Dave Trott’s Blog

One day, when I was at art school in New York, I walked past a newsstand.

The booths where they have all the magazines hanging outside.

I glanced at it and I stopped dead.

I promise you I nearly fell over.

All over the newsstand was that month’s Esquire cover.

The entire front page was a photograph of a smiling Lieutenant William Calley with several little Vietnamese children sitting on his lap.

That doesn’t mean much nowadays.

But Lt. Calley had been in charge of the platoon that went into a Vietnamese village and murdered 250 defenceless women, children, and old people.

The entire platoon had gone insane with blood lust.

One soldier ran out of ammunition, stripped naked and jumped on an Ox’s back, stabbing it to death with his bayonet.

Because he’d run out of things to kill.

At the time, we couldn’t comprehend it.

It was beyond horrific, it was surreal.

And here was the man in charge of the platoon who did it.

Smiling to the camera, cuddling beautiful Vietnamese children on his lap.

Like a family photograph.

There was no such thing as Photoshop in those days, so this was real.

The first question that jumped into my mind was how the hell did they get Calley to do that?

What did they do?

Years later I read the answer in George Lois’s book, “The Art Of Advertising”.

George Lois was one-man creative hurricane.

As well as advertising, he designed restaurants, packaging, interior design, magazines, and anything else he could get his hands on.

For two decades he designed Esquire covers.

His single-story front cover visual changed magazine design ever since.

Dozens of them are in the permanent collection of MOMA.

In his book he writes about what he said to Lieutenant Calley to persuade him to do the cover.

He said, “Look, some people will look at it and think you’re guilty, some people will look at it and think you’re innocent. But, either way, it shows everyone that you’ve got nothing to hide.”

And it worked, Calley posed for the cover.

You can’t imagine the shock value now.

Just the same as you can’t imagine the shock value of seeing the Esquire cover with Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Tomato Soup.

Those covers have been so imitated, it’s not unusual anymore.

That’s what happens when you change things.

And George Lois was always desperate to change things.

To challenge conventional thinking, wherever he found it.

Even something as small as a half page ad for Renault dealers.

Every year the dealers wanted to clear the showroom, to make way for the new models.

So they normally knocked a few hundred dollars off the price of the cars.

The problem was no one wanted to buy an old model.

So Lois had a better idea: everyone loves a bargain.

He bought a couple of packs of Band-Aid.

Then he took a penknife and made a tiny nick in the paint of each car.

And put a Band-Aid over it.

He ran the half page ad saying “If you can spot an imperfection in our cars, we’ll give you $250 off.”

All the cars sold out in a day.

People thought getting that much money off for such a tiny blemish was in incredible bargain.

Instead of thinking it was just money off last year’s model.

George Lois had reframed the whole problem.

Much later, this kind of thinking would become known as Behavioural Economics.

Or Choice Architecture.

To Lois it was just street smarts.

When I was at art school in New York, George Lois was one of my heroes.

I didn’t always like his ads.

Half of them seemed a bit crude and corny to me.

But half of them were inspiring.

The sheer energy and power that came off them.

And not just the ads themselves.

But the way he got them made against all objections.

The way he turned any hurdle into another opportunity.

That’s real creativity.

So, although it was a lot of money at the time, I spent fifty quid on George Lois’s book ‘The Art Of Advertising’.

Back in London, while everyone else was poring over D&AD annuals, I was reading every word of that book.

I learned a lot from the stories about how he did the ads.

One particular story was about the NY Herald Tribune.

In the early sixties, newspaper sales were falling.

People got their daily update from the 11pm TV news instead.

So Lois had a really daring idea.

Beat television at its own game.

TV news was immediate, but it wasn’t thorough.

Newspapers are seen as late with the news, because they’re printed the previous day.

Lois decided to turn that to an advantage.

He got the newspaper immediately it was printed at 10pm.

Then he wrote the ads in the cab on the way to the studio.

And shot the ads, and broadcast them immediately before the 11pm News.

The VO said, “These are the stories you’re going to be hearing about in this news programme. But there’s a lot more to these stories than you’ll get on TV. So for the full stories, get tomorrow’s NY Herald Tribune.”

What a great idea.

Many years later we did a pitch for The Daily Express.

We heard the editor thought ad agencies were slow and lazy.

While he could put an entire paper together in a day, it took agencies weeks to do an ad.

We thought we’d show him we could make an ad faster than he could make a newspaper.

The pitch was 9.00 on Monday morning.

So on Sunday night we went and got copies of the next day’s paper.

Then overnight we wrote the ads.

We filmed them, and edited them at 8.00 Monday morning.

Then, in the pitch, on we showed the editor a commercial featuring his newspaper that was just hitting the newsstand.

And we won the pitch.

Thanks to George Lois’s book.

Another lesson I learned from that book was about TV censorship.

When he did the advertising for Xerox photocopiers, his commercial featured a young girl at her dad’s office.

To demonstrate how easy Xerox was to use, Lois had the little girl make some copies for her dad.

The ad was a very successful, but Xerox’s competitors objected.

They said no photocopier could be that simple.

And the US censorship authority made him pull the ads off air.

The story ran in all the papers.

So George Lois offered to prove it was true.

He said he’d reshoot the whole commercial in front of the censors and the papers.

When they showed up to watch, he waited until the cameras started rolling.

Then he sent on a chimpanzee instead of the little girl.

The chimpanzee did a perfect job.

This time the censors couldn’t object and the ad ran with the chimpanzee.

Because of the newspaper stories everyone knew what had happened.

And the new ad generated even more free publicity for days afterwards.

When we had Knirps umbrellas as a client. I followed his example.

We had a commercial where a man demonstrated that no rain storm can break a Knirps umbrella.

To prove it, we wanted to shoot a man using it in a carwash.

The ITCA, the equivalent of Clearcast, wouldn’t believe it was true.

So they turned it down.

Following Lois’s example, we offered to let them come to the shoot to prove it would.

They did. It did. And the commercial ran.

Thanks to George Lois’s book.

Another time a young writer at our agency, Little Jim, had written an anti Third World Debt commercial.

It featured a white English toddler drinking out of a toilet.

Making the comparison with black children lacking sanitation in deprived countries.

Little Jim said he wanted Bob Hoskins to do the voice over.

I said good idea.

Little Jim said, because we had no money, the account men and the producers wouldn’t approach Bob Hoskins’ agent to ask.

So I gave him George Lois’s book.

I said, “Read that Jim, see what George Lois would do.”

Jim took the book home that night and read it.

Next day he came in and found Bob Hoskins’ agent’s number.

He then persuaded the agent to let him talk to Bob Hoskins.

And he talked him into doing the voice over, for free.

That commercial got a D&AD award.

Thanks to George Lois’s book.

And those are just a few of the things I got from that book.

There are many more.

I still read it from time to time.

And I still learn things from it.

In fact it may be the best fifty quid I ever spent.

My Uncle Ginger was a marine.

His ship was The Prince of Wales, one of the most modern, powerful battleships afloat.

When Japan and Britain were at war, he was sent to the Far East.

The Prince of Wales was sent along with The Repulse, another huge battleship.

This was called Force Z.

They were sent to protect Singapore from Japanese invasion.

Apparently Churchill was advised to wait while air cover was arranged.

Churchill said, don’t be ridiculous.

Who ever heard of an aeroplane sinking a battleship?

All the experts say it couldn’t be done.

Well, unfortunately the Japanese didn’t listen to Churchill’s experts.

And they used aeroplanes to sink both battleships.

Uncle Ginger and the surviving crew managed to get ashore in Singapore.

The impregnable British fortress that had the largest land-mounted guns in South East Asia.

All pointing out to sea.

Because all the experts knew Singapore could only be attacked from the sea, the land was just impenetrable jungle.

No one could come that way.

Unfortunately, once again, the Japanese weren’t listening.

Their army came down through the jungle and captured Singapore.

Because the massive guns couldn’t be turned around to fire on the Japanese.

The experts said they would never need to.

And so Uncle Ginger spent 4 years in a Japanese POW camp.

The French experts were no better.

They built a massive, defensive fort, practically the length of France.

The Maginot Line.

It cost the equivalent of billions upon billions of Euros.

The part they didn’t bother with was the forest at The Ardennes..

All the experts knew it was impenetrable.

So they didn’t extend The Maginot Line that far.

But the German weren’t listening to the French experts.

Their army came through The Ardennes and captured France.

So, not quite so impenetrable as they hoped then.

History is a procession of ‘experts’ getting it wrong.

In the pub opposite BMP there was a condom machine in the Gents’ toilet.

On it was stamped, ‘Tested to British Standard 1148′

Under it someone had written “So was The Titanic”

People only listen to experts because it saves them having to take responsibility when things go wrong.

They’ve got a readymade excuse.

In primitive societies they didn’t have experts, they had people who can do stuff.

The medicine man was quite simply the person who could cure people.

If he couldn’t, he wouldn’t be the medicine man, would he?

But in our society it’s just the opposite.

We’re much more sophisticated.

The medicine man is the man who has papers saying he’s the medicine man.

Whether he can cure people or not.

We take his advice because his papers absolve us of responsibility.

No one can blame us if we listen to him.

His knowledge, his assurance, his language, makes him credible.

No one can argue with that.

But hang on.

Don’t we get good and bad people in every field?

Good and bad car mechanics?

Good and bad plumbers?

Good and bad comedians?

Good and bad artists?

Good and bad lawyers?

So having the right papers, the right language, the credibility, is no guarantee of being good at something.

It’s no guarantee of really being an expert.

In which case how do we know who listen to?

Ultimately, we can’t evade responsibility.

We choose who to listen to.

So we’re responsible for the outcome.

If we listen to the wrong research, choose the wrong agency, pick the wrong media, run the wrong ads, we will take the can back for it.

Whatever any so-called experts told us.

We chose the experts.

And we chose to listen.

And, when it all goes wrong, you’re on your own.

My  Uncle Ginger taught me that.

There’s a difference between involvement and commitment.

If we’re merely ‘involved’ in something then we don’t have to give it our all.

If it fails, it’s not the end of the world.

But if we’re ‘committed’ that’s a different matter.

Then it really is do or die.

We’ve got a lot more at stake.

It’s very important to know the difference.

And be honest with ourselves.

There’s a saying in New York about the difference between involvement and commitment.

They said it’s like ham and eggs.

In ham and eggs the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.

Many Americans see that as the problem with Europeans.

They’re only involved, never committed.

So they can’t be relied on.

In 1940 that was a huge problem.

Britain stood alone against Germany and needed American help.

But the Americans saw Britain as weak and about to crumble.

Some people in Britain even wanted to make peace with the Germans.

The USA didn’t see the British as committed enough to make a reliable ally.

But all that changed, during the course of what the French still see as the most shameful act of treachery in Franco-British history.

The French had already surrendered to Germany.

Their main ships were at port in Mers-el-Kebir, in North Africa.

Some of the most modern, most powerful, battleships in the world.

If they fell into German hands, they could be used to cut the Atlantic convoys.

Then Britain would be defeated.

Obviously, Churchill couldn’t allow that.

So he sent a British fleet to Mers-el-Kebir.

They waited outside the port and issued the French fleet with an ultimatum.

This is the gist of it:

“You have 3 choices:

1) You can either sail your ships with us and fight against Germany.

2) We can escort your ships to a neutral port, like the USA, where they must stay for the rest of the war.

3) Or you can scuttle your ships where they are, right now.

You have six hours to decide.”

The French said they would do none of these things.

So, when the six hour deadline was up, the Royal navy sank the French fleet.

Right where they were moored, in the harbour, virtually defenceless.

Killing several thousand French sailors.

The French have never forgiven us.

Churchill said it was the one decision he was most ashamed of.

But the Americans finally decided to give us the aid we needed.

Because it was apparent to everyone.

Now we were no longer just involved.

Now we were committed.

Now there was no going back.

Determination is very important to Americans.

And finally they saw we were determined enough to win.

We had staked everything.

We didn’t hold anything back.

Commitment is a very difficult thing for English people.

It’s uncool for a start.

We’re never supposed to look as if we’re trying too hard.

What if we give everything we’ve got and we still lose?

We won’t have any excuses.

At least if we don’t give everything, we can say we’re not that bothered.

We didn’t really try.

As Ricky Ponting said about cricket.

“When Australia loses we look for things we can change.

When England loses you look for excuses.”

It’s the same with war, with sport, with business, with relationships.

And it’s the same in what we do.

If we commit too much to work, we’re a workaholic.

Almost as if we’ve got a problem.

As if there’s something wrong with actually wanting to work.

When we could be over the pub.

Or at home watching TV.

Or reading, or at the gym, or sleeping.

Or anything, so long as it isn’t work.

Because being involved is okay, but being ‘committed’ is seen as somehow unhealthy.

Too extreme.

Funny thing though.

All the people who are really successful aren’t just involved.

They’re committed.

Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in 1929.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Ten years after The First World War.

Around the time of the Model T Ford.

When aircraft were still biplanes, made out of wood and fabric.

Still flown by men in open cockpits wearing leather helmets.

He invented the jet engine.

He tried to get the Air Ministry interested, but no one wanted to know.

No one in Britain at least.

The Germans were interested.

Heinkel especially.

Heinkel got hold of Whittle’s research, all his papers and his experiments, and he funded the development of Whittle’s jet engine.

Unknown to Whittle.

While the British were still building biplanes out of wood and fabric.

But it got even worse than that for Whittle.

He got some private backing and opened a company to develop his jet engine.

But when the government heard that the Germans were making jets, they

classified Whittle’s work secret.

Which meant Whittle couldn’t go out and raise private money anymore.

And the government wouldn’t spend public money.

And it got even worse than that for Whittle.

During World War Two he developed a two-engine jet, The Meteor.

It would have been the most advanced plane in the world.

Would have been.

But the government took it away from him and gave it to Rover to develop.

And Rover didn’t know anything about jet engines.

So they couldn’t do it.

And while the Germans had jet fighter planes we didn’t.

Whittle says we wasted two years when our jets could have been shooting down their jets.

Instead of letting their jets shoot down our bombers.

So it actually cost lives.

Eventually even the government realised it was stupid.

So after two wasted years, they took it away from Rover.

And they finally put Whittle in charge of building the engine he invented, right?

Wrong.

They gave it to Rolls Royce to make.

Because Rolls Royce were famous for building aero-engines.

But what they were famous for was piston-driven aero-engines.

They knew nothing about jets.

So Rolls Royce had to start at the beginning, learning how to make a jet engine.

While the man who invented it was ignored and overruled.

I recently saw an interview with Frank Whittle.

Naturally he’s still quite choked by what happened.

He had to watch everyone else succeeding with his ideas.

Have you ever felt like that?

Ever had a client who just wouldn’t buy your idea?

Ever worked for a creative director who took your idea away and gave it to someone else?

Ever watched someone else nick your idea and win an award with it?

Ever worked at an agency where dopes got promoted over you?

What should you do?

Recently I read this quote by Mother Theresa:

“If you are kind people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight.

Build anyway.”

See, the whole point of being alive is to fulfil our potential.

That means doing the best, and the most, of whatever it is that we can do that no one else can.

Whether anyone appreciates it or not.

Whittle did that.

He fulfilled his potential.

He squeezed the absolute maximum value out of his time on the planet.

See, we’re only here a few years.

Whatever happens, that’s all we get.

Which leaves us a simple choice.

Use it or lose it.

As George Bernard Shaw said, “When I die I want to be totally used up.”