"It’s not the size of the budget.

It’s the ferocity of the idea" 
– Paula GRRRRReen.I'd seen that name underneath some Avis ads.
But Helmut Krone's campaigns tend to be referred to as Helmut Krone's campaigns. (See what I mean?)
The spotlight rarely makes it past him.So the writers, and often originators, of much of his most famous work get forgotten.Avis is a prime example.I love the art direction of the Avis campaign, but I love the thinking behind it more.The Volkswagen campaign may be a more famous, but in terms of thinking, I prefer Avis.
Come to think of it, what is the idea behind the Volkswagen campaign? Hundreds of great one-offs unified by a great (and breakthrough at the time) tone of voice.'We're No 2, so we try harder' positioned a company, inside and out, getting employees to work harder and the public to root for them.
No mean feat.Who could fail to empathise with the truism that if you're not the biggest, richest or most famous, you have to try harder?
Everybody loves an underdog.
Paula Green wrote it, describing it this way "We were really creating an operating manual for the company, saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas."
Many in the agency objected to the idea, feeling that No. 2 was a put-down, so Green sent the researchers down to airports to get feedback on the ads.
They came back to report that 50% of people thought that No. 2 meant "not as good as."
That kills most campaigns.
But Bill Bernbach piped up "What about the other 50%?" and the campaign ran.(It's a great reminder; we aren't seeking broad agreement that a campaign is ok, we're looking for a small constituency to fall in love.)
Four years later Avis had increased its market share from 11% to 34%.
They used the line for the next 50 years. (And they'll use it again, I guarantee.)
Paula also wrote and oversaw great work on Heinz and Quaker before, in 1969, setting up her own agency Green Dolmatch.(Later changed to Paula Green Advertising Inc.)She funded it with the money she'd made on her Avis shares, she’d bought them soon after being assigned to the account.She felt she needed independence, saying “Years ago when I was working on detergents, I would be the only woman in a meeting with the production manager, account supervisor, art director and so on, but I couldn’t get them to listen.On one occasion I was the only one in the group who had any experience in doing wash, but they didn’t care because it did not fit into what they had already planned to do. One man practically hissed ‘you sound just like my wife’.”Her agency did mainstream work for the likes of The New York Times, Subaru and Goya beans (“There’s a bean for every girl and boya, in the food store section known as Goya”) but most of the agency’s work was cause driven.
This was partly because that was her preference and partly because she refused to work on products she didn’t believe in.One of the first ads she wrote for her new agency was a tv ad promoting self-examination for The American Cancer Society.(Paula had survived breast cancer as a young woman.)

She described her approach like this "I believe in words, they should come from the heart of the matter, I always feel I must first make a sensory connection, a gut connection, about how I feel about something before I do it."

(AN INTERVIEW WITH PAULA FROM FROM JAPAN'S IDEA MAGAZINE, 1970.)How did you come to DDB?I'd been working at an agency and I had taken the summer off to join my husband in a job at children's camp.He'd been working very hard. He had just finished school again. And the agency I had worked with would not give me a leave of absence.So I had had no job when I came back.At that point I called Ned Doyle. Actually I'd known him at Grey Advertising, where he'd originally been. I'd known all these people and had yearned to come work for them years before.And he had suggested "You know our Mrs. Robinson? Why don’t you come in and see her?”
 I got my book together and I came in and met her, we struck it off very well and she hired me.
 Originally, I was hired to work as a writer for the Chemstrand account.DDB was about twenty million dollars at the time, on two floors, art and copy on the 25th, administration on the 26th.
 That's now the size of copy alone.
 Then, I guess I was one of 8 or 9 writers.

What year?
1956.
And one of the nicest things happened when I was hired.
I was joining around Christmas and Mrs. Robinson (she was a copy chief at the time) called me and said "Look Paula, you're going to come to work for us, anyway; come to the Christmas party, meet everybody before you start."So I started on a very happy, generous note, which by the way, I think has been true for the twelve years I have been here since.

How many people were there when you came to DDB?
I don't know? I think the Christmas party had about 200 people, something like that. 
I mean everybody, clerk, secretaries, writers, art directors, bullpen, account executives, the entire agency consisted of about 200 people.What motivated you to be a copywriter?

I was born in Los Angeles and went to school in California.When I was through, my mother, having just got back from a trip to New York, said "Why don't you go to New York, Paula?"I asked "For what?”"I think you'd like it" she answered.So I came and I fell madly in love with it.I had a few friends that I had met on the coast, men from New York.I was talking with one of them and he said "Why don't you get a job in an advertising agency?”I thought that it was a nice idea, so I got a job as secretary to a promotion director of a magazine.He was a great fellow, a marvellous teacher, a very bright man with a great knowledge of graphics and writing.It was a very small operation, so we did everything, and he let me do writing, layout.
 This was a magazine for men called TRUE Magazine, which has been quite successful.
He taught me all along the line. He let me help him writing letters, he helped me learn how to do these things mostly by example and by saying "Write this" and showing me whether it was right.I'd been involved in writing of one sort or another, all my life. I just liked to write. I'd been writing in elementary school, junior high school, in little newspapers and putting on programs. It became a part of me.But I'd never considered it as a job, certainly not in connection with advertising, because I didn't know anybody doing that sort of thing in Los Angeles.So it wasn't until I came to New York that I got into the merchandising and sales promotion end of magazine work.When my boss left, I was made Promotions Director, which permitted me to meet agency people, one day they called to say "I think there's a job over here for you. Come on over."So I was introduced to the people at Grey Advertising and went to work there in the Sales Promotion department, I started writing sales promotion for an enormous list of accounts.
I left them after I married and had my child.But when my child was very small I did freelance for them all the time, it gave us extra money that we needed at that time.My husband then decided to go back to engineering school, so I went back to work for a magazine, in the promotions department of SEVENTEEN magazine, eventually I became the Promotions Manager, handling and writing pamphlets and ads.
I found the job unfulfilling, so I left them after a while.And a friend of mine, who was working in an agency, said "Won't you come over and talk to people here. We do very nice work".That was the LC Gumbinner Agency, they were very nice and hired me.At that particular agency, I did copy contact, account work, a little copy that was not much like publicity, the thing that clients really like.So when I came to DDB I was not even sure that I wanted to be a writer, I thought maybe I would be an account person because at that time we did not have any account women. 
But they weren't interested in me in that way.
 Mr Doyle soon said "I really think you should look into the copy part."That's how I got into it.

Why do you continue?
I like it.Of the number of things that I can do, it's the most rewarding.At this point, with my background and experience, it brings me into direct and interesting contact with so many facts of just plain life and business.Through the creative part, I'm involved in the most alive and interesting things in the art world today; in graphics, in film, in music, in acting, in the talent that is engaged in all sorts of activities, the best actors, actresses around, the best cameramen, the best directors.Also, because you deal with people who run large corporations, you speak to them about the most exciting things happening in business too.
And I don't know any other job that would put me in touch with so many facts of American life, both artistic and economic.
That's why I'm in it.

Why DDB?It has one of the best atmospheres you'll find.Basically, it comes from the top, they have a philosophy of open-mindedness and nourishment of creative activity and diverse ideas.They nourish and encourage you to be as good creatively as you can.There's never been a dictum sating "You must write this way because I would write it this way."But rather "What can you do that will best solve the problem?"They have encouraged diversity.They encourage you to be as good as you can be.And that's a rare thing.Also, you're never penalized because a client did not like something.It's both reward and responsibility.It is a unique place because the people who run this place are unique.Atmosphere does not percolate from bottom up, it comes from the top down.And you can only be as good as the people at the top let you be.Here, they let you be very good indeed.
I've worked in a couple of other agencies; certainly this is the best.
And from what I hear from outside, even though we've grown very big, it continues to be the most open, most encouraging.
Generally speaking, growth tends to make things less possible, I've not found that to be the case here.

Do you think talented writers can write good ads anywhere?No, I do not think a talented writer can do a good job regardless of the agency.They can only do as good a job as they're allowed to do.They may fulfil their agency requirements, but that's not the same as doing the best they can do.It's very frustrating to know you can do something and not be allowed to do it, due to client or agency pressures.And that's why, when hiring people, we ask them to show us what they wanted to do but was not accepted.It allows us to judge how far and how brilliantly they had thought, what they could've done, not just what they'd been allowed to do.We think that is very important.By the way, I think the copywriting should not be called copywriting.It's an unfortunate title.I think you first must be a thinker, a thinker about the problem of selling.Then, when you can really put that into words, then you become the person who puts the words of the idea down.Too many people think that to be a copywriter they simply need to be able to write clever and bright words.That's not the case.Our sole purpose is to sell.First you have to be a salesman.You have to have good merchandising and sales concepts.Good psychological insights and motivations.When you can put good words to them, then you become a so-called copywriter. 
I think many people get misled.They think if they can write, they can be an advertising copywriter.I do not believe that.

How do you lead and teach your young writers?Let me see, I hope I encourage them to be fresh and bright and to face the real problem of the assignment, not to face the problem they prefer.I think the most important problem in growing up in this business is "are you dealing with what the problem really is" or do you say "I don't like that problem. I'd rather do this."I really do not know how I teach.I hope with enthusiasm and a firm viewpoint, but not dogmatic, and by being very demanding.I like preciseness. I do not like vagueness. I like clarity, I like simplicity, I do not like cleverness for the sake of cleverness.I like clear-minded people who have a mind of their own; open-minded at the same time.And this is a hard combination to find.But I taught in the past.

What is your secret of making your career and housekeeping compatible?
I'm not sure they are.I think my secret is my marvellous husband and marvellous housekeeper.I think they are more compatible as I am better at home as mother and wife.I think the economic security allows you to do so many jobs better because you worry so much less when you make a decision.You're no longer concerned if it's wrong.It's harder to correct a mistake with little money to spend.As the economics have improved, so too have my relationships.And I have a great son. That helps.I think the other one thing I do is that I try very hard to be at home as mother and wife, I try not to let business wash over into my social relationships.

Do you have a knack to getting along well with art directors? 
I do not know.I think the knack is always how to get along with anyone.You have a point of view but you are open to their point of view.You understand in their way who they are.They have their needs and wants and you try to work with those.Just as they try to work with mine.I think perhaps a woman has the advantage in a sense of being able to be understanding in this relationship.Without trying very hard, if she is a woman and understands she is a woman, she gets along with a man non-competitively, hopefully as a companion.By the way, I think they react the same way.
I do not believe it is ever one-sided. As much as I give, obviously someone else is equally giving.The knack is, I think, to treat them as good friends with a single-minded job to do, it's not a matter of ego but a matter of professional man craft.
I hope that’s true.Please tell me your favourite ads.
I like the Avis campaign. I was the original Avis girl, the original writer on the Avis campaign.Obviously it was a milestone in my career, in advertising, in the industry, in almost the world.I don't think we dreamed what would happen.Nobody said "Oh boy, this is going to set everybody on his car."We hoped to do a job.We thought it was a great thing.We had no idea how absolutely far-reaching it was going to be.We thought we had something, obviously, or we wouldn't have done it.But we could never have realized what was going to happen when we did it.With the first ads, we were really creating an operating manual for the company, saying you had to give customers a clean car, windshield wipers had to work, cars had to have a full tank of gas.Although it ran later, the first ad was "Avis is only No.2 in rent a car business. So why go with us?"
 So that is obviously my absolute favourite.

Four years later the rent-a-car company's market share had increased from 11% to 34%.Avis used the line for the next 50 years. (And they'll use it again, I guarantee.)

She went on to do great work on Heinz and Quaker before seWhat advice by Mr Bernbach has impressed you most?
My very first experience with this company, which absolutely amazed me, was the extraordinary straight-forward dealing with clients, their conviction and honesty, I was terribly amazed. I didn't know it existed.
It was always coupled with great intelligence, keen-ness and wit.From the very beginning they allowed me to be honest and open with clients.No one ever told me "Don't say anything at a meeting, Paula. Don't give your opinion."Never.They always presumed me to have judgment and allowed me to contribute as much as possible, ask questions and be forthright.The second thing that impressed me about Mr Bernbach is that he said "Advertising is not just strictly science that you can put numbers to, but is an art and a talent. And to be fresh and provocative, always do a solid job."And to trust your intuition and experience.

(From 2015, upon being inducted into The One Show Hall of Fame)To what do you attribute your success?
I don’t deny I have talent, I do; I don’t deny I’m hardworking, I am, but I’m also lucky.I’ve been fortunate in the people I’ve met along the way who have encouraged me and opened doors—most of them men.

As a woman, what has been your biggest challenge?
From the beginning, I never just thought of myself as purely a woman.I always thought of myself as a writer, a copywriter, who could do a job.I suppose the biggest barrier could have been being hired in the first place.There had to be a kind of openness on the other side for me to have gotten hired in the first place.I worked at Grey, and they had women there; there were women who had their own smaller agencies—Bernice Fitzgibbons did all the ads for Gimbles.There were not so many women in management or account work and certainly fewer in art direction.But women writers did pretty much OK, depending.You never did or did not know why you were being hired.I would walk in to a reception area and see the receptionist and assess, is this a place where I’d be comfortable?I could pretty much tell you places I didn’t want to work even if I went in for an interview.At DDB, there was a kind of proud modesty to it and I liked that.And I knew I’d fit and I also knew I’d do the kind of work that they wanted.I came to the conclusion somewhere along the line when I was dealing at a fairly high level with male clients that they were not comfortable with women.Not so much prejudice, but just discomfort.They had a lack of knowledge of women; they were men of their own convictions. I went on to my own agency, and I dealt with men all the time.It was kind of maybe self-selecting. Clients didn’t come to me if they didn’t want to deal with a woman.The New York Times did, Goya certainly did, because they had women there, Subaru had no women but I had no problem with that.Is ‘Mad Men’ true to form?Oh, bull. No. I hate it. I find it just soap.The agencies I worked for, none of that went on.People didn’t sit around drinking in their offices.If they did, they did it on their own time.I had no sense of that kind of byzantine—there was competition, but among us writers.We all wanted to do well and be recognized. But there was none of that crappy stuff.At least to my mind.Paula passed in 2015, she was 92.More Paula...

Thanks to Vikki Ross and Alfredo Marcantonio for their help with this post.

Unusual names are more likely to be remembered.So I knew that the writer of the Levy's campaign was called Judy Protas.I didn't know she'd written one of my favourite ads - Ohrbach's 'Back to school'.I knew the Crackerjack ads but didn't know she'd written them.I didn't know she'd written the Ohrbach's cat ad (probably the most famous DDB before VW came along).I'd seen the funny Crackerjack commercials on a 100 Greatest ads reel back in the day, I didn't know she'd written them.I also didn't know she was the first writer Phyliss Robinson hired, making her the agency's second copywriter.And who new she worked there for 45 years? Starting in '52, leaving '97.

JUDY PROTAS INTERVIEW WITH JAPAN'S IDEA MAGAZINE, 1969.

You’re famous for being the copywriter for Ohrbach's.Do you still write for Ohrbach's?I took myself off the Ohrbach's account in December 1968.How long had you been writing for Ohrbach's?Since...let's see, 1951? That's longer than I've let myself remember! For a good many years Bill Bernbach and Bob Gage did all the concepts.

As a matter of fact, the Cat ad, which is very famous as you know, was their concept; my contribution was the body copy:“The way she talks, you'd think she was in Who's Who. Well! I found out what's what with her. Her husband own a bank? Sweetie? Not even a bank account. Why that place of theirs that has wall-to-wall mortgages! And that car? Darling, that's horsepower, not earning power. They won it in a fifty-cent raffle! Can you imagine? And those clothes! Of course she does dress divinely – a mink stole, all those dresses, and a Paris suite – on his income? Well darling, I found out about that too. I just happened to be going her way and I saw Joan come out of Ohrbach's!”

Gradually as the account grew and as Bill Bernbach's time became more crowded, he gave me more and more responsibility and I began to do the ads from scratch.

Did you feel stagnant on the account? Was that the problem?It wasn't so much a matter of getting tired of Ohrbach's. It became an increasingly complex job, a really enormous account. The store began pushing a great many departments for which it never had done ads before. It became more than one person could handle.Now; I had a choice of directions; I could either set up a group, ask for more copywriters, give some of the smaller jobs to them and keep the good things, the delightful things, the subway posters and institutional ads for myself, which would have been unfair to the juniors.Or I could do what it was time for me to do in the long run anyway, which was to ask to be relieved of the account.It wasn't the easiest decision. I was associated with Ohrbach's, my name meant something, but it was time for a fresh team.The institutional stuff that's coming out today is very exciting and has, in fact, been mopping up prizes.The store I'm sure is enormously pleased and I know the agency is too.

When you first joined DDB, what was the size of the agency?How many copywriters were there?I first joined DDB in year one, literally. DDB was a year old. I came in 1950 and there was only one copywriter before me. My bones creak when I think of it.

At that time, who directly taught you to write?I was the first copywriter Phyllis Robinson hired. She was my Copy Chief.What was her teaching method?She was absolutely marvellous. She tried to bring me out, to remind me that copy is not a question of writing cute stuff but of selling hard and being fresh while you sell, she kept me to the point, refused to let me go off into detours; she taught by correcting goofs rather than by setting rigid principles.She was an excellent teacher, and I'm delighted to see her around as often as I do, now that we're as big as we are.While you kept writing for Ohrbach's, how many different art directors did you have?Well, not too many different ones. I'd say there were probably four altogether. Charlie Piccirillo, who is back on the account now, worked with me for a while.So did Gary Geyer.

When you have a new art director to work with, do you somewhat change your way of doing things to suit him?I work with an art director as a friend. And as a laughing companion in fact. I've found it's important to laugh as much as you worry in doing ads.Charlie and I had a marvellous time together. Gary and I had perhaps less laughter and more work as the account grew more complex, but we still had a lot of fun.I've never had a problem with this change of art directors.A lot of the credit I give to them, of course; but in general, if you're mature enough, and if you understand people enough, you can adapt.It really doesn't matter what the personalities are as long as there is some kind of mental rapport.There's a kind of happy challenge, in fact, in adjusting to a new combination of talent and temperament.

Please describe in detail how you proceed in your teamwork with the art director?The teamwork with the art director, I think, is paramount. That's probably true for most of the people around here.The first thing you and the art director do when you get a requisition is to look at each other and say "My God, we'll never get it."After that you sit and you come up with some ideas that you think are perhaps OK. You look at them the next morning and you think "How could I have liked that? It's awful!".And you keep going until something happens.There really isn't much difference, I shouldn't think, in the way most of us work. What the best teams have is the good sense to do what has to be done first: get the story.Digging for background. And I'll never do that alone.A friend of mine at another agency recently said "I took my art director to a client meeting today." It was obvious he had condescended to do something different.I will never, as a copywriter, go off to the client to get the story and bring it back and feed it to the art director. The art director is 50% of the muscle; a good art director is as apt to come up with a smash headline as a good writer is to come up with a visual.As a team we go off together to dig out the facts.And we want everything.You've got to get a headful of information: the background, the client's thinking, the feeling he has for his product, every last little thing he can tell you.A client will sometimes answer a question with "You don't have to know that. You're not going to put it in the ad." Not true. We have to know everything, whether it goes in the ad or not. It's all part of the texture of the problem we're working on.Anything and everything may feed into the final idea.As a matter of fact, the client may trigger an ad without even realizing it.Clients, I've found, must be encouraged not to censor the material they give us.Most of the time, of course, they understand this; in fact, you sometimes have a problem turning the faucet off once you've turned it on.

In case the opinions of you two split, how would you solve the problem?One of us waits out the other. If there's a real split in opinion, we let it sit for a couple of days. Either the art director will begin to understand what I see in it or I'll begin to understand what he doesn't.Occasionally when you come up against an inseparable, difference and you really are at a stand-off, you ask somebody else's opinion, but there I think you have to be careful whom you ask. I'm not about to take a census of the secretaries, but a Bob Levenson or a Leon Meadow would be another matter.But I've never reached a breaking point with an art director.I just find that the challenge of the job and the problem you have to solve in the ad are a lot more important than the challenge of the personality. There really wasn't a personality problem, never while I was on Ohrbach's.What is the reason you've stayed so long at DDB?Well, obviously it's because I like working here; I've been very happy. You've heard it from other copywriters: the freedom to think, to be fresh, to be original, to be yourself as long as you never forget that the main purpose of an ad is to sell.Second of all, over and over again as writers have left and gone off to other agencies, you hear sad stories of the difference in working conditions.During your long association with DDB, you must have seen a lot of copywriters come and go. Among those writers, is there anyone that left you with a strong impression?One of the writers whom I remember best and have the greatest respect for is Ron Rosenfeld. I miss him as a friend, follow him as a writer, I'm proud and fond of him. Bob Levenson and Leon Meadow fill out my favourite triumvirate.

Tell us about your background up to the time you joined DDB.I remember one Christmas I had finished Graduate School; I had a Master's Degree in English and I thought I would like to write.I came back to New York and went around to magazines with my Master's Degree in my hand and found that with luck I could get a job at $25 a week doing research on a magazine. It was during the holidays, and being female, I decided to do what females do when they feel blue. I'd buy something to cheer myself up.I happened to be near Macy's, I went in, and bumped into a booth they'd set up to recruit temporary help for Christmas.Well, I wouldn't mind working for Macy's just for Christmas, but could I do something where I could write?They sent me up to the advertising department and I was hired to file proofs.From time to time I wrote little bits on housewares and turned them in and they decided to give me a chance as a copywriter. And that's where I learned about research.It was close to Passover, a Jewish holiday, and the Jews, of course, do not eat bacon or ham---not where the Lord can see them, at any rate. Well, we were going to advertise a carving knife on a page which sold Passover items, and I did my research and figured out how you sell a carving knife and got all enthusiastic over the things you could carve with this wonderful knife for Passover and in the middle of the list was the word "ham". And the next thing I knew, the Copy Chief was roaring "Protas, come in here!".It was an early lesson in over-enthusiasm and sloppy thinking.Anyway, after five years at Macy's, in which I specialized in furniture and some fashion, I decided it was time to move on.I remember when I first got to Doyle Dane Bernbach, we were on the top floor of a building on Madison Avenue, squeezed, as a matter of fact, into the penthouse, and Ned Doyle looked at me and said "Kid, can you work hanging from the chandeliers?"

Out of the work you've done so far, name two ads you like best and tell us why you like them. Any episodes concerning the creative work of the two ads?Now that I'm off Ohrbach's, I look back over the years with a new perspective and I realize there are other things I'm happy with.One is the campaign for Levy's real Jewish rye bread, which I did with art director Bill Taubin. "You don't have to be Jewish" took a regional product, a bread known only within a few hundred miles, and made it an international by-word.One of the things I'm proud of is the fact that when we first did it, the overt approach to an ethnic or religious group was quite a shock. That it is accepted nowadays, I think is in large part because of this campaign.

No matter where I go, if I'm asked "What do you do?" and I say "I've worked on Ohrbach's and I work on Levy's", the reaction is a delight to my ego.These days as I look back at Ohrbach's, my favourite ad is the one with the little boy sitting in the corner, very grumpy; the headline reads, "We regret to inform you your school stuff is ready at Ohrbach's". I love that one.

And I love the Crackerjack commercials, on which I worked with Bob Gage.You worked on Crackerjack TV commercials, did you say?Yes. For the first five years the agency had the account, I was the copywriter with Bob Gage.The first thing that we decided to do was to write a jingle, and it caught on. I haven't seen the jingle spots for a while, but I can tell you my very small friends still come up to me and say "You're the Crackerjack lady!"Did Mr Bernbach give you any advice that particularly impressed you? And how do you apply his advice to your work?Advice from Bill Bernbach? Well, the one bit I remember most was his advice on believability. Find a sound selling point, do a fresh and provocative ad, but always remember one guide-line; believability.One illustration he's often used is the man upside down on the page. Do it just for the sake of catching attention and you've got nothing more than a gimmick.If, on the other hand, you're selling men's clothes with pockets from which nothing can fall out, then you're being provocative and you're selling at the same time.More Judy.

Thanks to Vikki Ross for her help with this post.

NEXT DAY: I can't help but wonder whether the idea will work - will the 'V' H1 read clearly?I've got the images, let's mock a couple up.Just to see what they look like.

NEXT DAY: I look at my pin-board; the ads look cool, but is just two letters too random?Maybe it's too stripped back?Maybe we should tie the branding idea to specific programmes?The biggies seem to be on at 9pm Wednesdays and Thursdays; Ultimate Albums and The Rise & Rise Of.We look into which artists are coming up in future programmes, leaning towards those that would be more surprising for VH1.

NEXT DAY: Caspar pops in ‘Ooh they look good…but I thought we weren’t showing any ads?’‘We're not, we'll just have them in our back pocket’.I like the black and white images, but it makes the programmes appear like they're about the olden days, which they are, but we don't need to rub it in.Unfortunately the images aren't available in colour, so I put colour washes over the pictures, to add a bit of energy.Also, I don't like the VH1 element changing size and angle, so decide to keep it a consistent size and straight.

NEXT DAY: Better. But the layout looks a bit sensible, too corporate.Maybe it needs a bit more energy and attitude to make it less formal.Rips and a harsh dot screen over the images might do it?

NEXT DAY: The first thing I see are rips?Rips are less interesting than rock stars, let's minimise them.Also, that white 'H1' seems too loud, it should feel like part of the image.

THE NEXT DAY: Better still. But why have a rip at all?The stars shouldn't have to compete with the graphics for attention.If we want to create iconography fans will want in their homes let's minimise the bits they don't want.So bigger pictures, simpler layout.

NEXT DAY: I have an idea for year two: Rock stars giving the finger.

I Love them.Caspar comes in, 'Oh my god, what have you done?'He's looking at twenty or so A2 polyboards scattered around my office.No need to tell him they're now too big to put in our back pockets.CHEMISTRY MEETING: After brief introductions to the two young, female clients, I enthusiastically launch into selling our solution.Without knowing their problem.Rather being held aloft and cheered, I'm told 'We don't need a brand campaign'.Their problem, they explained, was time; they needed a campaign to promote a specific show very, very quickly.That was their problem.But, I was in too deep.I explained that this wasn't just a brand campaign, it could flex to any programme.I reiterated my concerns with their dowdy brand image.I talked about the benefits of bespoke ideas that can only be done by your brand.I reminded them of the power of simplicity.I told them that challenging their current brand perception could bring in a new audience.Whatever, they weren't interested.They were, by now, irritated.They'd just come in for a chat.I wasn't in a great mood either, I'd worked my ass off for the last week, for free, got to a solution I loved and they were refusingto even understand it.They didn't even want to talk about it.We waved goodbye, knowing we'd never meet again.Some may say that's a successful chemistry meeting in that both parties came to understand there was none.But I'd say not.MORAL: Next time you go on a blind date, don't turn up with a wedding ring. You'll seem weird.

I hated this campaign.It didn’t follow any of the rules we were supposed to follow at the time.It didn’t focus on something uniquely Benetton. (History, products, ingredients, process, etc.)It didn’t even attempt to persuade anyone their products were better than the competition.And frankly, it didn’t seem very clever.It felt like a generic solution that just happened to have a Benetton logo stuck to it.In retrospect, I was wrong.It wasn’t generic, it shone a light on something uniquely Benetton; their attitude.Name another client who’d have the cojones to run this campaign?Then or now.Few run advertising that breaks from the norms of their category, but how many are willing to thrust their companies into the middle of issues like racism, religion and capital punishment?You can count them on one finger.Backed by owner Luciano Benetton, Creative Director and photographer Oliviero Toscani (below) created a campaign that made Benetton, within a handful of years, one of the most famous brands on the planet.

With the benefit of time we can lay it out chronologically and see it evolve.Each year, Toscani pushed the envelope further and further, until, arguably, he pushes it off the edge of the…table? (Is the envelope on the table in that analogy? I can’t remember.)In the beginning, they start by linking the wide variety of colours they offer to the wide variety of humans mooching about the planet.'The United Colours of Benetton'.Gentle.Ish.Using multi-cultural models would've been unusual at the time, but probably didn’t present itself as a brand idea.I've always found it odd when presenting 'big' brand ideas, that we'll show how they'll roll out in years 2, 3, 4, to give the client confidence that the idea ‘has legs’.But I've never, ever seen all those years 2, 3 and 4 get used.Most campaigns evolve as they go, shedding the bits that don't work, building on the bits that do.I'd be willing to bet that there was no long-term plan, no year 2, 3 and 4.My guess is that the plan was whatever Toscani felt like at the time.The plan is him.Socially and culturally aware.Provocative.Graphic.(They look simple, but being able to capture social issues in such simple images is a rare skill.)He shot and oversaw all of them.From cute model shots to grim death row ads.From gentle to provocative to...well, whatever word is for provocative turned up to 11.Or, to put it another way; from unknown to world-famous.Handy if you’ve got a lot of coloured jumpers to sell.

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 campaign (thanks for the tear-sheets Brian Burch, posting soon), and this one: ‘21 Years Of Radio Advertising'.A one celebration of the best of the U.K's radio advertising, it includes advice and reflection from some of its best practitioners; Tim Delaney, David Abbott, John Hegarty and more.Interestingly, it says on the cover 'Commercial Radio. It's time has come.'I wasn't aware of that in 1994.It came in this...

No note was attached, so I've no idea who sent it. They may have forgot to include one or remain anonymous, who knows?I can't help but stare at that envelope for clues.I don't think I know anyone from Windsor? The wildly varying type size suggests it isn't from an Art Director.I'd say the @ points to someone under 35, but this thing was produced in 1994, it's unlikely someone at Primary school would've hung on to a CD about radio advertising for the next 26 years?So, whoever you are; thank you.For the rest of you; enjoy.

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 a good way to go?Because most purchasing decisions are based on what a product does.
But sometimes in ad agencies, we can get too distracted with our own fancy theories and philosophies.Not just in agencies, sometimes when I teach I’ll review work that, although clever, doesn’t feel like it'll sell anything.It doesn't feel like it's trying to sell anything.Would you buy that cereal because you're told it’s what the cool folks eat?Or a computer because the company that makes it has some very progressive social policies?Maybe.But most wouldn't, they want to know what's in it for them.My advice when such a situation arises is always the same; imagine you’re with a friend, face to face, how would you persuade them to buy this product?.They know they can't waffle and bullshit friends, so they stop trying.
Instead, they start thinking about why their friend may actually part with money for this product.Focussing on what it does.How it may help them.The ideas often become less grandiose and more like common-sense advice.Which is more persuasive.As the saying goes – Don’t tell me you’re funny, make me laugh.So why are we producing less product demos?Less products to warrant that type of advertising today?Would that kind of 'hard sell' advertising reflect badly on a brand today?
Or that it would reflect badly on us?(Answers on a postcard, etc, etc.)p.s. I couldn’t help wondering if the British Government spent less money telling people what to do about Covid-19 and more on demonstrating the benefits of wearing masks and washing hands, the situation may be a bit better?E.g. 1. Masks.

E.g. 2. Soap.

When I gathered together this bunch, I didn’t look through awards sites or annuals, I just tried to remember product demonstrations, ones that had stuck with me.Consequently, there are some ads in here that I couldn’t tell you when or where they were done, like Tonka and the nail varnish ad.But having collated all of this 'unfashionable' work, it dawned on me that most of it was created by the most fashionable agencies.At least, the most fashionable in their of the day.DDB, PKL, WRG, GGT, BBH, WCRS, DDB, AMV, APPLE.Written by the likes of George Lois, Roy Grace, Dave Trott, David Abbott, John Webster, Ron Collins.Maybe they knew something we don't?

TV.

Reader suggestions:

‘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 was a little irritated; why on earth had she never set up her own agency?Or run her own Creative Department for that matter?(And why wasn’t that one of my questions?)She was born to do it.She’s such a clear thinker, funny, ballsy and confident, as you’ll hear.Also, and this is often gets overlooked - in 1987 Mary picked up the coveted Whitbread Most Promising Beginner Award at The Creative Circle.Hope you enjoy it.

HOUNSLOW COLLEGE.

FOOTE CONE BELDING.London Underground.

Rimmel.

Kahlua.

GOLD GREENLEES TROTT.Zamoyski.

Post Office.

Mazda.

Holsten Pils.

The Daily Mirror.

ITV.

Cancel The Third Word Debt.

Cadbury's Wispa.

Toshiba.

LEAGAS SHAFRON DAVIS.The Sunday Express.

SAATCHI & SAATCHI.Royal Borough of Kensington.

British Airways.

Visa.

ABBOTT MEAD VICKERS.Famous Grouse.

Tampax.

Reed Employment.

Anti-Smoking.

British Telecom.

The Economist.

Yellow Pages.

Ikea.

RSPCA.

Make Poverty History.

Department of Transport.

Maltesers.

Mary's 5 copywriting tips:

It’s always weird looking back through these books.Like looking at those insects trapped in a chunk of amber. There they were, right in the middle doing something, simply walking or picking their nose, frozen in time.These books are a bit like that, a snapshot of what was happening at a certain moment in time, captured chronologically.(Encased in green this time, not amber.)This moment is '93 to '94, type & graphics, and what an odd moment it is too.Starting with classically crafted pages ripped from Fred Woodward’s Rolling Stone and Fabien Baron’s Harper’s Bazaar.Ending, little more than 12 months later, with the scruffy, deconstructed mess that was David Carson’s Ray Gun & Surfer magazines, Tibor Kalman’s Interview and the output of Tomato Design.What a shift in aesthetic over such a short time?A complete 180 degrees.But we ate it up, especially in London, even the older art directors, like my mate Derrick Hass.Every so often I’d be sitting in my office only to hear ‘WOW!’, I’d look up to see Derrick, like a kid after too many fizzy drinks, holding up one of these odd-looking, totally unreadable layouts.Layouts, I might add, that were totally against everything he’d believed in for the previous ninety five years.I’m not knocking him, I was the same, swept up by this exciting, new and progressive style.It was the way forward, who said words had to be legible anyway?Only squares and dullards; wankers!Looking at this stuff now, it’s hard to see why were we all so intoxicated.Your enjoyment of these magazine pages will be interrupted advertising, stuff I’d created and Chris & Mark had rejected (Simons Palmer (Denton Clemmow & Johnson).Also by some ephemera from the period, like two ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ tickets (from Gaumont Cinema), there’s a flattened pack of Death Cigarettes and a handful of semi-cool skateboard stickers.There's also a bunch of alphabets photocopied from a Monotype specimen book. (Jesus those old photocopiers were shit!)Presumably, I must’ve been convinced that these bits and pieces were crucial to the development of my career, sellotaping them into a book for speedy access.So, here you go, be my guest.(A £5 prize goes to anyone finding a use for those ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ tickets.)

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 for his new agency was that the clients should be in the limelight, not the agency.While I've heard many say that kind of thing, I've never seen anyone actually do it.They gave themselves an undercover name; The Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co.Then disguised the outside of the agency like a run-down seafood operation, just to throw off any potential clients who happen to be in the area.And just to be awkward, he changed his name from Dick to Rick Sittig.You won't find either of them in any of advertising's Hall of Fame's.Which is weird.Because between them they’ve done some of the best, most famous, longest running ad campaigns ever.Jack In The Box, Joe Isuzu, the Energiser Bunny and the Nissan Pathfinder campaign to name but a few.So at the risk annoying Rick by bringing on some unwanted adulation - if anyone out there works for the One Show, Art Directors Club or Clios; come on, induct this man immediately.It’s embarrassing.(See below for details.)Wed had a great chat, I hope you enjoy it.

DELLA FEMINA TRAVISANO & PARTNERS.KCET/28.

Don't Drive Drunk.

Isuzu.

CHIAT/DAY INC.

Nickelodeon.

Prince.

Nissan.

Energiser.

Reebok.

Jack in the Box.

KOWLOON WHOLESALE SEAFISH Co.(Later changed to SECRET WEAPON MARKETING.)Jack in the Box.

Ikea.

Honda.

Clear.

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 users blocked advertising on their connected devices'. Obviously, that number doesn’t include our own in-built adblockers.What percentage of advertising that never even gets seen would we get to if we added those?Then, we have the small percentage that does get seen.Owners of the eyeballs that have seen it report back that's dull, patronising, irritating and not to be trusted.Is this confined to the internet? Lordy, no.Tv, outdoor, radio, anything that comes under the heading of advertising is likely to be judged in the same way.One of the issues is that the human nose has evolved to the point where it can smell bullshit a mile off.It's not a nice smell, so that's a problem when it comes to us folks in advertising.They’re on to us. They know we’re trying to get them to buy things.They know our claims aren’t to be trusted.They've seen it all their lives.So putting out ads full of half-truths and ‘overly optimistic’ claims about what a product will or won’t fool them.We need to figure out new ways to talk to them.Radical honesty is the obvious way.A less obvious way may be extreme lying.Using a brand spokesman who could not be trusted.Not the obvious solution.Imagine presenting that idea to your brand new car client?Della Femina Travisano and Partners did just that for a me-too Japanese car brand called Isuzu.For a tiny brand like Isuzu trying to break into a well-established market, the first goal is to get onto people's radars.So it helps to run advertising that is:1. Unusual - so it stands out from the competitions.2. Tied to your brand name - because people may never have heard of it before.3. Entertaining - because smaller budgets mean less airtime, so you need people to want to watch it.Introducing Joe Isuzu. (Superbly played by David Leisure.)Everything that came out of his mouth was a lie.Within a year sales had gone up 16%.In the process, Joe, and therefore Isuzu, had became supremely famous.Even turning up in ads for other brands like Burger King and AW Soda.He started being referenced by politicians, Ronald Reagan compared Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega to Joe Isuzu, Michael Dukakis said "If George H Bush keeps it up, he's going to be the Joe Isuzu of American politics" during the Presidential debates of 1988.In 1993 Joe Isuzu was killed.But, seven years later he was resuscitated for a couple of years.In 2012, nearly 25 years after he first turned up, a Daily Finance poll voted Joe Isuzu 15th Top Celebrity Spokesperson of All Time and turned up in Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.Possibly most impressive of all, in 2016 a guy from Queens stole Joe Isuzu’s whole schtick and became President of the United States.Next brief; don't follow the footpaths, you're more likely to stumble upon gold.

CULTURE.

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 ourbusiness 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 a result.I framed the questions in terms of hiring for a new agency.For example, would it be better that people felt relaxed and comfortable in the office or fearful? Should we prioritise diversity over ability? Would misfits be more valuable in developing work than the well-adjusted.That was the plan anyway.But, firstly, I wasn't at Wave, I was on away territory (Sea Container’s House) so I didn’t have control over the tech and interruptions.Secondly, I asked a warm up question to get the ball rolling - ‘What is Advertising?’.I’d imagined three, four, maybe even five minutes before we got to the interview?Wrong.Fearing we wouldn't get to any of the pre-prepared questions, we abandoned it after 45 minutes.The upside is that it lead us down some interesting avenues, the downside was that you’ll hear a record scratch type ending as a lady kicks us both out of our room.Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed recording it, hope you enjoy listening to it.

Some of my favourite Rory quotes:

"Military strategy is in some ways very much like marketing - you can't be conventionally logical as a military strategist, because the enemy will be able to predict what you are going to do."

“A flower is a weed with an advertising budget.”"It doesn't pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical.''''Dare to be trivial.""Google understood that if you're just a search engine, people assume you're a very, very good search engine."

"Once you have a very, very large budget, you actually look for expensive things to spend it on."

“If you had retroactively applied the rules of scientific rationalism to all of the major scientific discoveries of the past 500 years you would have invalidated most of them. Perhaps most (penicillin, the X-Ray, the microwave, Aspirin, radio, Archimedes in the bath) were the product of “inspired opportunism”.As he once put it: “a methodology was an ideology Galileo could not afford.”

“The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol.”

“It’s important to remember that big data all comes from the same place – the past. A new campaigning style, a single rogue variable or a ‘black swan’ event can throw the most perfectly calibrated model into chaos.”

“Henry Ford’s reaction to a consultant who questioned why he paid $50,000 a year to someone who spent most of his time with his feet on his desk. 'Because a few years ago that man came up with something that saved me $2,000,000' he replied. 'And when he had that idea his feet were exactly where they are now."

“It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative.The fatal issue is that logic always gets you to exactly the same place as your competitors.”

"The problem with logic is that it kills magic."

“To put a value on the digital world by only tallying the money that changes hands is a little like trying to place a value on sex by simply measuring the amount spent on prostitution.”

“I think the first role of marketing is to make a decision easy to make.And that means firstly clarity in terms of choice, and secondly it means lack of anxiety."

"Solving problems using rationality is like playing golf with only one club.""A good guess that stands up to observation is still science. So is a lucky accident.""What the spreadsheet has done is to create in organisations and governments an over-reliance on numbers (by no means always meaningful or even accurate) with result that often spurious numerical targets, metrics or values invariably override any conflicting human judgement.This has given rise to what a colleague of mine, Anthony Tasgal, calls 'The Arithmocracy': a powerful left-brained administrative caste which attaches importance only to things which can be expressed in numerical terms or on a chart."

"So the first role of marketing is not actually getting preference, it’s not actually getting someone to prefer a Philips TV, it’s getting someone non-anxious about buying a Philips.”

“No big business idea makes sense at first.Imagine proposing the following ideas to a group of sceptical investors:

‘What people want is a really cool vacuum cleaner.’ (Dyson)‘. . . and the best part of all this is that people will write the entire thing for free!’ (Wikipedia)‘. . . and so I confidently predict that the great enduring fashion of the next century will be a coarse, uncomfortable fabric which fades unpleasantly and which takes ages to dry. To date, it has been largely popular with indigent labourers.’ (Jeans)‘. . . and people will be forced to choose between three or four items.’ (McDonald’s)‘And, best of all, the drink has a taste which consumers say they hate.’ (Red Bull)‘. . . and just watch as perfectly sane people pay $5 for a drink they can make at home for a few pence.’ (Starbucks)”

“Remember, if you never do anything differently, you’ll reduce your chances of enjoying lucky accidents.”

“It is perfectly possible to be both rational and wrong.”

"There is one place in the industry that could use more fear.In the way we sell ourselves.I met someone from the IT industry who was asked to sit in on several ad agency presentations.He thought they were brilliant.The slides, the stagecraft, the quality of argumentation was higher than anything he'd seen in his industry.'But you ad guys all made one terrible mistake.''What was that?''You sold positives.'In IT, he said, only in the direst cases would you ever sell a solution by detailing the benefits.'We sell on fear. If you don't buy this solution, the following bad things will happen.'I've never seen an agency argue it's case this way.By selling the positives we frame advertising as an 'optional extra'.It isn't.""Test counterintuitive things only because no one else will.""The ethnographer Tricia Wang suggested in her TEDxCambridge talk that the quantification bias created by big data led to the near death of Nokia as a handset manufacturer.All their data suggested that people would only spend a certain proportion of their salary on a phone handset, so the market for smartphones in the developing world would be correspondingly small.Wang noticed that, once people saw a smartphone, their readiness to spend on a handset soared.Her findings were ignored as she had 'too few data points'.However, in reality, all valuable information starts with very little data - the lookout on the Titanic only had one data point...'Iceberg ahead', but it was more important than any huge survey on iceberg frequency."If you liked those words, you'll find thousands more just like them in here... https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemy-Surprising-Power-Ideas-Sense/dp/0753556502

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.
He suggested we separate the names not by size of font, but by weight.
I mocked it up.

I thought it looked too basic.
Also, DOYLE looked too dominant.
We couldn’t agree, so the letterheads were never printed.
(Shame, as it was nailed on for a bronze at the Eurobest Awards.)
But the big question was why had we never noticed it before?
We’d been linked for over two thousand consecutive days, why hadn’t we spotted the link in our names?
At least Sean spotted it eventually, I never spotted it at all.

Surely the most important thing when brands run an ad is that people remember it was THEIR ad.
No matter how beautiful, disruptive or exciting your ad is, if people can’t recall whether it was for Nissan, Volvo or Davidoff, it won’t sell your cupcakes.
Ensuring that people remember that your ad was for YOUR company is crucial.
‘Branding’ I think the ad boffins call it.
Branding discussions in most agencies tend to get reduced to two areas a) logo size and b) Do we need to say the brand’s name in the voiceover if we’re already showing it in the end-frame?
Clients and agencies take their positions and off they go.
Here’s an example from last Tuesday, this happened in Shoreditch…

But rather than assuming that our ad is so awesome that the public will simply hang in there and try to figure out who ran it, shouldn’t we try to make it easier for them to recall it?
Maybe give them tools like Teachers give Students to aid memory?
Getting people to recall the name of your company used to be all the rage.
Try as I might, I can’t see ‘For mash get ……….’, , or ‘………an on, and on’ without mentally filling in those gaps, decades after some of them stopped running ads.
Jingles were a great way to aid name recognition, but seem to have been cancelled.
Another way is to create a distinctive asset, something unique and own-able by that brand.
The bullseye for these kind of ideas is the brand name.
To create one you have to resist getting distracted by all the cool (irrelevant) stuff on the horizon and focus on what’s right under your nose.
Here’s my diagram, hope it’s not too technical. (Les Binet, you can have this if you want?)

When first unearthed these ideas tend to appear almost boringly obvious.
But with a bit of work they start to look like a miracle.
The benefit is that they leave a trail of breadcrumbs between your message to your brand name.
Done well, they can get you to an idea that can’t be separated from your brand.

To start, here’s a few logos that fit this rule.
Richard Russell worked in advertising for 30 years before he spotted this.
It’s so perfect you that if you didn’t know him you’d think he came up with the logo first then changed his name by deed poll to make the logo work.

Or this one, designer Gary Gray’s logo.
He can never replace this logo, ever, it will only be worse.
(The wavy line means ‘swap’ for all you non typographers and designers out there.)

What about this one for Joe Biden?
Fortunately, every human being on the planet knows that Joe Biden is running against DONald Trump for the Presidency of the United States in a few months, otherwise you’d assume it’s a scam logo from some designer looking to win an award.

Who knew Manchester United had ‘NHS’ smack-bang in the middle of their name.In the right order.With an identical gaps between each letter.(The placement of those three guys reading and saluting it isn’t bad either.)

Another for the NHS.My guess, based on no evidence whatsoever, was that someone said ‘Let’s brand our line by using the letters N, H and S’.

A focussed brief, but very restrictive.After getting in some lines that felt a bit too contrived (another complete guess, I’m making this stuff up), they’ve rejected the likes of ‘Now Hibernate Sweetie’ or ‘Need Humanity Shutdown’ and the like to regroup.Then someone, risking sounding like an idiot spoke up ‘Those letters work upside down…they spell SHN’.‍

So they go again.They get to ‘Stay Home Now’.Perfect.Exactly what you want to say in an effortless, obvious sounding way.It became the centre of a very focussed, well branded NHS campaign.

I can no longer see anything relating to ‘Friends’ without thinking of this ad.
(That’s a pretty good return on their investment in a half page ad in the Evening Standard back in 2004.)

To spirits companies, Christmas is their biggest opportunity of the year, so they all advertise.
Standing out amongst the Santas, Christmas jumpers and snow is hard.
How do J&B Rare say we they are more Christmas than the others?
Bingo!

You’re Nike, Arsenal go a whole season without losing.
It’s never been done before.
As their sponsor you have to congratulate them, but what do you say?
How do you fit all those superlatives in a single headline?
Awesomenal?
Fortunately not, someone, (could’ve been Tony sitting at his desk, could’ve Guy sitting under his), someone spotted that Arsenal has an ‘L’ in it.
Why is this important? ‘L’ is the abbreviation used in the premier league tables to denote to ‘Loss’, which they hadn’t done.
‘W’ is used for a win, ‘D’ for a draw.
So restrained, so cool.

You are in power and you want to remind people that your rival party have no experience governing.Simple, replace the ‘L’ in Labour with an ‘L-Plate’.

Conversely, if you’re Labour and you want to brand the Conservative Party as untruthful.
Pull out the first three letters from Conservative.

Or what about this one; The deadline for entering D&AD is looming, we need to remind people that if their work isn’t entered it may as well not exist.
It’s basically dead.
Swap that & for an E.
Couldn’t be for anyone else.
Job done.

This one starts, as legend has it with a fax. (It was like an email but made of paper.)
The story goes that Trevor (Beattie) spotted one coming out of the fax machine at the French Connection offices.
Because it was an internal communication, instead of being headed ‘French Connection United Kingdom’, it was simply abbreviated to ‘FCUK’.

“Ooh! Looks like that well known swear word’ I’m presuming Trevor thought.Bingo! An unbelievably famous campaign that ran for 10 years and totally transformed French Connection’s business.Good spot Trev.

Ironically, Regal cigarettes were the least regal cigarette brand in the U.K.
They were very working class.
But in this category, you weren’t allowed to talk about anything to do with product, so how on earth do you begin to create a campaign?
You start by splitting that brand name in two.
You two names; Reg and Al.
Make them working class guys who spout their opinions on the issues of the day and you’ve got yourself a campaign.

I’d been aware of VW since I was a child, but I’d never considered that those letters were next to each other in the alphabet.Until Tony and Kim pointed it out.We were all at Leagas Delaney and had been put on a pitch for VW Germany.Tony had drawn an alphabet and replaced the V and W with the VW logo.I loved it.But what was it?Tony & Kim didn’t know, nor did Sean and I, but we all liked it.While we were musing on whether this was a doodle or the start of a campaign, Tony and Kim flew off somewhere exotic for a shoot.Sean and I said we’d babysit their idea for them, try to turn it into some ads.What we do with it?You needed to see the alphabet for the idea to work, I liked the idea of running ads that looked like a type specimen sheets.

‍

They’d look cool, attention-grabbing and, as the kids say ‘disruptive’.But they wouldn’t say much?Maybe we could find ideas in the alphabet, like those word puzzles?I put together a blank.

After reading the briefs supporting points, we both stared at our alphabets.Gradually, we started spotting ideas.This was my favourite.

I think we squeezed about 20 out.
I can’t remember whether these were what was presented or whether we ended up putting a car in the corner.
Looking at them now, they look pretty radical.
VW Germany presumably agreed, we didn’t win.

This last one took minutes to spot.
After being briefed I jotted down ‘MERRY (Happy), DOWN (sad)’ and drew a face that worked both ways up.
Again, I thought it was neat, but wasn’t sure what it was.
It’s not an ad campaign because…well, it doesn’t tell you anything about the product.
So I pinned it on my wall and ignored it for a couple of weeks, while I tried to come up with something more…meaningful.
So what can we say about the product?
Made from apples?
Made in Dorset?
100 years old?
Alcoholic?
Who gives a shit!
Everything seemed so boring and generic.
So after a couple of weeks, I thought sod it, let’s just brand the ads and make it fun.
I then wondered how we could make them more relevant to cider.
Maybe the Merry way up a hand is holding a full glass (happy), and the Down way up the hand is holding an empty glass (sad)?

It turned out that other people disagreed with me, they thought it was an ad campaign.
It won a ton of awards.
Ran for 5 years, across 50 posters, 5 films and about half a dozen pack designs.
Re-energising and transformed Merrydown’s business.
That little doodle.
Who’d have thought?

It used to annoy me that I didn’t have a big bottom drawer like other creatives.
They’d dip into it theirs, pull out one rejected idea after the next saying ‘Let’s just swap that logo for this one’.
I mean, I keep more stuff than most, I should have a huge bottom drawer.
After a while, I realised it was good thing, it reflected the kind of work I wanted to do.
Bespoke.
Try repurposing any of the ideas in this stream for another company.
Maybe a clothing brand could turn their initials into a swear word?
Perhaps an alcohol brand could split their name into two conflicting moods?
Or maybe a creative team could integrate their names into one, it looks really cool.
They can’t.
But they may well have their own branded ideas within their name or logo waiting to be found.
The tough thing is spotting them.
Even when they’re right under your nose.

‍

‍

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 that pints were drunk slowest on a Tuesday evenings and fastest on a Friday evenings. Gold!)Their many polls helped us understand areas of human behaviour that had previously confused us, like ‘What keeps couples together?’ (It turned out that "Liking your partner was the top factor. (61%)". (In real life, not on social media.)They answered the questions nobody was asking, like exactly how popular is the 'Lambeth Walk?It noted that it was 'so popular that you could find people doing the Lambeth Walk in Mayfair ballrooms, suburban dance-halls, at Cockney parties and village hops. An observer who visited the Isle of Arran noted its popularity there, while another observer reported that it caused a stir in the dance-halls of Prague".Arguably, the world wouldn't be in such great shape today without the benefit of this kind of insight.Inspired by this, I thought I'd do a bit of Mass Observation of my own.Well, not mass, targeted; ad folk.And actually, when I say 'I thought', I mean 'my mate Parv thought, and asked me to help'.Together, we've been scraping data from the movers and shakers across all areas of our industry; Directors like Juan Cabral, CCO’s like Nils Leonard, Editors like Paul Watts, Bloggers like George Tannenbaum, Producers like Chalkley and Sirs like Sir John Hegarty.The list goes on.We've put out about 40 so far.Already it's bearing fruit, offering valuable insights that may give clues and guidance as to where our industry is heading:1. The majority of ad folk believe Birds sing louder nowadays.2.We've learnt that you can live ‘in the sticks’ or ‘in the middle of nowhere’ but not ‘in the middle of the sticks’ (Sean Doyle).3.As an industry, we'd choose Joe Exotic over Donald Trump to handle the response to the global Covid-19 pandemic.4.Every time Tim Riley forced into isolation, he chooses to read Camus.5.It was agreed (unanimously) that Michael Jordan was really good at basketball.6.Media types drink like crazy at the beginning of pandemics, but then take control, eventually drinking less than before.7. Owning 90 loo rolls is too many (Tony Barry), 1 is too few (Yan Elliott).8.Moving forward, influencers are predicted to become less influential.9.Nobody wants to go back to working as they did previously, (a mix of home and office is coming through strongly).10. Introverted creatives are missing people more than they’d imagined.It's called Wave+Dave.It's posted daily.It can be found on Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes and your local podcast dealer.Look out for the pink squares on social media!E.g.

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 and apologies.AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM BERNBACH.

DOYLE DANE BERNBACH.

AN INTERVIEW WITH BOBBY K.

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 by awards, famous names or cool agencies, you now have 10 years of data to compare any new idea to - Is it as fresh as A? As funny as B or, actually, isn’t it just a reworking of C?It’s hard not to.You’re no longer that naïve, impressionable young thing you once were.In the music business they believe that our musical taste can be tracked back to our 16th summer; that's when we were most impressionable and hungry for experiences.As you get older it gets harder to find that tingle of excitement you feel when you experience things for the first time.In advertising, not being easily excited can be seen as being jaded.In fashion, architecture and many other creative they have different name for it; knowledge.I say this for two reasons;a) I’ve seen A LOT of stuff.b) David's stuff always causes a tingle, (not a minty-fresh, mouth tingle, but a work-fresh, excitement tingle).Somehow, he manages to produce work that feels like it's avoided committees, cliches and compromises.Whereas most work can be quickly categorised as good or bad, with David’s I often have to think about first.The Orange spot with the couple dancing; Is that good?The Guardian ‘3 Little Piggies’; Is that good?The Coal Drops Yard Branding with the seemingly random bunch of shapes, pictures and colours; Is that good?None are what you’d expect.Each take balls to go with.All are hard to ignore or forget.Much of the work he’s created and overseen at Droga5 London feels as though the team enjoyed thinking it up, then just couldn’t wait to make it and show the world.Good work tends to have that vibe.Unfortunately, we recorded this a while back, and David being David, he came up with a cunning way to make this podcast not only unusual, but complicated to make.Eventually, for reasons that would take too long to go into, it's coming out in a non-unusual, uncomplicated, familiar format. (Soz David.)It means that we don’t cover the great work Droga5 have been knocking out over the last year or so, like their exceptionally tingley Super Bowl ad for Amazon.Enjoy.

TBWA\Toronto.AGF.

GOODBY SIVERSTEIN.Logitech.

Denny's.

MOTHER.Orange.

BBH.Weetabix.

The Guardian.

Axe.Apollo.

ITV.

Shower Gels.

URL for Jeff Bridges Sleeping Tapes (includes ads + full album) from W+K New York

http://www.dreamingwithjeff.com/

WEIDEN + KENNEDY NY.Gap.

Southern Comfort.

DROGA5.Kwiff.

Belstaff.

Rustlers.

Hobbs.

Barclaycard.

Coal Drops Yard.

Go Compare.

Amazon.

More David.With balloon puppet.

Hanging with Maya.

Being slapped.

As hippie.

Ready for the kill.

Chillin'.

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.Take a look at the casting contacts from the the 'Pregnant Man' ad, the alternative models look ridiculous, but they didn't on January 21st 1970.Look at the 'Black' sheep ad Alan shot for John Hegarty (and Barbra Nokes), just a bunch of sheep with a black one plonked in the middle?Nope.If shot side-on, they'd blend into each other after the first row and not fill the poster.If shot from above you wouldn't see them in that classic, side-on profile.So Alan used his map reading skills (acquired through Rally driving) to find a steep incline, so that the sheep rose up, filling the poster with graphic sheep profiles, almost like cut outs, but better for being shot for real.Then there's the 'Wolf In Sheeps Clothing'; How hard can it be to fling a sheep's pelt over a wolf?Very, as it turns out.Wolves don't like modelling, so Alan borrowed some sheep pictures from a friend, photographer Adrian Flowers, then comped the two together.In Alan's words, he wasn't a photographer, he was 'an adman with a camera', simply trying to bring the ideas to life.He'd learnt how to do this from his years as a top art director at CPV and CDP, getting to work on a regular basis with photographers like Elliott Erwitt, Duffy and Terrence Donovan.We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

ART DIRECTOR.Colman Prentiss & Varley.BEA.

(A young studio boy stands in as a model, his name was Paul Arden. Below, you can see them both at work at CPV.)

Carlsberg.

Collett Dickenson Pearce.Lancia.

Aer Lingus.

(Terence Donovan shooting the above ad.)

Ronson.

Lady Ronson.

Flu-O-Pep.

Chemstrand.

Just one ad ended up being made from that campaign, it featured a car.So Alan, being a car nut, decided to design a car for the shoot.This one.

PHOTOGRAPHER.Studio.

ROCOLA SHIRTS - Bridge-Levin.Writer: Dan Levin, Art Director: Brian Bridge. (Shoe guy Manolo Blahnik is the first model, copywriter Andrew Cracknell the second.)

HARROD'S - Papert Koenig Lois.Writer: Tim Delaney, Art Director: Phil Mason.

NOVA - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Charles Saatchi, Art Director: Ross Cramer.

FORD - Collett Dickerson Pearce.Writer: Dan Levin, Art Director: Brian Bridge.

LEWIS'S - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Charles Saatchi, Art Director: Ross Cramer.

SOMNUS - Cramer Saatchi.Writer: Mike Coughlan, Art Director: John Hegarty.

Health Education Council (Cramer Saatchi).'Bleach' Writer: Charles Saatchi & Michael Coughlan. Art Director John Hegarty.

'The Pregnant Man' - Writer: Jeremy Sinclair, Art Director: Bill Atherton.

Casting.

Shoot day.

Outtakes.

The bill.

First bits of P.R.

HEADLINERS - Bridge-Levin.Writer: Dan Levin, Art Director: Brian Bridge.

RANGE ROVER - Pritchard Wood.Writer: Dan Levin, Art Director: Brian Bridge.

Aer Lingus - CDP.'Tipperary' - Writer: Lindsay Dale, Art Director: Alan Waldie.

BOAC- FCB.Writer: Tim Mellors, Art Director: Martin Reaveley.

BRITISH LEYLAND - Saatchi & Saatchi.Writer: Chris Martin, Art Director: John Hegarty.

DUNN & Co. - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Terry Lovelock, Art Director: Dickie Dearing.

SCHICK - Saatchi & Saatchi.Writer: Chris Martin, Art Director: John Hegarty.

P&O - DPBS.Writer: (Unknown), Art Director: Bob Nisbet

ALAN BROOKING - Bridge-Levin.Writer: Dan Levin, Art Director: Brian Bridge.

PIRELLI - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: , Art Director: Bob Isherwood.

UNIROYAL - DDB Paris.Writer: (Unknown), Art Director: Alain Mounier.

ARMY - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: John Salmon, Art Director: Arthur Parsons.

There's something very pleasing about that ad; the photo.In particular, it's order, but it was a reshoot, the first shot was this.

A year later, Alan got a chance to reshoot it.So he bought all the vehicles as Dinky toys and plotted it out in minature.

Scaled up the measurements then reshot it.

TEXACO - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer & Art Director: Rion Collins.

(The assistant stand in for the lighting tests.

(They are then replaced by James and his mum.)

ROYAL NAVY - KMP.Writer: Alan Tilby, Art Director: Jonathan Hall.

THE METROPOLITAN POLICE - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: John Kelley, Art Director: John O'Driscoll.

FIAT - Collett Dickenson Pearce.'Wolf' - Writer: Tony Brignull, Art Director: Neil Godfrey.

'Grrrr!' - Writer: John Kelley, Art Director: John O'Driscoll.

'Italians' - Writer: Tony Brignull, Art Director: Neil Godfrey.

BMW - Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.Writer: Robin Wight, Art Director: Ron Collins.

BENSON & HEDGES - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Alfredo Marcantonio, Art Director: Dave Horry.

The model. (Guy Hodgkinson.)

The studio.

Before photoshop, yep, there was a time before Photoshop, photographers would often have to capture the image on one sheet of film.Like this.

HONDA - Needham Harper Steers.Writer: (Unknown), Art Director: Paul Walter.

To get this lighting on the car required an enormous studio, (Alan talks about it on the podcast).

LONG JOHN WHISKY - Abbott Mead Vickers.Writer: John Kelley, Art Director: John O'Driscoll.

BIRDS EYE - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Tony Brignull, Art Director: Neil Godfrey.

LEVI'S - Bartle Bogle Hegarty.Writer: Barbara Nokes, Art Director: John Hegarty.

The creators check out the finished result. They look pleased.

LAND ROVER - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Writer: Lynda McDonnell, Art Director: Nigel Rose.

After seeing the layout Alan decided to shoot it in the studio. (Not an obvious choice.)

CITROEN - Colman & Partners.Writer: Malcolm Duffy, Art Director: Paul Briginshaw.

TETLEY'S BITTER - Leagas Delaney.Writer: (Unknown), Art Director: Anthony Stileman.

Alan has a book out:

It's available at Amazon.co.uk and here:https://www.ypdbooks.com/792_alan-brookinghttps://www.ypdbooks.com/792_alan-brooking

Whether it’s qual, quant or O.T.S, ROI, A/B testing or big data, when numbers turn up in marketing they must be obeyed.They're distilled and translated into 'rules'.Everyone wants their next campaign to be better than their last, but applying these 'learnings' to creative work often kills it.It can feel uncomfortable, because what's being said makes total sense, but the effect is to complicate and make your ad more like every other ad out there.The ones you and 90% of the public ignore every day.But weirdly, running ads like those getting ignored is considered 'playing it safe'.Whereas breaking away from that losing formula is viewed as risky.Common sense tells you this is wrong, the people writing the cheques tell you this is right.Unfortunately, numbers can kick the shit out of common sense.It's not even a fair fight.So ideas that divided people get turned into ideas that everyone feels the equally about.Nobody hates them, nobody loves them and everyone can understand the logic behind the changes, even if they disagree.But if nobody behind the work loves it, why would they imagine the public would?In the 1990s, half of the top ten biggest grossing films ever were directed by Steven Spielberg and was asked how he picked such popular scripts - “I look for scripts I like, I like them others might too.”
The best demonstration of this battle between gut and logic was written by Rob Morris, back in the 80s, it showed the effects of client feedback to a Parker Pen ad, it gets worse with each piece of feedback.What I liked about it was that the feedback wasn't stupid, mostly, but the effects were catastrophic.A few years after reading it I discovered Rob had based it on similar article by Fred Manley, in the sixties, using the VW 'Think Small' ad.Since then I've done my own versions of the article for clients I've worked with, it's been useful in demonstrating how well-meaning, thoughtful input can lead to less effective advertising.That small changes can have big consequences.It’s the classic frog boiling experiment - they don't notice the temperature increasing until they're dead.Below are four frogs being boiled.FRED MANLEY'S GREAT,ORIGINAL IDEA.

ROB MORRIS'S RIP OFFOF FRED MANLEY'S GREAT,ORIGINAL IDEA.

MY RIP OFFOF ROB MORRIS'S RIP OFFOF FRED MANLEY'S GREAT,ORIGINAL IDEA.

MY RIP OFF "OF MY RIP OFFOF ROB MORRIS'S RIP OFFOF FRED MANLEY'S GREAT,ORIGINAL IDEA.

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 room for ping pong tables and cappuccino machines).Our walls are in our heads, mental blocks that appear impossible overcome.Never is this more apparent than when you're starting out, searching for solutions is a bit like trying to make your way through a jungle; if one pathway is blocked you turn around and look for an unblocked one.But when you’ve been doing this thing for a while, you expect to hit a wall, it’s not a glitch in the process, it is the process.So you don't panic, turn back or give up, because the best solution may well be on the other side.You also know that things change.The same brief on a different day can create a different outcome.Sometimes you can force a change, swapping rooms, locations, music even pens can have an effect on your thinking.They can mean you look at the problem, or wall, from a slightly different angle.It's where the old cliché 'ideas in the bath' comes from, it's not the water or soap, it's the giving up worrying about it, you relax, so your brain leaks out a solution.The key point is that when you face a wall, embrace it. Don’t take no for an answer.Keep chipping away, it, suddenly you'll see a chink of light, then before you know you’re through to the other side.What can look seem impossible today can be obvious in the morning.Who knows why? The brain is one weird organ.But have faith, it'll happen.I tried to give the students an example of where I'd gone through a wall.This was the first wall that sprang to mind.I remember it seeming impossible. (Or impenetrable if we're going to keep using wall-speak.)Back in the '90s I sat on the D&AD committee, we’d meet once month to debate the major issues of the day; should we change ‘The Design & Art Direction’ to ‘The British Design & Art Direction’? Do tv ads need a whole page each in the annual or could we squeeze two on a page? Or whether copywriter A or B should replace copywriter C on the Copy jury.It was gruelling.One month I turned up to hear that was facing a big problem.It sounded ominous.‘The jury pictures we’ve had taken this year are rubbish.'Not as big as I'd imagined, I continued listening.'They're just...well...…everyone looks weird.’Ok, what does that mean? A reshoot?‘We’d never get the jurors together again.’How bad can they be?Whoa!There was a mix of gasps and giggles as we went through the pictures.Everyone just looked... weird.Either awkward...

bemused..

stoned...

supercilious...

drunk...

sneery...

anxious...

or like they wanted to murder your family.

Only my old mate Sean Doyle came away unscathed.

What the hell had happened?‘We need to do something…it’s very awkward.’ said the lady from D&AD.I don't know whether it was because I was the only art director on the committee or I was feeling a bit cocky, but I said I’d take the problem on.I took all the evidence back to BMP with me.Right, let’s have another look.Wow!What the hell had happened?Did the photographer think it would be interesting to shoot all these slick, superficial marketing types in the grungiest way possible?Or did he think advertising is evil, so tried to capture that vibe in the shots?Was it just his style? (In which case why was deemed appropriate?)Maybe we all being a bit sensitive about a few portraits?Maybe they look like that in the flesh?I compared the jurors in our pictures to their portraits in the previous annual.

Jeez! That's one year, if they’d been shot 20 years apart, it’d be understandable.I set off.1^st IDEA:We give them to an illustrator as reference to illustrate them, BOOM!‘We don’t have any money, there are hundreds needed.'2^nd IDEA:What’s the exact problem? Maybe it’s the universally yellow skin?

Maybe we can colour correct them?

Maybe less pasty?

Mmm, no, too much. Plus, it’s not just the skin tones.3^rd IDEA:Maybe there's some kind of graphic, paintbox* technique, to blur our detail? (*Computer the size of a wardrobe, back in the day.)

Too cheesy.

Quattro Fromaggio.This is the D&AD Annual, it should be sans cheese.4^thIDEA:Maybe we can do something with film grain, like that photographer David Fairman?

We had a go.

Garbage!You either need to do it in camera, be David Fairman or both. We couldn't and I'm not.5^th IDEA:Maybe black & white would be more forgiving?It'll sort out the yellow and weird blemishes and patches too.Might look a bit more sophisticated too?

A bit.But it's not just a colour issue, it's the weird angles and shot choices.6^th IDEA:Maybe we blow out all the detail by making them graphic and contrasty?(Who needs detail? Readers don't need to pick them out from a police line-up.)

Too crude, this is D&AD, not a local, badly printed newspaper.7^th IDEA:Maybe a duotone would look cool?It'd look like a style choice, not a fix.

But why? It looks like we're doing it for a reason and we're not.8^th IDEA:Stuck, I flipped through some old annuals to see how they used to treat the jury sections.One year, 1974, they had statements and signatures, instead of photos.I liked it, it was interesting to see the signatures of the likes of David Abbott and John Webster.Maybe we use signatures instead of photos? It's still personal.

'No, we need to use the pictures, we’ve paid for them.' BUT. YOU. HATE. THE. FUCKING. PICTURES!Jesus!Ok, so let’s recap:We can’t reshoot because we can’t get the jurors again.We can’t turn them into illustrations because we don’t have any money and there are hundreds.Black & White makes little difference.Techniques either look cheesy or render the person unrecognisable.We can’t use signatures because they aren’t the photos.The photos we all hate.But have to use.So, there’s the wall.A big, granite, electrified, immoveable wall.Ok, let's have another go.So, let’s get this straight; we have to use the pictures that we don’t like but I need to make them more likeable…without changing them.Ok.Tricky.Ok, nothing is impossible, as the kids around at Saatchi's say, so, we have to use the pictures that we don’t like but I need to make them more likeable…without changing them.Ok.Got it.Why the hell do we need to use pictures anyhow?Who cares about the faces?Why do we need to see what the people looked at the work look like anyhow?Oh, hang on, the people who looked at the work?Eyes.Maybe we crop the shots so tight that we only see their eyes?That’s what they judge with?Cool, there’s a reason for doing it.

Oh, hang on, are all the juries things you look at?I check last years annual.DAMN! Radio.What to do?What to do?BINGO! We just reshoot their ears!

DAMN!The Chairman's Statement?What to do?What to do?MOUTH!

Love it!It's actually better with the mouth and ear additions.I go down to Vauxhall.I turn up at D&AD headquarters feeling pretty-fucking-clever.Can't wait to see their faces.I smashed that wall to bits.Think it can't be done? Think AGAIN.I present my solution.‘Oh, you can’t see their faces?’“Exactly! Clever huh?’.'Oh?''And on Radio; Ears! Chairman's Statement - Mouth!' ‘Oh no, we have to use the photographer’s shots, we've paid him for them.'But you don't like them?'Yeah, but it’ll be a bit awkward if we don't use them, he did them cheap.'OH FUCK OFF THEN!E.g. A page from the 1998 D&AD Annual.

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 members of the family shout their goodnight.It was slightly chaotic and you were reminded that there were a lot of Waltons living cheek by jowl in that house.A decade later I was given a brief for The Observer Newspaper - a 48 sheet poster to promote their property section.Bingo! Show that end shot with ‘Goodnight Jon Boy’, ‘Goodnight Mary Lou’ plus another fifty goodnights and names, underneath was ‘If you’re looking for a bigger home, take a look in The Observer.’ The Creative Directors loved it.The Account team presented it.The client bought it.Kind of.They thought it would make a better radio ad.

Heartbreaking.Rather than have a big, glorious proof to put in my book, I’d have a little cassette.It got made.It got into D&AD, my first entry.It won gold at Creative Circle, my first award.Maybe it'd worked out best after all?I added the little cassette to my book.It was the only thing in there that had won an award.

I’d show my book to the great and the good at the agencies I hoped to graduate to, and without exception, they’d get to the end, see the cassette and start zipping the book up.I’d say ‘I have a radio ad…it’s won an award’.'Great' they'd say, continuing to zip.I’d push a bit further ‘Would you like to hear it?’The answers would range from ‘I’ve got a meeting I have to be at’ to ‘No...I’m sure it’s pretty good if it’s won an award.’No fucker would listen to it.My only award winning piece of work.What is it with radio?Why do we treat it like the runt of the media litter?It can be amazing.E.g.

It’s one of the most intimate ways of communicating.E.g.

And they're dead cheap to make and run.E.g.

But generally, creatives try to avoid radio briefs.E.g.

A few months ago I thought it would be good to post something on radio advertising, partly because I think it'll start to grow due to the booming podcast world, partly because it's the perfect subject matter for a podcast.Whilst thinking about how Angell Sound had closed, maybe I could interview Nick?

But for a decade or so after the whole Walton’s episode (or Waltongate as I refer to it), I’d avoided radio briefs whenever possible, so didn’t feel sufficiently knowledgeable to grill Nick.Fortunately, I have a mate who's more than qualified, this guy, casually looking off into themiddle distance.

Paul Burke, copywriter at BMP/DDB, JWT & AMV/BBDO.I was going to say he's one of the few creatives to truly embrace the possibilities of radio, but I can't think of who the others would be? So maybe he's the only creative to truly embrace the possibilities of radio.It's lead him to set up his own radio production company, teach and promote the joys of radio.Not only that, like the man from Delmonte 'He say yes!'.So here they are.Enjoy.[audio wav="https://davedye.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Paul-Burke-Interviews-Nick-Angell_126.57-1.wav"][/audio]

Nb. These will make more sense after listening.a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

ADVERTISING'S OSCAR WILDE.

An appreciation of the work of Geoffrey Seymour. By Mike Everett.It is one of the great ironies of the advertising business that one of its most talented writers is better remembered for his salary than his work. When he joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 1982, Geoff Seymour was paid £100,000 a year, a sum of money that soon became known in advertising circles as a ‘Seymour’. It may have been as an eye-watering amount at the time but, to pinch L’Oreal’s famous end line, he was worth it. In the 14 years leading up to 1982 he had been responsible for some of the most ground breaking and original work ever seen on the TV screens of Britain.As Sir Alan Parker has said, “Geoff was quite brilliant. He was one of the best thinkers of his generation of ad men and responsible for some seminal work, which helped revolutionise British and world advertising. I have to say my memories of working with him were completely pleasurable - invigorating, anarchic and fun”. If that endorsement wasn’t enough, what about this from Sir Ridley Scott: “Anything that Geoff Seymour wrote I verymuch paid attention to because he was kind of special. The main draw to direct Hovis was working with Seymour”. So what was this work?Let’s start by going back to 1968. A twenty-one year old Geoff Seymour is handed a brief to write a TV campaign for Bird’s Eye Dinners for One by Frank Lowe. ‘Let’s do some famous work’ Frank tells Geoff. Frank remembers that Geoff was unfazed by this exaltation and soon did something that Frank clearly remembers about Geoff. “He had a great facility for writing good lines, which I often thought of as based on the strategy we agreed, before he wrote the actual commercial”.In the case of Dinners for One, Geoff fretted that the product name would work to its disadvantage; that the name might suggest that it was a product for sad bastards, who live alone with no mates. Geoff got round this by writing the line ‘especially good for those who aren’t used to being on their own’. He brought the line to life with scripts that spoofed two feature films, Desert Song and Brief Encounter. Alan Parker shot them in glorious black and white. If you were to ask Alan Parker today which of the many commercials he directed is his favourite he would tell you Brief Encounter.Another irony that concerns Geoff Seymour is that he is credited with writing many commercials that he didn’t. In his obituary in the Guardian, for example, he is cited as the author of the famous Hovis Bike Ride commercial. He is not. David Brown wrote the script for that commercial. However, Geoff did write the end line ‘As good for you today as it’s always been’ and wrote two commercials that preceded the Bike Ride commercial, Seaside and Northern. In other words, he wrote the campaign, a far harder task than the writing follow on commercials, no matter how good they might be, as David Brown would surely concede.The Guardian also credits Geoff with writing ‘It makes a dishonest woman of you’ for Bird’s Eye pies. Not so. Tony Kenrick and Vernon Howe wrote that campaign. Likewise, ‘When you’ve got to make it something fast’ for Bird’s Eye Beef Burgers was also written by Tony Kenrick and Vernon Howe, not Geoff. Not only are these credits inaccurate, they belie the vast amount of work that Geoff actually did for Bird’s Eye.After his success on Dinners for One, Frank Lowe kept feeding Geoff Bird’s Eye briefs. A couple of notable examples are More for Bird’s Eye Deserts, an Oliver Twist spoof, and Princess for another range of Bird’s Eye deserts known as Hidden Centres. There were many more.Geoff also wrote the campaign line for Nescafé, ‘If you’re serving coffee, better make sure it’s Nescafé’, together with a number of commercials to accompany it. In 1972 he was asked to create a campaign for an ersatz sports car that Ford was launching, the Capri. His slogan for this campaign ‘The car you always promised yourself’ was far more elegant than the car it advertised.Talking of elegance, there is one commercial that Geoff wrote that illustrates his apparently effortless ability to parody the British class system, Lifeboat, for Cockburn’s Port. This sixty-second one act play was shot by Alan Parker in Malta using the tank that had been constructed for the sea sequences in Ben- Hur. To sublime comedic effect it shows the survivors of a shipwreck being more concerned with their after dinner drink and the pronunciation of its name than their immediate and highly inconvenient plight.He was no slouch when it came to writing print advertising, either. An early example of Geoff’s prowess in print is an ad for the Ronson electric toothbrush. It shows a set of dentures in a glass of water with the headline ‘How long will you be able to call your teeth your own?’ He also wrote ads and posters for Whitbread Tankard beer using the line ‘Tankard helps you excel, after one you’ll do anything well’. The posters were in the style of circus advertising, as were the commercials that Geoff wrote to promote Whitbread Trophy.All this work, of course, was done at Collett, Dickenson and Pearce, just as it was entering its creative heyday. Geoff was a significant contributor to CDP’s creative success – and boy, did he know it. He was often to be seen flouncing around the corridors of the agency with an insouciant swagger, his flowing locks leading him to look like a latter day Oscar Wilde.Under Frank Lowe’s patronage he was made deputy-creative director, a promotion that before long led to trouble. He mounted an unsuccessful bid to usurp John Salmon from the role of overall creative director. This move and Geoff’s increasingly errant behaviour started to disrupt the smooth running of the agency. So Frank Lowe convened a board meeting to discuss how to deal with Geoff. Colin Millward, CDP’s original creative director was present at this meeting. After listening to Frank talk for a while about the difficulties Geoff was causing, Colin spoke. “Well as far as I can see, Frank, he’s your monster. You created him so you have to destroy him”. That was the end of Geoff Seymour at CDP.Well, if he couldn’t run the creative department of one agency, he could jolly well run the creative department of another. Thus, Geoff moved to Royds as creative director, charged with re-invigorating the agency’s staid creative product. Looked at whichever way, this was a mistake, both for Royds and for Geoff. He soon went elsewhere.In partnership with art director Peter Cherry (also ex-CDP) and account man, Dick Hedger, Geoff set up Cherry, Hedger, Seymour. This proved to be a more productive time for Geoff. He resumed his practice of formulating the strategy by writing the strapline first. For Morland’s Sheepskin Coats he coined ‘When luxury becomes a necessity’ and under the banner ‘Allow us to spoil you’, he created a campaign for Air India. Another end line written by Geoff at Cherry, Hedger, Seymour was one that later survived transition through several other ad agencies: ‘Made in Scotland from girders’ for Irn Bru, a fizzy drink enjoyed north of the border.But perhaps the best regarded of his straplines is ‘Temptation beyond endurance’ for Planter’s Peanuts. In combination with art director Glen Clarke, and using illustrator Patrick Hughes, Geoff created a poster showing a huge shadow reaching out to steal a peanut from the man whose shadow it was. This poster went on to win the 1982 D&AD Silver Award for a 4-sheet.A further notable campaign that Geoff created during this period was for Foster’s Lager, featuring Paul Hogan reprising his Crocodile Dundee character as a galumphing, unsophisticated Aussie trampling over British traditions. These extremely funny commercials were signed off with a devilishly simple but clever strapline, ‘Foster’s, the Australian for lager’.Time moved on and so did Geoff. His old boss from CDP days, Frank Lowe asked him to join the agency he’d just set up with Geoff Howard-Spink. It was while he was here that Geoff came up with the end line for the Stella Artois campaign, ‘Reassuringly expensive’, although at first he didn’t know that he’d come up with it. Frank Lowe fished the line out of piece of body copy that Geoff had crafted for a Stella print ad. Unfortunately, this serendipitous discovery has given rise to another misattribution concerning Geoff Seymour. He did not originate the Stella Artois campaign, only the end line. The credit for creating the campaign and its strategy falls to David Watkinson and Bob Isherwood at Collett, Dickenson and Pearce eight years earlier.As well as gifting the Stella Artois end line to Frank’s agency, Geoff Seymour did a memorable Heineken commercial with Alan Waldie, Windermere based on Wordsworth’s famous Daffodil poem. Despite these successes, his time at Lowe Howard-Spink was far from turbulence-free. Many members of the creative department resented the way Geoff had been parachuted in by Frank Lowe. This caused tensions, that along with other matters related to the share allocation at LHS, eventually led to the resignation of the founding creative directors, John Kelley and John O’Driscoll. Not surprisingly therefore, Geoff’s tenure at LHS was short-lived. He moved to Saatchi & Saatchi and the famous £100,000 a year salary.When he joined Saatchi, Geoff stipulated in his contract that he would never work on the agency’s Procter and Gamble business. He feared that working on such a client would contaminate his creative flair. Instead he was put to work on Saatchi’s British Airways account. Geoff’s method of working – writing the strapline to inform the strategy – once again came into play. Buried in some research that he was given to read was the fact that British Airways carried a greater number of passengers than any other airline on earth. Geoff took this fact and turned it into a phrase that has since passed into common memory, ‘The world’s favourite airline’. That line alone probably went a long way to paying Geoff’s salary for the first year.But before long, Geoff’s feet began to itch again. He decided to become a commercials director, setting up Geoffrey Seymour Films. This was never entirely successful. Some might say that this was due to the fact that Geoff had upset so many of his potential clients that they were unlikely to favour him with work. It’s true to say that Geoff could be acerbic and had got on the wrong side of quite a number of people. However, it’s also a fact that Geoff had entered a crowded and competitive market. There were plenty of more accomplished directors around. Geoff was a long way down the pecking order, so he ended up doing most of his film work abroad, far from the plum London scripts. Increasingly, though, Geoff was falling victim to ill health.In 1997 he was diagnosed with a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and later was discovered to have a brain tumor. This led to his untimely death in December 2009 at the age of 61. It is a final irony in his story that it was his brain, one of advertising’s finest and most original, that ended up killing him.COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE.Ronson.

Birds Eye.

Ford.

Benson & Hedges.

Hovis.

Collett Dickenson Pearce.

Whitbread.

Cockburn's Special Reserve.

ROYDS.

CHERRY HEDGER & SEYMOUR.Keep Britain Tidy.

India.

Air India.

Royal Bakers.

Planters.

Irn-Bru.

Morlands.

Fosters.

Schlitz.

Tizer.

Cherry Hedger Seymour.

LOWE HOWARD-SPINK.Heineken.

Gold Label Lager.

Albany Life.

SAATCHI & SAATCHI.

British Airways.

GEOFFREY SEYMOUR FILMS.