Dave Trott’s Blog

One time, John Webster was doing a pitch for Johnson & Johnson cotton buds..

People needed educating about when and how to use them.

The main use for cotton buds of course, is to clean out your ears.

Either when they’re full of wax or when they’re full of water, say just after a shower.

The brief was to get them seen as an item in everyday use.

So John thought the best way to do that was to get them into the language.

That way it sounds as if everyone’s doing it.

A good way to do that would be to use rhyming slang.

So it would just be seen as an ordinary, everyday thing.

So John thought he’d turn the name Johnson & Johnson into a verb, and pair it up with the rhyming slang for ears.

He knew “Brighton” was short for “Brighton Pier” which was rhyming slang for ear.

So he wrote the line, “Johnson & Johnson your Brightons every day.”

And, as usual, what John did was very catchy, and we had a seamless pitch: planning, media, and creative.

Every department presented it’s section of the inexorable logic, and was received really well by the client.

It culminated in the line “Johnson & Johnson your Brightons every day.” and how it would work across all media to get into the language.

We couldn’t see any way the agency wasn’t going to win this.

Except.

It turned out the main client was a bit of an expert on cockney rhyming slang.

He said to John, “I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong.”

John said, “Pardon.”

He said, “Brighton Pier isn’t rhyming slang for ear. ‘Donald Peers’ is rhyming slang for ears, after the crooner.”

John said, “But I’ve heard people talk about their ‘Brighton’.

The client said, “Yes, I’m sure you have.”

John said, ”Well if “Brighton” isn’t short for ear what is it short for?”

The client said, “Well @Brighton’ isn’t short for “Brighton Pier”actually, it’s short for ‘Brighton Rock’.

And I’ll give you a clue, it doesn’t rhyme with ears.”

If John Webster can get it wrong sometimes, the rest of us needn’t feel bad about  the occasional ‘Brighton’ up.

Ron Collins was a one man team.
He was a great art director who was also a terrific writer.
He told me, when he was at CDP, he was working on a TV campaign.
Suddenly he had a great idea and he wrote it up on the spot.
Now when you do something on your own, you’re never quite sure if it’s really a great idea.
So he walked out of his office looking for someone to show it to.
Coming down the corridor was Frank Lowe, the CEO.
Frank said, “Hello Ron, what are you working on?”
Ron said, “I’ve just written this script. I think it’s good, but I’m not sure.”
Frank said, “Let me see.”
He read it through and said, “It’s brilliant. Who should we get to direct it, Alan, or Ridley?”
Ron said, “We’ve got research it first Frank.”
Frank said, “I’ve just done that. Now who should we get to direct it, Alan or Ridley?”
Frank didn’t need permission.
He was having it his way and that was that.
Ross Cramer was telling me about when he worked with Charlie Saatchi.
They had an agency together called Cramer Saatchi.
Ross was the art director and Charlie was the writer.
They’d just done a Health Education Council ad about what happens when a fly lands on your food.
For me, it’s one of the all-time best ever ads.
Ross said he knew it was a great ad when they did it.
So he was desperate to get it to run.
The client liked it a lot, but just wanted to change a full stop to a comma.
Ross said “Yes, okay.”
Charlie said, “No.”
The client said, “Come on, surely that isn’t such a big issue?”
Ross was thinking, “No it isn’t, and I don’t want to lose the ad over a full stop.”
Charlie said to the client, “You do your job, and I’ll do mine.”
And the ad ran exactly as Charlie had written it.
Ross didn’t want to risk it.
For Charlie it wasn’t a risk.
He was having it his way and that was that.
Nowadays I see a lot of people moaning that you can’t do that anymore.
That no one lets you be really creative and exciting.
But the truth is nothing’s changed.
No one ever let you be creative and exciting.
No one ever gave you permission.
If you had to wait for permission you probably weren’t creative and exciting in the first place.
Frank and Charlie didn’t wait for permission.
They were having it their way and that was that.
It could have gone badly wrong.
And probably for a lot of people it did go badly wrong.
They ignored the rules, had the rows, and lost their jobs.
Paul Arden got fired from at least two jobs before he ended up at Saatchi & Saatchi.
Then he became the creative director of the biggest agency in the world.
These are people who would rather go out with a bang than a whimper.
People who would rather fail big than succeed small.
People who will not compromise.
I don’t say they’re right.
Personally, I’m not like that.
I’ll compromise if it gets me what I want.
I’d rather have 75% of what I want than lose the entire 100%.
Frank and Charlie and Paul weren’t like that.
For them it was all or nothing.
Shit or bust.
They just did it and accepted all the risks that went with it.
Other people want to do the same thing but without any risks.
They want the success that the risk-takers had.
But they don’t want to take a chance of losing their job.
I can understand that.
But it doesn’t work that way.
The freedom to succeed includes the freedom to fail.

It’s amazing how your mind creates reality.
I once heard the script writer Frank Muir talking about the first time he went to New York.
He said he was terrified because he’d heard what a dangerous town it was.
As soon as he got off the plane at Kennedy airport he felt jumpy.
He kept looking over his shoulder, suspecting everyone.
But he managed to make it to a taxi without getting mugged.
All the way into Manhattan he was sure the cab driver was going to drive up a back alley where a gang was waiting.
But it didn’t happen and he got to the hotel safely.
He made it from the cab to the hotel in one piece.
He checked into the hotel, got upstairs to his room and began to relax.
He looked out of his window at Central park.
In the twilight it looked beautiful, sun setting behind the skyscrapers on the other side.
He was filled with a sense of just how great New York is.
He thought he’d been overreacting, he felt foolish.
He thought, “I can’t be in one of the greatest cities in the world and hide in my hotel room.”
So he decided to go for a walk.
He left the hotel and started walking along Fifth Avenue.
As he was looking up at all the tall buildings a man bumped into him.
Then the man backed away, turned and walked off quickly.
Frank Muir thought, that didn’t seem right.
He felt inside his coat and his wallet was gone.
He couldn’t believe it, everything he thought about New York had been confirmed the minute he dropped his guard.
He yelled at the man and started running after him.
The man turned round, saw him coming, and took off.
Into the park.
Now the one thing you don’t do in New York is go into the park after dark.
But Frank Muir was furious and he wasn’t thinking properly.
He chased the guy into the park and caught him under one of the bridges.
He spun him around, slammed him against the wall, reached inside his coat and grabbed the wallet.
The man took off, running as fast as he could.
Frank Muir walked back to the hotel.
He thought, you don’t have to be scared of New York, you just have to stand up for yourself.
Only weak people let themselves get taken advantage of.
He went up to his room feeling pretty pleased with himself.
And, when he opened the door to his room, he noticed his wallet was lying on the bed.
He hadn’t taken it with him.
He looked at the wallet in his hand, the one he’d taken off the man, and saw it wasn’t his.
He’d been so preconditioned, so petrified about New York that he realised what he’d done.

He’d chased an innocent man into the park and mugged him.
The other man was probably just another tourist like him.
Also petrified about being in New York and expecting to get mugged.

See, we think our mind interprets reality.
But actually our mind creates reality.
That’s a pretty empowering thought.
All the things you thought were stopping you actually don’t exist.
Unless you say they exist.
Then you make them exist and your behaviour reinforces them.
Sure objects exist, New York is there, that exists.
But as something to be terrified of it doesn’t exist, unless you say it does.
If you decide to be terrified, then you will make it exist.
Once you know that, you are free to choose the reality that’s going to make you empowered.
Rather than the one that’s going to make you disempowered.
The one that’s going to allow you to do the best work.
To fulfil your potential, whatever you decide that is.
Instead of the one that isn’t.

You choose the reality.
Then you live it.

Apparently, Alain de Botton recently said at a TED.com lecture that he felt there was a problem with meritocracy.
It meant that the best would win, which meant everyone else would lose.
And that wasn’t very nice.
I think it depends on how you hold winning and losing.
Do you hold it as a matter of life and death?
Or do you hold it like sport?
I was explainingto some students recently that the fun in winning was beating people who are better than you are.
Anyone can beat people who are not as good as they are.
The fun is in beating people that you shouldn’t be able to beat.
How do you out-think people like that?
That’s real creativity.
Isn’t the whole point of creativity to stretch yourself so that you do things you wouldn’t otherwise do?
Things that, if you stayed within your comfort zone, you wouldn’t even attempt.
Isn’t the whole point to continually grow and move on?
How are you doing to do that unless you compete?
How are you going to compete unless you’ve got something to compete with?
Maybe you compete against other agencies: you try to win against better competition.
Maybe you compete against the establishment: you try to upset the status quo.
Maybe you compete against your background: where you came from, what people expected of you.
Maybe you compete against yourself: your fear of failure, your laziness, your embarrassment.
Competition doesn’t define and limit the game.
Competition provides the energy for the game.
If you decide to help feed the third world, you compete against starvation.
If you decide to promote better healthcare, you compete against disease, or ignorance, or poverty, or greed.
Maurice Saatchi is often misquoted as having said,” It’s not enough for us to win, someone else has to lose.”
What he actually said was, “In order for us to win, someone else has to lose.”
This is a huge difference.
The first quote suggest that the whole point of competing is the pleasure gained from grinding someone else into the dust and seeing them suffer.
The second quote merely states a creative principle.
I have to cross the line ahead of you.
So, if I can’t make myself faster than you, I need to make you slower than me.
This is simply how sport works.
Look at Snooker.
The game is based on scoring points by either potting more balls myself, or forcing you into a position where you give away more points.
That’s what a ‘snooker’ is.
Look at Football.
You win by scoring more goals, but also by making the other team score less.
Look at Boxing.
You win by hitting your opponent more, but also by making him hit you less.
Look at Bridge, look at Darts, look at Ker-Plunk.
Blimey, look at Snap, look at I Spy.
Look at the very first games we start playing as soon as we’re old enough.
Look at Peek-a-Boo.
You play a game with a little baby to see if they can spot you behind your hands.
When they do they giggle.
It’s competitive, and it’s fun.
Years ago, when I was at BMP, one of the copywriters asked me to take her along to play squash.
I took her along to the court, and we started to play.
After a while she said, “This isn’t fair, you keep hitting the ball where I can’t get it.”
I explained that that was the point of the game.
She insisted that it was no fun that way, she wasn’t enjoying the game.
She said we should hit the ball so that we could each get to it, and hit it back and forth.
So we did that for a little while and it was of course incredibly boring.
The same is true of advertising.
If we could guarantee that our consumers only saw our ad today, then we could be as nice and gentle as we liked.
But it’s estimated that each of us sees around a thousand advertising messages a day.
TV, posters, radio, print, online, ambient, PoS.
Quick, name one you remember from yesterday.
Time’s up.
And that’s the problem.
Even if you can name one from yesterday, that’s one out of a thousand.
And that’s the competitive area we work in.
Just getting on the radar.
Beating the other nine hundred and ninety nine ads for attention.
However you slice it that’s competitive.
And you either think that’s fun or you don’t.
If you don’t, you can just play pat the ball against the wall, backwards and forwards, so you can each get it easily.
It’s nice and friendly and uncompetitive.

But it isn’t sport, and it isn’t advertising.

Do we think Picasso was creative?
Pretty much, right?
Imagine Picasso before he did a painting.
He gets up, sits in the studio, bored.
He looks out the window, has a Gauloises, sips a Pernod.
Eventually he calls his agent, “Any commissions in yet?”
His agent says, “Nothing yet, why don’t you do some spec paintings?”
Picasso says, “What on?”
The agent says, “I dunno, think of something.”
Picasso says, “What size: a miniature, or as big as a wall?”
The agent says, “Whatever you feel like.”
Picasso says, “Should I use oils, or do a drawing? Or should I do a sculpture, or ceramics? Should I make it out of objects I’ve found or clay?”
The agent says, “You’re the artist.”
Picasso says, “You’re no help.”
Then he slams down the phone and carries on looking out the window.
He can’t do anything because he’s waiting for a brief.
And everyone knows creative people can’t do anything unless someone gives them a brief.
How about Orson Welles, do we think he was creative?
How do we think ‘War Of The Worlds’ happened?
Orson is sitting in his office wondering what to do.
He’s twiddling his fingers looking out the window, waiting for a brief.
Suddenly one lands in his ‘in’ tray.
“BRIEF:
We suggest there exists an opportunity to present “War Of the Worlds” in a new format for radio.
Research has shown there is a chance to hoodwink the public into believing an invasion of the earth is taking place.
To give this broadcast the appearance of authenticity we should replicate the format of news updates.
Constantly interrupting programmes throughout the evening with “important announcements” about the progress of the invasion.
If done properly this could cause panic and mayhem across America.
The radio station see a real opportunity for us to get into trouble here. ”
Orson leans back in his chair.
“Hmmmmm.” he says.
Do we think it happened that way round?
Probably not.
Back in the caves at Lescaux, 50,000 years ago.
A caveman’s dipping his stick into a little pool of black liquid.
His wife says, “What are you doing?”
He says, “I’ve just made this stuff for painting on walls.”
His wife says, “What’s painting?”
He says, “It’s like a picture of what you see when you look at things.”
His wife says, “Show me one.”
He says, “I haven’t done any yet.”
His wife says, “Why not.”
He says, “No one’s given me a brief.”
His wife says, “What’s a brief?”
He says, “Someone has to ask me to do it first. Then they have to tell me what they want in it, how many, and how big.”
His wife says, “I see. So you had to invent the brief before you could invent painting then?”
He says, “Well of course.
Otherwise how would I know if anyone wanted it?
If I do something no one’s asked for I could be wasting my time.
I wouldn’t know where it’s going to run, what size, what media, who the target market is.”
His wife says, “Look, while you’re waiting for all that, couldn’t you just come up with some ideas on your own?”
He says, “What, just do something for the sake of it? That’s not very creative is it.”
She says, “What about you and your mates hunting buffalo?”
He says, “How many buffalo?”

Do we think it happened like that?