STUFF FROM THE LOFT - Dave Dye

Every day I get great old print ads popping up in my feed.I'm reminded of Volkswagen's self-deprecation, Nike’s humanity and BMW’s intelligence.It’s easy to forget that each owes its existence to a magazine.Whose huge readership is responsible for the quality of the ad.Putting your product in front of so many people justified billing so many creative hours.And signing off such an expensive photographer, illustrator, celebrity, location, set build, etc.It's also why the converse is true today.There are still great print ads being produced, but they’re rare.Pick up most magazines and you’ll discover a slender selection of ads that have had neither time or money spent on them. They look like the clients made them at the weekend, after putting the kids to bed.Today’s tiny magazine audiences don’t warrant more.Which is a shame.It’s hard to explain just how important magazines once were and the role they played in people’s lives.As David Hepworth says ‘they were the internet’.David knows magazines – having written for the NME, Sounds and Smash Hits before becoming editor, then launching Just Seventeen, Q, Empire, Mojo, More! Heat and Word amongst others. I’ve listened to his podcast for the last 19 years.Each week, David and his Old Grey Whistle Test co-host Mark Ellen talk music and a bit of whatever’s happened that week.Very occasionally, David will talk briefly about the nuts and bolts of running a magazine, in particular, the symbiotic relationship between magazines and it’s advertisers.It's fascinating and I’m always left wanting to hear more.So I asked him to talk more.We had a very enjoyable chat, I hope you enjoy it too.

Faxes.Magic Markers.Hard copies of Campaign.Offices.Grant projectors.PMTs.U-matics.Scalpels.Memos.Information Departments.Flash.Spray mount.Chinagraphs.Secretaries.Pinboards.Foamboard.Lightboxes.CS10.Lighter fuel.Paintbox.Dupes.10x8s”.Contact sheets.Proofs.All gone.Replaced by something that did the job better.But what about all those great creative agencies, why did they vanish?Like Collett Dickenson Pearce, Gold Greenlees Trott, Howell Henry Caldecott Lury, Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson.And Fallon.From ’98 to ’08 they seemed to rule the world with ads that appealed to the public as much as awards juries.They certainly haven’t been replaced by something better.Maybe if you hit it big in a certain decade it defines you as much as you define it, when that passes you go with it?Like Disco, Mike Myers and Pokémon GO.Or maybe it’s chemistry, that weird substance created when the founders are stuffed into the same test tube, maybe it evaporates when they leave?Laurence and I talk about this and more.Hope you enjoy it.

A planner!The third.Well, the other two weren’t talking about their careers, Paul Feldwick discussed his great book ‘Why Does The Pedlar Sing?’ and Sarah Carter reflected on working with John Webster.So maybe it's my first?Creative operating the seventies hated planners.'They ruined the business’ and ‘they took all the fun out of advertising’ being their most common complaint. As they see it; planners stole half their job.Their instincts were replaced by the data obsessed views of these Oxbridge types.Clarity became more important than cut through.They get accused of sanding off the edges and idiosyncrasies of their creative work.Therefore destroying Creative's winning lottery tickets.You can’t accuse Laurence Green of any of the above.Skoda ‘Cake’, Sony ‘Balls’, Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’.(I could go on.)He’s wears his intelligence lightly, using it to simplify and explain, not impress.Regardless of the agency or creatives, the ads are simple, engaging and human.That can’t be a coincidence.Or could it? I asked him.Hope you enjoy it.

I never knew Martin at BMP.He kept a desk there.So I'd occasionally spot his green Bentley in Bishopsbridge Road.There'd be the odd a sighting in the building, a bit like Bigfoot or the Yeti, a glimpse of a blurry Martin moving through corridors, but way in the distance.Perhaps because of this, it didn’t occur to me to pick up the phone and ask him to do a podcast about his amazing career.But Charlie Crompton pushed me to do so, offering to broker the deal.(Thanks Charlie.)The timing is odd – BMP, or BMP/Univas/BDDP/ReevesRobertshaw/Davidson Pearce/Needham/DDB/Adam&Eve have just left 12 Bishopsbridge Road.After 55 years.It's difficult to even know where to begin to talk about the impact of Boase Massimi Pollitt.Obviously there's the birth of planning, the work of John Webster, all the agencies and people it gave birth too, but there's so much more.I’m also anxious about listing Martin’s achievements as he was so reluctant to take credit for them when we chatted.Or accept a compliment.Or criticise any employee who ever traipsed up their spiral staircase.Gossip? You try getting gossip out of a guy who’s been trained to interrogate Russian spies, it’s really hard.Despite this, we had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty opened its doors in 1982.Eight years later, Campaign voted them the agency of the decade.Why?Their work was considered, intelligent, and, in a decade often referred to as style-obsessed, BBH was the most style-obsessed.But they also had something few agencies have today; swagger.They had the confidence, or is it arrogance? to cut their own path.Refusing to do creative pitches, turning down business and making challenging creative calls few agencies would make.For example, on Audi, the created an end line only 5% of the population could understand – Vorsprung Durch Technik.For a desperate to become relevant to a new generation Levi’s, they soundtracked their ads with music their parents would consider old-fashioned.(Normal now, unusual then.)And on the subject of female sanitary protection, which everyone knew had to be dealt with delicately, like defusing a bomb.They risked it all, by boldly talking to women like human beings.Their Dr Whites ads ditched metaphors, blue liquid and any mention of roller-skating.Not only were these choices counterintuitive, they sold.As they put it in their AAR reel ‘We don’t sell (fade to black) We make people want to buy’.It was true, it was like they knew something others didn’t.Brands that chose BBH in the eighties were sprinkled with some kind of fairy dust that made them desirable and often fashionable.Since their launch, and for most of its first decade, John Hegarty worked writer Barbara Nokes.Together, they created the three campaigns above.The foundations of the agency. And one of their ads, Levi’s Black Sheep (below), remains as their logo and philosophy.We cover this in the second part of my chat with Barbara.Hope you enjoy it.

During my first year in advertising, a shiny new book turned up at the agency (Brooks Legon Bloomfield).Weirdly, some in the creative department referred to it as 'the bible'.It's actual name was The Designers & Art Directors Annual.I was told it showed the best advertising and design from the U.K.Although, also at this point, the U.K. arguably produced the best advertising and design on the planet.This was the 1986 version.The advertising featured was judged by 72 jurors.Only 4 were female.1 was Barbara Nokes.315 advertising creatives had their work included.29 were female.Of those, Barbara Nokes had the most ads reprinted.She was the 5th most successful creative overall. (14 entries and a silver).I didn't think about whether she was male or female at the time, I just loved her work.Always smart and punchy.At the time, she was working with one of my favourite art directors; John Hegarty.She's been top of my wanted for the last decade.She finally relented.Enjoy. 

To hear Derek tell it, his career was totally unplanned.One impetuous decision after the next.Leading to endless mistakes.Exhibit A: Quitting the best agency in the country to go on holiday with his girlfriend. (CDP)To me, it looks as meticulously pre-planned as any of the plots in the ‘Ocean’s’ films.STEP 1: Work for the best agencies in town:(CDP, BMP and DDB).STEP 2: A reconnaissance trip to the States (Smith/Greenland).STEP 3: Create financial security (Day/Devito-French).STEP 4: Build a creative reputation at the most creative agencies of their day (WCRS and AMV).STEP 5: Practice being a Creative Director at a big, bad agency (Ted Bates).STEP 6: Now ready, you start your own shop (BDDH).STEP 7: Position the agency as the first of a new trend (Third Wave).STEP 8: Turn Marketers Directors curiosity about the Third Wave into retained business.STEP 9: Sell.Have a listen, tell me I’m wrong.

Being one, I'm very aware of my fellow double d's out there in advertising.Dave Droga - met once, gave him a lift after judging D&AD together.Donny Deutsch - never met, seen him on Morning Joe though.David Denton - did a few ads with him at BMP, did Cointreau 'Ice melts', amongst many others.Don Draper – never met, seems cool.And Derek Day - less known than the first three, but well worth checking out.I'd hear his quotes on a regular basis back in the early nineties.My then writer, Mike McKenna, had worked for Derek twice, first at Ted Bates, then Butterfield Day Devito Hockney, and would regale me with 'war' stories.I was new to the business, so ate them up, desperate for clues on how it worked.Mike's most repeated was a version of this - "I showed him our campaign for (insert various campaign names here)...Derek pulled a face, like a bulldog chewing a wasp, pull a face, then said (insert various clever critiques here)... and the scales fell from my eyes”.In a sea of dumb, crass ads, Derek's work always seemed clever and considered.Often not criteria that wins big awards.They tend to go to flashy and different.If I had a brief and wanted to win an award, quite a few writers spring to mind, if it needed help to my family business grow, Derek's would spring to mind.Looking at his career, there's a whiff of Zelig* about it. (*You’ll have to google it, soz.)Hired by Alan Parker to work at the best shop of the sixties - Collett Dickenson Pearce.Hired by John Webster to join arguably the best shop of the seventies - Boase Massimi Pollitt.(In part 2, we find he was also hired by David Abbott to join arguably the best shop of the eighties - Abbott Mead Vickers.)Then onto Doyle Dane Bernbach.Smith/Greenland in America, under futurist Faith Popcorn.Back to Blighty to become Creative Director at 25.Setting up a Cramer Saatchi-like creative consultancy for seven years, earning a ‘Seymour’ when Geoffrey was still in short pants. (Again, I refer you to google.)Then taking a 75% pay cut to join new agency Wight Collins Rutherford Scott in an attempt to win creative awards.And that’s just part one.We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

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 sceptics to know where to go.He loves research.He does the best work.So why did he embrace it?How did he use it?And why doesn't everyone who loves his work follow his lead?I asked these and more to Sarah Carter, Adam&Eve/DDB Global Planning Partner, who worked with John as his planner for over fifteen years and who knows how many ads.Hope you enjoy it.

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 Martians, Cresta Bear, Honey Monster, John Smith’s Arkwright, the Prize Guys, the Humphreys, and on and on.Born across four different decades.Created, unlike other ads at the time – alone and using research.Occasionally John and a writer are credited, but primarily John was both the art director and writer.At the time, Bernbach’s 1+1=3 was the law, so that was very rare.Rarer still, were Creatives who embraced research.Creatives viewed it as a killer of creativity and innovation.I thought I’d look into these aspects of John’s process.First, by talking about how John created ideas.Fortunately, Dave Trott broke his anti-podcast rule, which is great, because I couldn’t think of anyone better to talk to on the subject.Dave worked with John through the seventies and is obviously a brilliant Creative in his own right. (He’s not just a blogger kids.)Next, I’ll talk to planner Sarah Carter about how John used research to shape ideas, but first, here’s Dave…