ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An enormous thank you must go to Andrew Sanigar of T&H for his encouragement and enthusiasm. Also to Ilona de Nemethy Sanigar for making sure my words made sense, to Chris Wakeling for his designers eye and lastly to Amy Kingsbury, my long-suffering PA, who typed, re-typed and finally deciphered my appalling handwriting.
Captions for the images on page 2
Key to the above pictures
1. Client: Google, 2010
Title: Speed
Art director: Steve Peck
Copywriter: Jared Elms
Director: Aaron Duffy
2. Client: Audi, 1992
Art director: Russell Ramsey
Copywriter: John OKeeffe
Photographer: Leon Steele
3. Client: Perfetti Van Melle Vigorsol, 2002
Title: Lotto
Art director: Mike Wells
Copywriter: Will Barnett
Director: Harold Zwart
4. Client: Johnnie Walker, 2010
Title: Man who walked around the world
Art director: Mick Mahoney
Copywriter: Justin Moore
Director: Jamie Rafn
5. Client: Bertolli, 2003
Art director: Adam Staples
Copywriter: Paul Miles
Illustrator: Syd Brak
6. Client: Pretty Polly, 1987
Title: Smooth running
Art director: Rosie Arnold
Copywriter: Derek Payne
Director: John Marles
7. Client: St Johns Ambulance, 2010
Title: Popcorn
Art director: Adrian Rossi
Copywriter: Alex Grieve
Director: Jeff Labbe
8. Client: Levi Strauss, 1996
Art director: Rosie Arnold
Copywriter: Will Awdry
Photographer: Nadav Kander
9. Client: Parker Pens, 2003
Art Director: Russell Ramsey
10. Client: Audi, 2002
Title: Hendrix
Art director: Matthew Saunby
Copywriter: Adam Chiappe
Director: Daniel Kleinman
11. Client: Club Med, 1996
Title: City
Art director: Tony McTear
Copywriter: Will Barnett
Director: Jonathan Glazer
12. Client: Sony Walkman, 1990
Art director: Mike Wells
Copywriter: Tom Hudson
Photographer: Malcolm Venville
13. Client: OMO Dero, 2007
Title: Muscle man
Art director: Dave Monk
Copywriter: Matt Waller
Director: Jonty Toosey
14. Client: K Shoes, 1990
Art director: Gary Denham
Copywriter: Barbara Nokes
15. Client: Levi Strauss, 1995
Title: Clayman
Art director: Tim Ashton
Copywriter: John McCabe
Producer: Philippa Crane
Directors: Michael Mort/Deiniol Morris
16. Client: Asda, 1987
Writer: Nick Welch
Art director: Billy Mawhinney
Photographer: Stak
17. Client: Castlemaine XXXX, 2006
Art director: Adrian Birkinshaw
Copywriter: Paul Yull
Photographer: James Day
18. Client: Levi Strauss, 1994
Title: Drugstore
Art director: John Gorse
Copywriter: Nick Worthington
Director: Michael Gondry
19. Client: Barclays, 2002
Title: Samuel L. Jackson
Art director: Pete Bradly
Copywriter: Marc Hatfield
Director: Jonathan Glazer
20. Client: KFC, 2008
Art director: Kevin Stark
Copywriter: Nick Kidney
Illustrator: Ali Augur
21. Client: Barclaycard, 2009
Title: Water slide
Art director: Wesley Hawes
Copywriter: Gary McCreadie
Director: Peter Thwaites
22. Client: British Airways, 2008
Title: Bloody Mary
Art director: Kevin Stark
Copywriter: Nick Kidney
Photographer: Dan Tobin Smith
23. Client: Axe Lynx, 2006
Title: Getting dressed
Writer: Nick Gill
Director: Ringan Ledwidge
1
IDEAS
Ideas are what advertising is built upon. We worship them, we seek them, fight over them, applaud them and value them above everything else. Walk round the floors of any agency and the phrase youll most hear is: whats the idea?
Ideas are the most incredible thing we possess. They can change the future of brands, of countries and of the course of history. They engage, entertain and stimulate, encouraging debate, dissent and adoration. We take them for granted, but sometimes it is important to step back and marvel at their brilliance and, so often, their simplicity.
Ideas are the most egalitarian thing we do. They can be done by anyone at any time. You dont need any special qualifications to be able to do them or special equipment to conceive them: they can be created anywhere.
I believe that celebrating this unique skill is fundamentally important. The creation of ideas is the intellectual force that has driven civilization and empowered the dreams of us all. And, with ideas, the more you have them, the better you get at having them. Thats one of the many reasons why advertising is such a stimulating environment in which to work.
The pressure of such creative demands can be exhausting, and one of the most relentless environments I ever worked in was the Cramer Saatchi consultancy, set up in 1967 and the forerunner of Saatchi & Saatchi, the advertising agency. It was certainly an exciting place to be, but to make it pay we had to create a major campaign a week: print, TV and posters, point of sale. Everything. We even used to redesign the packaging if we felt it needed it. This was 360 thinking before people knew what 360 thinking was. || Most of our briefs came from agencies that had failed to crack a creative problem so they turned to us to dig them out of a hole. The problem being that as the client had run out of patience with the agency, they had also run out of time, so we were always working under extreme deadline pressure. Over night, over the weekend, over everything.
We were working so hard and so fast that at times it was madness. Wed be presenting the ideas wed drawn up before the ink had dried. Binning the bad ones took too much time, so wed just chuck them over our shoulder and start on a new one. It was all slightly comic and felt a bit like a scene in the Billy Wilder movie