Many of you won’t recognise that name. You won’t find it attached to tweets his latest ‘hot’ campaign, or 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 forRead more
JUST LIE.
Advertising is like kryptonite to us human beings. Just as our instinct kicks in to ensure we don’t look directly at the sun, we now do the same when advertising appears in our peripheral vision. We know it’s there; jumping up and down desperately trying to get our attention, but we manage to shield our eyes from it. Like everything else, the internet can throw us a bit of data on this – last year, ‘25.8 percent of internet usersRead more
PODCAST: RORY SUTHERLA…
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 is 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 aRead more
BULLSEYE!
I worked with Sean Doyle for roughly 12 years. One morning, about six years in, Sean threw a scruffy ball of paper over to my side of the desk – ‘I did us a logo’. It was like a miracle; Our names fit together perfectly, symmetrically, what were the chances? It was worth putting it together even if just to enter for awards. I turned the scribble into type. That wasn’t how Sean had imagined it. DYE was too dominant.Read more
D&AD&ME.
In 1961, notoriously hot-headed photographer Bob Brooks arrived in London. The advertising scene he stepped into was a very poor relation to the one he’d left in New York. His biggest grievance was it’s annual advertising awards “it was put on by a printer, whose clients were the major agencies, so the ads were often credited as being ‘designed on a group basis”. No names were mentioned, and nobody knew who designed anything.” Rather than except the situation, he gotRead more
YE OLDE ADVERTS.
Before we start, full disclosure: I’m not anti old ads. I quite like them. But weirdly, a surprising number of creatives leaders don’t. At least, they say they don’t in public, I’m sure in private they must have a cheeky flip through the odd One Show annual now and again? They put out phrases next to their profiles like ‘All about the new’, ‘Future facing creative’, ‘Forwards, not backwards’ ‘I never look back’. It sounds so cool. Frankly, it makes meRead more
WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?
If you lived in Britain in between 1937 and 1958 there’s a reasonable chance you were spied on. It wasn’t called spying, it was called Mass Observation. Armies of clip-boarded volunteers quietly observed Britons, recording their behaviour in the most minute detail, unearthing invaluable insights on our society. Like this one, “the average time taken to drink half a pint of beer in pubs on a November Saturday night in Brighton in 1938 was 7.3 minutes.” (It also discovered thatRead more
PODCAST: Gary Goldsmith
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 inRead more
FOUND: BERNBACH STUFF.
I’ve no idea where this came from. I’ve had it for at least twenty or so years. Looking at that high-class screw holding it together and thick cell cover, it probably once belonged to a Creative Director. (Me and my friends didn’t have access to that kind of luxury at the time.) If you recognise it, get in touch and I’ll return it. It’s one of the best, most thorough interviews I’ve ever read with Uncle William. So thanks andRead more
PODCAST: David Kolbusz.
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 byRead more
PODCAST: Alan Brooking.
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. TakeRead more
GREEN BOOKS: Ads 2.
I have a confession to make; not everything on this site is from the loft. Apologies to those of you who feel cheated. I feel such a fraud. The good news is that this post is 100% loft. Not mine, my old partner Mike McKenna’s. I started putting these green books together when Mike and I worked as a team at Publicis, back in the early 90’s. They were our internet. We’d split the cost of the pricey books fromRead more
The fewer words you use
the more impact they have. Read more
PODCAST: Trevor Beattie.
‘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 beforeRead more
GUT.
Facts seem to have lost their resonance in may areas today, but in marketing, they’re still king of the castle. They call the shots. Whether it’s big data, qual, quant, O.T.S, ROI, A/B testing, name any marketing abbreviation, if numbers are involved they must be obeyed. These numbers get distilled into rules. It makes sense, who wouldn’t want to use previous learnings to improve future performance? But somehow, applying these learnings to creative work often feels uncomfortable, less like improvingRead more
Minneapolis, U.K.
I’ve spent over thirty years working within a few square miles of Soho Square. Historically, it’s where the majority of the client’s headquarters were situated. It’s also where country’s magazines, photographers, printers, film companies based, so it became where the bullseye for the country’s ad agencies. Leaf through a bunch of awards annuals and you’ll be hard pressed to find work from another city. Birmingham and Manchester pop up periodically, but not regularly. But in the eighties, one city turnedRead more
THE WALL.
It’s what you hit when you run a marathon. A sudden loss of energy followed by your body telling you ‘I’m done, it’s all over’. But keep putting one foot in front of the other and pretty soon you’re through to the other side, with renewed energy. I was teaching students at the SCA2 last Friday, and was reminded that as creatives we also face a walls, (not physical ones, obviously, they were torn down years ago to make roomRead more
MARK DENTON HAS A BOOK TO SELL!
A weird thought popped into my head on my way to record this interview. 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 are taught to put their skills at the service of the brand. Let’s say you’re designing forRead more
Radio: Paul Burke interviews Nick Angell.
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 very wholesome. At the end, after some member of the family had realised the error of their ways, they’d cut to their familiar end device: A shot of their quaint wooden house at night. We’d hear a voice ‘Goodnight John Boy’, then gradually we’d hear all the other membersRead more
Hands Up Who’s Heard Of Frank Budgen?
We’re smack bang in the middle of the age of collaboration. Any press release for a creative hiring now contains that reassuring phrase ‘Known for being collaborative’. (To me it always reads ‘We’re pleased to announce we’ve finally found a creative who will listen to us’.) The feeling the team had creating the work is as scrutinised as what they created. But collaboration means different things to different people. For most of the team it conjures up enjoyable meetings onRead more