Dave Trott’s Blog

When I was at art school in Brooklyn, I was looking for an apartment to share.

One guy I went to see was a bodybuilder with rippling muscles.

He was about 30 and, at the time, that seemed really old to me.

He said he was gay and did I have a problem with that?

I said I wasn’t and I didn’t.

He told me he used to go ’straight-bashing’ at the weekends.

I asked what that was.

He said he’d get a small, gay friend of his to go around various bars and act really camp.

Meanwhile he would wait outside.

Eventually some drunks would start picking on the little guy.

Calling him faggot and shoving him around.

When they took him outside to beat him up, this guy would be waiting.

And he’d kick the daylights out of them.

Fair enough.

He told me was actually bisexual.

He said, in his time, he’d had sex with around 500 women, and 1,500 men.

Fair enough.

I didn’t end up sharing a flat with him.

But one thing he told me did come in very useful.

He said the canteen at my college was the biggest ‘cruising’ venue in New York City.

It came in useful because one of my courses was psychology.

And to pass, we had to write a thesis.

This meant coming up with a question.

Interviewing lots of people.

And drawing conclusions from the results.

Basically, crude research.

For a creative person this could be a dull process.

Unless I could find an interesting and provocative question.

Now that I knew the college canteen was full of gay men that was easier.

I made my title something like, ‘Gay: nature or nurture?”

I had lots of potential subjects to interview.

I’d ask them all about their history, when did they know they were gay, patterns of behaviour, etc?

This is many years ago now, but I remember one thing that surprised me.

The majority of these guys had lived in denial about it for a long time.

They had sex with many times more females than a straight guy would.

Until they stopped resisting and admitted they were gay.

Ever since then, I thought the subject of denial was fascinating.

How we try to impose our will about our self-image on the physical universe.

Without looking at the evidence.

I was in denial about advertising when I was young.

I thought it was just big-business manipulating the gullible masses.

I thought I should be involved in something better.

Like joining the Peace Corps and serving in the Third World.

But the evidence said I was good at advertising.

I was in denial.

I spent years resisting it.

Eventually I came out of the closet.

I admitted to myself that I loved advertising.

So the question was, could I be in advertising and help the Third World?

Well, if you’re creative there’s always a way.

I figured, I could earn a lot more in advertising than I could in the Third World.

And I’d be in a position to influence people’s attitudes more.

So I began donating part of my salary every month.

And the government had to donate the tax on it.

It added up to enough to pay for at least one person to replace me.

Plus I began making press ads, posters, and commercials about the Third World debt.

A huge amount of media and production, all for free.

So, me being in advertising was actually better for the Third World.

A lot of us wish we were doing something else?

So we make ourselves unhappy about our situation?

And by resisting what we’re doing we make it worse.

The best thing is look at the evidence.

And be honest with ourself.

Then stop resisting.

When we come out of the closet, about whatever it is, we release all the energy we previously wasted in pretence and denial.

We can start enjoying what we always wanted to do.

And that’s a better way to spend our time on the planet.

There was an interesting exchange on TV, on Question Time.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party was on the panel.

The BNP is an extremist fringe-fascist party.

The most contentious of their policies are openly racist.

The sort of thing that gives the right wing a bad name,

But whatever most people thought of their views, they had a legal right to be heard.

The interesting part for me was the opening exchange.

Apparently the BNP had hijacked Winston Churchill as a figurehead.

The questioner asked if everyone thought this was fair.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, answered first.

He made a big play of the fact that he’d been to France to see the war graves.

He lauded the patriotism of the fighting men.

There were around 500 graves from members of his constituency.

Half of those were white, and half Asian.

Non-whites had died fighting for this country’s freedom.

Therefore they should have the same rights here as whites.

Very fair point.

Jack Straw paid tribute to the patriotism and sacrifice of our soldiers.

And his constituents who’d been willing to lay down their lives fighting for democracy.

Fighting the Nazis.

Who were not unlike the party represented by Nick Griffin.

Jack Straw spent ten minutes extolling the virtues of the people who fought and died for Britain.

So far so good.

Then it was Nick Griffin’s turn.

He said, “Hang on your father was in gaol, for refusing to fight the Nazis, while my father was in the RAF, fighting the Nazis.

By your logic, honouring the descendants of the people who fought against them, I have a lot more right to claim to be anti-Nazi than you do.”

Now I don’t think anyone reading this is going to remotely sympathise with the BNP.

But the issue is, how dumb was Jack Straw to walk into that?

He appeared at best a dope, and at worst a hypocrite.

Why didn’t he have an answer prepared about the fact that his father was a conscientious objector?

Something like, “My father was prepared to go to gaol for his principals.

I don’t agree with what my father did, but I admire his courage.

Anyway, the issue isn’t my family, it’s whether the descendants of the people who died fighting for Britain deserve an equal place in it.”

Why didn’t he say something like that?

He’s a professional politician.

These sort of debates are what his job’s about.

Let’s give Jack Straw the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

Let’s assume he’s not a dope or a hypocrite.

What he did was underestimate the competition.

You see this all the time in sports.

Big, rich, powerful teams get complacent.

This becomes laziness.

They turn out against a really motivated underdog.

And they get beat.

It happens to ad agencies all the time.

You look at the pitch list and, alongside your agency, you see a great agency, plus an agency you never heard of.

So you concentrate on beating the great agency, and ignore the one you don’t think has a chance.

And guess who wins.

The lesson is that anything you’re not paying attention to, makes you vulnerable.

This is true in our daily advertising lives.

Lots of creatives grumble about the briefs, but don’t do anything about it.

They’ve accepted that they can’t change the brief.

So they get complacent.

They sit in their office and accept what they’re given.

I’ve never understood that attitude.

Why would you want to trust your career to someone else?

What if the account man, or planner, or media buyer is as bored and unprepared as Jack Straw?

That’s your ad you’re trusting him with, your career.

How will you know if he’s doing a good job or not?

You won’t, unless you take the time to find out about their job.

And you know what?

Like everyone else, they’ll try a lot harder if they know someone is paying attention.

Finding out about the market we’re in, finding out about strategy, how to write a brief, finding out about media.

That’s all the equivalent of preparation.

Straw didn’t prepare so he was vulnerable.

He was vulnerable so he lost.

It’s the same with us.

The same in any area we don’t know about, anything we’re not prepared for, anything we ignore.

That’s where we’re vulnerable.

When I was at art school in New York, I knew a guy who was there on The GI Bill of Rights.

This meant he served his time in the armed forces, so Uncle Sam paid for him to go to college.

This guy had been a lieutenant in Vietnam.

He told me they had a really high mortality rate amongst Lieutenants.

One of the main reasons for this was ‘fragging’.

Fragging wasn’t enemy action.

It was your own troops.

What would happen is this.

A really gung-ho lieutenant would arrive from the States.

He’d be desperate to prove himself and he’d pick all the most dangerous missions for himself and his men.

Obviously the men didn’t like this.

The troops were all enlisted men and only had to survive their two-year stint.

They weren’t going to do this by taking unnecessary risks.

So they gave him a warning.

When he pulled the blankets off his bed that night, there would be a fragmentation grenade lying there.

As this was only a warning, the pin would still be in it.

So it wouldn’t explode.

Of course, if he ignored the warning, the next time it wouldn’t have the pin in.

So the only thing stopping it exploding was the weight of the blanket.

And when he flipped the blanket back he, and the evidence, would disappear.

Of course, that only happened to lieutenants who didn’t listen to the warning.

But it did happen.

I think that’s the most important thing about warnings.

Don’t make any that you aren’t prepared to carry out.

Otherwise, the very first time you make a threat and don’t follow through, everyone knows your threats are always empty.

Far better to think first.

If you threaten something, are you really prepared to carry it out?

I watched one of my son’s friends and his father once.

We were picking the two boys up from a bowling alley.

The boys asked us for some money to play the video games.

Both of us said the same thing.

“Okay, here’s £2 but that’s it.”

Both the boys came back when they’d spent it.

The other son said, “Dad, can I have some more.”

The father said, “Okay, another £2, but that’s it.”

He went away and came back, “Dad, can I have another £2.”

The father said, “You’ve already had £4.”

The son said “Please.”

The father said, “Okay but this is definitely the last.”

The son went away and came back for more.

The father gave him another £2 and said, “This is the last time, I really mean it.”

When my son and I left it was still going on.

What the father had trained the son to do was ignore what he said.

When he said no, it didn’t mean no.

It meant pester me and I’ll give in.

So that was their communication.

That’s why account men think all creatives are drama-queens.

Constantly making threats they don’t mean.

So it just comes across as whining.

Threatening not to work on the account.

Threatening not to make the changes to the script.

Threatening not to go on the shoot.

Threatening to let the account man edit the commercial himself.

Threatening to resign the business.

They aren’t going to do any of those things.

Everyone knows it.

So all they do by saying it, is train the account men to ignore them.

Isn’t it better to only make threats you’re prepared to carry out?

Like calling the client yourself, say.

Think first, would you do it?

If you would then it’s okay to threaten it.

Or leave and get another job?

Do you mean it?

If so it’s okay to threaten it.

That way everyone, including you, knows you mean what you say.

Like fragging.

One warning, then you carry out the threat.

Which is why the threat has power.

Imagine if the officer opened the covers on his bed and there was a fragmentation grenade with the pin it.

Then the next night the same thing.

Then the next night the same thing.

After a week or so, it wouldn’t even be a threat.

Just an irritation.

Someone has to know when you say something you mean it.

Otherwise don’t say it.

Think of it as truth in advertising.

When Glenn Hoddle was the England manager, I was watching a crucial world cup game on the TV.

The camera was showing a close-up of Hoddle sitting in the dugout making note after note.

He was surrounded by charts and diagrams.

Eventually he was ready to make a change.

He called over the substitute and started to give him instructions.

I watched him talking the young player through his thoughts.

Pointing to the players on the pitch, their movement and their positions.

He indicated the charts and made sweeping gestures.

In Hoddles mind he was sharing his strategic thinking with the player.

In Hoddle’s mind the player would then go onto the pitch and share all this thinking with the other players.

Everyone would understand the new strategy and England would win.

In Hoddle’s mind.

What actually happened was the player ran onto the pitch trying to remember what he’d been told.

Instead of playing football.

He told the other players what he could remember of Hoddle’s instructions.

Instead of playing football, they were trying to understand what was wanted.

England lost, and we went out of the World Cup.

Contrast that with Harry Redknapp.

Redknapp took over as manager of Tottenham Hotspur.

They had a lot of good players, but as a team they were in trouble.

They weren’t playing together, no one had any confidence

In one of his first games in charge, Spurs were 1-0 down and looked like losing again.

Redknapp could see the problem.

The opposition defence was well organised and dealing with his forwards  easily.

He needed to find a way to open them up.

To pull the opposition out of position and let his forwards though.

He had a fast young, foreign player, and he told him to get ready.

The player spoke no English.

Redknapp said to the player’s interpreter, “Tell him to go on and run about a bit.”

The interpreter passed it on.

The player went onto the pitch and turned the opposition defence inside out.

Tottenham won the game 1-3.

The player was fast and did as he was told.

Redknapp kept it simple.

He knew there was power in simplicity and weakness in complexity.

I was reminded of this the other night.

I was talking to Dennis Willison, a creative director at Saatchi.

He was telling me about a friend of his who’s a salesman.

Now I’ve seen lots of books on selling.

But they’ve always been too complicated for me to read.

Just like Glenn Hoddle’s briefings.

Chart after chart until you lose the plot.

Charts on gradually turning a prospect’s rejection into acceptance.

Charts with pyramids of trust.

Circles of persuasion.

Ladders of permission.

Paths of acceptance.

Arrows and captions everywhere

You see, people are impressed by complicated things.

But actually, complication is the enemy.

If you can’t understand it you can’t remember it.

If you can’t remember it you can’t act on it.

If you can’t act on it, it’s useless.

So I was surprised when Dennis said, “My mate says selling’s really easy. Just remember three things: Feel. Felt. Found.”

I said pardon.

He said, “Feel. Felt. Found. That’s all you need to know”

I said how does that work?

He said, “Well, let’s say you’re selling double-glazing for instance.

You tell the prospect it’ll cost around ten thousand pounds.

The prospect frowns

You say, “Look I know how you FEEL. Ten thousand pounds is a lot of money.

I FELT exactly the same way when I had double-glazing put into my house.

But what I FOUND was that the savings on central heating were enormous. And the value it added to my house more than covered  the cost”

Now forget the merits, or otherwise, of double-glazing salesmen for a minute.

Look at the simplicity of the language.

Anyone can remember “Feel. Felt. Found.”

Three simple words that, dropped into the conversation in that order, do more than all the charts.

(Feel) First you show empathy with the prospect.

You demonstrate that you understand their reaction.

In a right brain way this releases the emotional need for resistance.

(Felt) Then you talk to them like a friend not a salesman. You tell them about your personal experience. Human being to human being.

(Found) Finally, having established a comfortable bond, you can present all the left brain logical reasons for the purchase decision.

I thought that was a great example of what we should be doing.

Going beyond the complicated to the simple.

It reminded me of the exchange between Bobby Moore and Alf Ramsey during the World Cup final.

In the dressing room, Ramsey started giving Bobby Moore instructions.

“Look, you’re the captain. I want you to make  Peters track back and pick up his opposite number. And I want Alan Ball to be…….”

Bobby Moore picked up the ball and ran onto the pitch saying, “Leave it out Alf. I’ve got me own game to worry about.”

England won the World Cup.

This is a bit unusual..

I just got this email and I’d be grateful for your help in answering it.

What advice do you think this person needs to hear?

Hi Dave,

Hope you are well and in good health. Sulaiman Khan here, I am the student who e-mailed you a couple months ago.

I just am really enjoying reading your blog and I it is quite a great resource I check many times a day now I have started my course at university. My course tutor, Gareth Pitman, often talks about your blog and you in my Introduction to Advertising & Branding lectures; and it is always quite interesting to learn what you say about advertising.

That being said, I have a few questions for you, as follows:
1) What is the best way I can better my communication skills like you?
2) What is the most important thing you look for when you are choosing a student for an internship or to hire?
3) What do you love/hate the most about working in advertising?
4) How can I improve my ‘book’ so it has the best chance to get the perfect job? What do look for?
5) Do know if there are any other severely disabled people like myself working in advertising? Am just a bit curious.
6) What techniques do you use to generate the ‘wow ideas’?
And 7) How did you get your first break in to advertising.

I very much look forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you for all you time and consideration.

Kind regards,
Sulaiman