Dave Trott’s Blog

There used to be a time when account men actually sold advertising to clients.
The theory was that the best advertising was brave advertising.
Advertising that stood out by breaking the category rules.
Given that the client had spent a long time learning and implementing the category rules, this was not an easy sell.
Every time you broke a rule the client would point out the ‘mistake’.
The client needed someone to help them understand why you were breaking the rules.
Someone to hold their hand.
That was an account man’s job.
I heard it put as follows:
“The client knows what he wants.
The agency knows what he needs.
The account man’s job is to get the client to want what he needs.”
Obviously every agency wants a happy client.
There are two ways to do this.
One: do the best job possible.
Two: do what the client wants.
They are the short-term view, and the long-term view.
In the short term the client will be happy if you do what he wants.
If it doesn’t work, he won’t be happy.
The alternative is you insist on doing what you believe to be right
In the short term the client may be unhappy.
But if it works, he’ll be happy.
So the issue is: happy client in the short term, or the long term.
If you do what the client wants in the short term, and it doesn’t work, you lose the account.
Likewise, if you do what you believe to be right, against the client’s wishes, and it doesn’t work you lose the account.
So, either way, you’re betting the account on what you do working.
In short, you’ll be left carrying the can.
So you might as well bet on the option you think will work.
Not just the easy option.
When I was at BMP I had a conversation with the (then) Head of Planning.
I thought the way we were using research made everyone  lazy.
Instead of being a source of useful information, it became a thumbs up or down on whether work got made.
I thought we should use research findings as input, but still take the final decision ourselves.
One of the agencies I admired was Saatchi.
They’d always done disruptive work, long before the term ‘disruption’ was coined.
I thought the difference between them and us was the account men.
It wasn’t that our creatives couldn’t do work as daring as Saatchi, it was that our account men wouldn’t sell it.
I said to the head of panning that I thought ‘selling’ had become a dirty word.
In his heavy Scottish accent he said, “So it should be. We’re not some shyster outfit like Saatchi. We don’t ‘sell’ work to a client.
We lay the true facts of research before him and trust his own good sense and judgement to show him the correct path.”
That’s where we differed.
That’s why I always thought one of the things that made Saatchi a great agency was Tim Bell.
An account man who actually sold work to clients.
That’s also why I thought one of the things that made CDP a great agency was Frank Lowe.
Another account man who actually sold work to clients.
Apparently, CDP once had to present a long expensive commercial to a difficult client.
Frank went into the presentation and sat next to the client.
The account man played the commercial.
Frank and the client watched it together.
After the client had seen it, he said he wasn’t sure about a particular part.
Frank said, “Do you know, that’s exactly what I thought. I think we should see it again. Play it again for us please.”
So the account man played it again.
Frank and the client watched carefully.
After it had finished, Frank patted the client’s arm and said, “No, I think we were wrong. It’s actually okay.”
And the client, reassured, bought it and ran it.
And that’s how important real account men are.
We can have all the great ideas in the world, but if the account man doesn’t get the client to run it, it’ll never happen.

And all we’ve got is a bookful of great roughs.

One of our art directors, Simone Micheli, was sitting opposite me in the office, looking through The Art Direction Book.
Because he was opposite me, I was looking at the pages upside-down.
Somehow the ads looked fresher, bolder.
One of them that particularly struck me, was an ad for TWA that Neil Godfrey had done ages ago.
It had a plane in the middle distance, and a red carpet cutting across half the white page in powerful perspective.
Apart from anything else, it was a just such a strong piece of graphic design.
How come I never noticed that before?
Then it struck me.
It was because it was upside down.
So I couldn’t read the words.
Normally I take a cursory glance at something then, within a nanosecond, start to read it.
Once I’m involved in the words, the left side of my brain takes over.
The right side (the visual side) immediately gets put in second place.
That’s why I was so much more impressed with the layout when it was upside-down, and I couldn’t read the words.
For the first time I was concentrating solely on the graphic qualities.
That’s why Japanese art direction always looks so beautifully designed to us.
Our brain isn’t engaged in reading the words.
To us, there aren’t any words.
The calligraphy is just another graphic element, so we’re impressed with the design rather than getting sidetracked by the words.
This knocks on to semiotics.
The structuralist view is that we never actually see what we’re looking at.
Rather we decode it for meaning.
So actually, language is the only reality.
All we ever see is symbols and concepts.
Symbols and concepts that exist only in our minds, not in reality.
I once read a book called ‘Drawing With the Right Side Of Your Brain’.
At first I didn’t get it.
I thought the right side was the visual side, so don’t we always draw with the right side of our brains?
Apparently not.
We don’t draw what we see, we draw symbols for what we know is there.
So, if I see a face, I start to draw the symbol that I know works for eyes.
A shallow curve for the top lid.
An inverted shallow curve for the bottom lid.
Similarly for lips.
A flattened-out letter ‘M’ for the top lip.
A flattened-out letter ‘U’ for the bottom lip.
And so on.
I draw symbols for what I know to be there rather than what I actually see.
I’m drawing in language: semiotics.
Which is how pretty much everything in the world works.
Road signs, packaging, clothing, cars, offices.
Everything is designed for the signals it gives off.
Everything is communicating, so everything is a language.
Mike Gold showed me a great way to prove the power of the left brain to over-ride the right brain.
When I was making a speech, I had words printed on large cards in different colours.
I asked the audience, “Please shout out the colours the words are printed in, not the words themselves.”
Then I’d hold up the word YELLOW printed in blue.
Then the word GREEN printed in red.
Then the word PINK printed in green.
Then the word BLUE printed in red.
In each case everyone shouted out the word, not the colour it was printed in.
Try it yourself.
Your mind reads the words aloud and steamrollers right over the colour your eyes actually see.
I noticed it again this morning.
I’d been through the Saturday paper, and bypassed all the ads without even noticing them.
Then I left the paper on the table.
My wife sat opposite me and started flicking through it.
And upside-down I started to actually notice all the ads I’d ignored.
When I couldn’t read the words I started to appreciate the design.

Try it yourself.
See if it makes you think differently about how you do ads.
See if there’s an opportunity there.

Last week I heard an interesting programme on a Chicago radio station.
The famous copywriter Julian Koenig is still very upset that George Lois has take credit for some ads he did in the 1960s.
These are “Think Small” for Volkswagen, and “If your Harvey Probber chair wobbles, straighten your floor”.
Both, really terrific ads.
Personally I’ve never seen George Lois’s name anywhere near the VW ad.
Everyone knows that was Helmut Krone.
(The VW and Avis campaigns being the two most important case histories you learn when you start in advertising.)
But I have read several times George Lois taking credit for the Harvey Probber chair ad.
Lois says it was his idea and Koenig just changed some words.
Koenig, however, says Lois wasn’t even in the room when he wrote the ad.
My attitude to these questions is always that you look at the track records of the people involved.
Who’s done more great work?
For instance, supposing there are two guys.
One has been involved in dozens of great pieces of work with lots of different people.
The other guy has only been involved in one famous piece of work, and that’s the one that’s in dispute.
The weight of credibility has to favour the first guy.
So that has to be the focus of a career in this business.
Do as much great work as you can, with as many different people as you can, on as many different clients as you can, as fast as you can.
That way the weight of credibility is on your side.
You haven’t just proved yourself in one situation, but over and over again.
Of course this means moving a lot faster and only dealing with the big picture.
If you spend your time worrying about details you have to go slower.
Then you get bogged down.
There’s a famous old Zen story about two monks walking alongside a river.
A woman is standing there crying.
The older monk asks what the problem is.
She says, “I need to cross the river, but if I do I’ll ruin my kimono.”
The older monk says, “Hop on my back.”
And he carries her across, and puts her down.
The younger monk is furious, and for hours the two monks walk on in silence.
All day he rages inwardly, until at sunset he can’t stand it anymore.
He turns to the older monk and says, “You broke the rule that says we aren’t supposed to have anything to do with women.”
The older monk says, “I left her at the river, you’re still carrying her.”
So I think the thing is, you might be right but what is it costing you?
While you’re stuck with the detail you can’t move on.
Everyone knows Julian Koenig was the writer on probably the most influential ad ever: Volkswagen’s “Think Small”.
Then he opened an ad agency with George Lois, called Papert, Koenig, Lois.
Then he and Lois split up, no one’s heard much about him since.
After George Lois left that agency he set up another agency, called Lois Holland Callaway.
He did two decades of covers for Esquire that changed magazine covers for ever.
Today all magazine covers are still pale imitations of his originals.
He was involved in so many advertising campaigns, I can’t even list them here.
And he was too full of ideas to be limited to just advertising.
He designed logos, restaurants, books, cars, interiors, anything he could get his hands on.
He’s done at least ten times as much as the entire output of anyone else.
He’s also probably a bully, and certainly an egotist.
So was Picasso.
If you go to the Musee Picasso in Paris, you’ll see paintings by Van Gogh, Gaugin, Lautrec, Manet, Degas.
Except they aren’t.
They’re all by Picasso, while he was young and looking for his own style, he copied everyone.
Later he stole from everyone: Braque, Modigliani, Matisse, African art.
Until eventually it all came together to be Picasso.
One of the most prolific artists ever.
Julian Koenig’s position is that George Lois was a better showman than an art director, and was better at promoting himself than he was at doing ads.
Well the same could be said of Picasso.
It’s a fine line between charlatan and genius, even a blurred one.
You haven’t got time to slow your life down to a speed at which you can gain everyone’s approval for everything you do.
Do it, get on to the next thing.
Do it, get on to the next thing.
Do it, get on to the next thing.
After I’d left BMP someone called me up to say they understood John Webster had stolen some of my ideas, and they were having the same problem.
I said I didn’t think John did any of that on purpose.
John was just so concentrated on whatever he was into he wasn’t worried about details like that.
He was like an absent-minded professor.
He just took anything from anywhere to get the job done.
In fact sometimes he forgot and gave me credit for ideas he’d come up with.
So it worked both ways.
Ideas I’d come up with would never have seen the light of day without John.
I wouldn’t even have recognised them as ideas without John.
So I got back ten times from John whatever he took.
I learned to forget the details and look at the big picture.

I’m not still carrying the woman.
I left her at the river.

Ever heard expression “on your tod”?

It means to be, or do something, on your own, without help.

As in: “He stood guard all night, on his tod.”

Ever wondered where it came from?

Well all you have to do is look it up in any of the various books on cockney rhyming slang.

There are several in Foyles.

All written by 30-ish middle class university graduates.

All of whom are experts in the derivation of cockney rhyming slang.

So to them, all slang must be rhyming slang.

Rhyming slang is where you leave the second part of the rhyme off.

So, if we go a bit Dick van Dyke for a moment, “apples” means stairs, because the full rhyme is “apples and pears”.

So in seeking the derivation of ‘tod’ they know it must be the first part of the rhyme.

And the second part must rhyme with (on your) “own”.

So they’ll tell you that ‘on your tod’ is believed to refer to a certain Todd Sloan, a man famous in the east end of London for riding around everyday, alone on his horse.

He liked to be alone.

Hence ‘todd sloan’ = alone.

Except that’s bollocks.

These people assume that all slang is derived from rhyming slang because that’s their preconception.

So they make the evidence fit their preconception.

The truth is ‘on your tod’ isn’t rhyming slang at all.

I know, I was there.

It started with Elizabeth Taylor.

She married a Hollywood producer called Mike Todd.

He wanted to make the film “Around The World In Eighty Days” starring David Niven.

It cost an absolute fortune and he couldn’t get any backing.

At the time it was a famous story, how he scraped, and did whatever it took, to finance the film.

Against the odds he got it made, and it was a huge success.

In those days the biggest TV programme was “Sunday Night At The London Palladium”.

The host at this particular time was Norman Vaughan.

He used to do a brief monologue at the beginning of the show.

One Sunday night he was grumbling that he’d had no help that evening.

“I’ve had to do everything on my Mike Todd” he said.

It got a huge laugh.

Because everyone knew what he meant without saying it.

The phrase “on your Mike Todd” caught on.

Soon it got shortened to “on your Todd” and eventually “on your tod”.

And it passed into the language.

Now anyone who wasn’t there at the time, to watch TV on that Sunday night, obviously won’t remember that.

So they’ll recreate it from the tools they’ve got.

And, as they say, if the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

Or as Werner Heisenberg put it:

“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”

It’s the same way with ads as everything else.

We each have a preconception about what works and we can each put up a good argument.

Who wins?

Whoever makes the best argument.

But, as Tim Delaney once said to me, “Yes, but that doesn’t make them right, just because they won the argument.”

That’s why an argument about ads is really kind of futile.

All that wins is the best argument, not necessarily the best ad.

Think of that next time you’re on an awards jury, or with a client, or an account man or planner, or even your creative partner.

Someone might be better at arguing.

They might win the argument.                                         

But they might still come up with the wrong answer

When I was about 17, I started doing A level Art.

We weren’t allowed to draw nudes at school.

So I signed up for the life drawing classes at East Ham tech on Saturday mornings.

I had an image of life-class being about learning the structure of the human body.

So I thought we’d get fit, healthy specimens to draw.

I was the youngest person in the class, and eventually this grumpy, sixty year old naked model came and sat on a stool in front of us.

At first I wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman.

It had purple-dyed, bouffant hair like old ladies.

Plus makeup and sagging boobs.

But also a little posing pouch like a man would wear.

And a pot belly and stick-like arms and legs.

I was quite innocent, so I thought it must be a hermaphrodite.

It certainly wasn’t one of the Greek gods and goddesses I’d expected.

Years later I found out that grumpy old model was Quentin Crisp.

The subject of the TV programme, ‘The Naked Civil Servant’.

Sting even wrote a song about him, “An Englishman in New York”.

But, at the time, I was just disappointed we didn’t get a perfect body to draw.

Anyway, I realised if I was learning structure it didn’t really matter what he looked like.

All the bones underneath were the same: arms, legs, head, hands, feet.

So I started to draw structurally: starting with the core balance line.

Usually one foot is taking all the weight: work out which one, then draw a straight upwards like an armature.

In a sculpture this would be the rod attached to the base, that everything else hangs off.

Then the directional lines for pelvis, ribs, chest shoulders.

Then relationship lines between ankles, knees, hands, elbows.

The same with the face: core tilt line for nose, directional lines for mouth, ears, eyes.

And I’d just keep building structures until a form appeared out of the mass of scaffolding.

That’s how I’ve always drawn, structurally.

Many years later I married an art director and we had children.

When they were about 13 we decided it was time for them to start life classes.

So we booked up at a little art school in Hampstead, and on Saturday mornings, all four of us would go.

Then I noticed the way my wife drew was exactly opposite to me.

I started from the inside out, and drew structure.

By the time I’d got to the surface I wasn’t really interested in the outside appearance.

So I started another drawing, investigating structure again.

My wife was exactly the opposite.

She wasn’t interested in structure.

She started on the surface and drew in every detail, in perfect light and shade.

All her drawings looked almost photographically like the model.

I thought why is that?

Then I thought, probably because she’s an art director and I’m a copywriter.

Art directors are right brain, copywriters are left brain.

Right brain is sensory and emotional.

Left brain is rational and logical.

Right brain arrives at a solution holistically and instinctively.

Left brain arrives at a solution incrementally by a process of deduction.

Which is how the best teams tend to work.

Copywriters work out what we’re supposed to do, art directors come up with exciting ideas.

Art directors have flashes of inspiration, copywriters keep the whole process on track.

Which is also why they work better together.

Left to themselves, art directors would be exciting but wrong.

Copywriters would be right but dull.

I thought that was fascinating.

But then I would, I’m a copywriter so I’m left brain.