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: John Stingley

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. The third requires a bit of psychology, observation and 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 forRead more

PODCAST: Adrian Lyne

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 them Rather than chase the formal perfection,Read more

PODCAST: RICK SITTIG

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

PODCAST: Gerry Graf.

The best ads appear effortless. As if created accidentally, the result of a chance corridor meeting by people letting off steam on their way to different, grown-up,  serious meetings, probably ones involving charts, numbers and mashed-up new words they get the gist of but aren’t 100% confident of their meaning. The truth is that it’s hard to create work like that, it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. A few creatives have been in the right place at the right time to grab a bolt, barelyRead more