Dave Trott’s Blog

My son used to go to a school for nice, intelligent, middle-class boys.

All approaching puberty.

One day we had one of those conversations that sons and dads have.

It was a similar situation to the one The Who sing about in “Pictures Of Lilly”.

So, I went into the office and asked Yvonne, my PA, if she could pop over to the newsagent.

I said I needed copies of Playboy, Men Only, Hustler, and anything else she could find on the top shelf.

Yvonne asked why I couldn’t go and get them myself.

It was a fair question.

The truth is our offices were in Soho.

And I didn’t want to join all the other blokes leafing through porn mags.

So Yvonne, being a good sport, eventually went and got them for me.

I took them home and gave them to my son.

I said, “Put these where Mum, Grandma, or Carol (the cleaning lady) can’t find them.”

And that was that.

I thought.

A month or so later I got a package in the post.

I opened it up and it was all the porn mags.

Plus a letter from my son’s headmaster.

It said, “One of our teachers saw a large crowd of boys in the playground, gathered around your son.

Upon approaching them he discovered your son was showing the boys the pictures in these magazines.

He asked your son where he acquired them and your son told him they were yours.

Magazines like these are not allowed in school, so we thought you might like to have them back.”

To get himself out of trouble, my own son’s grassed me up.

Now what happens on next parent’s day?

Every teacher will think I’ve got a massive stash of porn mags at home.

I avoided the embarrassment of buying the mags, but this is now much worse.

It’s the equivalent of the argument I always have with Gordon.

About whether we should show our ads to anyone else or not.

Gordon is an art director, so he doesn’t trust anyone.

He wouldn’t even show the ads to me if he had the choice.

He just wants to run the ads before anyone can interfere with them.

I feel the other way.

I want to show the ads to everyone before they run.

That way, if there are any problems, we’ll know about them.

And we can fix them.

We can have all the arguments internally.

If there’s a mistake or problem, we’ll find out before the ad runs.

That’s got to be better than finding it’s wrong after the ad’s run, and everyone outside the agency has seen it.

Then it’s too late to do anything about it.

Then it really is embarrassing.

That’s why I think it makes sense to ask everyone else about your ads.

Literally everyone.

From the office cleaner upward.

With one proviso.

Everyone who doesn’t work on the account.

Planners, account men, production, studio, media, secretaries.

Anyone who doesn’t know the brief.

So they don’t know what the ad’s supposed to say.

They can judge it like the man, or woman, in the street.

They judge whether they’d stop and look at it, whether they’d remember it, whether it’s interesting.

The account man, or planner, who wrote the brief can’t judge that.

They’re too involved.

They know what the brief says, so they’re looking for that.

They’re not looking for impact, involvement, memorability.

So they can’t judge the ad from the consumer’s POV.

There’s another great thing about asking people who don’t work on the account what they think of your ads.

You don’t have to listen to them.

Unless you think they’re right.

You haven’t got that option with the people who work on the account.

If they’ve got an opinion they’re going to fight for it.

So I always ask people who don’t know the brief.

Then I can decide what to do.

I want that information, so I’ve got the option.

I’d much rather be embarrassed inside the agency than outside.

Stanley Pollitt was in the BMP pub one evening after work.

The head-of-art was there too.

They were discussing Dave Christensen.

Dave was then a junior art director, and he’d just been fired by the creative director, Gabe Massimi.

Stanley was furious.

He thought Dave was young and talented and it wasn’t fair.

Stanley began telling the head-of-art that he should have taken better care of Dave, looked after him more.

The head of art said something along the lines of, “Don’t fucking tell me what I should have done. It’s your fucking agency. You did fuck-all to stop it you fucking hypocrite.”

In the circs, this wasn’t a smart thing to say.

The circs being:

1)    Cold refreshment had been liberally taken.

2)    Stanley looked like a tubby, bald old duffer, but he’d been a boxing blue at Cambridge.

So Stanley hauled off and gave the head-of-art what we used to call a fourpenny one.

The head-of-art cartwheeled across the floor of the pub.

And, almost without stopping, picked himself up and ran out the door.

Stanley went back to his drink.

Shortly after, the head-of-art left the agency.

Gabe Massimi got fired.

And Dave Christensen was un-fired, and went on to win lots of awards.

That was definitely one way to run an agency.

Although not the one Stanley is more famous for.

However, another believer in this school of management was Kerry Millett.

Kerry was head of creative services at GGT.

She also used to sing in some of the roughest pubs in south east London.

In fact Kerry was from a very tough estate in Bermondsey.

Briefly, you didn’t mess with Kerry.

One evening there was an agency party.

Lots of drinking, loud music, flashing lights, everyone dancing.

One of our art directors was going out with Kerry’s secretary.

He’d had a few drinks and he was having a row with her, on the dance floor.

One thing led to another and, for some reason, he slapped her.

Kerry had been watching this.

She walked onto the dance floor and knocked the art director out.

One punch.

He went down like a sack of spuds.

Two of the other creatives went onto the dance floor and carried him off.

Kerry came back rubbing her knuckles.

She picked up her drink and said, “I don’t like blokes hitting women.”

That’s how Kerry ran the creative services department.

Tony Brignul was a creative director at CDP.

He was also a superb copywriter.

And a published poet.

Tony won more D&AD pencils than any other copywriter.

In short, Tony took copywriting very seriously.

One day an account man came back from the client and handed Tony a piece of paper.

It was Tony’s copy, with some parts scratched out and changed.

Tony said, “What’s this?”

The account man said, “The client had one or two problems, so I’ve rewritten a few bits. I think it’s an improvement.”

And Tony knocked him out.

But Tony was a sensitive man.

And he began to wonder if he’d been too harsh.

The account man had made a mistake, but he was only doing his job.

Tony began to feel bad.

So he went to see the account man, and he apologised.

He said, although the account man was wrong to change the copy, he felt he’d overreacted.

The account man accepted the apology.

Then he said he did however think he’d been right to change the copy.

His version was much better than Tony’s original.

So Tony knocked him out again.

When my son was very small he came back from school one day looking upset.

I asked him what was up.

He said, “There’s a boy at school making fun of my name.”

I asked him what the boy said.

He said, “Lee Trott - pee pot.”

I said, “That’s not so bad, what’s the problem?”

He said, “I don’t like it and I don’t know what to do about it?”

I said, “Well you make fun of his name faster and better than him, until he shuts up.”

My son said, “That’s okay for you Dad, but I don’t know how to do it.”

I said, “Pardon?”

He said, “You went to a rough school where people learned stuff like that. But we never learned it at my school.”

I thought, fair point.

He went to a posh, North London private school, full of very nice, middle-class boys.

I said, “What’s this boy’s name?”

My son said, “Gbimini Soyinka.”

I said, “And he’s taking the piss out of your name, right?”

And I sat my son down and showed him the basics of making fun of other boy’s names.

See, the school playground is a great place to learn mnemonics.

A device to implant something in the memory.

What the boy had done with my son’s name was basic assonance.

Repetition of the vowel sound.

Another good device is alliteration.

Repetition of the first letter of a word.

Both of these are great branding devices for us to use.

Registering the brand in the consumer’s mind.

So that you can’t remember an ad without remembering who it was for.

We use those devices all the time.

At BMP we did ‘Do it for half at Halfords”

At Saatchi they did, “Don’t ‘um and arr’ go Red Star”

At GGT we did, “Hello Tosh, gotta Toshiba.”

“Ariston and on and on and on.”

“You can break a brolly but you can’t knacker a Knirps.”

“You’ll be amazed at a Mazda.”

The very lessons you learn in the playground, making fun of other people’s names, is how people’s minds work.

If you want something to stick, get a mnemonic.

So that’s a great tool to have when brand awareness is critical.

When the brief is Brand-Share, not Market-Growth.

Especially when you don’t have a definite point of difference.

Without a mnemonic you could just be growing the market for whoever is brand leader.

Another thing you learn fast in the playground is how to beat someone bigger and better than you.

And you do that by changing the rules.

That’s creativity.

So if a bigger tougher guy makes fun of you, you can’t make fun of him back.

But what you can do is make fun of yourself faster and better than he can.

Suddenly the crowd is laughing with you.

They’re on your side not his.

And he doesn’t know what to do.

He can’t get upset because you’re making fun of yourself.

But he’s being beaten, because you’re funnier.

So he goes away confused.

And you win.

What you learn in those situations is the subject matter is irrelevant.

You win by being creative.

That’s what interests me.

The way you win creatively, not the subject matter.

That’s what I found strange about something I wrote here a while ago.

It was about buying a house and out-thinking an estate agent.

I wanted to discuss the creative aspect of it.

But a lot of people just wanted to discuss the morality of it.

Was it right or wrong?

I don’t see the point of discussing morality.

You either thinks something is moral or it isn’t.

That’s not a creative issue.

That’s a personal opinion.

That’s the ‘What you do’.

Creativity is the ‘How you do it’.

David Abbott decided not to allow his agency to do cigarette advertising.

That was his moral position.

We can’t discuss how creative that moral position was.

Or how creatively he decided not to advertise cigarettes.

We can discuss whether Paul Arden’s Silk Cut advertising is more creative than Alan Waldie’s Benson & Hedges advertising.

But we can’t do that with someone who keeps repeating, “But cigarette advertising is wrong.”

Maybe it is wrong.

But that’s something for a morals blog.

This blog, hopefully, is about creativity.

Stanley Pollitt always used to say that we were like barristers.

The system was set up for our clients to get a fair hearing.

We were simply there to argue their case.

But I admire what David Abbott did, simply because he actually did something.

Most people just sit around and moan about things.

That doesn’t help anyone.

If you feel strongly you should do something about it.

Get creative.

That’s what I learned in the playground.

Every day I come into the office past people smoking on the pavement.

I pop out at lunchtime and people are standing in the rain, smoking.

I go home at night, past groups of people outside pubs.

Freezing and smoking.

How can smoking like that be any fun?

When I used to smoke, you could smoke anywhere.

Upstairs on buses, upstairs in the cinema, in the office, in the pub, in restaurants, in shops.

Every other carriage on the tube was for smoking.

I used to smoke about 60 a day.

That wasn’t considered a heavy smoker.

Stanley Pollitt was heavy smoker, he smoked 100 a day.

I used to light the first one up before I got out of bed in the morning.

And stub the last one out in bed at night.

Just like everyone else.

When I was typing, I usually lit the next cigarette up from the previous one.

It seems excessive now.

But that’s because fewer and fewer people smoke.

When everyone does it, no one notices it.

I started smoking like most schoolboys.

We thought it was macho.

But the truth was it was the opposite.

I was so short of breath I couldn’t even run away, let alone fight.

So I decided to quit.

I looked at it like any advertising problem.

Most advertising fails because no one bothers working what the real problem is before they start.

They just blindly assume that running any advertising will increase sales.

That’s why 90% of advertising fails.

It was also why 90% of attempts to stop smoking didn’t work.

No one bothers working out the real problem before they start.

So I thought, let’s approach it creatively.

Let’s see where I can actually be most effective.

I can’t give up 60 a day just like that.

I’m too addicted.

But maybe I could transfer the addiction to something easier to give up.

I still needed the nicotine hit.

So I figured, let’s switch to other sources of nicotine.

Cigars, a pipe, chewing-tobacco, snuff.

First I’ll reduce my dependence on the actual, physical cigarette.

Then I can cut down my dependence on nicotine itself.

And it worked.

I couldn’t smoke as many cigars (or as much pipe) as I had cigarettes.

After a week, I got fed up smoking a pipe, so I stopped.

After a month I was getting fed up smoking cigars.

And gradually, naturally, my dependence on nicotine cut itself down.

And after a couple of months, I’d stopped smoking totally.

What had seemed like a massive problem got resolved bit by bit.

Just like advertising.

Don’t expect an ad campaign to do the entire sales job on its own.

From factory to consumer.

But by working out what small part advertising can actually effect.

And how that part can influence the whole.

What’s the pressure point?

Years ago I used to study Kung Fu.

One of the things that impressed me was ‘pressure-points’.

You may have an opponent that is bigger and stronger than you.

If you simply go head-to-head with them you’ll lose.

But there is a pressure-point just below the inverted V in the ribcage.

If you can strike here with your knuckle, they will collapse.

You don’t have to oppose their strength, you can remove it.

This is the sort of pressure point advertising should always be looking for.

The knock-on effect.

You don’t have to knock all the dominoes over.

Just find the first one and knock that over.

As Henry Ford said, “No problem is too big if you break it down into small enough pieces.”

One morning Gordon Smith came into the office in a foul mood.

The glass had broken on the front of the washing machine at home.

And his wife had told him to get it fixed.

So he stormed into the office and started making phone calls.

Actually ‘phone calls’ is a euphemism.

The phone is not Gordon’s, or any art director’s, natural instrument.

Art directors are visual people and the phone is a verbal medium.

This is frustrating for them.

So actually he started arguing with the phone.

He approached it with, what we might term ‘bad grace’.

He went round after round with the phone.

It was like watching Frazier fight Ali.

At the end of several hours he was exhausted.

And no nearer getting a new glass-front than when he walked in the office.

Eventually I said, “Gord, why don’t you let the creative dept PA do that?”

Gord said, “It’s not agency business, it’s my washing machine.”

I said, “True, but let’s see what’s best use of agency resources.

You’ve just spent two hours getting nowhere.

During that time, we can’t work together.

So that’s four hours of expensive creative time spent not getting a problem solved.

Doesn’t it make more sense for the agency to spend less money getting a PA to do that?”

So we asked the PA, and she made some phone calls.

And in less than fifteen minutes, a new washing machine glass was being delivered to Gordon’s home.

I think having an expert in that area was roughly ten times more effective use of agency money than letting Gordon do it.

Gordon approached the problem knowing it was something he hated doing.

Knowing he’d waste ages on the phone, talking to unhelpful people.

Getting frustrated and getting nowhere.

So that’s exactly what happened.

The PA approached the problem as a simple phone call.

She expected it to get solved easily.

And that’s exactly what happened.

How you approach a problem determines the outcome.

I’ve got a Corby trouser-press at home.

One day I noticed one of the plastic feet was broken.

I thought, right I’ll make a wooden one.

And I’ll stain it black so that it matches the plastic one.

So I went to B&Q and bought some wood, some screws, some woodstain, a cheap brush, and some white spirit.

Cut the wood to length and screwed it in place.

But the bottom of the trouser press was plastic, so it was very wobbly.

I thought, that foot needs reinforcing.

I’d better put a longer piece of wood from the back of the wooden foot to the top of the trouser-press.

So I went back to B&Q and bought some small angle-braces, some nails, and some epoxy resin.

Then I went back into the garage and started putting it all together on the Black & Decker WorkMate.

While I was working I had the radio on.

Someone was talking about what women really want from men.

She said all most women really want is someone to put the shelves up.

I thought, that must be tough on women.

They can’t even put up some shelves up by themselves.

Then I thought, what do they do if they haven’t got a man?

I thought, I bet they phone someone up to do it for them.

Women can get on the phone and fix most things.

Then I thought, how would she solve the problem I’ve got?

She’d look for a phone number first.

So I went upstairs and looked on the side of the trouser-press and there was a label.

And on the label was a phone number.

So I called the number and said, “Do you do spare plastic feet for a Corby trouser-press?”

And the young lady said, “Certainly sir, five pounds a pair.’

So I ordered a pair.

Meanwhile I’d just wasted about twenty quid on wood, screws, nails, braces, glue, and woodstain, that I wouldn’t use.

All because I started on the solution, not the problem.

Dennis Lewis was a creative director at BBH years ago.

I once asked him what made them different as an agency.

Dennis said, “You know how, at most agencies, the brief comes into the creative department and it takes you about a week working on it to get the brief right, before you can start working on it?”

I said I did.

He said, “Well at BBH it isn’t like that. They take a lot longer sorting out the brief, but when it lands on your desk it’s right. You’re ready to start work on it straight away.”

That is a sensible use of resource.

There’s a definition I like a lot:

“Efficiency is doing things right.

Effectiveness is doing the right things.”