I used to walk past this poster every week for about a year.I was fifteen, my Art teacher had got hold of a life size billboard poster, a 48 sheet, or I should say 48 sheets.It was twenty or thirty foot long, and papered the entire corridor that lead to our classroom.We were all bemused by it at first, just a close-up of an electric circuit board? weird? Was it even an ad?Then we found the gold pack-shot.Who knew adverts could be so cool, sophisticated and playful?I walked past it every week for about a year, it made a lasting impression.

1965: The Government banned cigarette companies from advertising on T.V.Press and posters become crucial to Tobacco companies.1971: The Government declares that cigarettes must carry a health warning, and that press and poster advertising must donate a strip at the bottom of their advertising to print the message 'Every pack carries a Government Health Warning.' In retrospect, that's the least they could've done, but at the time it must've caused outrage in agencies with cigarette accounts; 'You mean we need to take a piece of OUR pages and posters, space that WE'VE paid for, to say bad things about our product?' So you'd have all the creative bods in an agency trying to say good things about their brand of tobacco in the top bit of the ad, and effectively, at the bottom it would say 'Yeah, whatever, we think it's RUBBISH. signed THE GOVERNMENT.'1976: The Government come up with some more rules for the Advertising industry: 'If you're advertising Tobacco DON'T feature people using the product, in fact, DON'T feature people at all. DON'T say anything about the product, don't even mention it, DON'T even write it's name on the ad, DON'T even think about its name when you are creating these ads.Come to think of it, the only words we want to see, and we want them in black on white, clearly legible, nice and big, saying "This product gives you lung cancer or can kill you". Capiche?'1977: Benson & Hedges agency, Collett Dickenson Pearce, are increasingly irritated by the number of companies aping their original Gold Box campaign.It meant that B&H advertising was starting to get lost in the crowd.The account guy on the business, John Ritchie, made a big call; 'Forget all we've done! we need something completely new!'It was a big ask; the 'Gold Box' campaign was famous, award-winning and had turned a niche product into the brand leader.As if that wasn't pressure enough, the new Government rules meant you couldn't show or say anything about the product.So not only have you got your hands tied behind your back, you have one leg tied too.

Art Director Alan Waldie and Copywriter Mike Cozens were one of the teams given the task. WALDIE: ‘Days drifted into weeks and Ritchie, who was forever chasing me, said “What have you got?”I said “we’ve got something, but it’s probably not quite ready, it’s a bit different.It’s dare I say, a bit advanced. I’ll need to explain it”.“You won't need to explain” said Ritchie “Let‘s have a look”.Silence descended on the room as they gazed at some totally incomprehensible layouts of birdcages, mouse-holes, eggs, sardines.No messages.No words at all.Unified only by a solitary gold pack.A rival team had also created a campaign, unsure of which to go for, CDP M.D. Frank Lowe takes both to his mentor, former CDP Creative Director Colin Millward, for his view.‘One will let you sleep at night, the other will make you famous’ was Millward’s verdict.Sleep wasn't a priority for Frank Lowe or CDP, so the famous campaign was presented to the B&H Chairman Stuart Cameron and Marketing Director Peter Wilson.They loved it, telling the agency to spare no expense in photographing the ads.

When money was no object Brian Duffy was the guy, he was promptly called upon to turn Waldie's drawings into photographs.

An arty choice.He wasn’t the consummate commercial photographer.He was opinionated, experimental and very creative.Brian Duffy was one of the trio of famous cockney snappers, (the others being David Bailey and Terrence Donovan), probably the least known, arguably the most talented.Duffy went to work and had the sets built in his Primrose Hill studio. DUFFY: ‘I changed the colour and scale of everything, which looks pretty weird today.I played with optical illusions, since I know enough about what lenses can do and plate cameras and changing perspective.They’re real photographs and it’s quite complex to do things like that, which look like trick photography.They’re not phoned in from the coast, it’s all done in the camera.’ The first shot was ‘Mousetrap’, showing a pack replacing to lure to a presumably nicotine addicted mouse from its hole. He tried five different lighting set-ups before settling on the final image.It set the style for the campaign.

Duffy’s son and assistant Chris remembers that ‘Birdcage’ was a very simple set unusually lit, ‘We lit it with an old Rank projector light and through it we projected an image of a bird that we had reversed out on a negative’.

David Montgomery was then called in to shoot these two.

Adrian Flowers shot the last of the first years campaign.

The shots still look amazing. They looked even better when blown up and put on billboards. They were like nothing people had seen. If they ran tomorrow they would still be like nothing most people had seen. Here's an from of one at Victoria Station in 1978.

The campaign became so famous even the Government spoofed it.

The brief was then opened up to the whole creative department.Here’s what Neil Godfrey and Tony Brignull made of it with photographer Jimmy Wormser.

Pre-CGI, pre-austerity, it was shot for real, this is how the shoot went:The agency and photographer turned up in Egypt on Sunday.Scouted the location on Monday morning; perfect.Turned up Tuesday to shoot; too hazy.Turned up Wednesday; too hazy.Thursday; too hazy.Friday; too hazy.Saturday; too hazy.Sunday; too hazy.Monday; perfect.(It turned out the hazy effect was pollution from the local factories, only after a weekend of not pumping out crap was it shootable.)

This one was shot on the top floor of the National Liberal Club, the payment was the luxurious fitted carpet used for the shot. Because the young people were in and out of each others rooms all night, photographer Adrian Flowers used a ‘20 - 30 minute exposure, so that they wouldn't show up on the film’.Again it took a week to get a result they were happy with.

Two years in, the question was asked how would this new surreal B&H behave in film?The answer, created by Waldie, and Mike Cozens was shot by Hugh Hudson.It was also featured in the Guinness Book of Records every year until the mid-eighties as the most expensive commercial ever made.Worth every penny.

This was followed by another Hugh Hudson epic, this time created by Johns O'Driscoll and Kelley, not as famous, equally mesmerising.

The photographer of this one; Max Forsythe recalled: “The finished shot looks very much like the original layout, but the struggle was how to light it. No conventional lighting seemed suitable.After about two days of messing about I finally settled on sunlight coming through the studio window with a bit of BBQ grill to cast the shadows.The Chameleon and the pack were both models, we did get a real one in the studio, but soon realised that it was not possible to work with it, it kept disappearing.They were about five times actual size, which made it possible to shoot on 10×8.”

The writer of this one is unknown.

In the eighties, art director Nigel Rose takes the reins.

Here are some of Nigel’s fantastic roughs for ideas that didn't get bought.

Looking at back at these posters I can't help wondering why people aren’t producing posters like this at the moment.Instead of trying to shout a dull message across the street, why not create something that intrigues, makes people lean in, then rewards them by creating a smile in the mind?Kind of interactive.

Imagine these pictures:1. A baby lying down.2. A group of men talking.3. A broken down car.4. A Policeman on the street.5. A girl skipping.6. A kid playing marbles.Most people would imagine them something like this.

Mid-shots.Side on.With the main object in the middle of the frame.Almost in 2D, a bit like a diagram.It's hard to imagine pictures from other angles.Even harder to draw them.So most layouts start life a s a kind of 2D diagram, a bit like the pictures above. It's always been the case. But over the last ten years or so, the 'mock-up' has grown. So now, after the art director has drawn rough, we look for a better, photographic representation of what the art director has drawn. The client signs the ad off. Now we have a blueprint for the photographer to match. The photographer doesn't have to think about it too much. Why reinvent the wheel? It can be embellished, but essentially the image is related to the one we used in the mock-up. Otherwise why mock it up? Consequently the idea was stunted at birth. It didn't evolve from that very basic 2D drawing. Good photographers work in 3D. They can find angles which can make an idea more dramatic, more surprising and more emotional. Useful when you're trying to get someone to engage with your message. At the moment too many photographers are simply used to colour in, not create. It's a waste, because they know all the angles.

The third and last post on Lester Bookbinder, unless by some miracle I get to interview him.If I thought finding the pictures was tough that was nothing compared to finding the words.But here's what I've managed to discover.a) He was born in New York City in 1929.b) He trained with the photographer Reuben Samberg.

c) He opened his own studio in 1955.d) He moved to London in 1959.e) Long before the New York Police Chief Bill Bratton started talking ‘zero tolerance’, Lester was operating a similar policy in London way back in the sixties.MARTIN HILL, (Set Art Director): ‘No detail was beyond his eagle eye. The almost invisible joints in wallpaper, micro blemishes on a distant skirting board, all had to be dealt with and rendered perfect. On a square foot basis his sets were by far the most expensive and time consuming to make. Mouldings were baked enamel, wall paper hand stenciled, all surfaces exercises in perfection.One of his tricks was to direct a carbon arc light across the set to highlight any imperfection, and woe betide if found any were found.To have him walk on set on the morning of the shoot and just nod his head in approval was one of the art director’s highlights.’RON COLLINS, ( Art Director): ‘Years ago we were shooting a still life. Just a bottle and glass of beer. It was only the second time I’d worked with Lester and he spent about six hours setting it up.Finally he asked if I’d like to have a look.So I looked through the camera and then reached around and gently moved the glass about 1/32 of an inch.When I turned around Lester had gone.I went into the office and asked his secretary where he was. She said he’d probably gone for a walk and would be right back. I told her what I’d done and her face darkened. “Oh dear”, she said, “he won't have liked that’’.Finally he returned.“Ronnie’’, he said very “please don’t ever do that again. Talk. Point. But don’t touch!”I realized he’d spent hours finessing the shot and I had ruined it in a moment.Since then, even with the young photographers, I don't touch. I point.’ROMAIN d'ANSEMBOURG, (Photographer): ‘During my diploma course at the Ealing Technical College, in 1983 or 1984, we were invited to Lester Bookbinder’s studio.What struck me most was his attempt to capture the hollowness of an avocado after removing the stone. He showed us a sequence of 10x8 or 11x14 inch transparancies of an ever increasing ‘emptiness’ - on the edge between (suggested) 3-dimensionality and 2-dimensionality (to which we poor photographers are condemned); with a degree of perfection and urge to capture the uncapturable that I will indeed never forget.’MARK REDDY, (Art Director): ‘Lester ignored me during the shoot, until at one point I heard him shout from under the black cloth “Mark...come and have a look’’. I thought finally he's warming up, I walked over to the camera and put my head under the black cloth. I'm now virtually nose to nose with Lester. He looked at me and said “Not you!”. He'd meant his assistant, also called Mark. I slunked back over to my chair.JOHN O'DRISCOLL, (Art Director): ‘When I worked with Lester his set looked nothing like a normal set, it was like the laboratory of some strange scientist; weird tungsten lighting everywhere, and three assistants, dressed head to toe in black. They looked like waiters.’BARNEY EDWARDS, (Photographer): ‘He was once shooting for an agency in Germany, he sent the film to Germany for approval. They asked for something to be moved in the composition.The following day Lester sent a new batch of film to Germany.What they saw were not their amendments to the composition, but Lester’s assistant standing in front of the set with his his two fingers sticking up. Exactly as Lester had positioned him.’Whatever the description of his working method, the results are as powerful today as they were then.This first batch of work was shot by Lester in New York during the fifties.

Around 1959/60, he moves to London becoming a regular contributor to Vogue, Queen and Nova.

He also starts to make an impact on the advertising world too, with campaigns like this one for Bachelors cigarettes by J. Walter Thompson. (1962/3.)

Before long he's working the best agencies in London, including the best; Collett Dickenson Pearce.

For one creative team at CDP, Alan Parker* and Paul Windsor, whatever the client, Ford, Harvey's Bristol Cream, Whitbread or Senior Service Extra cigarettes, whether shooting on location, in a studio, people or objects, Lester Bookbinder was the answer.*Yes, THAT Alan Parker.

In the sixties great photographers were eye-waveringly well paid and deluged with work, consequently they'd turn down way more than they'd accept.Submitting a layout to someone like Lester in those days would be like submitting a script to Ringan or Glazer today; almost pointless.So I find it intriguing as to why he took on the Gilt Edge Carpets campaign.There couldn't have been layouts, the brief must have literally been “Can you shoot some rolls of carpet?...please Lester.”Is there anything less glamorous, less stimulating or more dull to photograph than a roll of carpet.Few photographers would even take on the challenge.Most wouldn't have the patience or will power to try to give the shots ‘something’.But somehow Lester manages to give the shots elegance and sophistication.

In 1971, Robert Waterhouse talked to Lester for the Design Journal:‘Lester Bookbinder, the American photographer who has imposed his distinctive imagination on British advertising and magazines.“Look. I take photography seriously, but not myself.” Lester Bookbinder, one of London's most successful and creative photographers though not necessarily at the same time - is careful to suggest the right image.’Violently self deprecatory about past work he is nonetheless very touchy about other people's attitudes to it and the kind of job it now brings in.That job may not be exactly what he wants but, having made sure there's enough money for it to be done properly, he proceeds to lavish on it his considerable talents; or, to put it in the language of a Jewish New Yorker born on Bleecker Street, “I work my ass off”.Still life advertising photography is an ever-present reality to Bookbinder.Skill in this craft helped him - after spells as a fashion photographer and illustrator - establish his own New York studio in the mid fifties.There his particular ability to capture, or more often create, the inscape or “this-ness” of a consumer product led him towards the top of a highly treacherous profession.An exploratory voyage to Europe some ten years ago produced return trips paid for by agencies and four years later he settled here, collecting in due time an English wife, a Somerset cottage and more still life.“I've been relegated to it here. The label is stuck on me so solidly that unless I make a great effort that's all the work I get. The trouble is I thrive on pack jobs. When they can't afford forty people running up and down a beach they come to me.’’So, working for agencies, he shoots the glimmering whisky bottle, the sophisticated cigarette lighter - but not the enchanting pack of cigarettes.That he gave up a couple of years ago as a small contribution to world health, though he reserves the right to smoke himself to death. Bookbinder reckons that he makes a fair living because “the pictures are sharp and the colour is good”.But don't make the mistake of associating this kind of photography with art. “I am by definition a commercial photographer, not an artist by any stretch of the imagination,” Bookbinder assures you.“I’m successful in identifying the positive aspects of frivolous things. I have the ability to see near beauty in trivia.’’Near beauty is not to be confused with real beauty or with reality itself - though advertising has a separate reality of its own. Nor are the renowned fashion pictures for Queen - the disjointed females sporting animal limbs and expensive shoes - accorded any retrospective respect: Bookbinder dismisses them as ‘‘second rate surrealism”.The reason for this seeming aptitude for self-denigration is that Bookbinder, like he says, takes photography very seriously, believing that the art form does exist and that it has reached its finest expression in people like Bill Brandt.He himself has a collection of “fine” photographs and is a practising artist, only he keeps this side of his work very much to himself. The two dissociated nudes we show on these pages are seen in public for the first time.London's rather lethargic pace, (in comparison with New York), permits Bookbinder to spend time on his own work, and on editorial jobs for magazines.While he freely admits he would go broke if he concentrated solely on magazines, (say £30 a commission instead of ten times as much for an advertising agency), the occasional job serves the dual purpose of making him think in a more creative way than for advertising and of keeping his name before the discerning public.However, he demands absolute freedom and personal control of the frame eventually used. His relationship with art directors tends to be stormy, though Roland Schenk at Management Today has his confidence and admiration.Bookbinder’s covers for this magazine are among the few commercial jobs he cares to remember.Basically an indoors man, working from the measured disorder of his Kensington studio. Bookbinder is also well known and well used on the Continent, where he can be found making tv commercials in Italy or taking baby pictures in France (to his continued amazement).Now that he can afford to be choosy about the kind of job he accepts, he claims that in the mellow light of Kensington and, particularly, Somerset, the quest for money has left him. He lectures periodically at the Royal College and recently tried out an eight week workshop evening course of experimental photography for students who really wanted to get to grips with technique.He is not yet sure that it will be repeated. Although successful, it was personally a painful experience - “and I try to avoid pain”.

In the same way that kids reject the music and dress codes of their parents, art directors often reject the styles and people favored by the previous generation, preferring fresh, new people, nearer their own age.So demand for Lester slows in the mid seventies.But FCO art director Graeme Norways decides against using one of the new kids on the block for his White Horse Whisky campaign, instead he chooses someone old enough to be his dad, and probably the best person on the planet for that campaign.

It's a tremendous campaign.Absolutely timeless.Lester was now back in vogue, (small ‘v’), and he started shooting commercials as well as stills.The images from his commercials are strong enough to be stills, as this front cover shows.

The images with Paul Arden for the V&A are amazing.They are made be odd, idiosyncratic little touches, like the one unvarnished fingernail or the mug positioned behind the sculpture.

His last great campaign was with Mark Reddy for Volkswagen.The idea was to shoot images that look distorted, as if being seen by someone from a speeding car.But how do you distort them in a way that looks real yet aesthetically pleasing?How do you control what you are shooting?Lester pointed the camera at a reflective piece of perspex that could be bent in or out to extend or contract the image, giving him complete control.

Throughout his career Lester shot a helluva lot of personal work, unfortunately these are the only pictures I could find. (Bought by Paul Arden.)

In our business you often hear the question ‘do they have a good eye?’ Very few have. But those that do transform. In their hands the everyday feels exotic and the familiar appears fresh. It's not logic, education or training. It's an instinct.They make subjective decisions.‘Five ice cubes look right’, ‘The face out of focus is best’, ‘Leave one fingernail naked’.Some people get those decisions right time after time.The ones with ‘an eye’.Like Lester Bookbinder.A profile of Lester by Creative Review, from February 1982.

A few months back, I chanced upon this.

It's an ad by George Lois.It caught my attention because I’d never seen it before and it looked ,from the photograph, like it was from a large, sharp image.I followed the link.More Papert Koenig Lois ads!I could see these weren't tiny pictures from an early New York Art Directors Club.

Where the hell were they from?I read the text underneath:“Some months ago, Julian Koenig died. He was the famed copywriter behind Volkswagen’s “Think Small” ad, maybe the most famous ad ever. He was also the ‘K’ in the upstart creative agency Papert Koenig Lois.I’m a lover of obituaries and read every one I could find on Koenig. I stumbled through Google to find more information. I was particularly intrigued by his decades-long feud with his ex-partner, George Lois whom, according to Koenig, took credit for work he didn’t do. In my book and Koenig’s the most heinous crime a creative can commit. (Koenig once wrote an ad attacking Lois. The headline: Low, Lower, Lois.)Somewhere along the way, I discovered that Papert Koenig Lois after its first year in business produced a hardcover book containing each of their ads done that year. They did the same after their second year. The books were entitled, appropriately enough, “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The First Year” and “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The Second Year.”I quickly found them on abebooks.com. The pair cost me $50 and they arrived in short order in very nearly perfect condition. I have them here, in front of me.Each volume is organized by client. The First Year (1960-1961) features work for: Ladies Home Journal, Renault, Pharmacraft Laboratories, Granada TV Networks, England, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ronson and Dansk, among others. There are probably about 75 ads in all, many of them I recognize from old Art Directors Annuals or from George Lois’ books about, primarily, himself.Here are a few of the ones that I either recognize from annuals or I think have held up for half a century. Sorry for the crappy photographs. I took them from my iPhone and couldn’t get things quite square.The Second Year looks identical to the first. Same size. Same black linen cover. Same forest green frontispiece. Clients include: Dutch Masters cigars, Dansk, Evan-Picone, Faberge, First National Bank of Miami, The New York Herald Tribune, Peugeot, Harvey Probber, WNEW Radio, Xerox, as well as many of the clients from the previous year.I don’t know much about the further history of PKL, beyond those first two years. I assume George Lois imploded and Julian Koenig spent too much time at Aqueduct Racetrack. They scaled the heights of New York advertising, but never reached the pinnacles achieved by DDB, Carl Ally, Scali McCabe Sloves, Delahanty Kurnit & Geller and one or two others.I might be the last person on earth who’s even heard of them.Years ago, I taught some classes at New York’s School of Visual Arts in putting a portfolio together. I decided I wanted to move past stylistic trends and get to the heart of what makes a strong communication. Not what’s “hot,” what is enduringly moving and motivating.What I did what go through my trove of awards annuals from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. I picked out disparate ads then we spent the next few hours discussing their alikeness.It seems to me that PKL’s ads here are built around the basics of good communication. They are simple and clean. They make a promise. They find something human. They often flatter the reader—letting her know that we regard her as intelligent. We might even reward her for that intelligence.If this were a better world, and I were rich, I would offer to send these two books to anyone who’s interested as long as they swore to return them. The thing is, I lent them to my boss in May and only got them back around Halloween. So I’m not parting with them so easily.I think they’re esoteric. They probably have an audience of seven, mostly people interested in “Mad Men” but only because of the wardrobe. But to me, finding them was like finding a Cuneiform tablet. Nothing remarkable may be written down (they were usually tallies of goats, grains and wine) but still, they’re priceless. They tell us how we lived and how we thought.Underneath it said something like 'From PKL book I picked up'.DAMN!I quickly went on Abe Books.Nothing.Ebay - Nothing.Amazon - Nothing.I spent ages trying to figure out how to get my hands on these books.Nothing.Desperate, I contacted a guy I didn't know who was three thousand miles away to ask if I could borrow his treasured books.I then forgot about it.The guy replied: 'Sure, I'll mail them to you'How weird is that?It turned out to be George Tannenbaum, from the great adaged blog.They then turned up at my front door. He'd paid the postage!So here is the first PKL book.If you like it, thank George in the comments, what a trusting human being.

Fashion advertising isn’t like regular advertising.Attitude is as important as the ‘idea’.The photographer can more important than the writer.What you say is less important than how you say it.The font is often more important than the argument.And the gut is definitely more important than the head.It's a odd world.Paul Smith is rumoured to have been on the lookout for an agency for decades.Organising endless chemistry meetings every couple of years, but never appointing an agency, because he can never find one that ‘gets it’.Jane Trahey got fashion.She started writing ads in 1947, for Neiman-Marcus in Dallas.In 1956 she moves to New York to found 425 Advertising Associates for Julius Kayser Inc, as their in-house agency.Only a couple of years later she leaves to open Jane Trahey Associates.1958.In 1950s New York, openly lesbian women didn’t start ad agencies, Vikings probably started more than lesbians in those years.Their work was simple, stylish with a kind of sassy, New York attitude.HOFFRITZ.

WRAGGE.

D’ORSAY.

FRANKLIN SIMON.

ELIZABETH ARDEN.

BILL BLASS.

SWANSON’S ON THE PLAZA.

PALIZZIO SHOES.

ECHO SCARVES.

ROB ROY.

I. M. MILLER.

She picks a young, local illustrator for some I.M Miller ads, (and an invite), his name is Andy Warhola.

In 1959 she brings a partner to help manage the business, now growing fast.

Although Jane was a writer, really she wrote slogans. She would conjure up a handful of words for a brand to give it attitude. Those words would stay there for years, sometimes ten, in one case forty. These words would rarely be product based. More often than not they had a kind of ‘fuck you’ flavour.DYNEL. A great example of that flavour is Dynel work for a synthetic fur-like fabric. Most rational people would position it as an inexpensive alternative to real fur. That was far too mealy-mouthed and apologetic for Trahey Cadwell, they said ‘It’s not fake anything, it’s real Dynel’. (You may as well put ‘schmuck!’ at the end of that sentence.)

DYNEL FAKE HAIR.

DANSKINS.Positioning the brand as kit you can wear when not exercising.Straight to the point and with attitude.

Considering she was a writer, it’s amazing to see consistently strong the art direction is over a thirty year period.

TRIGERE.

CHARLES OF THE RITZ.

GASHINS MUSHI.

MA GRIFFE.

PARAPHERNALIA.

In the late sixties, former Haprer’s Bazaar Art Director Henry Wolf was bought in as a partner.OLIVETTI. Wolf shot and art directed these ads.

Through the seventies, Trahey continued to battle anyone still against equal rights.

In ’72 she gets involved in he National Organisation of Women. Soon after she get’s her pen out.

BLACKGLAMA.One of her last, but most famous campaigns was for the Great Lakes Mink Association. Realising that the name was too much of a mouthful, she rechristened them; ‘Blackglama’.She then figured that because the lustre of black mink didn’t show up in photographs, she needed stars to give Blackgama lustre.First she went out and got some stars, and when I say stars, I mean STARS!, then she got Richard Avedon to shoot them.

Towards the end of her life, Jane wrote and edited books and films.

“I try to find a way to get into the head of a child.”- Stephen O. Frankfurt.

His quote sounds spooky, but I guess it’s just another way of saying keep it simple and interesting. Virtually unknown today, he was a big deal in the fifties, sixties and seventies. His Mum was the secretary to the head of the Twentieth Century Fox film studio. (Sounds irrelevant, it isn’t.) He spends three years at the Pratt Institute, being ‘molded’ by Alexey Brodovitch. He leaves and visits every major studio and ad agency to try to land a job. No-one is interested in him. So he took a job as a junior in a tv company, painting animation background cells. One of the clients offered him a job at their agency; Young & Rubicam New York.He became assistant art director in a department recently opened for a new medium they were calling ‘Television’.Unlike the rest of the department, former movie production types and radio writers imported from Hollywood, he had hands on experience in animation and camera techniques.Before long he was writing and creating his own commercials. They were exceptionally graphic. What you need to bear in mind was this was the late fifties, most commercials used presenters or product demonstrations. The really creative ones would use both at the same time. Ads like the one below really stood out.

He was widely credited as ‘helping Bernbach’s creative revolution extend into TV’.He realised that TV wasn't a branch of live performance, it could be more like his first love - cinema. (Remember his mum’s job?)He started using film makers to tap into emotions.His work was starting to get noticed more and more.One of those taking notice was film director Alan J. Pakula.He asked Frankfurt to design the opening titles for ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’.

He wins an oscar. Here, he explains his thinking;

He shot a lot of commercials with Irving Penn, who said this about him; “He has always been a rarity in the advertising business. He believes that magic can happen in the film studio…and keeps his commitment to the client as loose as possible so as to make good use of a miracle should it happen.”His press and poster work was equally simple and graphic.

He does groundbreaking work for Eastern Airlines.

In 1967 he becomes President of Young & Rubicam’s New York office.Now at the time Young & Rubicam was the world’s second largest ad agency, so appointing a 36 year old to run your Head Office was brave, a 36-year-old art director was just plain nuts.

He visits his heroes; Bill Bernbach, George Lois and Arnold Varga, asking for advice on how to communicate his ideas to the department. In the process, he collected proofs of their work. He used them to create a gallery in Y&R’s art department, ttelling staff that within a year he wants to replace them with Y&R ads that were equal or better, than those on the wall. It took two years.He then got New York to ‘Give A Damn’.

Not long after he got a visit from a friend of his, film producer Robert Evans.(Remember his mum’s job?) Evans had a problem; Paramount didn't know how to sell his new film ‘Rosemary’s Baby’. “I can’t release the movie because the whole of our advertising team doesn’t know how to sell it, and the picture’s brilliant!”A viewing was set up for Frankfurt to see the film.“Bob, I’m going to tell it you straight; it’s not an easy picture to sell and I’m not going to take one dime from.”He then said “But if you buy what I give you I want one hundred thousand dollars”.Rather than design a poster, he distilled the idea of the film into a single hook, as he’d learnt in advertising.

Robert Evans: ‘I walked in to the office of Chairman of the Board, Charles Bluhdorn, and said ‘‘Take a look at this and you tell me if you want to write a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars’’. And I turned the art-board around and there it is; there’s a mountain and a carriage and it says ‘Pray for Rosemary’s Baby’, that’s all. Bluhdorn looked at it, he becomes as pale as these white shoes that I’m wearing, he said ‘I have to pay him one hundred thousand dollars for four words?!’ I said that’s right, and he did! 'Pray for Rosemary’s Baby' became the ad of the year. It made the picture, without that image people wouldn’t know what it was, they still didn’t know, but they were intrigued. It opened to the biggest business Paramount had done in years.”

Here’s is a BBC documentary on Frankfurt, an amazing snapshot of his life at the time.

The ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ experience gave Frankfurt a taste of a different life. Also, President was a very different job from the creative one he was used to. “I never had a frustrating day in that company, until I became President,”

He works on the campaign to get Mayor Linsay re-elected. A tough job, as his first stint in office was considered a disaster.Like a lot of truly great advertising, he uses the truth and gets Mayor Linsay to admit that ‘mistakes were made’, and ends with Linsay calling the job of being mayor of New York ‘the second toughest job in America’.What a great end-line.

Mayor Linsay was re-elected.In 1971, he leaves his swanky office at Y&R to set up Frankfurt Gips, with the designer Phillip Gips. His mission was ‘to see the packaging of movies as a totality—designing the titles, posters, trailers and ads with one common look and theme.’An integrated campaign, as we’d call it today.(Remember his mum's job?)

In 1974 he gets roasted, (not British footballer style), by the board of the New York Art Directors Club.

In the eighties, Frankfurt described his company’s approach:‘Clients come to us expecting to see something different.We tend to come at things in an unexpected way.We offer a point of view on a film.We try and create a strong copy line or image that everything else can be hung on...You have to reflect the film's essence.You have a generation of fast-forward kids out there zapping movies.The challenge is to find a way to be different.The people who come here to work are misfits. They don't fit in anywhere else.These people go out and have fun together at night.Bill Murray dropped by and took them all out to dinner. You can't fake that.’

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find the complete campaign for the films, but with ideas like ‘In space no-one can hear you scream’ or ‘You'll believe a man can fly’ still famous today, you have to say he fulfilled his mission.

Where did you grow up?South East LondonWhen did you take your first picture?When I was eleven.Then I asked for a camera for my fifteenth birthday.One of my brothers showed me how develop a film and to make a contact print.I was completely absorbed by photography for the next 40 years.What was your first job?Aged 18, I spent two weeks in an ice cream warehouse, at minus 20 degrees.It paid for my new darkroom.I always developed and printed my own pictures.Who did you assist?I am grateful to several photographers who gave me a chance at age 18 and 19: David Davies, Mike Goss, Mick Dean, Bob Croxford, Eric Mandel.But it was David Thorpe who had the greatest influence. I worked with him for 6 years.

What was the first image someone paid you to produce?£5 to shoot a pencil sharpener, in 1970.My first real job was for Paul Arden in 1977.He was going to be a photographer and had asked me to be his assistant.I said no, I’d been an assistant for long enough and I was going on my own.A few months later he gave me my first job, a twelve day car shoot!I was probably saved by some good retouching.

The ‘Looks aren't everything’ ad is the old ‘mechanical’, probably made with Letraset and a scalpel. I don't have a proof.I can't help but notice those weird angular shadows?Yes, that was Paul’s idea, he was very insistent that he wanted ‘square shadows’.Who was the best Art Director you worked with, and why?I couldn’t say, I worked with so many talented art directors. Bob Isherwood, Rob Morris, Alan Waldie, Neil Godfrey, Paul Arden, John Horton, Ron Brown, Nigel Rose, Cathy Heng, and many others. They had great ideas and knew what they wanted.

I wouldn’t have guessed this portrait of Dave Horry was one of yours Graham?Yes,Dave was quite resistant to appearing as nature intended.It was commissioned by Roland Schenk, a very influential designer who had adventurous tastes in photography.I was experimenting with spots and mirrors at the time, and used them for the scaly effect.I presume Irving Penn was your hero?One of them.Also Lester Bookbinder. I once asked him who’d had the greatest influence on him, he replied: ‘Penn, Penn, Penn, and ….err… Penn.’ I think Lester was in a class of his own, but he was mostly doing commercials by the time I was working.

Totally agree, I love Bookbinder’s stuff.Not being a photographer, it’s difficult to explain why they have that magical thing about them, most of the shots just simple set ups on white backgrounds.How did he do that?I wish I knew.First, he must have believed it to be possible; how do you get a horse to stand still like that, and to look down a little, no, slightly to the left, with one eye towards camera?While the people are all doing their part but without looking static.Maybe it was all done on a dye transfer or in retouching?I remember Ron Collins telling me about a shoot for Clark’s shoes with Lester, eight women in a line doing the can-can. Lester said to Ron, “I can only watch five at once, you take the three on the left.”Who else inspired you?So many...Bill Brandt, I loved his use of black, and extreme perspective, drawing you in and making you wonder what was going on in there.A good picture makes you think, and to want to look at it again and again.It does not give everything to you all at once.

Someone told me you shot Bill Brandt’s collages?That’s right, there’s a book, it’s rather rare, ‘Bill Brandt. The Assemblages’.I have one copy.In later life Bill made some collages/assemblages and made some black & white photos of them.I photographed all of those that were left, in colour in 1993, in collaboration with Zelda Cheatle, the publication has notes by Adam Lowe. Despite what you may read elsewhere, all the colour photographs are by me. (The black and white ones are by Brandt.)It was beautifully printed, but in very small numbers, about 1000 I think...or may be 2000.Highly collectible.

Ok, more names, any other influences?Well, Edward Weston.

Paul Strand.

Avedon.

Phil Marco.

Weegee.

and Penn.

Man Ray.

Hiro.

and Hans Feurer.

I also drew inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci,

Bach...

...and Beethoven.

I enjoy science and art, they both involve observation, understanding, questioning, experimenting, inventing.I always listen to music when I am working.

Was this done for real?The agency had complaints about this one, how could we be so cruel?Needless to say it was retouched. We shot the fish, and the fin was attached to a model.The two images were then put together on the computer.

Did you prefer a tight or an open brief?I always saw the layout as a starting point, often a point of departure.Most art directors could draw very well, and knew what they wanted, but not always how to achieve it, a sketch with a black felt tip pen could show the idea without being prescriptive.Art directors usually wanted some input from me if it helped to put across their idea.In later years this happened less, as clients had more control; briefs and layouts became tighter and more finished, I would sometimes be given a finished illustration and asked to recreate it on film!I usually worked with an art director in the studio, the composition had to work within a layout with just the right amount of space for copy and headlines.Sometimes art directors would turn up for a few minutes, make a comment and leave again; still life photography is not much of a spectator sport.Much of my work was a collaboration often involving model makers and background artists too, such as Gordon Aldred.The best art directors were often the most demanding and wanted to break new ground in some way.When shooting looser briefs, such as those for Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges, I had the luxury of spending one week or more on one picture, so I could try anything I wanted.Unlike today, the picture would usually be a few sheets of 10 x 8 film hopefully with little or no retouching needed.I rarely shot variations, the art director and I would make a decision and follow it through to the end.

You turned down a lot of work?Yes, hard to believe today.If I felt I could not do a good job, or had been chosen for the wrong reasons I might turn it down, I often had more work than I could manage, as I was quite slow and rarely found it easy. I preferred to do what I was good at, but on the other hand you never know what you are capable of until you try.

Which English photographers inspired you in the early days?As a teenager in the sixties I used to devour the Sunday colour supplements, which had some great photography, both editorial and advertising.The ads never credited the photographers, but Adrian Flowers,

Lester Bookbinder

and Tony May come to mind, there must have been many others.

Which ads were you most pleased with? GRAHAM: B&H ‘Goldfish’, ‘Ants’, ‘Magnet’, ‘Gold Pour’, the first Silk Cut, Absolut ‘Rome’, Levi's ‘Horse’.I also like a very early one for Holsten Pils, all done in camera, no retouching.

Also, I shot a blue envelope for Paul Arden, I think it got me a lot of work.He asked for a print of it, so I spent two weeks making a 2 meter wide cyanotype, (a blueprint), the largest contact print I ever did.

I was pleased with many pictures for Absolut Vodka, again all done for real, in-camera.

The Absolut Geneva ad would be drawn today, it would be perfect but wouldn't feel as expensive as this. Was it down to great modelmaking?One of my brothers is a clockmaker, he made the bottle, one half an inch long.The jewel was put in on the computer.

How was this shot?It was tricky. The gold was a model by Matthew Wurr, placed on glass and shot from below to avoid any reflections in the glass.

I think Paul Arden is the best Art Director Britain has produced, what was he like to work with?A man of iron whim! Not my words, but they’re very apt.He got the best out of people. (Providing they could get on with him.)He also gave me many opportunities to prove myself.He held very strong views, but they could change at any time.You did the first Silk Cut ads together, shooting a bit of silk looks easy, I bet it wasn't?Paul had several photographers working on this for weeks.I had to learn to shoot silk, how to dye it, cut it, light it, get the colour right.It was easier after the first one.To get the intense colour, Paul had the posters inked and printed twice, there was so much ink on them that they would not stick to the hoardings and started to peel at the joins.

How did you get that odd texture on the shower ad?This was shot on a little known film, Polaroid 35mm instant transparency film, it was very grainy and had fine lines across it like a TV screen.It also rendered the purple very well.We wanted a degraded image as if it was from a movie.There is a myth that 48 sheet posters have to be shot on large format. They do not.A well known photographer who shot on 35mm told me once that if the agency wanted a picture shot on large format, he would just copy it on to 5 x 4.

You turned a lot of assistants into very good photographers, The School of Graham Ford.David Thorpe worked for Bert Stern and Arnold Newman in the US.I worked for David.Jerry Oke and Eugenio Franchi worked for me.John Parker and Kevin Summers worked for Jerry.Many others carry on a certain tradition and approach adding and adapting to it all the time.David really understood advertising, having worked at DDB in New York.For him great advertising photography was the expression of a great idea, it can be self indulgent and often meaningless out of that context.The family tree is quite extensive, I am proud to be part of it.I think we have all been willing to share ideas and techniques, I have no time for secrecy.

Ever tempted to move into commercials?I tried a few times, I think one commercial I co-directed even won an award in an obscure category at Cannes! but it was not for me.I am very bad at delegating.

I can’t help noticing how shiny cars were back in the seventies and eighties?I always asked for dark cars, for that reason.

Did you meet your photography heroes, like Penn?.No, though I attended talks by Elliot Erwitt and Richard Avedon.They were totally professional, even when giving a lecture, I later thought they probably wanted to let people know that they were still approachable and available for work.

Who were your rivals?In the sense I think you mean, I only admired pictures, not photographers.Anyone who takes risks has a mixture of success and failure.There were many very good photographs published in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.I think it was a Golden Age for advertising.Ken Griffiths,

Pete Lavery,

Rolph Gobits,

Norman Parkinson,

Peter Lavery,

and Brian Griffin.

They were not rivals, but I admired their work.There were too many to mention that I did compete with in the UK, look at the D&AD annuals.Also Daniel Jounneau...

...and Francois Gillet in Europe.

I thought Nadav Kander did some remarkable work too.

Why do your pictures still look more sumptuous than most photographs today?Spending a week or more on a picture, weeks of model making and planning, 10x8 film, a handpicked group of talented people, decisions made by individuals not committees .Film is an attractive medium in itself.There is a magic, an alchemy, in the interplay between light, lens and film.I may be wrong about this, but I guess Photoshop was derived from the techniques used in making animated films, so you have layers which are overlaid on each other.Film does not work like that, black is an absence of light, it does nothing to the film,film reacts only to light, not to dark.I would leave the shutter open for five or ten minutes or more, adding one image on top of another in the dark. I don't think you can really do that in the same way with digital cameras.

I may be wrong, but I think some of Brian Griffins’ images would not be possible with a digital camera.I am fairly sure that mine would not, though there may be new developments that I am not aware of.

The colours seem denser, the blacks seem blacker?

I used to make very contrasty transparencies, ‘Chromes to weld by’ as Dave Christensen said, but they looked better in my portfolio.

When computers came in, the first thing some retouchers would do was lighten all the shadows.I was surprised when I saw some of Lester Bookbinder’s transparencies just how flat they were, but they printed beautifully.

Model making vs CGI?I have seen CGI images that are almost completely convincing.It is an interesting area, because I think it has the potential to be rigorously accurate, if one person could have ultimate control over the whole image.Once you start drawing and making things up, I think you would often be better off with an illustration.You really have to know what you are doing to be a good illustrator.

DAVE: Do you think digital technology has helped photography?Experimenting is now easier, but I see less of it?It must be good that anyone now can take a photograph and produce a usable image with little skill or forethought.I expect many imaginative people are using photography in new and adventurous ways.On the down side, it is a less exacting process, there is less at stake, it is easy to be lazy.It is also fairly easy to make very complex images using Photoshop, but so many of these are meaningless or unconvincing.I always felt the power of photography lay in its basic reality.Of course the camera has always lied, but it lied convincingly. I can never really believe in an obviously digitally manipulated image.To paraphrase Henry Wolf: Photography has the power to make an object or person seem unique, beautiful or ugly, thoughtful or desirable beyond its mere physical existence.What’s keeping you busy at the moment?These, silver vessels, each raised from a disc by hammering.

Do you collect, shoot or make them?Make them, just for fun.Amazing, they look great, thanks for sharing them Graham.

Penn and Avedon are almost as well-known today as they were when they were alive and working.It's rare to be given a treatment, whether photographic or film, that doesn’t reference at least one of their images.Why not? They were two of the three best commercial photographers of the last century.The third has been virtually forgotten.Google ‘Bookbinder’ and you’ll be lucky to find a handful of images.(And those images will be very small.)I'm going to try to change that.Here’s the first tranche; The Management Today covers he did with the art director Roland Schenk.

He didn't just shoot covers.Occasionally he shot stories.

N.B. Thanks to Matthew Gwyther and Sarah Ozgul at Management Today for allowing me to access their archives, and Matthew Ford for putting us together.P.S. If anyone is in contact with Lester or has copies of his work, please get in touch: dave@davedye.com

Where did you grow up?Stirling, Scotland. Hitch-hiked to London the week I left school.Unusually, you had a lot of weird jobs before you got into advertising, so what did you learn from your time;a) running a stall on Petticoat Lane?People will buy anything as long as you can convince them it’s stolen.b) Selling Morris Minors?I learned that being 18 and looking 15 wasn’t a good start for being a car salesman.People used to come in and ask if my dad was around.c) Writing brochure copy for Anne Summer’s Sex Shops?They had one product called Anne Summers Love Foam.It was an aerosol can with a picture of a naked woman covered in foam.But if you soaked it and peeled the wrapper off it said Gillette Shaving Foam.An early example of advertising providing added value.d) Selling door to door?Hardest job in the book.You need a lot of training and a very rehearsed pitch.I was 17 and had no training whatsoever.But I looked a bit sweet and innocent so I went for the sympathy vote.e) Assisting the Advertising Manager at Curry’s?I found out I had gone into advertising by the wrong door. f) Writing mail order ads for Bullworkers?Direct response advertising is like basic training for copywriters. Everyone should have to do it before they get let loose on regular clients. One of the key things I learned is that you double the response if you can inject a sense of urgency. Tell them if they respond in the next 7 days they get something extra. One of the most successful headlines I ever wrote was EMERGENCY SALE.How did you end up in advertising?I started writing brochures about farm machinery at ATA then went on to mail order at Robinson Scotland.Robinson Scotland & Partners. Any better?More money because nobody there knew anything about advertising and I had read a book on it.You were schooled in advertising by the Father of the Wombles, Terry Flounders?Yes he had recently been eased out of the creative directorship of Spottiswoode’s, a FMCG agency with mainstream clients like Bachelor's Soups. He taught me a lot.At the age of 32 you decide to get a job in a proper agency.Your book was made up of Bullworker ads and spoof radio ads, I’m guessing a lot of agencies passed before Saatchi’s took you on?Yes. It was the spoof radio ads that got me the job at Saatchi.Was Saatchi’s your first choice?Yes. I was offered a job at Charles Barker for more money. (They liked me because I wrote 30 dirty jokes a month for a top shelf magazine called Knave.)I had to take a drop in earnings to go to Saatchi but they said I could keep my freelance work going on the side and they didn't mind if I took a few business calls at work.At one point I was making more money flying to Holland for the weekend and writing brochures for Philips than I was making in the week at Saatchi.

What did you make of Admen compared to market men?I was already in the ad business as assistant ad manager at Curry’s when I had the stall in Petticoat Lane.I just did it on Sunday mornings with another Curry’s guy called Jim Satterthwaite, who went on to become MD of Greys.The market men treated us with a degree of suspicion, but I used to love watching the hucksters selling stuff of the back of a lorry.“You don't ask me where I got the goods and I won't ask you where you got the money”. “My father works for the company that makes this product. He's not the managing director. He's the night-watchman. I'm saying no more.”

Who’s work did you admire at the time? Only DDB New York and CDP in London.

David Abbott’s Sainsbury’s work that followed yours was much gentler?I thought it was probably more on the money than mine.I was never into the David Abbot/CDP ‘dare we suggest’ school of copywriting.But it helped to establish Sainsbury’s as THE middle class supermarket.

To an Art Director like me, a massive Paul Arden fan, the difference between your ads pre and post Paul is amazing? But he must've been hard work?Paul always said that in a AD/CW team the AD is always the creative director because he/she listens to the writer's ideas then decides which ones to draw up. That's true but only in press.

Incidentally the ‘new kid in despatch’ was my son with Paul Arden’s glasses on upside down.I’ve always thought that they were quite arty glasses for a kid to wear, they were upside down?I love that, it's the tiny detail that makes those pictures pop.

I’ve never seen your name on an ad for the Conservative Party, didn’t you work on it?No. It was Jeremy Sinclair and Andrew Rutherford’s domain.

You and Paul Arden appear, from the outside, to be polar opposites, one a hard nosed salesman, the other, an arty-farty type, how did you work together?Actually we got on really well for that very reason. We each recognised that the other had something that we lacked.

How did you come to leave Saatchi’s?I’d always admired Charles Saatchi and wanted to have my name on the door of an agency and make a bundle of money like him.Didn’t Charles try to stop you?Yes they doubled my salary to stay.So Hedger took on a bloke called Carter instead. But that didn't work out so a year later he approached me again. This time I took the plunge.Why join Hedger Mitchell, fame, fortune or both?When I started in the business everyone over 45 was a dinosaur.They wore bow ties and had carnations in their buttonholes.My long-haired bejeaned generation just pushed them aside.So I was determined this wasn't going to happen to me.I was going to make enough money to get out at 45 and sail round the world, a lifelong dream.As it turned out my generation went on to run the show right into their sixties.The other reason is vanity.There's a certain thrill about having your name above the door and it made you more of a figure in the industry.Campaign would phone me regularly for a quote on something topical.They never did that before.

Going from a rich behemoth like Saatchi’s to a tiny boutique must have been odd, did you panic in the beginning?No not really.I remember pointing out at a board meeting that we could run the whole agency with 10 people instead of 40.I could write all the ads, all I needed was an Art Director.Dick Hedger could do all the selling. All we needed apart from that was a media guy, a receptionist and a couple of secretaries and we’d make a ruddy fortune.They didn’t go for it.DAVE: Was that seriously debated?That’s the kind of silly thing I think, that one can kind of channel ads, if the pressure is on and you’re in the groove.I’ve always found it weird that some creatives, good ones too, take weeks and weeks to write an ad.When I joined Saatchi I was 33.I’d been freelance for several years and had never worked for an agency that anybody had ever heard of.I was used to writing three or four ads a day and didn’t realise that in big agencies you got a week.So when I got to Saatchi and got my first brief I went back to Jeremy within a couple of hours with the ad.Also, I was thrilled at getting full-page ads to do.Nobody had ever given me a full-page in a national paper to write so I wanted to get my hands on every brief that was going.I did the Daffodil toilet paper ad within my first couple of weeks there.

‘Look very carefully at what the competition is doing, then do something completely different’.I love your statement of principles, not the kind of thing agencies say today?I think the good ones still do.My other guiding principle, which I explained to the creatives on my first day, was that I wouldn’t pass any ad that I didn't think would sell the product based on my direct response experience - even if I thought it would win an award. (There had been a spate of award-winning ads from CDP that had notably failed to sell anything.)

I know some of the ex HMS creatives, they all seem quite...confident, what did you look for when you hired creatives?My policy on hiring creatives; hunger counts for more than anything.Intelligence comes second.Practicality third.

Why would a fancy-dan, Aston Martin driving adman put his neck on the line and attempt to humour the blood thirsty crowds of the Comedy Store?The Comedy Store came long before the big money and the Aston Martin.Like a lot of people I had watched comedians getting big laughs and thought ‘I’m sure I could do that’. And to a certain extent I could.When it was good it was the best drug ever.When it was bad it was hellish.

Be aware that much of the HMS work wasn’t actually written by me personally, so I wouldn’t like to claim that it was.

Tony Kaye. You were a very early adopter?Yes. Mike Shafron was a great fan of his and had introduced us.The first commercial he ever shot for me was for Olivetti.He shot four times as many shots as we could ever use.Then when they processed the stock it was all milky and we had to shoot it again.So I said before we went any further we should edit the milky film together and see how it was working, which we did.Then when we came to reshoot it we knew exactly how to do it.Pity you don't get milky film any more.Tony then got flushed with success and went barking mad.I think even he would admit that.

You basically wrote ‘Crocodile Dundee’ didn’t you?No. I’ve often been given credit for inventing the Fosters campaign but I didn’t.It was an Australian writer called Rowan Dean, who knew all about Paul Hogan before he’d ever been heard of here.He then promptly went back to Australia, leaving me and Warren Brown to write the ads.Though I would argue that the innocent abroad we created in those ads was the persona that Hogan developed into Crocodile Dundee.The stuff he was doing in Australia at the time was nothing like that.

Can I tell you another funny story about the Fosters poster? Dick Hedger went to sell it to the Watney’s client, but he wouldn't buy it. Dick came out of the meeting with his tail between his legs and met Dave Trott and Mike Greenlees waiting in reception. (They had the Holsten Pils business.) Dick showed them the poster and moaned about the client not buying it.

They said ‘It’s brilliant, let us have a go’. So, our rival agency went in with our ad and told the client he was mad not to buy it. Do you think that could happen nowadays?

Just as Hedger Mitchell Stark starts winning awards and business you sell?The way it happened was this. Charles Saatchi rang me and said he wanted me to come back as CD.I said I couldn’t leave because I had an agency depending on me.He said ‘don’t worry, we’ll buy the agency’.It was a bum deal for them because our biggest client was Fosters and they had to resign that due to conflict with Castlemaine XXXX.Do you ever regret selling?Sometimes I regret that we didn’t carry on.Campaign told me they were about to announce that we were agency of the year and had to re-think in a hurry.But we were already talking to GGK about selling out to them. Saatchi was a better deal.

In 2005 my agency, CDD, was awarded the National Portrait Gallery advertising account.The only proviso was that the Chairman had to approve someone from the agency.I was nominated.It was arranged for me to take tea with the Chairman, Charles Mills, a very eccentric posh bloke with braces attached to pin-stripped trousers that started just below his nipples. I think he may now even be a Sir...or a Lord?He was a lovely guy, he told me he was slightly anxious about dipping his toes back into the advertising world as his only previous experience of advertising had been an unmitegated disaster.Unfortunately he’d approved an ‘awful campaign whilst at the V&A’.“Not the ‘Ace Caff’ campaign?’ I said. ‘I’m afraid so’ he replied. ‘That wasn't awful, that was brilliant!’.He went on to tell me that everyone was appalled internally, he still seemed quite traumatised.We spent the whole meeting discussing the campaign, with me trying to convince him that he was wrong, that it was a great campaign.He said it he hadn’t dared look at it since it ran.When I got back to the office I tracked down the ‘Brian Sewell’ film and a couple of the posters then sent them to him.He emailed back to say ‘It wasn’t as awful as he remembered, in fact, he actually quite liked it’.So how did you end up coming up with such a traumatising idea?Here's what happened. I was living in New York and came over to London for a few days so dropped in to Charlotte Street to say hello.Paul showed me a campaign he’d been working on for V&A, lots of arty pictures with headlines like ‘Vivacious & Alluring’, ‘Visceral & Arresting’ etc. Very Paul.

He asked me what I thought. I said ‘boring’.He said ‘I know. What should I do?’I said ‘what’s it got that would appeal to a Sun reader?’He told me it had a great cafe.I pondered for a bit and, came up with the line ‘An ace caff with quite a nice museum attached’, I only meant it as a joke, not a real ad, but Paul loved it.I then wrote a couple of headlines and went back to New York.(I don’t think I wrote all those V&A ads, I can’t remember which ones are mine.)A few days later I phoned him from New York and said ‘I’ve got a better idea; The picture is a picture of Tom Stoppard and Jerry Hall gazing at a nude male statue and both looking at his dick, the headline says “Tom & Jerry & Victoria & Albert”.Then there’d be ‘Janet & John & Victoria & Albert’ with Janet Street-Porter and some politician for writer called John, etc.But Paul said “No, I prefer the ace caff”.I said “they‘ll never buy it”, but I was wrong.Maurice Saatchi went in person and sold it to them.There was a huge outcry with questions in the House of Commons, loads of press coverage. The media spend was tiny but the furore it created was worth millions.I have met V&A people who were horrified by the campaign but, like the ‘Pregnant Man’, which only ever ran once in a paid space, but it got huge awareness for no money.Also, at that time the V&A had a much more fuddy-duddy image than it has now.(No Alexander McQueen shows or anything like that.)

The rumour was that the idea of colouring the footage came about to try and save the ad.No. It was Tony Kaye’s first big breakthrough with a proper budget.Nobody would touch him with a bargepole.But he had briefly been my A/D at Hedger Mitchell Stark and I knew he was a real talent, though the madness needed careful handling.The colour tinting was his idea from the word go.When I presented the finished ad to the client he said ‘great, it’ll be nice when you get the proper coloured footage’.Tricky.But British Rail was an incredibly loyal client.They followed me out of Saatchi, then followed me back in again.

The ad also had a sequel, using the same cast?Yes several, but none quite as good as the original.

You switch to Saatchi’s New York. What was the difference creatively?Chalk and cheese.At Saatchi New York people queued up to work on Proctor & Gamble because they were more open to ideas than the other big client, General Mills.The work was hellish, but I loved living in New York and I was only seeing out my time at Saatchi before the big round-the-world sail.(I only got half way round before getting bored.)

While there you worked with DDB titan Bob Levenson?Yes but he was having a tough time with the way the New York advertising scene was developing - all that research and all those layers of nervous client types, with the power to say no but not to say yes.We got on well though and liked each other.Your tv work from your time in New York is incredibly graphic.There isn't much of it. I barely got anything made.

Your first few directing jobs were shockingly graphic, where did that approach come from?I felt I needed to prove that I could be visually original.Directing is a job that requires several skills. Some of them come naturally, others you have to work at.For me, working with actors and telling the story was the bit that came easily, the visual side was where I felt I needed to prove myself.It’s true in movies too. Mike Leigh is great with actors and performance, not too great visually. Ridley Scott the other way round.

Which ad did you wish you'd written?‘Kiss your piles goodbye.’ ‘The complete history of motorcycling since last Tuesday’, (Motorcycle News). The ‘Where’s the Beef’ campaign for Wendy’s. The ‘Red’ ad for Virgin.

Why didn’t you keep any of this work?I never keep anything.I always thought ‘it’s only advertising, don't kid yourself it’s art.’ Paul and I used to argue a lot about this.I was in it for the money, he was in it for the kudos.We both got what we wanted.Seen any good ads lately?Yes lots of TV, especially the adventure-seeker stuff for Lurpak and internet ad for Old Spice.But hardly any good press and never any good stills photography.Why? There are dozens of great photographers out there starving.Thanks Jeffery.

Where did you grow up?I grew up in Newry in Northern Ireland, a great place to live before religion destroyed it.When did you take your first picture?Probably in my teens, my uncle was a wedding photographer, so I used his half plate camera.I took a lot more serious pictures on a trip to the US when I was 18.What was your first job?I was an Assistant Art director at what was then Hobson Grey.I was fired after 3 months.How did you get into an ad agency?I did some ads at the London College of Printing, I was lucky enough to be under John Gillard who taught me what an idea was.My finest was an ad for a police recruitment brief with the line ‘Not every Tom, Dick, or Harry can be a Bobby.’That got me my first job.You worked for the legendary CDP art director Colin Millward, tough?Colin was a tyrant, but he was always on our side.He insisted on good work and but then insisted that the work was sold to the client.Who were your influences at the time?Robin Wight, who I worked with, and John Hegarty.We would meet for lunch regularly and collect ads from New Yorker and Esquire.We’re still good friends and meet often to put the world to rights.Do you remember which ads you cut out?VW, Chivas Regal, Avis, there was a wealth of inspiration.

You worked on Ford, did that mean you were in Alan Parker’s Group?No, I was in John Salmon and Arthur Parsons group, by this time Alan was making movies in the basement.

CDP were probably the best agency in the country, why leave?Robin and I got an offer to set up an agency with a talented guy called Richard Cope.We couldn’t refuse.

What a freaky photo - Robin Wight isn’t wearing a bow tie.What was he like to work with?Robin was great, he was very analytical and also a great copywriter, he believed in ‘interrogating the product’ until we arrived at a viable concept.

Which photographers were you working with at the time?Stephen Coe shot a lot of still life for me, and I worked a lot with John Claridge.

What happens between Euro and you being a photographer?I realised I was better at taking pictures than agency management, so with the courage born of deep ignorance I set up a studio and starting taking pictures.

What was the first image someone paid you to produce?I can’t remember, I think it was a Birds Eye shot for art director Arthur Parsons, but he was taking a considerable risk.I can remember doing a lot of midnight re-shoots.

Who was the best Art Director you worked with and why?I’ve worked with some very talented people, but Gary Denham springs to mind for his sheer irreverent creativity.Who were your early photography heroes?Bill Brandt,

William Eggleston.

Harry Callahan, (not 'Dirty Harry').

But perhaps I was more by David Hockney...

...Van Gogh...

Matisse and of course...

...Edward Hopper.

How did you graduate from small, table-tops to grand landscapes?An Art Director called Nigel May trusted me with a shoot for Ordinance Survey.It was right at the time that travel became a lot cheaper and location shoots became more possible.The next big shoot was six weeks in the US with Ken Hoggins.

Did you prefer a tight brief or an open brief?I prefer Art Directors to tell me what they want the picture to say, rather than what they want it to look like.

I love the Ilford campaign you did for FCO, it could run today. (If they still made roll film?).Hang on, Ilford - FCO, Nike - FCO, Ordnance Survey - FCO, I see a pattern emerging?It wasn’t a large agency, but FCO was one of the best in London at the time,I worked a lot with Ian Potter, the Creative Director, we produced a lot work I am very proud of.

Your early work was uber-colourful, did you ever shot black and white?I did, I don’t think I was ever comfortable with it, there were a lot of people doing it better.I felt that colour had been much maligned; Black and white was art, colour was seen as what you got from Boots.Very few disciplines have ignored a major development like photography ignored the creation of colour film.I published a book called ‘Colour Prejudice’ in the 80’s to argue the case for colour, and had the first colour exhibition that Hamilton's Gallery had ever hosted in 1984.

You’re obviously very interested in composition, particularly playing with graphic shapes? I remember an old friend of mine, Derrick Hass, (he’d hate being referred to as ‘old’), bringing in one of your posters and saying ‘Look, it's just like a bloody Miro’.

Spanish Playground... It's still one of my favourite pictures, it is one of the rewards for always carrying a camera.Even when going for lunch in a small Spanish town.I studied Graphic Design at college, not photography, I didn't have a lot of the baggage that photography students can pick up.Having been a successful art director, did you find it difficult accommodating art directors?The opposite, I understood what they were trying to achieve and understanding that perversely gave me more freedom.I don't think I ever fell out with an Art Director or had a serious disagreement, their contribution was almost always constructive.

Photoshop would make this B&H image so much easier now, but would you end up with a better result?No, it would just be easier, the best thing about that ad is Nigel Rose’s idea.

Has the digital image manipulation lead to better images?It’s managed to elevate mediocrity to acceptability.But there is no substitute for being able to ‘see’ pictures rather than build them.Which ads were you most pleased with the final result?Probably the ads I shot for Land Rover, I shot them over several decades, they were great locations and normally great ads, with very few restrictions.The Land Rover clients were the best in the world to work with.

I love the ‘Flesh Tints’ spreads, have you done much editorial?I’ve shot very little editorial, I wish I’d shot more.I started shooting with Wendy Harrop at Interiors Magazine, and then later with Ilse Crawford and Claire Lloyd.All very talented ladies from whom I learnt a lot, I enjoyed the totally different disciplines.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you and a few of your contemporaries is that I’m struck by just how strong and expensive your images look compared to a lot of images around today?The simple answer is that they cost more.Advertising agencies were the gate keepers to sales, press and posters were important media and it was worth spending money on the production.As clients now have many other ways of generating sales the agency's power has diminished and the client is now demanding ‘cheap’ as most of them can't tell the difference.I remember you telling me about the idea behind Lensmodern when you launched in 2006; ‘People will be commissioning less and less so we are making it possible for them to access high quality images’, or something to that effect. A pretty good hunch?Yes and no. The market for good images in advertising is diminishing.The demand now seems to be for royalty-free, dirt cheap images that are being used on the web.Perhaps the big wheel will turn and clients will realise that in general, good is more successful than mediocre.Which photographer would you’d love to join Lensmodern? Name them, we could do a live shout-out.No, there are just too many.

How do you get young art directors to understand the difference between your archive and Google images?They do understand, but good work is more expensive and clients are increasingly unwilling to pay for it.My kids give a song about 10 seconds before deciding whether they like it or not.Why not?They’ve made no financial investment.Also, there’s a million more songs out there lined up for them, free and ready to go.Photography used to cost a fortune, so people took it seriously and treated it with respect.Unfortunately, in the absence of critical judgment people use price as a benchmark for quality. Speed and access are now more important.Finally, which photographers do you admire today?Mostly guys we represent, like Andreas Heumann,

Ashton Keidtsch.

Jaap Viegenthart and many more, the measure is ‘I wish I’d taken that’.

Others are Luke, my son.

And Steve McCurry.

Shot anything good recently Max?Of course, old photographers never retire, they just go out of focus.

NB.

I did this ad for free.My theory was; get freelance work, do it free in exchange for a free hand.I thought it would allow me to get together better work than I could in my day job.At the time asking John Claridge to shoot your layout was like asking Jay Z to write your jingle.The chances are he's going to say no, but if he said yes, you'd almost certainly have a good ad.He said yes.The result was probably the first ad I made that actually looked good.John, like Me, you grew up in the East End of London, how was it for you?Growing up in the East End, the old East End that is, was fantastic. I loved every moment. Great parents, great mates.I boxed for six years. I also represented West Ham at athletics and I loved motorcycling (I still have a couple). Got into a bit of ‘trouble’ but most of all I took pictures.When did you take your first picture?About the age of eight, I spotted a plastic camera at a local funfair in the East End.I just had to win it, it was as simple as that. I wanted to take home all the memories of that day. Obviously, I adore eels, stewed or jellied. We’d go on holiday to Southend and eat fresh seafood, so I thought I’d send this postcard back to everyone.

When did you start to take it seriously?My first serious camera when I was fifteen, bought by hire purchase.I still have it, but it’s resting now.

What was your first job?The West Ham Labour Exchange sent me 'up West'.For a job in the Photographic Department of an Advertising Agency, McCann-Erickson.Which I got.

So what was a normal day for you in the McCann Erickson Photographic Department.When I started, the college graduates wouldn’t speak to me, I was told I was from the wrong side of the tracks.You were at McCann’s the same time as one of my favourite designers - Robert Brownjohn, did you meet him or work for him?

Yes, I not only met BJ but also worked with him on a few projects and I took pictures for him for Typographica Magazine. We would also spend time in the darkroom experimenting with different types of photographic techniques. We also experimented with sliding the emulsion off glass plates that I had exposed to different typefaces. I then manoeuvred the emulsion into different shapes. The plates and emulsion were then dried and projected onto photographic paper showing what could be achieved with distorting typefaces.

How, only a year after getting your first job, did you get yourself an exhibition?BJ and Ross Cramer, as well as many Art Directors, liked my East End documentary pictures, and one day BJ said “You’re going to have an exhibition, kid.”An offer I couldn’t and wouldn’t refuse. The exhibition was said to have shades of Walker Evans. That was when I was seventeen.

Who were your early photography heroes?Walker Evans.

Bill Brandt.

Irving Penn.

Robert Frank.

Avedon.

Man Ray.

Eugene Atget.

Robert Doisneau.

Andre Kertesz,

Brassai.

And Josef Sudek.

I read that you just turned up on Bill Brandt's doorstep one day?Yeah, I went to his home in Hampstead to give him one of my prints.I was seventeen.He was lovely, gentle and polite. He invited me in and asked my opinion on some work he was doing I walked away feeling ten feet tall.

How did you become David Montgomery's assistant?

When I was seventeen and still at McCann’s, I was recommended to David by BJ, Ross Cramer and Terry O’Neill.What did you learn from David Montgomery?An invaluable door opened to a new way of thinking about editorial and commercial work. David also allowed me to print, not just for him, but also forJeanloup Sieff,

Don McCullin

and Saul Leiter.

I only discovered Saul Leiter three or four years ago, he went straight into my top five photographers, what was he like?A good man, a real pleasure to print for. Also very laid back.You go it alone at nineteen, opening your own studio, you must’ve been a confident kid?I just needed to take pictures.What was the first job you got as a photographerMy very first commissions were for Management Today, Queen, Town, Harper’s, and Nova Magazines.

Who were your early clients?A lot of cars and countries; Bahamas, Indian Tourist Board, English Tourist.Cars? Audi, Rolls Royce, Porsche, Citroën, Ford, I'm sure I've missed a couple.

What was "Five Soldiers"?A film I did based on an American Civil War tale, comparing it to the war in Vietnam.It caused a riot amongst the students when it was shown at a university campus in the US, and ended up getting banned, but made its way onto the underground circuit.The press compared the film to Luis Buñuel.Unusually, you've done great stuff across the map; portraits, landscapes, still life, cars, reportage?Yeah, I'm a photographer.LANDSCAPE:

The 'India' campaign still looks great, were there layouts or did you just find the shots when you got there?With headlines from Geoff Seymour, rough layouts from Graham Cornthwaite, Graham, myself and my assistants went off to India to explore and discover what we could do with their brief.

Did you prefer Art Directors to give you a tight brief or an open brief?I have no problems with Art Directors giving me any type of brief.

You're then asked to -a) Pick some of the most beautiful women in the world.b) Take them to a tropical island.c) Ask them to take their kits off.d) Bank a large cheque for the above.Nice gig the Pirelli Calendar?Course it fucking was.

I've written about Qantas Art Director John Knight, very underrated?John Knight was and still is underrated.Had a lot of fun working with him.Not only a great mind, a great sense of humour.Also, he swore more than me.

Rumour has it that you knocked out a couple of Art Directors? And I don’t mean with the quality of your pictures.YES!PORTRAITS.

How did you start shooting the jazz portraits?I shared the lease of 47 Frith Street, Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, with Ronnie, (below) and Pete King for fourteen years.I had the two top floors of the building where I had my studio, office, darkroom and lived. So each night I used to go to sleep listening to jazz, which was great, (if you loved jazz).

My favourite was Chet Baker, what he was like?

Chet Baker was a very charming man.While I was telling him about the first time I ever heard him play was on an EP called ‘Winter Wonderland’ that I had bought when I was thirteen; he hesitated, thought and told me the line-up and then just looked towards me with all his memories.Then I took the picture.

You've shot Britain's most famous comedians, who made you laugh most?Tommy Cooper.When he looked at me, it was very difficult not to break into laughter.We did three rolls of film and it was getting intense, quite serious.He said 'This is serious, isn't it?', and I was in fits of laughter.He was courteous to me, and when I said I loved Laurel & Hardy, he started doing impressions of Oliver Hardy until I had tears running down my face, I had to stop him.I think the pictures tell the story, there's some fun photographs and some serious photographs - I know he had demons, but I found him a very lovely man, very gracious.

The Frankie Howerd shoot was interesting.He was up and down. Funny one minute sad the next.Quiet a few demons I think.

Spike Milligan came to my studio.We sat around listening and talking about jazz for a couple of hours before I shot a picture.Another lovely man with a very deep sense of humour.

The ad you did with Derrick Hass for the Covent Garden Art Company is amazing, it could run tomorrow unchanged.(If they were still going...people sent out for artwork...computers didn't exist...)It was hard to find the model for that shoot.

You spent a bit of time modelling, the other side of the camera?Ha Ha.

Who was the best Art Director you worked with?This is very difficult to answer as I worked with all the best Art Directors in the business. Not just Art Directors, but Designers, Copywriters and Typographers.You seemed to create a new, very distinctive portrait style, with those very dark, moody Klaus Kalde lith prints?I, myself, in the darkroom was exploring different printing techniques for portraits and separately with Klaus exploring Lith printing.

STILL LIFE.

What ad were you most pleased with?Without question I worked in the golden age of Advertising with like-minded people who all had an opinion and passion about communication. It was not run by a committee of visually illiterate people with no soul, which seems to be the norm these days.However, I must say that, in my mind, there are a few exceptions but sadly very, very few. So I feel I was extremely lucky to have had a great deal of fun, crazy times,seen the world and produce, I think, some important work.Many talented people made that possible.Do you think digital technology has helped photography?Experimenting is now easier, but I see less of it?Like any new technology, it has it’s pluses and minuses.For me photography should come from the heart. not the head.Which ever way you want to run with it.Did you meet Avedon, Penn or any of your photography heroes?Just Bill Brandt. Not just a great photographer, but also a very charming man.What do you shoot with today?Cameras. Anything, I’m not a camera freak.Do you still print your own stuff?Of course.What photographers do you admire today?Robert Frank.

Sebastiao Salgado.

Sarah Moon.

You seem seem to be publishing more books these days than J. K. Rowling?Hopefully a very important one next year. Will keep you informed.

You grew up in the land of the Brum?I was actually born in the Children's Hospital in Birmingham, although I grew up in the Black Country in a town called Lye.Art College?I worked in engineering until I was 21, so as a mature student I studied at Manchester Polytechnic School of Photography.Did they teach you anything useful?How to lose your virginity and smoke.When did you take your first picture?As an amateur around 1965, but as a professional November 1972.

What was your first job?I was a trainee draughtsman.That must have fed into your photography?Assisted my sense of proportion, when it comes to composition.Did you assist anyone?No.

What was the first picture you were paid for?It was for the magazine Management Today, I shot Newsprint being unloaded from a barge on the Thames, just down the road from where I live now in Rotherhithe, South East London.Who were your early ad clients?Daily Mail, British Airways, Hewlett Packard, Olivetti, Levi’s, Philips & Beefeater Gin.

Who were your early photography heroes?Myself.What traits did you most admire in yourself?Obsessiveness, aesthetic judgment, bravery, competitive spirit and being not afraid of hard work.After your smoke filled upbringing in Birmingham, how did you find the glitzy world of advertising?I have always enjoyed problem solving and advertising certainly nourished that. Being a good mathematician, inherited from my engineering days in Birmingham, served me well, certainly when jumping through photographic technical hoops on advertising shoots, prior to the advent of Photoshop.I found advertising enjoyable because it not only involved creativity but a high level of problem solving.

Who was the best Art Director you worked with?Paul Arden, because he loved photography and understood how to use it powerfully.

I heard a rumour that you once turned up to the D&AD Awards, being held at the Royal Albert Hall, dressed as the Royal Albert Hall.Is this true and if so do you have photographic evidence?I certainly did and here I am in the outfit.

What was your first good ad?I just can’t remember having done so many.

You worked with a little known art directing hero of mine - John Knight, how was he to work with?That was on the Beefeater Gin campaign.John made me feel like anything goes!He enjoyed working in my studio, which at that time was situated in the dark overgrown weed land of the disused docks.

Were you difficult to work with?Eccentric but never difficult. In fact maybe far too easy at times.

You’re quite arty, did you like the commercialism of advertising?No.

What ad were you most pleased with?Probably the 1991 film I shot for Paul Arden, who was Creative Director at Saatchi’s.Its title was 'For The World' and was for Forte Hotels.My brief was to get Rocco Forte a Knighthood, he got one!

Why move into commercials? Cash?It was my ego getting the better of me.Did you prefer Art Directors to give you a tight or open brief?Always an open one of course.Well, the top art directors were confident creative’s and always set an open brief.

DAVE: As well as being a ludicrously well paid advertising photographer you had a parallel career as a barely paid rock photographer?Correct.

And sang with Ian Dury?Me duetting with Ian at my 40th birthday party, which was also the launch party for my book ‘Work’.How many album covers have you shot?I think almost 200, if you include single sleeves.

Is shooting an album different to shooting an ad?Because of the total freedom, most definitely.

You shot a lot of them with your mate Barney Bubbles. Surely one of Britain’s most talented and least known designers?Absolutely criminal. Mainly due to the fact he took his life 20 years ago.What did you learn from Barney?At the point of absolute failure arrives success.Do you have an example?Too many to recall an individual example.It was most often that the edge of the envelope was pushed.

Often there's only a face and a prop, so how is it that your portraits are so distinctive?I wish I knew.I guess its the fact I always try so hard to produce something that is different.Plus coming from the Black Country certainly gives you a warped outlook on life.I presume some come from observing and thinking on the spot?

But some come from you having the sheer cojones to ask someone famous to do something weird?‘Ere Manolo, sniff those shoes for Me’.

‘Helen, be a love and crawl under that table for me.’

‘Lie down and give that saw a kiss for me matey’

‘Can we just cover one with a saucer on your bonce?’

‘Ere Damien! Stick this thing in your gob!’

Where do you get the brass-neck to ask famous people to do silly things?I have no choice. For I have to ask them otherwise the photograph would be boring.I experienced that first hand when you shot some portraits for Me, (and art director David Goss).

We shot the first few, they all went well, but when it came to Dave Trott we couldn't think how to shoot him.You said to your assistant ‘Pop down to the sports shop and get some ping pong balls, I think we'll pop one in Dave's mouth.’‘You won't’ said Dave.So we didn't.It was not easy trying to make Dave Trott interesting, and his lack of collaboration didn't help.

You have portraits that are supposedly shot in camera, but Brian, how on earth can you do this in camera?

Being an ex-engineer I developed many light machines to produce in-camera effects.

For years after people visiting my studio would stand within this light machine.So I'm guessing you're not a fan of CGI and retouching?I’m one of the last practicing living photographers that had to do it all in camera, which involved technical gymnastics.It's good that they don’t request photographers to be that clever these days because its painful and you have to be really good.

Do you think the digitisation of photography has advanced imagery?Created a great deal of harm in developing homogeneity in image making.However it has opened up opportunities due to the decimal divisions now in exposures, to create beautifully lit scenarios when employing lights.

If you could take a portrait of anyone, living or dead, who would you choose?Princess Anne.Which of your rivals did you respect most?Irving Penn. and Richard Avedon.

And Richard Avedon.

Why and why?Constantly, day after day, as professional photographers they produced powerful images from a variety of subject matters.Only the truly great photographers can photograph anything to a high standard.

Which photographers do you admire today?None.

N.B. A Direction magazine article from the early eighties.

Subject:'IMPORTANT!!' I didn't recognise the name of the sender, let's call her Nadia Johnson. What could it be? What have I missed? Is it the bank? Tax office? Maybe it's something good? A publisher with a huge cheque wanting to turn this blog in to a book? What could it be? Should I be worried? Excited? Turned out ‘Nadia’ was a student looking for a job. So it was a kind of trick. I guess Nadia thought that if she put ‘IMPORTANT!!’ in the subject box I’d read on. She was right. But she hadn't considered how I'd feel by the end of the email - tricked. So if someone asked me to pick one email from my inbox that wasn't important, I’d pick that one. Because she’d forced me to assess its importance. In advertising, over-claiming is second nature . It's easy to get clients to buy it, but hard to get the public to. If someone reads ‘Product X will rock your world’, they are forced to assess whether it’s true. Generally, they conclude that it isn’t. So it gets put into a big bin marked ‘Products That Won't Rock My World’. It also demonstrates that you don't understand, or care, about the person on the other end of your message, maybe even that they are daft enough to believe it. Hardly a way to create empathy. Let’s say the subject of Nadia’s email was ‘Not important’. Then I couldn’t help but think that Nadia was being too self effacing, too polite. But if asked to pick an email that wasn’t important, it wouldn't be Nadia’s, because she had made a connection, albeit a small one. Ultimately, advertising is simply connecting companies to people. Understanding context is crucial. But it’s hard for advertising to put out messages that are realistic. If you can legally put messages out that say your product will rock your world, why wouldn’t you? It's a good theory, but harder to sell than ‘We’re AMAZING!’.EXHIBIT A: Channel 5. Today, a new channel gets lost amongst the hundreds already out there. In the late nineties, a new channel was the fifth channel. Good news, the new channel got a tremendous amount of media attention. Bad news, the channel turned out to be rubbish and got a tremendous amount of media attention. They had a transmission issue which meant the picture was fuzzy. This was probably just as well, because the programmes were shocking. Dodgy Australian soaps like ‘Sons & Daughters’ and ropey French gameshows like ‘Greed’.That was their high-end offering, lower down their schedules they had a whole bunch of cheap documentaries; ‘Strictly Hairdressing’, ‘Swindon Superbabes’ and ‘On the Piste’.They had tacky chat shows like ‘Roy’, ‘HG’s Planet Norwich’ and ‘Melinda’s Big Night In’. Their lead soap, ‘Family Affairs’, was so poor they blew up the majority of the cast in a boat, so they could start again. People ignored Channel 5. It had, appropriately enough, a 5% share. It was a big bowl of wrong. So a couple of years in they felt they needed a new ad agency to get people to give them another chance. Before they came into CDD for a chemistry meeting, we thought we’d get the ball rolling by sketching out a few ideas to talk about. So how the hell do we get people to tune into something that had been lambasted since it launched? Why would anyone believe it’ is now good? They can’t just say they are now good, they’ll look as though they're in denial. If we say ‘Channel 5 are good’ people will simply think ‘Nope, they’re not'.David Abbott used to say ‘a small admission gains a great acceptance’.Our strategy was to admit we hadn’t been good. If we say ‘Hands up, we were bad, but we've changed’ people will agree with the first bit and may be a little more open minded on the second bit. It worked for Avis, Volkswagen and Skoda, why not Channel 5? How exciting. We got our Pentels out.

‘It wasn’t what we were expecting’ said the guys from Channel 5.‘We know, exciting isn't it?’ we said.‘Er... yeah...could we take copies of the ads back to the office?’ Great we thought, they obviously like them so much they want to show the guys back at the ranch. In retrospect, they probably wanted proof of what had just happened. We didn’t get that account. Channel 5 ran some ads saying they were amazing.(Nobody believed them, their share didn’t rise.) A few years later, a new Channel 5 Marketing Director chanced upon the ads we’d written.She was tickled, called us to put us straight onto their new pitch to change their perception.

Another green scrapbook.(For the young people out there, a scrapbook is a kind of pre-internet, analogue way of bookmarking web pages, only heavier and, as it turns out, longer lasting.)This one is full of photographic reference. It's from about 1993/4, when Satoshi Saikusa, Raymond Meier and Rolling Stone Magazine were all the rage. At least they were in my world.There's a couple of images in there I'd forgotten all about.They are screaming tortured heads.Almost like Francis Bacon, only greener.I wish I could read the signature to give the guy credit, they still look extrordinary.All I can remember is that a guy from The London College of Printing came to see me with a book of amazing images like the four below.I tried to helping by designing a poster for him as a mailer, it showed all these amazing howling, tortured heads with a line underneath that said ‘Also available for weddings, graduations and bar mitzvahs’.The plan was to get someone at The L.C.P. to print it for free, but unfortunately we couldn't make it happen.It’s a real shame, I love his images and would loved to have helped.If anyone recognises the images and knows his name, let me know and I’ll credit and tag the images.

In 1962, a bright, shiny new agency Collett Dickerson Pearce was offered a big account, the DuMaurier cigarette brand.This good news was particularly timely, as many at the fledgling agency were starting to worry their jobs.The agency turned the offer down.Founder John Pearce told the potential client the brand was a ‘dead duck’, and he didn't want his agency to work with 'no-hope brands' or brands that they didn't truly believe would respond to advertising.But being a decent sort of chap, Mr Pearce tried to help out the client trying to give him some business, by saying he’d take on that ‘funny looking king-size brand in gold foil packs’ that he’d recently seen in Old Bond Street shop.The client was baffled, he said he agreed that the brand in question may have a future in the king-size sector, but that sector was small he couldn't commit much budget to it.‘Never mind the budget’ said Pearce ‘Give us the brand and we'll make something of it’.The early work looks unremarkable, but at the time cigarette ads came in two flavours;a) Starring heroes; cowboys, naval officers and all manner old world status symbols.b) Starring ‘cool young people snogging and smoking’, as early B&H copywriter Frank McCone put it.Because king-size cigarettes carried a king-size price tag, Frank and Art Director Mike Savino tried to justify the price by referencing the distinctive gold foil pack.They wrote a line ‘Pure Gold from Benson & Hedges’.As the campaign developed they started treating the pack as if it were a valuable object, like jewellery or money.As the campaign develops so too does the photography. Some of the images still look amazing. And by 1980, (still with CDP), Benson & Hedges was the biggest selling cigarette in Britain.

Nb. Weirdly, they re-shot a couple of sixties ads in the seventies.Badly.Compare these two the the two earlier versions to appreciate the value of a good photographer.

Whenever briefing photographers at Harper’s Bazaar, Art Director Alexey Brodovitch would send them off with the same brief - ‘Astonish me!’.With a lot of photography today, it feels like the brief is ‘Can you do it like that?’.It's understandable, it's easier to get a client to approve your vision if you show them an example of exactly what it looks like. But the most difficult job in advertising is stopping people to engage with your idea, and one thing that stops people more than most is the unusual - something they haven't seen before.There's never been a point in human history where more people have been trying to attract the public's attention.So the need to surprise, intrigue and astonish has never been greater.Astonishing jumps queues.Different gets waved to the front.Even odd will get preferential treatment.Scottish photographer Alan David-Tu's images won't be confused with other photographers.Whether a pair of sneakers, a face or a roll of gaffer tape - they're astonishing.

Tim Berners Lee; what an absolute rascal.Not only did he shaft the chaps at Yellow Pages, the manufacturers of Fax machines and the purveyors of XXX filth in the Soho district of London, he's made scrapbooks virtually extinct.Their numbers are dwindling, reportedly below those of the Snow Leopard.Before you could simply call up a hundreds images for any photographer or illustrator you care to mention, you could only reference those images if you owned them.Which meant;a) Buying a book on a particular photographer. Fine, but expensive, if you wanted references of someone world-famous, like Irving Penn. But not fine if you wanted references for some up and coming turk.b) Keep all the photographers cards and pages you liked in a scrapbook.I’ve come across a bunch of these in the loft recently.What’s striking is the sheer focus you get by viewing only one or two images of a particular photographer.The tyranny of choice we now face each time we need to commission an image can be confusing, particularly as there appears to be less specialism.Most photographers now shoot everything under the sun; portraits, landscapes, still lives.You name it they can put a camera in front of it and press the clicker.(Often with surprisingly average results.)Anyhow, here's one of my scrapbooks, photography I liked, circa 1992.Ironically, although it now feels redundant, I wouldn't mind betting that most of these images aren't currently on the net.Let me correct that, weren’t on the net.

Agencies and clients generally shack up together after a single blind date, (or a pitch, to give it its technical name.) As a result, the relationship is a marriage of convenience; ‘‘Do you, Least Bad Agency In The Process, take you, Client Who Needs To Look Like They’re Shaking Things Up?’’But when an ‘old flame’ comes back the dynamic is different, you feel you have to do everything you can to justify their decision.Or at least I did when this happened back in 2009.I got a call from Andy Wood, formerly Adnams Marketing Director, now their C.E.O. and top chap.He talked fondly of the old ‘Beer From The Coast’ campaign we'd created together six years earlier.

Then he told me that their marketing had ‘lost its way a bit in recent times’, research had said people saw them ‘a bit like a Volvo, reliable, trustworthy, but boring’.He shared some of their most recent ads.

Wow! The only positive I could find was that they consistently featured generously proportioned pictures of a pump clip, which would be lapped up by all those...er... pump clip fans out there.He was reluctant to jump back into producing more Beer From The Coast work, as it felt like a backwards step.I told him I'd mull the problem over.What to do?The ‘Beer From The Coast’ campaign was pretty well-known, so it felt wrong to completely ignore it and reinvent the wheel, maybe we could evolve it?I remembered back to when we were writing the first campaign; a planner had argued ‘brewing beer next to the sea doesn't actually make it taste better’.Technically that may be true, but emotionally it isn't.maybe we should lie and say it does make it taste better? If done in a tongue in cheek way, maybe saying being brewed by the coast DOES make it taste better could be cool?E.g. ‘Every pint contains special pockets of unique Southwold Sea Air.’ It would be a kind of USP, (that's ‘Unique Selling Point’ for all you post Compact Disc generation.).It could give Adnams a bit of attitude, make them more contemporary. Less Volvo-ey.I emailed Andy a couple of concepts.

He liked them.But there was a problem, the idea was too beer focussed.The Adnams of 2009 was different from the Adnams of 2002, it had diversified, they now distilled Whiskey, had a growing number of stores, hotels, wine departments and all manner of brand extensions.All these different parts of the business looked different too.We'd need to unify them.But the messages would be quite diverse, ranging from ‘30% off Rioja’ to ‘Weekend Hotel Breaks’ to ‘New Store opening’ to ‘Mayday Bitter is back’.Given the range and type of messages we'd need to cover, words seemed to be the only way to go.We'd need to create a distinctive voice to make it feel like one brand.The most successful 'voices' tend to feel true to the company.Baked Bean companies that talk like street pimps or Banks that talk like they are your oldest friend don't tend to hang around for long.So what truths could be used to build Adnams voice?We put together a presentation.

This theory was bought.But what did it mean in practice?How would it look?I liked the idea of using recycled papers as backgrounds, to look home-made.I felt photographs of beer would look too corporate.Photographs of products can look cool, graphic, vibrant and powerful.But they rarely charm.We just need to find the right illustrator...ooh, there he is, sitting on the other side of the office; Simon Barna, the dude on placement, he could draw?

But could he draw a pint of beer?

Yes!POSTERS.I tried a single font in the initial roughs.

But I felt it was a bit formal, maybe we needed to be more playful and mix up the fonts?

I was happy with the tone of the words.They weren't overtly selly, so felt like they were talking to an intelligent, sophisticated audience.The tone was kind of 'We know that your too intelligent to trick, so we're just going to joke around with you about the merits of a particular beer, then you buy what the hell you want to buy. It's no skin off our nose."It made Adnams appear confident.The various recycled paper backgrounds worked well, giving the ads a homemade, environmentally friendly feel.Changing the font from beer to beer gave each beer its own flavour, BUT it just made the campaign feel erratic.We're supposed to be unifying.We needed to give ourselves stricter guidelines:

Which makes them look like this.

BROCHURE/BOOKLET THINGY.We needed to get the whole Adnams story out there, their views on the environment, their diverse portfolio, etc, etc.We could house it on their site, but it would also be good to create something we could put in people's hands, whether they were trade or consumers.We set about creating a book.First I needed an illustrator, I wanted someone who was a bit naive...

...fun...

...a bit scribbley...

...positive...

and not too polished...

I chose Nicholas Saunders:

I went to Southwold to make notes and collect ideas for it's content, then sent them to Nicholas to weave his magic.

I wrote a manifesto for the intro page, then Nicholas brought it to life.

We needed a section on ordering beer online.I thought it would be cool to have a picture with bottled beers hidden within it, and titled ‘Where to find our beer?’, a bit like a kids book.

Nicholas's first rough looked good.

But maybe it would look more interesting if it wasn't confined to a street?

We turned some of the illustrations in the book into ads.

Also, maybe we could rehash that 'coastal air' idea?

WEBSITE.We re-skined it, changing it from this...

...to this...

BADGES.We colour coded the Adnams tours with a range of cool enamel badges.

Seasonal Cellar Wine Club.It didn't seem to stand for anything in particular, so I tried to coral some facts and views on the world to let people know why they were different.

SOCIAL.Their brewery is smack bang in the middle of Southwold High Street, so we turned one of their windows into an Instagram/Facebook/Pinterest photo-op.

BOXES.The ultimate free media, most simply print the name of the product and a few functional details, it's a waste, it's 's a great way to to get your story out. Free.

LORRIES & VANS.We turned them into moving 48 sheets.

CELLAR&KITCHEN STORES.We took our new voice in store.

AWARDS.We let people know about them.

THE LATITUDE FESTIVAL.It's very local.

NEWMARKET SPONSORSHIP.

BEERMATS.One of the least used, most read bits of media; the humble beermat.

JACK BRAND.We helped create this sub brand.We wanted to create something authentic, not just Shoreditch cool.Andy Wood, the Adnams C.E.O. turned up at our offices with just the thing, ye olde Adnams bottle.

We based our design on it.

THE END.Three years in Adnams was beginning to be ‘de-Volvo'd’, made cool even.But, and we should have guessed it given their environmental policies, Adnams decided to source their creative work locally.It's understandable from their point of view, they now had a template to copy and agencies in Suffolk are cheaper than those in Soho.Is it really worth paying writers to find an angle on a new message when we could just say it?Is it worth paying for Art Directors to Art Direct each execution when we already have a style to copy?Is it worth debating with an agency about what they want vs what we want?Is it worth listening to an agency push us to be ballsy when we don't always want to be?Is it worth arguing about whether the layout is cleaner without the extra info?Is it worth having to listen to the agency wang on about which is the wittier execution?Well, on the evidence of their recent work, below, I'd have to say:YES!,YES!,YES!,YES!,YES!andABSO-BLOODY-LUTELY YES!But then again, I'm horribly biased, you decide.

It’s sometimes tough to argue the obvious. When you have teams of people analysing, strategising and theorising it’s difficult to sound like the dumbest guy in the room. Take ABC, someone must have had to pitch the idea ‘How about we say tv is good?’

‘‘TV is good? Duh!’’It doesn’t sound very creative or intelligent, but it’s right. It's not the kind of idea that's greeted with joy; ‘Shouldn’t we be saying people need tv in their lives? Or say that it's the most cost-effective way to shift a product? Or maybe we say it enriches lives and gives joy to the joyless? Educates the uneducated, y’know... the white trash... thickheads?’There are armies of people with long titles and big qualifications looking for something intelligent sounding to build a career boosting power point presentation around. So holding on to your gossamer thin vibe against an army wanting empirical evidence is hard.‘Haven’t we got a demographic insight? Some media usage numbers? A chart with some big numbers on? Come on, throw us a bone here?’But sometimes a believable emotion can be more powerful than a dubious fact.I remember Paul McCartney once being challenged about the unevenness of The Beatles ‘White Album’, ‘Wouldn’t it have been better to put all the best tracks onto a single ’Instead of defending Bungalow Bill, Savoy Truffle and all the other ‘interesting’ tracks, he said “Nah, leave it alone, it's The Beatles ‘White Album’ ”.So uber-confident that you have to agree.The guys at TBWA/CHIAT/DAY adopted the same attitude with the ABC posters; ‘You want us to defend TV? Er... well, there hasn't been any World Wars since tv got going, how about that? Now fuck off...idiot!’Rather than defending tv, it makes you think it doesn’t need defending. Lee Clow, TBWA\Chiat\Day’s Chairman: ‘We thought, why not kind of honestly celebrate the notion that TV is a good part of our lives, and sitting down in front of it for a while isn’t a bad thing.’

The ads above look good here, on your computer, but the place radically simple, human and funny ads like these work really well is out on the street.What felt a little too basic on a piece of paper in a meeting will shout above the rooftops when on a billboard.What felt like a childish joke as a scribble in an office can often kill all the pompous, patronising bullshit that surrounds when on a street.

Looks easy. Isn't.

When you start a job with the title ‘Creative’ you feel compelled to be very creative.It’s easy to confuse being described as ‘creative with with being ‘nuts’, ‘bonkers’ or ‘out there’.Consequently, you tend to emulate or simply copy people who appear very weird.In 1987 I attempted to Jean Paul Goude.I can’t recall whether it was of lack of money, poor script or the fact that it was for one of the least cool brands in the world, (Hotpoint), but Jean Paul Goude declined to help us make our ‘Jean Paul Goude’ ad. (A shame, as it would’ve made the task much easier.) Instead, we got the director Nick Lewin.Red hot at the time, having just directed two very cool Levi’s ads for BBH; ‘Marlin’ and ‘Rivets’.Try as we might, the ads didn’t end up very Goude.I realise now that very creative people’s minds work differently to the the average bod. They are stuffed with a whole bunch of weird reference points, as unique to them as their finger prints.Often these reference points are ignored or thought of as uncool by the majority.But very creative people connect these disparate reference points in idiosyncratic ways, eg. “I want a kind of  ‘H R Puff ‘N’ Stuff ’ vibe, but with bit of ‘Lou Grant’ attitude and a kind of Fiorucciesque stye?Oh, and a Gilbert O’Sullivan type soundscape…upbeat Gilbert O’Sullivan, not the maudlin shit.”
Their idiosyncratic reference points and take on culture gives them their aesthetic.It’s almost impossible to mimic someone else’s aesthetic.So, although we tried very hard, I, and Nick Lewin, weren’t Jean Paul Goude.He was just too damn idiosyncratic.He was a brilliant illustrator, photographer, Art Director, Director, Choreographer, Wallpaper Designer, etc.His images, whether moving or still leap out of magazines, spring from screens.They’re striking and incredibly seductive.This is him, (acting the giddy goat):‍

He started out as an illustrator, a very good one.

Then he turns up at Esquire as an Art Director, executing stuff like this for George Lois.(Yes, that George Lois.)

Occasionally art directing his own covers.

But mostly illustrating for them.

Images start to get more realistic with the advent of the airbrush.

‍

He then mixing photography and airbrushing.

He gets a new girlfriend and takes control of her image:

As there’s no Photoshop, Goude cuts up negatives and airbrushes the print.

He starts choreographing and directing her gigs:

Farida.

He starts directing commercials. Unlike anyone else at the time:

‍

You were Fallon McElligott’s first Creative, Tom obviously liked you, what did what did you make of Tom when he first interviewed you?Actually, I had known Tom at Bozell. We never worked together as writer and art director, but I knew him. So when he offered me a job, it wasn't out of the blue. I remember we sat by a fountain and Tom said we would buy up all the foam core in the entire city and pitch new accounts. I kept my mouth shut but it sounded to me like a lot of work. Tom was excited. That excitement started then and lasted for seven years. It got everything and everybody going.

At what point did you think you had a future in advertising, was there a particular idea, award, comment, etc?First, I had an instructor my senior year of college who pulled me aside and told me that he normally told design students who weren’t very good to go into advertising.Second, he told me he was making an exception in my case.He thought I’d make a good designer but he thought I’d do better in advertising.Third, I did.We had a week’s break from school.I left the outside window near my work area unlocked so I could sneak in and use the stat camera.At first I didn't think I’d be able to get in because there was snow all around the building, if I walked up to the window my tracks would show.I walked around the building with my back to it until I got to my window and crawled in and repeated that for a week until I was done.My book won an award at graduation and it came with a good-sized check so I thought I might do ok.Did you feel like you were in advertising or against it?I hope I’m being honest here, I always felt like I was against it.My first day on the job in advertising, my wife asked me how was it? I said I think there's more people in it to be in it than to do it.It felt like I was always trying to make it better than it was.There was always resistance to doing good work.Years later I remember looking at an award show list of results on the wall and I turned to the first person I saw and said we're making history.It was Pat Fallon and he said yeah, but we don’t realise it.So I went home that night and told my wife that we were making history and I realised it.She said yes and you bitched and complained your way through the whole thing.

Minneapolis. Do you think the cold helped keep you all alert and focused?Yeah.I had a grade school teacher who started the day one really cold morning by telling us to look around the room at all the red cheeks and then he told us it would be a good day, we would learn a lot because we had been so cold.I thought he was full of shit but I never forgot it.Did you FM guys feel like you were on a mission to add a bit of intelligence to the schlocky world of Advertising?Yes.It was us against everybody else constantly.And I remember Tom coming back from a meeting with the 4A’s in New York.He told us we were going to work on a campaign to improve the image of advertising.I said the best way to improve it was to make it better.Well, Tom disagreed.We went back and forth several times.I was at one end of the conference table and Tom was at the other.The rest of the department was sitting on both sides.It got tense.I remember seeing the worried reactions from the creatives stuck in the middle as I pounded the table at my end and Tom did the same at his end.Finally, Tom ended it by saying he was going to great ads for it and he wanted others to join him.Much later I realised that Bill Miller and I had won a gold in The One Show, for a spot we did for advertising in that campaign.I still shake my head today, I think we were both right?At the time, most campaigns created a hermetically sealed brand worlds, Fallon McElligott’s work used the real world and culture in particular, why?I don’t know if I have an answer for that.Maybe it's the red cheeks from the cold.Also, one of Tom’s favourite expressions was zig when the others were zagging.We never wanted our work to resemble anybody else’s.Our work for our clients always had to be different.

Tom McElligott, most influential ad man of the 80s?I would certainly agree with that, but then I’m biased.How comfortable was Tom’s seat on that first day?You know, that’s something I never thought about.Looking back on it you'd think it would have been the big topic for me then.It wasn’t.It never crossed my mind.I think it was because I had been there so long.I just kept my head down and made ads and helped others do the same.A reporter asked me once how I kept everybody in the department.I said I didn’t keep them they kept me.We cranked it up.Adweek described you as a Creative’s Creative Director, why?When I was associate Creative Director a reporter asked one of my writer partners how much time I spent on my own work and how much time I spent helping others.I said seventy percent on my own work, thirty percent on others.My partner said the exact opposite.I discovered that I got a bigger kick out of helping somebody else do a good ad than I did doing one myself.It was sort of like a drug; the more I did it the better it felt.I remember my associate Creative Director standing in my doorway with a fake frown on his face and he said “Just when I thought I’d done a great ad, here comes a young team down the hall with a campaign better than anything I’ll ever do”.I said that's exactly why we’re here.I also fought for good work.I fought anything and anybody to get good work out, I fought a lot.The Creative Department gave me a bullet proof vest with my name on it for taking all the flak.

Luke Sullivan described his first walk through the Fallon McElligott Creative Department like this; ‘Genius, Genius, Genius, stairwell, Genius, Genius...’ What did you look for when hiring?We looked for the best people we could find.We seldom hired.Nobody in the department wanted to give anything up.We were selfish I guess.When we did hire we looked for a sense of humour first and foremost.I had help from others in the department when looking at books. I’d often ask them to recommend the best of the best. I never doubted their ability or their choices.I was comfortable delegating that and I was always happy with the results.They did not let me down.

Were you a hard task master?Well, I don't know if I’m the best person to answer that.I don’t think I was.But I know that if there was a chance of a campaign being great, it didn’t feel like work to me.If we had one good ad on the table six would always be better.I also thought no Creative Director should ever get paid to tell people who that idea sucked or he or she had seen that ad before.Leave those alone, that’s not saying anything.I used to sometimes get what I called a burst of ice water in my veins just before going into a room full of ad ideas.I never wanted to leave a One Show gold campaign on the wall. Then I’d shake it off, be myself and enjoy the work.

Who’s the most gifted person you've ever worked with?Bob Barrie.What was the ad you wrote that made you think you could do it.All of those in my book when I crawled though the window I guess.Under Tom, the work had either great headlines or great visuals.Under you there were a lot more new structures, I loved the way that the creative work, seemed to be looking for new ways of structuring an ad, ie; Jim Beam.

I think some of it goes back to ‘Zig when the others are zagging’.We were naturally trying to avoid looking like the other guys.It’s interesting that you mention Jim Beam here.I should tell you that at one point we had like fourteen different campaigns for fourteen different products of theres.One day we got word that the president of Jim Bean brands thought that all his work looked too much alike.We were told he was coming to the agency to tell us personally.I had a hunch that the president had never seen all of his campaigns in one room.I knew I hadn't and I worked on all of them.We lined up all the campaigns on all the walls of our largest conference room.They looked like they we’re shot out of machine guns.The president came in sat down lit up a cigar and leaned back in his chair and looked around the room.He was surrounded.He left without ever mentioning anything about the ads looking alike because they didn’t.That’s a credit to all the Creative teams who did the work.A lot of your old Creative department wrote to me after my blog about Tom, they were very protective of you, pointing out some of the work I’d featured was under your watch.Also, and without exception, they said that not only did you continue the quality of the creative work, you raised it.E.g. Bob Barrie: ‘Pat was a wonderful guy who had some really big shoes to fill after Tom’s departure, and he filled them admirably. Some of the best work done in Fallon’s history was created during Pat’s reign as CD”.How did you do that?I remember talking to Tom about the energy in the creative department years ago.We were standing in the hall and the building was such that if you walked out of you office and turned left and kept walking you'd eventually end up back at your office.I said the energy level was like a big wheel with fire crackers on it spinning like crazy around and around the whole floor, I said you couldn’t stop it if you tried.I lit as many firecrackers as I could get my hands on, and lit them as fast as I could, everybody in the creative department did their part and more.The result still puts a smile on my face today.You made Fallon McElligott’s reel as good as their print, how?My true love was television.It was always just more exciting to me.I think your work is better when you enjoy something.As time went on we got more and more chances to do television and the more we did the better we got.Sometimes a team might worry that an idea might not work in production and they would come to me and express their concerns.I’d always tell them it was like running through a brick wall.Get up a head of steam and blast your way through.And whatever you do don't hesitate.I remember telling one team if it sucks tell them I did it.

Enjoy pitching?No.Burnham, Whatsit & Thingy. Ever a possibility?Pat Fallon asked me once what I thought of Fallon Burnham.I told him I’d think about it overnight.The next morning I went to his office and I told him honestly it didn’t sound better than Fallon McElligott to me.Which campaign do you wish you’d written?I guess I don’t think that way.I’m usually too happy for the people who do good ads that I don't think of it in that manner.

Talent or desire, what’s more important?I’ve seen great talent without desire and I’ve seen great desire without talent, they both make me equally sad. I think an equal mix makes people special.Seen anything good lately?Yes, there’s stuff my son has done that makes me smile.Great, thanks for yor time Pat.

Above, Pat is far right, below, Pat’s diagram on how to succeed.

N.B. Bob Barrie has just emailed Me this:

He said the previous post about Tom McElligott had initiated a lunch reunion in Minneapolis.Some hadn't seen Pat in a couple decades, Tom Lichtenheld flew in from Chicago and Jarl Olsen flew in from San Francisco.In the picture is a big chunk of the pre-1985 Fallon McElligott Rice Creative Department: Left to right: Mark Johnson, Mike Lescarbeau, Jarl Olsen, Dean Hanson, Bob Barrie, Tom Lichtenheld. Seated: Bruce Bildsten and Pat Burnham.