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PODCAST: JOHN WEBSTER #2. John & Research - Sarah Carter

You can count the number of Creatives who embrace research on one finger. The rest of us desperately try to fight it with lines like ‘you can’t research original ideas’, ‘the group gets lead by its most vocal member’, ‘the public can only judge finished ads, not research material’, and on and on. Good arguments. But the argument against is better – John Webster. Once delivered, it’s hard for us…

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PODCAST: JOHN WEBSTER & IDEAS - Dave Trott

British advertising may have had more successful businessmen. More accomplished creative directors. Bigger award winners. But never a better Creative. No one has more ideas living in British people’s heads than John Webster. They didn’t gatecrash either – they were invited in. Singing and dancing their way past the barriers and into the national consciousness. One big, happy conga line; Smash…

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YE OLDE HARRODS CAMPAIGN.

Halfway through this post, I considered abandoning it. It was referencing things that seemed so detached from today. Like I was recounting tales of life in the court of Louis XIV. The time, energy and hard cash given to creating a single press ad looks so excessive. Obviously times have changed, digital has eaten their lunch, breakfast and dinner. Smaller audiences mean smaller budgets. Some of…

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PODCAST: Steve Hudson

Imagine a day where you don’t own a computer, and you lose your phone just after breakfast. We used to live like that. Every damn day. With virtually no access to information. Researching how to be better at your job wasn’t a thing. Advertising people didn’t do podcasts or post articles about their work. True, there were books, but not many. Aside from awards annuals, the main two were ‘Ogilvy On…

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PODCAST: MARTIN JONES ON PITCHING

Creating is different to managing. Creators try to break rules, managers set them. Creators look inward, managers look outward. Creators are introverts, managers are extroverts. Not 100%, but most, AMV/BBDO once Myers Briggs tested their creative department. The results came back – fifty people were rated ‘I’ (introvert), one was ‘E’ – the creative boss (Peter Souter). I’s are ‘more likely to be…

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PODCAST: JOHN LLOYD

Whatever happened to funny ads? Have clients buying them? Or have agencies stopped writing them? They used to dominate the ad breaks. Humour was the first tool you reached for after being handed a brief. Why? Well, as that Poppins women says ‘A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down’. Actually…did they dominate ad breaks? Maybe I’ve slipped on my rose-tinted specs again? I reach for an old…

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CONVERSATIONS WITH JIM RISWOLD

Feb 13, 2024, 12:39 PM (Twitter) Hi Dave, I’m a huge fan of your podcast and your work before that.  I was wondering if you’d be interested in interviewing Jim Riswold? – Kash Sree Feb 13, 2024, 12:52PM. 100%-definitely, absolutely-yes-please Kash. Dx Feb 13, 2024, 12:59 PM (Twitter) I know you have a lot of the greats on your podcast and I honestly believe that Jim is one of them, though not as…

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PODCAST: NICK COHEN

“A lot of people on your podcast became creatives by accident.” Someone messaged me this last week (after listening to four of them back-to-back). I got me thinking; why do creatives become creatives? I’d divide them into two groups. The Lifestyle Brigade™ – attracted by the trappings. (Nothing wrong with that – it’s why most people go to work.) And the Expressionists™ – attracted by putting a…

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PODCAST: Paul Feldwick

I​ u​sed to like Tesla​s, I nearly bought one. ​N​ot any more. Obviously it’s ​still a great product​, but it’s an Elon Musk company. And his purchase of Twitter, ​and subsequent flooding of my feed with his ​thoughts has put me off him. ​​I choose not to give my money to a multi billionaire who whines everyday about how unfair the world is. I want best product for the least amount of money, but…

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PODCAST: Michael Johnson

A muffin company wants to make more money. It’s hard to increase their current customers weekly muffin intake – so they need add some new ones. To flip muffin fans who aren’t choosing theirs, they need to tell them about their company or muffins that will get them to try one. And tell them in a way that gets their attention. But the first thing they need to do is choose who to speak to.  An ad…

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BLOGCAST: Graham Watson #2

I met Graham 33 years ago. My partner and I desperately wanted to work at BBH. At the end of a book crit, Graham gave us a brief and told us to come back the following week. We left excited. Maybe this test was our way in? The following Thursday we lugged a stack of ideas back to Graham detailing how we’d make Bama Thermal insoles the season’s must have for fashionistas. (Bama Thermal insoles? is…

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BLOG/CAST: Graham Watson #1

In the style-obsessed 80s, no agency was more obsessed than BBH. Everything that came out of the place reeked of it. Including the staff. Their men’s toilets were stocked with tubs of hair gel (What? It was the eighties!) Their AAR reel, a tool for agencies for clients to compile pitch lists, didn’t follow the template the rest of the industry did (pasty faced public schoolboys using big words,…

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PODCAST: Mary Warlick

I’ve just finished watching ‘Coco Chanel Unbuttoned’. Not only did I discover Coco wasn’t her real name (Gabrielle), I discovered her philosophy. Pre-Coco, high end fashion used the finest, most expensive materials, like silk, lace and satin – a visual display of one’s wealth. Coco chose instead, the basic materials she’d grown up with, poor and in an orphanage. Like jersey, previously used to…

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PODCAST: Roger Woodburn (1 & 2)

1 and 2? Well, it came in at just under four hours. Tell me about it? I tried cutting it. Maybe I could’ve edited out the pre-directing bit? Lost the chat about growing up; the nine months in walled hospital room with one wall missing or the time he appeared on national tv as a puppeteer. Or cut the bits about his endless list of non-directing jobs? Maybe trim the stuff about his previous…

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PODCAST: John Stingley

There are many ways of writing ads. Simply stating that your product is good. Giving evidence that it’s good. Or making people feel that it’s good. Ai could spit out versions of the first two pretty quickly, but it’d struggle on the third. The third requires a bit of psychology, observation and understanding of what makes people tick. Bill Bernbach put it this way “It took millions of years for…

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Hands up who's heard of TOM LICHTENHELD?

In the late 80s, I discovered a discount bookshop on Shaftesbury Avenue, amongst the junk,  ‘Knitting For The Whole Family’ and ‘Fun With Chives’ were piles American advertising books I’d never heard of; One Show Annuals. They were dirt cheap – £4.99. For the cost of one D&AD Annual I could buy six One Shows. So I bought six One Shows. The work was a revelation. Bolder, funnier and less genteel…

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ROY GRACE SITE. With Allen Richardson

Roy Grace may well be the best ad guy you’ve never heard of. But you’ll recognise some of his Volkswagen ads below, created at DDB between 1965 and 1986. Whereas most creatives will lean towards a particular medium – Roy was as good in print as he was in tv. Many creatives make their names on one, great account, like a Nike or Volkswagen, Roy did great work across everything; from J&B Rare whisky…