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 ...
Jun 25, 2025•1 hr 40 min
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 ...
Jun 19, 2025•1 hr 54 min
If you’ve ever wondered how reliant creatives are on their producers, count how many are married to them. Lots. Including me, my two creative partners at Campbell Doyle Dye and dozens of friends. Psychologists say we seek qualities in a partner we don't have ourselves. To create more complete children. So right brainers, who come up with the theories, need left brainers to help turn them into reality. Yvonne Chalkley has turned more crazy, impossible, can’t-be-done theories into reality than any...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 59 min
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 Advertising’ and ‘Bill Bernbach’s Book’. Occasionally you’d photocopy an article from Campaign, Crea...
Feb 28, 2025•1 hr 27 min
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 successful in careers like writing, science and art’. Makes sense. “I’s are predominantly concerned w...
Feb 21, 2025•2 hr 4 min
Whatever happened to funny ads? Have clients stopped 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 D&AD Annual. Randomly, I pick up 1991’s. 34 tv and cinema ads featured; 28 were funny. Of...
Nov 06, 2024•2 hr 3 min
“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 bit of themselves out into the world. A point of view, an observation, a joke, whatever. Like 90% of cr...
Aug 06, 2024•1 hr 16 min
So far, I’m about eighty podcasts in. If someone tells me they listen, they usually follow up with ‘that Frank Lowe one’s great’ (or ‘sick’, depending on their age). I always ask why, but never get a clear answer. They just like it. It was enjoyable to record too, but I left wondering why he’d barely mentioned Lowe Howard-Spink. As if he’d only ever worked at CDP. Which was a shame, CDP had been amazing, but they weren’t my era. Lowe’s was. By the time I’d snuck into advertising the cool agencie...
Jul 26, 2024•1 hr 46 min
I used to like Teslas, I nearly bought one. Not 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 who I buy it from counts too. If I like the company I’ll give the benefit of the doubt, if I don’t, ...
May 22, 2024•1 hr 47 min
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? M...
Feb 06, 2024•2 hr 10 min
‘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 agency? O...
Nov 19, 2020•2 hr 41 min
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 search ...
Apr 23, 2020•2 hr 34 min
When you start out in your advertising career, Pentel in one hand, Macbook in the other, you seem to be surrounded by good work. Awards books are choc-a-bloc with it. As you go on, year by year, you seem to see less and less. For example, the first D&AD Annual looked at probably had an 80/20 ratio of good to bad. 10 years later those percentages are likely to have flipped. As you move on you become less swayed by awards, famous names or cool agencies, you now have 10 years of data to compare...
Apr 03, 2020•1 hr 30 min
'Recorded any new podcasts lately?' I get asked this a few times every week. The askees range from college attendees to retired adman. As I pick the people I interview, they seem as famous as The Beatles to me, but they're often unknown to the askees. After offering up a name and watching a blank expression appear, I reach for a quick handle, something from culture that I think they'll know. Occasionally it's an ad fact; 'Set Up Fallon before his name was lopped off' (Tom McElligott), but it's b...
Jan 08, 2020•1 hr 45 min
Back in the seventies there was a tv show called The Waltons. A depression era family mooched about Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains dealing with various social and moral issues, it was all very wholesome. At the end, after some member of the family had realised the error of their ways, they'd cut to the usual end device: A shot of their quaint wooden house at the night. We’d hear a voice ‘Goodnight Jon Boy’, gradually we'd hear all the other members of the family shout their goodnights. It was s...
Oct 06, 2019•1 hr 27 min
Context. It’s the word that comes to mind every time I think about writing one of these intros. What seems familiar today was once considered very left-field, risky or just plain crazy. Each pushes the peanut along for the next generation. Take the 1988 D&AD Annual, it’s hard to believe now, but all but one ad in the press and poster section had black headlines, the one that didn’t was Graham Fink’s Metropolitan Police campaign. I was a generation behind Graham, so watched from afar as he an...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 41 min
I was just about to write ‘the business I joined 30 years ago is unrecognisable today’. But then it occurred to me; that’s bullshit. Take today, either side of writing this I’m working on a global brief. The brand has an existing line that needs to be given new meaning, its felt to be a little too heavy, and possibly a bit esoteric in certain markets. We need to make it lighter, more upbeat and positive. Also, it’d be handy if we could use some kind of visual link to the product, as it’s going t...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 31 min
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, n...
May 21, 2019•2 hr 7 min
Chris Palmer. My 5th boss. His 1st job was as John Hegarty’s writer. He won 5 D&AD silvers in his first in his first year. Set up and agency in his 4th year. Become one the most in demand directors of the last 25 years. Launched, arguably, London’s No 1 production company over over the last two decades; Gorgeous. Also, Mark Denton says Chris can draw better than him. Annoying isn’t it? We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.
May 21, 2019•2 hr 20 min
After years of being amazed at what was on the net, I’m now increasingly surprised at what’s not. Three years ago I was trawling for a particular ad of Tom’s, not only couldn’t I find it I could barely find any of his work. Outraged, I gathered together as much of his work as I could lay my hands on and put out a post called ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of Tom McElligott’. I was trying to be snarky and ironic, like you may write ‘Hands Up Who’s Heard Of John Lennon?’. Two things happened: 1. An enormou...
May 21, 2019•2 hr 21 min
It’s weird, I only interview people whose work I really like, but whenever I lay their work out end-to-end, I’m always surprised at how much better it is than I’d remembered. It could be that there’s much more of it, the sheer consistency of it or that it appears better with the benefit of time and a bit of distance. All three are true of the work in this post. Tony does a good job of shining a light onto how he produced it, hope you enjoy it.
Apr 03, 2019•3 hr 18 min
‘Art Director’ is an unhelpful title. It has nothing to do with Art and very little to do with directing. Some think it’s about making stuff look cool, I think it’s about communicating at speed. We work in a medium people are actively trying to ignore, so we can’t hang around. Art Director’s can only communicate quickly if the understand: a) Their basic toolkit; photography, film, illustration, editing, cropping, fonts, colours and the rest. b) The world around them: how humans behave, the meani...
Apr 03, 2019•1 hr 46 min
Read any article on good copywriting and you’ll find the same names appear. David Abbott and Tony Brignull usually battle for the top two slots, Tim Delaney and John Salmon fight it out for third place. But talk to writers about the same subject and another name appears; Richard Foster. Richard is the only one of the five who has worked under the other four. (He may well be the only writer to have worked under the four?) For a number of reasons, the other four are better known. Two have agencies...
Mar 06, 2019•2 hr 11 min
The best ads appear effortless. As if created accidentally, the result of a chance corridor meeting by people letting off steam on their way to different, grown-up, serious meetings, probably ones involving charts, numbers and mashed-up new words they get the gist of but aren’t 100% confident of their meaning. The truth is that it’s hard to create work like that, it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. A few creatives have been in the right place at the right time to grab a bolt, barely any ca...
Feb 17, 2019•2 hr 16 min
‘Chris is one of the few very, very bright people around.’ – CHARLES SAATCHI. ‘On his day he’s a much better writer than I am.’ – DAVE TROTT. ‘He is intelligent, witty and versatile and I’d say he’s probably one of the best three copywriters in the country.’ – JOHN WEBSTER. ‘He’s just done a podcast with me!’ – DAVE DYE
Feb 16, 2019•1 hr 43 min
Since he quit advertising, Dave has had a big effect on it. First, with Howies. His mail order catalogues built up more than customer base, they built up a fan base. They were, and still are, traded on Ebay. Not for their clothing, for their vibe; that decent feel-good, smart, happy, moral life is for living, do the right thing voice. (Dave: Did I miss anything?) Their writing and ideas were ripped them off mercilessly by ad agencies, constantly being used as reference for tone of voice or stimu...
Feb 16, 2019•1 hr 38 min
“Frank Lowe single-handedly cajoled a whole generation of writers, art directors and film directors into revolutionising British and world advertising.” – Sir Alan Parker. It seemed a bit over the top. I know he was very good and had a big impact on the business, but ‘single-handedly’? But I guess Alan is his mate, so he’s probably bigged him up a bit. Having just spent three hours nose to nose with Frank, I got a taste of what Alan was talking about. I can’t think I’ve met anyone who’s as sure ...
Feb 16, 2019•2 hr 11 min
