You’re no longer that naïve, impressionable young thing you once were. In the music business they believe that our musical taste can be tracked back to our 16th summer; that's when we were most impressionable and hungry for experiences. As you get older it gets harder to find that tingle of excitement you feel when you experience things for the first time. In advertising, not being easily excited can be seen as being jaded. In fashion, architecture and many other creative they have different name for it; knowledge. I say this for two reasons; a) I’ve seen A LOT of stuff. b) David's stuff always causes a tingle, (not a minty-fresh, mouth tingle, but a work-fresh, excitement tingle). Somehow, he manages to produce work that feels like it's avoided committees, cliches and compromises. Whereas most work can be quickly categorised as good or bad, with David’s I often have to think about first. The Orange spot with the couple dancing; Is that good? The Guardian ‘3 Little Piggies’; Is that good? The Coal Drops Yard Branding with the seemingly random bunch of shapes, pictures and colours; Is that good? None are what you’d expect. Each take balls to go with. All are hard to ignore or forget. Much of the work he’s created and overseen at Drog5 London feels as though the team enjoyed thinking it up, then just couldn’t wait to make it and show the world. Good work tends to have that vibe. Unfortunately, we recorded this a while back, and David being David, he came up with a cunning way to make this podcast not only unusual, but complicated to make. Eventually, for reasons that would take too long to go into, it's coming out in a non-unusual, uncomplicated, familiar format. (Soz David.) It means that we don’t cover the great work Droga5 have been knocking out over the last year or so, like their exceptionally tingley Super Bowl ad for Amazon. Enjoy.

I'm guessing you're not as familiar with that name as were with others I've posted? But you'll be familiar with his work. Saatchi's 'Pregnant Man'? BBH's 'Black Sheep' poster? CDP's 'Wolf In Sheeps Clothing'? Yes? All shot by Alan. Because they're such a fantastic ideas, they look as though anybody could've shot them. The images are so simple and clear you can't imagine done them any other way. But each is the end result of a series of choices. Take a look at the casting contacts from the the 'Pregnant Man' ad, the alternative models look ridiculous, but they didn't on January 21st 1970. Look at the 'Black' sheep ad Alan shot for John Hegarty (and Barbra Nokes), just a bunch of sheep with a black one plonked in the middle? Nope. If shot side-on, they'd blend into each other after the first row and not fill the poster. If shot from above you wouldn't see them in that classic, side-on profile. So Alan used his map reading skills (acquired through Rally driving) to find a steep incline, so that the sheep rose up, filling the poster with graphic sheep profiles, almost like cut outs, but better for being shot for real. Then there's the 'Wolf In Sheeps Clothing'; How hard can it be to fling a sheep's pelt over a wolf? Very, as it turns out. Wolves don't like modelling, so Alan borrowed some sheep pictures from a friend, photographer Adrian Flowers, then comped the two together. In Alan's words, he wasn't a photographer, he was  'an adman with a camera', simply trying to bring the ideas to life. He'd learnt how to do this from his years as a top art director at CPV and CDP, getting to work on a regular basis with photographers like Elliott Erwitt, Duffy and Terrence Donovan. We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

'Recorded any new podcasts lately?' I get asked this a few times every week. The askees range from college attendees to retired adman. As I pick the people I interview, they seem as famous as The Beatles to me, but they're often unknown to the askees. After offering up a name and watching a blank expression appear, I reach for a quick handle, something from culture that I think they'll know. Occasionally it's an ad fact; 'Set Up Fallon before his name was lopped off' (Tom McElligott), but it's better if it's something that's escaped from the pages of Campaign and the various awards annuals and seeped into the culture. A good test is whether it would pique the interest of your parents. For example, mine wouldn't be fussed about who founded Fallon, but they might be interested in the bloke who 'Created those Smash Martians and Cresta Bear ads, yet wasn't John Webster' (Chris Wilkins), or the 'Typographer who used to be in a band with David Bowie' (Dave Wakefield) or maybe the guy who 'Shot all those Gary Lineker Walker's ads' (Paul Weiland). Should I bump into another askee before I post this, and they haven't heard the name Trevor Beattie, the problem wouldn't be trying to think of a cultural link they may know, it will be trying to figure out which one is most relevant to the person in front of me. I could create a very bespoke answer. Because Trevor seems to have had a disproportionate amount of brushes with popular culture. Here's a few that spring to mind: He went to school with UB40. Worked for the bloke who wrote the R-Whites 'Secret Lemonade Drinker'. Did those Weetabix 'Skinhead' ads. Got Bob Hoskins to do the voiceover. Hired by the guy who wrote Campari's 'No, Luton Airport'. Wrote those ads where people turn into Bertie Bassett. Created an Irish Tourist Board campaign featuring Wendy Craig and Billy Beaumont. Wrote 'Cats Like Felix Like Felix' in 1989 (it's still used). Discovered Holly Willoughby for Pretty Polly ad. Wrote ‘Hello Boys’. Shot with Hugh Hudson. Did that 'Cometh The Hour' David Beckham ad. Created that F.C.U.K. campaign. Owns the biggest Muhummad Ali collection in the world. Did a Unicef ad with Nelson Mandela. Persuaded Chris Cunningham to direct his first commercial. Shot an ad with David Lynch. Used John Shuttleworth for Yorkshire Tea ads. Rewrote Lionel Bart's ‘Food, Glorious Food’ for McCain’s ad. Pays for hundreds Veterans to go back to the beaches of Normandy to commemorate D-Day every year. Approved 'Double Life'. Invested in 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. Bought the original Abbey Road sign. Approved Peter Kay’s John Smith's campaign. Oversaw the marketing for Tony Blair and New Labour for three successful General Election campaigns. Created poster for that film 'Layer Cake'. Hired Zowie Bowie. Produced the cult film ‘Moon’. Made a documentary about Rudolph Nuryev. Produced a documentary about the history of the Spitfire. Producing a film about Brian Epstein. Trekked to the South Pole with Buzz Aldrin. Produced a documentary about Thalidomide (Attacking The Devil). With Harold Evans. Going to space in 2020. (At the time of writing he's desperately trying to make a film about Hilda Ogden.) We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

On my way to record this interview a weird thought popped into my head. Weird, because I’ve been reading books on designers for thirty odd years and I’d never spotted it. Also weird, because it’s the opposite of the received wisdom. The thought was this ‘Good designers can work in many styles, great designers have a distinctive style’. As Art Directors and Designers we're taught to put our skills at the service of the brand. Let’s say you’re designing for IBM on Monday and Kleenex Toilet Tissue on Tuesday, your output should be as diverse as the products. You should leave your personal preferences at home. Be led by the problem. You should be a chameleon. Ask anyone, everyone knows this is true. But it’s not. Take my, and any civilised person’s favourite designer; Paul Rand; you can spot his work a mile off, the hand-writing, playful cut-outs and use of space. Herb Lubalin, few use or could use type the way he did, so it’s easy to pick his work out of a line-up. Brownjohn, Vignelli, Fletcher, Gill, Kalman, Scher, you name them, if they are great they’ll have their own style. Their own aesthetic world made up with favourite fonts, colours and techniques. I went to hear Paul Rand talk once, I thought he'd be all precious and delicate, talking about abstract concepts. I couldn't have been more wrong, he was blunt, grouchy and straight-talking, more like a New York cabbie than an Artiste. Anyway, someone asked him if he was worried that he had a style. "NO? WHY THE HELL WOULD I BE? I like what I like, other people like what they like, so our work comes out different. My work's unique to Me, their work's unique to them. It’s a good thing." Out taste is shaped by the culture we take in and gravitate towards as we grow up. But when we try to copy it we can't help but add a few dollops of ourselves, which warps it into a new shape. I read an interview with Bryan Ferry where he talked about how much he regretted giving away his influences, he said it made it easier for people to copy him. (I think he was referring to David Sylvian at the time, shows you how long ago it was.) But it's odd, Bryan Ferry copied Smokey Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra and a whole bunch of other folks and it came out Bryan Ferry. I've been trying to think of someone whose work is like Mark Denton's. I couldn’t and still can’t. He once described the issue like this ‘People look at my work and put me in this little box, the thing is, I like it in here.’ We had a great chat about Mark’s new book and all the ingredients that make up the fruit cake that is Mark’s brain. Enjoy.   p.s. It's on sale here https://www.coy-com.com/shop It'll make a great Christmas present. Particularly for kids (If you rip out page 292). Also parents and grandparents alike (again, probably best rip out page 292). And anyone interested in design. Or puerilty. p.p.s. If none of that appeals to you, maybe you have a damp patch on the wall that you need to cover? https://www.jealousgallery.com/artists/mark-denton-esq?

Back in the seventies there was a tv show called The Waltons. A depression era family mooched about Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains dealing with various social and moral issues, it was all very wholesome. At the end, after some member of the family had realised the error of their ways, they'd cut to the usual end device: A shot of their quaint wooden house at the night. We’d hear a voice ‘Goodnight Jon Boy’, gradually we'd hear all the other members of the family shout their goodnights. It was slightly chaotic and you were reminded that there were a lot of Waltons living cheek by jowl in that house. A decade later I was given a brief for The Observer Newspaper - a 48 sheet poster to promote their property section. Bingo! Show that end shot with ‘Goodnight Jon Boy’, ‘Goodnight Mary Lou’ plus another fifty goodnights and names in text, underneath was ‘If you’re looking for a bigger home, take a look in The Observer.’ The Creative Directors loved. The Account team presented it. The client bought it. Kind of. They thought it would make a better radio ad. Heartbreaking. Rather than have a big, glorious proof to put in my book, I’d have a little cassette. It got made. It got into D&AD, my first entry. It won gold at Creative Circle, my first award. Maybe it'd worked out best after all? I placed that little cassette in my book. It was the only thing in there that had won an award. I’d show my book to the great and the good at the agencies I hoped to graduate to, without exception they’d get to the end, see the cassette and start zipping the book up. ‘I have a radio ad…it’s won an award’ I’d say. 'Great' they'd say, continuing to zip. I’d push a bit further ‘Would you like to hear it?’ The answers would range from ‘I’ve got a meeting I have to be at’ to ‘No...I’m sure it’s pretty good if it’s won an award.’ No fucker would listen to it. My only award winning piece of work. What is it with radio? Why do we treat it like the runt of the media litter? A few months ago I thought it would be good to post something on radio advertising. Partly because I think it'll start to grow due to the booming podcast world, partly because it's the perfect subject matter for a podcast. Whilst thinking about how to go about it, I noticed that one of the best producers of radio ads had just closed up shop; Angell Sound. Owner, Nick Angell, had consistently produced some of our country's best radio ads over the last thirty or so years. But for a decade or so after the whole Walton’s episode (or ‘Waltongate’ as I call it), I’d avoided radio briefs whenever possible, so didn’t feel sufficiently knowledgeable to grill Nick. Fortunately, I have a mate who's more than qualified, Paul Burke, copywriter at BMP/DDB, JWT & AMV/BBDO. I was going to say he's one of the few to truly embrace the possibilities of radio, but I can't think of who the others would be? So maybe he's the only creative to truly embrace the possibilities of radio. It's lead him to set up his own radio production company, teach and promote the joys of radio. Not only that, like the man from Delmonte 'He say yes!'. So here they are. Enjoy.

One of my favourite tweeters. Always insightful, but more than that, Richard always seems so excited to share each idea or thought. He writes his tweets like they're Breaking News. Richard, like all of my favourite tweeters nowadays share the same job title; Behavioural Insight Bod. (Or some version of.) Traditionally, planners looked at behaviour, but not in the same way, not with such insight and usefulness. Which is weird. Why, when your whole business is built around communicating with human beings would you not have a whole department set up to understand human beings? Well now they're out on the net, sharing observations on how humans work for free, just check out Richard at https://twitter.com/rshotton...Hang on! Hang on! Not now, listen to this first. It’s different from my usual, chronologically structured podcasts, this one's all over the map. You can hear in real time as Richard and I try to get our heads around what's happening with humans and ad agencies today. The result is that there are: a) Far more thoughtful pauses than usual. b) The number of 'Mmmms' is off the charts. c) Julius Caeser features more than Bill Bernbach. d) If you're in the creative department, I'm afraid there's a whole bunch of difficult to pronounce European philosopher's names you'll need to google. But on a lighter note, listen out for Richard crunching his way through a Bourbon biscuit about halfway through. Enjoy.

One of the nice things about doing these interviews is getting to know people who you’ve only previously knew though their work. So, when I write one of these intros I try to reflect on what I’ve learnt about the interviewee, to capture the characteristics that have helped them create such great work and succeed in such a competitive business. But as different as they all are, they all share the same characteristic; They care. When they commit, they’re all in. Whether making an ad or a cup of tea they want it to be as good as possible. They keep pushing when others decide ‘that’ll do’. A few years back, a friend of mine wandered into Adrian’s office to leave a message, he found that the desk was filled with random sets of letters and numbers. Some were ticked, some crossed and one had a question mark. He stood there looking at them trying to figure out what fiendish creativity was going on. Until, a few weeks later, when he bumped into Adrian, who’d just taken delivery of his new BMW, it turned out that Adrian had been trying to pick the most visually pleasing arrangement of letters and numbers before committing to a number plate. Then there was the time that Adrian, irritated at having to fold his copy of Campaign to fit into his briefcase, found someone to make him a new, bespoke briefcase, unfolded Campaign size. Also, you’ll notice something different when you look through Adrian’s work, along with the names of the agencies and clients, you’ll also see the year it ran, the art director, director, illustrator, photographer and typographer. You’ll see subheads. You won’t hear the sound of my phone beeping or Adrian not being able to recall a Creative Directors name. (It was edited, re-recorded and fixed.) And at the end of this post you’ll see an article titled ‘My Portfolio’, look closely at the first line and you’ll notice that the word firing’ is fractionally bolder than the rest, that’s because underneath is the word ‘giving’, Campaign had misquoted him, Adrian and his scalpel fixed it. I’m not sure you can learn to care passionately about the details, but if you do, your work be better for it.

Context. It’s the word that comes to mind every time I think about writing one of these intros. What seems familiar today was once considered very left-field, risky or just plain crazy. Each pushes the peanut along for the next generation. Take the 1988 D&AD Annual, it’s hard to believe now, but all but one ad in the press and poster section had black headlines, the one that didn’t was Graham Fink’s Metropolitan Police campaign. I was a generation behind Graham, so watched from afar as he and his writer Jeremy Clarke tried to push the peanut forward. They made ads taking the piss out of other ads, (Hamlet), they got England’s Cricket Captain to stick two fingers up to the establishment after being arrested for smoking dope, (Hamlet again), and they were the first to blow a million pounds on the production of a single tv ad, (B.A.). I had a great chat with ‘Finky’, hope you enjoy it.

He’s never tried to become his own brand, hang out at the right clubs or promote himself. He doesn’t bounce from jury to jury, job to job or club to club. And you’ll never read his latest theory on marketing in the trade mags. Nick Gill is currently Chief Creative Officer of BBH, his third agency in 30 years. We had a great chat, hope you enjoy.

Former rent collector, bull-fighter, porn director, klacker salesman, Judas Priest manager, account man, copywriter, art director and Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy Worldwide. Warning: Some areas of the recording may have been adversely effected by a Rioja. (See above for only known picture of Neil without a cigar.)

I was just about to write ‘the business I joined 30 years ago is unrecognisable today’. But then it occurred to me; that’s bullshit. Take today, either side of writing this I’m working on a global brief. The brand has an existing line that needs to be given new meaning, its felt to be a little too heavy, and possibly a bit esoteric in certain markets. We need to make it lighter, more upbeat and positive. Also, it’d be handy if we could use some kind of visual link to the product, as it’s going to run in a wide range of countries. Overall, they just need to feel cooler and more relevant to a younger audience. That was happening thirty years ago. Sure, the thoughts may end up in some new locations and appear in slightly different shapes and sizes, but the process isn’t that different. There is one big difference though, the creative bods were way more cynical back then, for example, every element of a brief would be challenged: ‘Is that REALLY true?’ ‘It may be true but people won’t believe it!’. ‘Why should anyone believe that?’ ‘Is there really nothing better to say?’ ‘That’s two messages, pick one’. ‘Why would that make me buy it?’ ‘Posters are the wrong place for that message’ ‘That’s way to complicated for TV!’ ‘Who would be arsed to read about that?’ ‘They haven’t got much money, let’s spend it all on tv… or posters?’ Then digital turned up. It was a challenge for the creatives of my generation, not understanding the channels or tech but understanding why you weren’t allowed to question it. Why weren’t we allowed to take that same cynical approach that we’d taken to all information we’d be given, whether propositions or posters, creatives adopted the stance of super cynical member of the public. We couldn’t do that with digital, if you took that position with anything that involved a single pixel you risked being seen as a ‘dinosaur’. So people adapted, they avoided appearing cynical by using phrases like ‘there’s never been a better time to be in the business’ or ‘I’ve never felt more alive than when I’m being briefed on social media’ or ‘You want to brief me on a digital banner? I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven’. Questions started being replaced by buzz words, the aim was to get as many into a conversation before it collapsed due to their volume. It created a kind of MaCarthyite environment where most were too afraid to call it as they saw it.

Words. Boy, they’ve really fallen off their perch. They used to be so respected, as were the people who knew how to use them. They could breathe life into cold, dead facts, in their hands ‘our beer costs a lot’ could become ‘Reassuringly expensive’. Better and shorter. Writers would often burn the midnight oil in an effort to get the maximum meaning from the minimum word count. It’s odd, because people have never read more than they do today, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, emails, texts, not to forget books, magazines and the odd newspaper. In fact today, there’s no part of the communication process that doesn’t rely on words, including the deck that explains the communication process. But for some reason, the skill of using them effectively is no longer being taught or even valued. Tim Riley has been choosing his words carefully for three decades now, we had a great chat about his time using them at some the best agencies in London. Hope you enjoy it.

Chris Palmer. My 5th boss. His 1st job was as John Hegarty’s writer. He won 5 D&AD silvers in his first in his first year. Set up and agency in his 4th year. Become one the most in demand directors of the last 25 years. Launched, arguably, London’s No 1 production company over over the last two decades; Gorgeous. Also, Mark Denton says Chris can draw better than him. Annoying isn’t it? We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

After years of being amazed at what was on the net, I’m now increasingly surprised at what’s not. Three years ago I was trawling for a particular ad of Tom’s, not only couldn’t I find it I could barely find any of his work. Outraged, I gathered together as much of his work as I could lay my hands on and put out a post called ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of Tom McElligott’. I was trying to be snarky and ironic, like you may write ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of John Lennon?’. Two things happened: 1. An enormous amount of people checked it out, 65k. Most had never heard of him, he was being shared and referred to on Twitter and Facebook a ‘really cool pre-internet guy’. 2. A few members of his department got in touch to point out that some of the ads featured were not under Tom’s watch, they were overseen by Pat Burnham. Then Pat Burnham emailed me; I opened it cautiously. ‘Just wanted to get in touch to say thank you, I really enjoyed your blog post, best, Pat.’ It made me feel bad. What can I do to make amends? Interview him, I’d never done it before but it seemed like a good thing to do. I’ve now posted about 50 interviews. So it feels appropriate that Tom is my first podcast interview. He hasn’t given an interview for 25 years and said he doesn’t plan on giving one on the next 25. I Hope you enjoy listening to Tom as much as I did.

It’s weird, I only interview people whose work I really like, but whenever I lay their work out end-to-end, I’m always surprised at how much better it is than I’d remembered. It could be that there’s much more of it, the sheer consistency of it or that it appears better with the benefit of time and a bit of distance. All three are true of the work in this post. Tony does a good job of shining a light onto how he produced it, hope you enjoy it.

‘Art Director’ is an unhelpful title. It has nothing to do with Art and very little to do with directing. Some think it’s about making stuff look cool, I think it’s about communicating at speed. We work in a medium people are actively trying to ignore, so we can’t hang around. Art Director’s can only communicate quickly if the understand: a) Their basic toolkit; photography, film, illustration, editing, cropping, fonts, colours and the rest. b) The world around them: how humans behave, the meaning of gestures, what’s fashionable, what’s unfashionable, the difference between someone looking excited and crazed, whether to it’s funnier to cast the tall skinny guy or the short fat guy, whether it would be more dramatic to fill the frame with sea and have a thin strip of sky or vice-versa? I don’t know an Art Director who understands both better than Mark Reddy.

Starting out as a creative is tough. Most days are divided into two parts, first you squeeze out as many ideas as you possibly can, second you try not to give up when your creative director tells you they are all crap. Occasionally you may get a ‘nice’, that will keep you going until maybe two months later when you may get a ‘cool’, even an ‘ok’ buoy the spirits. Encouragement is crucial. The first person of any note to say nice about one of my ads was Dave Waters. (‘Jan’ was Jan Van Mesdag, Dave’s old partner at GGT and my boss at the legendary Cromer Titterton.) It was very encouraging, Dave was one of the stars from the best agency of the time GGT. GGT was not only the best creative agency at the time, it was known to have the toughest regime, weekends there were like Mondays anywhere else, Also, if you didn’t deliver creatively, either your salary was cut or you were fired. Dave thrived in this environment. Dave Trott, the ‘T’ on GGT, called Dave his Roy Keane, saying he was hungrier than anyone, ‘the juniors would do trade ads and if they did well they could steal the bigger tv briefs the seniors were working on and have a crack. Dave was one of our most senior creatives, he’d do all the big ads and then steal the trade briefs from the juniors, he wanted to do everything.’ We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

The arc of most creative agencies tends to be very similar; start idealistic and creative, become less principled and duller over the years as the realities of finance, earn-outs and fatigue start to kick in. Adam & Eve are like the Benjamin Button of ad agencies. They started burdened by the financial realities due to a situation called ‘Sorrell’. Having come through the early sensible years they seem to grow more creative as each year goes by. They won no creative awards in their first year, they’ve won more than anyone else last year, they’re currently top of the Gunn Report, their 10th year. Ben Priest has overseen their creative journey. We had a great, very candid chat, hope you enjoy it.

My 7th boss. Former hitch-hiker, copywriter, Frankenstien re-animator, ECD, David Abbott replacement, D&AD President, ITV sitcom creator, Radio 4 drama writer and cousin of Showaddywaddy lead singer Dave Bartram.

Read any article on good copywriting and you’ll find the same names appear. David Abbott and Tony Brignull usually battle for the top two slots, Tim Delaney and John Salmon fight it out for third place. But talk to writers about the same subject and another name appears; Richard Foster. Richard is the only one of the five who has worked under the other four. (He may well be the only writer to have worked under the four?) For a number of reasons, the other four are better known. Two have agencies named after them. They were all Creative Directors, (or Chief Creative Officers as we call them today). Each took on the title of Chairman. All four became President of D&AD. With those roles came P.R. Whereas Richard wrote. He wrote for everyone, from 14 year old girls (Lil-lets) to Captains of Industry (The Economist). He wrote for products from 1p up to £100k. He wrote ads that featured in 29 D&AD annuals. He wrote the best section in D&AD’s ‘THE COPY BOOK: How 32 of The World’s Best Advertising Writers Write Their Advertising’. We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it. Dx