Vinny Warren did the ‘Wassup’ campaign for Budweiser.
It was one of the biggest advertising phenomena ever.
It caught on worldwide.
In countries where they don’t even speak English.
(But where they still drink Budweiser.)
Tons of free media, sales went through the roof.
So Vinny became a star and now has his own ad agency in Chicago.
Recently he was interviewed on Crispin Porter Bogusky’s blog.
Vinny thought a blog interview was a really good idea.
So he asked me to one on his blog.
The questions he asked were so thorough that it took me 11 pages to do them justice.
That’s a lot of work.
So I’m putting the link up here, in case anyone’s interested.
http://theescapepod.wordpress.com/2009/12/15/an-interview-with-dave-trott/
After you’ve read it, you may have some of your own questions.
If so, come back and ask them here, and I’ll try to answer them.
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Dave,
I’ve noticed that branding and design agency bloggers are often scathing of the advertising industry…. and ad agency bloggers are quite down on some “brand” communication strategies. Do you know what I mean? Do you have an opinion on that?
Hey Dave
Suspect you’re thinking, where can I go to escape all these Grilla’s…
And
My, the responsibilities of being so sought-after for my ad opinions is slightly wearying when what I’d really like to be doing is putting my feet up and have Gordon pour me a nice cup of rosy-lea from an oversize white tea pot…
…Maybe I’m wrong?
Grilla,
Gordon’s from South London.
He might nick a pot of tea, but I don’t think he’d make one.
Hi Gareth,
I find that bad people tend to group together.
This comes from insecurity.
They know they can’t make it on their own, so they need to be part of a group.
Racism, sexism, agism, fundamentalism.
Generally a sort of ‘if you’re not one of us you’re bad’ football supporter mentality, really.
The best people don’t group together and pretend to speak for an entire industry.
They want to work with other ‘good’ people, wherever they’re from.
Because they’re confident they can stand on their own.
I never heard John Webster or Charlie Saatchi speaking on behalf of the advertising industry.
I never heard Steve jobs speaking on behalf of the computer industry.
Or Scorcese on behalf of the film industry.
Good people don’t have to hide in a group.
So when you bhear someone pontificating on behalf of a group of people, you know what it’s usually worth.
Well that would explain the surge in traffic to my blog. thanks a million dave.
Funny your Webster/Saatchi never spoke for the industry. Years ago, some famous consultant did a book called “The End of Advertising and The Rise of PR”. All bollocks, or mainly bollocks, I thought. I wondered why no one from our industry responded. Perhaps you shed light?
Robyn,
I think it’s a market-growth v brand-share decision.
If I speak on behalf of the entire advertising industry that means I’m trying to grow the market.
For everyone.
That only makes sense if I have a huge share of the market like, say, AMV-BBDO.
If I have a small share, and most agencies have less that 1%, why would I want to do that?
Surely it makes sense to try to grow my share.
Which means telling people why my agency is better than other agencies.
If agencies can’t see that for themsleves, what chance do they have of doing it for their clients?
Which may be why 90% of advertising doesn’t work.
Hi Dave,
I love your articles so much that at times it’s depressing. Reading your blog gives me the same high as cracking a good idea; that innocent giggle moment. But this letter is not about your great writing skills rather it’s a question for which I request an answer.
I read your interview at Vinny Warren’s blog. There was this particular sentence of yours that stuck me hard.
“I’m a lot like that. I can pass it on to kids who are desperate to learn. But I can’t work with middle and heavyweights who think they know it all.”
This is wrong because the middle weight didn’t just become a middle weight over night. He worked his ass out so that one day Dave Trott can interview him and hire him. You just can’t trash him because he has learned to walk. Indeed it’s now that he needs you most. I understand the young kids stuff. Six years back I was like that, all bright eyed with optimism, eager to learn and ever ready to make mistakes. And guess what; even now I’m the same. But what’s killing the enthusiasm is the cynicism like this. Especially when it’s coming from you.
The middle-weight-who-thinks-he-knows-all! Sorry to disappoint, yes I do know some stuff and I’m eager to learn more from you. But you don’t seem interested, ‘cause you are looking for a college pass out, who will be more than happy to resize your layout or ask for approvals for the pamphlet headline.
One more thing, the youngster you hire today, well one day he’ll move on and then in some another corner of the world he’ll meet Mr. Not-As-Famous-As-Dave-Trott; who will have his own definition of a perfect pamphlet headline. And he will ask him to trash everything he has learned and asks him to repeat after him.. “A PERFECT HEADLINE IS BLA BLA”….
it’s the saddest things about advertising; the amount of bull shit people pass on to their juniors in the name of learning. Academic, rotten and recycled shit that just gets dumped in as advertising gas. It’s suicidal. It makes you feel obsolete, useless and it takes the joy out of advertising.
One of my ex-bosses told me this, the best thing to do when you hire someone new is to embrace him and then figure out the space in which he wishes to work. Life and work will be a lot sorted like this.
Hi Fritz,
I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been in that response during the interview.
You quote:
“I can pass it on to kids who are desperate to learn. But I can’t work with middle and heavyweights who think they know it all.”
If you substitute ‘people’ for both “kids” and “middle and heavyweights” it gives a better sense of what I meant.
So it would read:
“I can pass it on to (people) who are desperate to learn. But I can’t work with (people) who think they know it all.”
That is definitely true.
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever been “looking for a college pass out, who will be more than happy to resize your layout or ask for approvals for the pamphlet headline.”
Why would I waste money on someone like that?
I’m looking for someone who can come up with great ideas, not an automaton.
But it is a simple fact that middle and heavyweights cost more than juniors.
I can get 3 or 4 teams of juniors for the cost of a more senior team.
If the senior team’s worth it okay, but often they aren’t.
I can spot and train juniors.
Keep the good ones and give them a raise, and let the bad ones go.
Think of it as football.
Man Utd got Beckham, Giggs, Butt, Scholes, and the Neville brothers from their youth training programme.
That’s about £200 million of talent, absolutely free.
Man City paid £35 million for one player who’s been a flop.
There is no rule about youth versus age.
Good people are good, wherever you find them.
But you have to factor in cost and attitude.