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 agency?A design company?Branding agency?Packing firm?Social media experts?Behavioural scientists?Media...

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 make men’s underwear, she used it to make dresses.She did the same with the tough, knitted stripey...

Carling's 'Dambusters'.Fallon McElligott's Lee Jeans.BMW's 'Birth of A Notion'.Saatchi's Dunlop'.Webster's Hofmeister Bear.Lowe's Heineken.June Whitfield's Birds Eye.Hegarty's 'Levi's Russia'.Alka Seltzer's 'Lifeboat'.Etc,Etc,Etc.

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 bosses?But his previous bosses are people like Gerry Anderson and Ridley Scott.And his pre-directing jobs were...

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.That last category requires a bit of psychology, observation and an understanding of what makes people tick.Bill Bernbach put it this way “It took millions of years for man’s instincts to develop. It will take millions more for them to even vary. It is...

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 to Alka-Seltzer, from Chanel to SOS soap scrubbing pads, from Land Rover to IBM computers.Most...

In 1969, fourteen years after the first commercial aired in Britain, colour arrived.The bar was raised.Ambitious ads could now go beyond the over-lit, creakily acted black & white output from adland.Ads, well, the good ones, started to look like they could've been snipped from a movie.But they were still pretty formal.A couple of years later, a young producer decides he wants to stop producing ads and start shooting themRather than chase the formal perfection, Adrian Lyne sees it as an...

When I put these blogs together I build up a file.Work for every client goes into a file, that goes into the appropriate agency file, the agency are numbered so that they come chronologically.It sounds a faff, it is a faff, but the only any way I can do it.Anyway, the last file is generally 'P.R' - all the news clippings, interviews and pictures that the individual has accumulated over the years.It helps me get a sense of the interviewee. If you've lead an agency like CDP, I'd expect about 15...

Leap before you look.That's written on the back of Michael's business cards.He prefers instinct over logic; everyone can access to logic, so they all end up in the same place.At Wolff Olins he took a brief to rebrand a paint company, now most would end up with rainbows, peacocks or some colourful iconography.Not Michael.He chose a fox, because 'the owner reminded me of a wily fox'.When Bowyer's needed a new logo, Michael went with a solution that combined illustration and photography 'because...

You can’t advertise if you can’t attention.You can’t get attention if you don’t stand out.You can’t stand out without being different.You can’t do different if you think the same.If you think different you’re likely to be different.Being different is a problem to agencies.A BBH Planner once complained ‘the problem with this place is they can’t accommodate black sheep’.Equally, I doubt TBWA embrace disruptive people to create disruptive work.Why hire people who challenge the rules, avoid the...

Ad agencies often claim to have no set style, that each campaign is created from scratch, bespoke for every client.It may be true for the mediocre ones, but not the great ones.Nobody used to confuse the work of AMV, BBH and GGT.The same with Wieden, Chiat and Fallon.Today, stick me in front of a tv and I’d fancy my chances at picking the Droga5.Or spotting the Uncommon on a tube platform.Because although ad agencies use the same ingredients, like chefs, they favour some more than others.We...

Whoever it's with, whenever I do these podcasts, some personal link seems to turn up.Something I'd forgotten or been unaware of - Paul Weiland was once my landlord, I judged the One Show with Gerry Graf 15 years earlier, David Holmes drew a poster for me 25 years earlier.This isn't like that, this time it really is personal (isn't that the Jaws 2 strap line?).Malcolm and I started out together; he'd shoot pictures for free, I'd write ads for free.The stuff we created helped us inch forward in...

The first drawing I saw by R. O. Blechman showed a boardroom table full of people trying to brainstorm.In 6 stages, it showed different people having an idea, the ideas were represented by various forms of lighting, from tiny lightbulb to lamp with shade to a massive chandelier.In the last frame the boss at the end of the table comes up with an idea, it's represented by a miniscule lightbulb.Brilliant observation, very funny.I also loved the naive style of the drawing.It looked like a note...

‘I’ve just done a Volvo ad with no car in it, it doesn’t get any better than that!’Those were the first I heard on day one at AMV/BBDO.It was the Art Director's way of saying 'it’s good here'.I appreciated the intent, but thought it was weird.Who cares if the ad has a car in it? Is it a good ad?But that's how a certain group of creatives think.For them wins are - running an ad word-free, securing hot director X to shoot their ad, getting the word 'dick' approved in a headline, keeping a logo...

Should Liverpool win the Carabao Cup this season I’m sure they’ll be happy.But it’ll be a bonus.Their goal is to win the Premier League.Or maybe the European Cup.Creatives used to view Creative Circle Awards in the same way; delighted to win one, but their eyes were fixed on D&AD.Or BTAA.Or Campaign Press.Or Campaign Posters.Or The One Show.Or, a bit later, Cannes.In fact, my first ever advertising award was a Creative Circle Gold for radio - great, but I’d happily have swapped it for an...

'We want a Patek Philippe!'.I'm told intermediaries hear that phrase on a regular basis.The problem is, most ad agencies can't do it.Most are unable translate the signals and nuances of the world's of premium and fashion.It's why the majority of advertising in those categories is produced in-house.But that's not perfect either, they may capture the right vibes but they rarely create anything with substance.They rarely position a brand or create long-term adverting campaigns.Much of it being...

Finally!Not exactly hot on the heels of Part 1 - it's been eighteen months.I wonder whether the fresh-faced, pre-pandemic Rory would’ve answered those questions in the same way today? The last eighteen months have probably changed us a bit.Just a reminder, the questions I asked back then were built around the idea of a new agency, as these are, like 'how would you hire?', 'what kind of atmosphere would you want?' etc.But rather than ask them in an open way, like that, I thought it would be...

“Hello Dave, We’ve not met before. I’m an ad creative too. I felt compelled to write and tell you how much I’m enjoying your blog. I’ve learnt loads. (Now I’ve started writing this email I feel a bit silly!) Anyway, keep pumping your stuff from the loft out into the ether. It’s wonderful. Thanks, Oli.” I got that email in 2013. I wondered where this charming young man went to college or was on placement, so I googled him: ‘Partner and Executive Creative Director at Anomaly.’ Before that...

When I started out, lunch with my old writer Sean would end with ‘Right, let’s shift some product’. It was irony, of course. It’s rare for creatives talk like that. If you’d have asked me at that time about the performance of one of my ads, I’d have given you a ton of awards data, but nothing on sales. To be fair, awards won are what creatives are salaried on, not units sold. And if you’ve ever sat on an awards jury you’ll know that it’s not exactly a scientific process - do the assembled...

There may even be another one, along with Paul Burke I’m trying to track down the 100 best radio ads. (If you have any send them in.) But onto this one, one of the surprising joys of doing this blog is unexpected things that turn upon my doorstep. Proofs, agency brochures, old DVDs, all manner of ephemera. (Or ‘crap’ as my wife calls it.). It’s lead me to post blogs on David Abbott’s BT Pitch, Fallon McElligott’s Rolling Stone campaign (thanks for the tear-sheets Brian Burch, posting soon),...

‘Remember how seriously we all took it? Not that we took ourselves seriously or that we didn’t have fun, but we just tried so, so hard to make great work. It may be chip paper to most people, but we’d really sweated every last detail. Even on the bad ads, we'd stay lat trying desperately to improve them. Like we were on a mission. It seemed so important.’ I enjoyed chatting to Mary. Although afterwards, I must confess, I was a little irritated; why on earth had she never set up her own...

Many of you won’t recognise that name. You won't find it attached to tweets about how hot his latest campaign is next to a picture of his latest lunch; he doesn't do social media. You won't find his agency in any new business tables; they only handle three clients at a time, so tend to have long client relationships. You won't find their scripts in any production companies; they direct them in-house. This is because, when, 23 years ago, the goal for his new agency was that the clients should...

That's not a mistake, it's my attempt to graphically warn you that this podcast ends abruptly.
 The idea was that I'd grill Rory on some of the issues facing our business today.
 He's easily one of the most thoughtful, smartest guys in our business, just check out some of his quotes below if you don't believe me.
But rather than ask softball questions that were too broad, I thought it'd be more interesting to make it binary.
 Forcing a result.
 I framed the questions in terms of hiring for a...

Pick up any New York Art Directors Club Annual from the sixties and you can feel the heat coming off the pages. The Writers are using words previously confined to conversation, the Art Directors are trying to find new ways to present the information (‘Creating new pages’ as Helmut Krone put it.) Then, the seventies. A whole different story; the experimentation and energy appear to have dried up. True, there are still lots of good thoughts and lines, but in terms of how it's presented the...