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 ph...

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...

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...

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...

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 pi...

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 t...

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 tri...

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...

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 sc...

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 Mart...

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 rea...

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...

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 s...

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...

“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...

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 a...

I​ u​sed to like Tesla​s, I nearly bought one. ​N​ot 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 w...

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 agen...

‘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 after...

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. T...

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...

'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. Occas...

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 ‘Goodnigh...

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...

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 po...