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 agenciesRead more
Posts tagged: #Tom McElligott
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
INTERVIEW: George Gier.
I’ve been on a bit of a Fallon McElligott tear recently. American awards annuals were stuffed with an obscene amount of their work, for over two decades. As varied as the work is, whether it’s Rolling Stone’s Perception/Reality campaign, Porsche’s ‘About as fast as you can go without eating airline food’, BMW Films, Miller’s ‘Evil Beaver’, Citibank’s ‘Live Richly’, it all has that same joyous vibe. You can sense that people enjoyed creating it. So expect a bunch of FallonRead 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
THE LOOKY-LIKEY AMALGAM.
I few months back I recorded a podcast with Richard Shotton, one of the brightest people in the business. Whilst preparing I read Richard’s book, The Choice Factory, it’s great, full of fascinating insights and observations on human behaviour and how we respond to marketing. Whilst taking in all this intelligent insight an interesting theory occurred to me; why don’t we just create ads that people like? Granted, it’s no theory of relativity, but it’s odd that it’s barely aRead more
100th post. (Well, nearly.)
Full disclosure; it’s actually the 113th. But I noticed that when blogs or podcasts hit a significant number they do a kind of round-up, like a kind of house-keeping thing, so here’s mine. 10 THINGS I’VE LEARNT ABOUT BLOGGING. 1. BLOGS HAVE A LIFE OF THEIR OWN. MAY 2002: My friend Paul buys me davedye.com. OCT 2013: I decide to bung all my old work on it, for easy access. NOV 2013: It’s a bit chaotic. Having presented the workRead more
PODCAST: Tom McElligott.
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 writeRead more
Hands up who’s heard of TOM McELLIGOTT?
It’s crazy, he should be better known. He ushered in a new, sassier way of talking. His work felt like it was written by a very smart lawyer with a wicked sense of humour. He influenced a generation. But there’s almost no evidence of his existence on the internet. In a Stalinesque style purge, Lurzer’s Archive have retouched the Fallon McElligott work to read Fallon. Even the publishers of Luke Sullivan’s great book ‘Hey Whipple’ seem not to know him: I can’t find a lot ofRead more
Hands up who’s heard of MARY WELLS?
Bernbach, Lois, Gossage, Chiat, Wieden and McElligott. In over twenty years I can only recall hearing the name Mary Wells once; Tim Delaney referenced her in a tone that implied he thought she wasn’t completely useless. (Obviously something like that sticks with you.) I started reading her biography a few years ago, but had to stop, her chest thumping and name dropping was so loud the neighbours were complaining.“Sure I had in me what it takes to lead the agency intoRead more