Dave Trott’s Blog

During World War 2, my mum and sister were evacuated to Wales.

So my dad was living in the house on his own.

Because he was alone, he tended to go to bed early.

One night he was woken, about two in the morning.

By the sound of a piano playing.

Dad laid in bed for a minute, trying to work out what was happening.

Was the noise coming from inside or outside the house?

He knew they had an old upright piano in the front room.

But nobody used it.

And anyway, there wasn’t anyone in the house.

So he got up and went to the top of the stairs and looked over.

He could definitely hear piano sounds coming from the front room, downstairs.

But the piano wasn’t playing a tune.

Just strange collection of weird, discordant notes.

So he started to go downstairs.

As he got closer he could hear a strange wailing noise.

High pitched, like child in pain.

But not quite human.

He got to the bottom of the stairs and looked towards the living room.

Which was pitch black.

He put his head inside.

Nothing.

Except the jangling sounds coming from the piano.

And the high-pitched mournful wailing.

In the empty house.

In the dark.

At two in the morning.

The whole world was dead, except for this noise.

He walked over to the piano, and looked at the keys.

They were moving up and down.

Not in any order, just up and down.

And the echoey notes were playing.

And still, the high-pitched cries.

Then he opened the top of the piano and looked in.

A cat was walking up and down, inside the piano.

Trying to get out.

Crying in high-pitched voice.

So dad reached in, grabbed the cat, and put it outdoors.

Then he went back to bed and fell asleep.

See my dad was a policeman.

So it was his job to be rational in all situations.

Everything always had to have a logical explanation.

Personally, I don’t think I’d even have gotten downstairs.

I’d have been out the window and down the street, as soon as I heard the piano playing inside the empty house at two in the morning.

But then I’ve got a very vivid imagination.

And, luckily, I’ve got a job where that’s a good thing.

My dad trained himself out of having an imagination.

In his job, imagination was hindrance.

Imagination got in the way and clouded your mind.

So you had to learn to control it.

You don’t want to imagine things any other way than the simple facts.

And that’s really good advice for everyday life.

Imagining what your boss thinks of you, worrying what the client’s going to say, fretting over all the problems, all the things that might go wrong.

All of this can stop us doing great and exciting things.

But.

If we don’t imagine things how are we going to do our job?

How can we imagine a more creative kind of advertising?

A more exciting solution to any problem.

How can we imagine new ways to beat the competition?

Things that haven’t been tried yet.

I think we have to have imagination.

But we have to make sure imagination doesn’t have us.

We have to feed it, look after it, develop it.

Just like we would if we lived in Burma and needed an elephant to do our job.

It’s vital to us, but we have to be in control of it.

We have to make sure the elephant does what we tell it to.

We can’t let the elephant tell us to do.

That’s what happens if we let imagination get in control.

The good part of imagination is that you can take something and imagine what it would be like if it was more exciting.

The bad part of imagination is that you can take something and imagine what it would be like if it was more exciting.

In our business we need imagination.

As Rory Sutherland said, “It’s the job of advertising to make the new familiar, and the familiar new.”

And for that you need imagination.

Just remember, imagination makes a great servant and a lousy master.

There’s a story I love about an ex student of mine.

He was very talented, very creative, and turned into a good copywriter.

He did some nice ads, and got a job at a really good agency.

The CEO of this agency was very rich and famous.

He noticed that Charlie Saatchi was into modern art.

This piqued his interest.

And he decided to get into modern art too.

So he visited all the galleries and saw lots of modern art.

Eventually he found a large brightly, coloured piece he liked.

It was an acrylic painting, made up of lots of small, brightly coloured squares.

He had it hung, in pride of place, in his office.

It was very impressive.

My ex student was thinking about this, one night after work in the pub.

When everyone else had gone home he went back into the agency.

He went to the press production office.

He took a Pantone book and a pair of scissors.

A Pantone book is made up of little swatches of every colour there is.

He took this book to the CEO’s office.

He held it up to the painting against the coloured squares.

Then he cut out some exactly matched squares from the Pantone book.

And he laid them on the carpet at the bottom of the picture.

Then he went home.

The next morning the CEO went into his office.

He stood admiring his new piece of modern art.

He called his PA in and pointed out to her the finer points of its artistic merit.

Then she asked, “What are those little coloured squares on the floor?”

He picked them up and examined them.

They were exactly the size and colour of the ones in his painting.

He said ominously to his PA, “Get the art dealer who sold me this painting on the phone.”

Calmly, he said to the dealer, “Look, I’ve got a bit of a problem with this painting you sold me.”

The art dealer asked what it was.

Controlling his anger, he said, “Some of the little squares have started falling off.”

The dealer said that wasn’t possible.

The CEO yelled, “Don’t tell me it’s not bloody possible, I’m sitting here holding the little coloured paper squares in my hand.”

The dealer said, “I’m sorry, but that can’t happen. That’s an acrylic painting. The squares can’t fall off, they’re painted on.”

The CEO went quiet.

Gradually the penny dropped.

He put the phone down.

This was embarrassing.

He’d been humiliated in front of his art dealer and his PA.

And subsequently, the CEO stopped collecting modern art.

And my ex student didn’t wait to get fired.

He quickly found himself another job.

Personally I thought what he did was very creative.

And what made it so creative was the simplicity.

The understatement.

He didn’t do, or say, anything.

He just left some little bits of coloured paper on the floor.

And let imagination do the rest.

I think we can learn a lot about the way the mind works from that.

And the human mind is our medium.

It wasn’t advertising, but it was very creative.

You start getting fired from your first job the day you get it.

Because you start to relax.

So you stop doing everything that got you the job.

Which was whatever it takes.

Working all the hours there are.

Contacting absolutely every creative director you can find.

Not being picky about where you work.

Just wanting a job, anywhere.

Just to be working and doing ads.

The energy, the enthusiasm, are irresistible.

And they work.

But the funny thing is, as soon as you’ve got a job, you stop doing it.

You relax.

You start to work reasonable hours.

You look at what everyone else is doing.

What time do they come in, what time do they leave?

Then you copy that.

And the senior people in the department, they like a drink.

So you copy that.

And they don’t work too hard, they go to the bar, or spend all day on FaceBook, or sit around telling jokes.

So you copy that.

And what you forget is, that you’re not senior.

So you can’t get away with what they can.

You haven’t got as much work under your belt as they have.

You haven’t earned the right.

The CD will swallow it from those guys.

He won’t swallow it from juniors who haven’t done anything.

Why should he?

You had one advantage: energy.

And you threw that away when you got hired and relaxed.

So you get fired.

Happens to all of us in our first job.

That’s when you ask the question.

How do you get your second job in advertising?

Well, how did you get your first?

The answer is still the same, whatever it takes.

So you work on your portfolio, all the hours there are.

You call up everyone you can think of.

You call and write to creative directors, headhunters, friends in the business.

You ask everyone and anyone for help.

The energy is coming off you like sparks.

Now you can’t relax and work reasonable hours.

Now you can’t do the same as everyone else.

Because they’ve got a job and you haven’t.

So you need an advantage.

And that advantage is energy.

That’s what a creative director is always looking for.

That’s what will shake up his department, and give him something he hasn’t got.

That’s what will eventually break down resistance.

That’s what will get you the job.

Then what’s the first thing you do when you get the job?

You relax.

Go back to the way you were when you got your first job.

Start to work reasonable hours.

Watch what everyone else does.

And behave like them.

Like everyone else, you stop doing exactly what it was that got you the job in the first place.

What made you different.

And you start to behave like everyone else.

You lose your point of difference.

And pretty soon you’ve got another question.

How do you get your third job in advertising?

When my kids were young they liked to dress up for Halloween.

The usual thing, witches, vampires.

Lots of fake blood, and pretend scars.

So we’d dress the basement up with the usual props.

Spider’s webs everywhere, skeletons, witches, monsters.

Try to make it look like a crypt or a graveyard.

The main idea being to make it as scary as possible.

Then we’d switch the lights off so it was pitch black, and give them a torch.

And leave and their friends them to tell ghost stories in the dark.

One year I thought I’d add to the atmosphere a bit.

So I went to HMV and bought a CD of horror movie sound effects.

Creaking coffin lids, groans, shrieks, axes chopping up bodies.

And I also bought a blank C120 tape-cassette.

I wound the blank tape on until it was about half way through.

Then I recorded a soft knocking sound from the FX CD.

Then silence.

Then more knocking, more insistent this time.

Silence,

Then a creaking coffin lid opening.

Then horrible groans.

More groans.

Then terrifying roars.

And finally screams.

Then I rewound the tape to the beginning.

And I put the cassette-player in the corner of the basement, where no one could see it.

On Halloween, all the kids came down to the basement.

While they weren’t looking, I turned the tape player on and left them alone.

For half an hour the children told scary ghost stories in the dark.

Each one trying to outdo the other in horror and gore.

While the tape player wound silently on over the blank bit.

Suddenly, the kids heard knocking coming from somewhere in the dark.

They stopped and looked.

Nothing.

Then, from the dark, the knocking got louder.

They froze.

Then the sound of a coffin lid creaking open.

They. Were. Terrified.

Then came the awful groan of a rotting corpse coming to life.

Suddenly the kids just jumped up and ran.

They were out of their like small rockets.

It took me a while to calm then down.

Eventually I convinced them to come back down to the basement and showed them the tape player.

And eventually, they all laughed with relief.

And they understood the only really scary thing was their imagination.

But that’s always true.

What we fear is nearly always worse than the reality.

And that’s why sound can be more powerful than vision.

The power of suggestion over description.

To calm the kids down, we put a horror movie on the DVD player for them.

And they sat around watching it, eating popcorn.

Talking, joking and laughing.

And it wasn’t nearly so scary as the basement.

Because that was just pictures.

And pictures are finite.

Whereas imagination is infinite.

Imagination is always, as far as you can possibly go plus one.

As Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.

For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

When I was at BMP, I used to play snooker in the pub at lunchtime with my art director Dave Christensen.

Dave wasn’t a very spectacular snooker player.

He mainly played safe shots.

But he usually beat me.

In fact he beat me because he wasn’t spectacular.

See, I always wanted to play like ‘Hurricane’ Higgins.

Walking around the table potting the longest, most difficult shots.

Whacking the ball so hard there was a really satisfying thump when it went in.

But the more difficult shots are more difficult for a reason.

They’re more difficult.

So I didn’t get so many.

Dave took his time, went for the easy shots.

Lined them up carefully and hit the ball just hard enough to plop gently into the pocket.

So Dave won more often than I did.

Dave said, “Your problem is you’re not really playing to win. You just enjoy sinking the balls.”

Fair point.

When my shots came off they were great.

But you don’t get extra point for great shots.

A red is still just one point, whether it’s spectacular or easy.

The difference was, Dave was playing like a creative director and I was just playing like a creative.

He was seeing the big picture: winning the game.

All I was looking at was the individual shot.

I’d rather risk a spectacular shot and fail, than win by taking dull shots.

That’s a great attitude when you’re a copywriter or an art director.

It may not be the right attitude when you’re a creative director.

For a creative, the individual shot is the ad.

For a creative director, the game is the account.

And if you lose the account, no one gets paid.

In fact, lose enough accounts and you don’t have an agency.

So it comes down to priorities.

For a writer or art director the priority is always to do good ads.

That’s their job that’s what they’re paid for.

They don’t want to do a bad ad just to hold an account.

They’re not management.

They’re not paid to make decisions like that.

And they can’t put a bad ad in their portfolio.

The creative director on the other hand, is part of management.

That is his job.

And sometimes that might mean doing a dull, unspectacular ad.

Something that will keep the account.

In the old days, Saatchi always had a principle.

“We’ve either got to be making money on an account or doing great work on it. If we’re not doing either, we don’t want it.”

So there it is.

Some accounts you do great work on.

Some accounts you make money on.

But a lot of creatives don’t see it that way.

They think they should only ever be doing great work on everything, all the time.

But what if you can’t?

Those same creatives still want paying.

And the agency can’t pay the creatives if the client won’t pay the agency.

And the client won’t pay the agency if they don’t run the ads.

And they won’t run the ads if they don’t like the ads.

And that’s the truth.

The job isn’t always just about doing great ads.

It isn’t even always about doing ads that you believe will sell product.

Sometimes, sadly, we have to accept it’s about doing ads that the client likes.

Because, sometimes, that’s what keeps the account at the agency.

And that keeps the agency in the game.

And you can’t do great ads if you’re not in the game.

John Webster once explained it to me as the difference between a gifted amateur and a professional.

He said, “At the end of the day the gifted amateur comes out of their office with something great, or nothing.

The professional comes out of their office with something great, or something.”

Sometimes you get a chance to sink a spectacular shot.

But sometimes you have to win by playing a safety shot.