Good morning. Apologies for the recent silence of this blog. WordPress lost all my data recently, so that had to be sorted out. We got most of it back, but if you’re wondering where a few of the more recent posts have gone, they have vanished into the digishpere, never to return. A shame, as... Read More

Anthony is many things: comedian, journalist, DJ, presenter, author, pilot, maker of excellent roast potatoes, and, of course my next-door neighbour (find out all about him/hire him here). But he is also a top-level voiceover artist, who has lent his vocal cords to such clients as Nike, Lego, Samsung, Kellog’s and Disney. Here’s his Nike... Read More

So I was watching this video the other day: …and I found myself in violent agreement with everything Tim Lindsay was saying. There are lots of questions advertising has to ask itself right now. The industry is in a state of disrepair: financially straitened, endlessly splintered and trying to find its place at a time... Read More

The second part of my chat with Paul. iTunes link, Soundcloud link, direct play button:

Paul would be far too modes to say this, but if you watched a brilliant ad from the late 1990s to the early 2010s, there’s a decent chance he had something to do with it. As one of the founders of Gorgeous (2.0 – Chris Palmer had already been running a pre-Paul Gorgeous for a... Read More

I used to collect movie posters. I still have a few favourites, but in the end I ran out of wall space and it seemed a shame to keep so much great stuff rolled up in a cupboard, especially if someone, somewhere might really want that foiled Kill Bill One-Sheet I tracked down, or the... Read More

This is the third and final ‘people who were heavily involved in the Blackcurrant Tango ad’ series: my chat with the client, David Atter. (Episode 1 with director Colin Gregg can be found here. Episode 2 with copywriter Chas Bayfield can be found here.) Just in case you’re popping by at some random point in... Read More

This is the second in my series of three posts/podcasts about Blackcurrant Tango, apparently one of the most beloved ads of the last thirty years: You could read the Colin Gregg post, or read this repeat of what I said there: I put this up on LinkedIn and it caused a massive, affectionate response. So... Read More

I’ve been putting up great ads from the 90s on LinkedIn. It started as a snarky attempt at pointing out how ads used to be better, and that even ads from 20+ years ago would be better than the ‘best’ of today. One of these ads was the wonderful Blackcurrant Tango ad of 1996: It... Read More

Stephen was the 25th employee of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which means he saw it grow from a very good agency to the best in the country in a few short years. After a stint on Audi he became the first account guy on Levi’s, so we talked all about that. If you grew up in... Read More

Rich and I started in advertising at the same time in the same place. He won a Cannes Gold in his first year. I was laid off. Now we’re back together having a delightful chat about those intervening 24 years. He’s a top bloke, and still has those great creative chops, as evidenced by this,... Read More

Jean-Louis is the Chief Strategy Officer of The Concept Bureau. (Slight aside: I wonder why job titles are sounding increasingly military.) I asked him on the pod because ‘strategist’ is becoming a very common word in advertising-adjacent job titles. Jean-Louis is a Brand Strategist, so what does that mean, and what is a Creative Strategist, and where do their jobs cross over with that of, say, a comms planner? What do these very smart people do all day, and how does it relate to what you...

Rob McFaul is the founder of an organisation called Purpose Disruptors: A network of advertising insiders whose goal is to create a visible, large scale, bottom up movement within the industry, that will act in solidarity to meaningfully tackle climate change. I’m very, very interested in this subject. It’s both immensely interesting and immensely intractable. In some ways it’s the ultimate brief. Have a listen and dip your toe in the waters of capitalist hypocrisy, corporate...

This is my attempt to make sure the podcast adds to the iTunes feed. Fingers crossed…

I loved chatting to Trevor. We’d never met before, but he was a warm and lovely fella. His first Tango ad broke the mould, as popular with kids in playgrounds as it was with award jurors. But then there was the weird, pervy Apple Tango ad. And the weird, pervy Pot Noodle ads: as popular with sex fetishists as they were with award jurors. Then he created a new kind of ad agency that is still going 25 years later. Then he won an OBE. And he helps prove the benefits of...

At last! Paul is one of the people I’ve most wanted to interview. He’s arguably been responsible for more classic advertising over the last 20 years than anyone else. Whether it was for Stella, Nike, Playstation, John Smith, John West, Adidas, Levi’s, Scalextric, Olympus and dozens of others; with a very talented art director or on his own; at Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow and Johnson, BBH, Lowe, Leo Burnett, Leith, TBWA, Fallon, Rainey Kelly Y&R, freelance, Saatchis or BBH...

So here’s the second episode. Thank you for your patience, and thanks to Paul for his.

  Here’s my chat with Matt Follows, an award-winning creative turned mental health professional and coach. After 20 years as a writer/creative director at places like W+K, M&C Saatchi, Clemenger and Naked, he left the industry to retrain as a performance psychologist, psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist at King’s College, London. He’s now been working in this field for nearly 10 years, and for the past 6 years he’s been specialising in coaching creative leaders from...

Here’s my chat with Mr. Jeremy Craigen, one of the first names that sprung to mind when I first had the idea to do this podcast. He’s a very good bloke, an excellent creative and one of the best CD/ECD/CCOs in the business. Here we discuss… Beginnings. Getting to a good agency from a bad one. It doesn’t matter how long your product is in the ad, as long it makes the strongest impression. Many logos can lead to excellence. Demon Baby. Working with Jonathan Glazer. The ‘DoC’...

Hi there. Apologies for the wait since the last episode. I’ve been busy. Anyway, this one’s a corker. Ian Reichenthal is the one US creative I really wanted to speak to. This is because he’s been involved with most of my favourite ads of the century so far. Here are just a few (the rest can be found here): So if you want to find out how and why they were made, have a listen. We also discuss life at Cliff Freeman, W&K, TBWA NY and Barton F. Graff, all at their absolute...