Show Notes
Words. Boy, they’ve really fallen off their perch. They used to be so respected, as were the people who knew how to use them. They could breathe life into cold, dead facts, in their hands ‘our beer costs a lot’ could become ‘Reassuringly expensive’. Better and shorter. Writers would often burn the midnight oil in an effort to get the maximum meaning from the minimum word count. It’s odd, because people have never read more than they do today, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Google, emails, texts, not to forget books, magazines and the odd newspaper. In fact today, there’s no part of the communication process that doesn’t rely on words, including the deck that explains the communication process. But for some reason, the skill of using them effectively is no longer being taught or even valued. Tim Riley has been choosing his words carefully for three decades now, we had a great chat about his time using them at some the best agencies in London. Hope you enjoy it.
More from 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.
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.