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
Posts tagged: #Hamlet ad
BLOG/CAST: Graham Watson #1
In the style-obsessed 80s, no agency was more obsessed than BBH. Everything that came out of the place reeked of it. Including the staff. Their men’s toilets were stocked with tubs of hair gel (What? It was the eighties!) Their AAR reel, a tool for agencies for clients to compile pitch lists, didn’t follow the template the rest of the industry did (pasty faced public schoolboys using big words, diagrams interspersed with clips from their ads). BBH’s simply showed endingRead more
WHAT I LIKED before I knew what I was SUPPOSED TO LIKE – Mark Denton
A funny thing happened the other day…I saw an advert on the internet and I went out and bought something. Don’t laugh, IT’S TRUE! The advert was for a TRIO bar and after seeing it I urgently needed a toffee/chocolate hit. Of course I couldn’t find a Trio anywhere (do they still make them?) so I had to make do with a Toffee Crisp. They (I bought a multi-pack) were very nice. I can’t remember what their advertising was likeRead more
PODCAST: Graham Fink. (Part 1.)
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 behindRead more
INTERVIEW: Sir Alan Parker.
Sir Alan, where did you grow up? I grew up in Islington. Ours were the first council flats built after the war and I moved in aged about three or four. Ironically, the flats overlooked the street where my Dad was born and brought up. (My Grandad was the local barber and the family were evacuated in the war when a bomb hit St Mary’s Church close to their shop. He was also the local bookie—illegal then—and so they movedRead more