To hear Derek tell it, his career was totally unplanned. One impetuous decision after the next. Leading to endless mistakes. Exhibit A: Quitting the best agency in the country to go on holiday with his girlfriend. (CDP) To me, it looks as meticulously pre-planned as any of the plots in the ‘Ocean’s’ films. STEP 1: Work for the best agencies in town: (CDP, BMP and DDB). STEP 2: A reconnaissance trip to the States (Smith/Greenland). STEP 3: Create financial securityRead more
Posts tagged: #David Abbott
PODCAST: Derek Day Pt. 1.
Being one, I’m very aware of my fellow double d’s out there in advertising. Dave Droga – met once, gave him a lift after judging D&AD together. Donny Deutsch – never met, seen him on Morning Joe though. David Denton – did a few ads with him at BMP, did Cointreau ‘Ice melts’, amongst many others. Don Draper – never met, seems cool. And Derek Day – less known than the first three, but well worth checking out. I’d hearRead more
PODCAST: Yvonne Chalkley
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 thanRead more
PODCAST: MARTIN JONES ON PITCHING
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 andRead more
PODCAST: Alfredo Marcantonio
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 advertisingRead more
PODCAST: Mary Warlick
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,Read more
PODCAST: Roger Woodburn (1 & 2)
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 areRead more
ANOTHER POST ON POSTERS.
Clever-clogs, San Franciscan adman Howard Gossage once said that advertising had a responsibility to society not to pollute our environment. Particularly outdoor, as everybody was exposed to it. I’m sure everyone in marketing at the time nodded sagely in agreement, then got back to polluting. After all, job one is shifting product. Creating a more pleasant trip to the shops is an indulgence. Isn’t it? If you believe dull, ugly ads shift more product. Do they get you to buy?Read more
COPY SAFARI THOUGHTS.
Last week, Vikki Ross asked me to do one of her Copy Safaris. A stroll around London judging advertising in the wild, then posting on Twitter. One of the good things is that you don’t pick and choose, you comment on everything; the good, the bad and the fugly. One of the benefits of having to give an instant take, often on the move, is you can’t overthink it, you react more like the rest of the people on theRead more
WHAT I LIKED before I knew what I was SUPPOSED TO LIKE – Paul Burke
My childhood, to put it mildly, was not a middle class one, so I was spared that haughty parental diktat to watch BBC and not ITV. Thames and LWT were our channels of choice which meant that I grew up watching Opportunity Knocks, Benny Hill, Man About the House and The Sweeney. Good job too because watching the commercial break during every episode of On the Buses turned out to be the perfect preparation for my future career. I mustRead more
Podcast: MICHAEL WOLFF
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 withRead more
PODCAST: HORRY
You can’t advertise a product unless you can get attention. You can’t get attention without standing 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 are different. But, being different is a problem in ad 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 challengeRead more
REMEMBER THOSE GREAT PORSCHE ADS? 1. Bruce Bildsten
How did you end up at Fallon McElligott Bruce? I got there very early, but I suspect I came close to being there from the beginning. I had met Tom McElligott at the University of Minnesota when he spoke to an advertising class I took. He was at the creative agency Bozell and Jacobs and asked me to come back and interview a couple of times. I got impatient with student loans to be paid that I took a jobRead more
PODCAST: Mark Denton saves The Creative Circle.
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 CreativeRead more
Another post about radio advertising. (Sorry.)
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 campaignRead more
THE MOST UNFASHIONABLE FORM OF ADVERTISING?
What was the last product demo you saw? Not on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, they’re all over those, but on tv, billboards or press (does press still exist?). You just don’t see agencies doing them anymore. Odd, because, and I hope I’m not giving away any trade secrets here, the goal of most advertising is to persuade people that the product featured is good. Ideally, REALLY good. So showing it in action, performing well, seems like it might be aRead more
PODCAST: MARY WEAR
‘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 wasRead 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
Hands Up Who’s Heard Of MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMEN?
Remember Alessandro Volta? Douglas Engelbart? What about Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis? Thought not. Even if I asked who invented electric light, the computer mouse and social media, those names are still unlikely to come up. More likely, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg will spring to mind. They didn’t invent those ideas, they either stole from those guys or ‘built on their thinking’.But although now virtually forgotten, their work was crucial, take away their thinking would be likeRead more