Behind The Billboard

Dan and Hugh virtually catch up with Ben, from their respective homes, and from his home in LA. The trio talk all things creative OOH, looking at his incredible back catalogue of work. We're talking, Economist, Samaritans, Snickers and Apple as well as hearing all about Ben's amazing new ventures. Follow the visuals here: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/?p=643

Typical. You wait 17 episodes to hear from a photographer and then 2 come along at once. Hugh and Dan shared an epic few hours with Adam Hinton, another awesome photographer who has helped create some of the most iconic billboards in the last 2 decades. Hear all about his life as a 'part-time punk', getting stabbed, photographing warzones, and shooting some of the worlds most iconic athletes for Nike, some of the least iconic athletes for This Girl Can and some incredible work for the NHS and Cancer Research. It's no wonder it's an epic 2 hour long. And yeah... apologies for the drop in sound quality. Lockdown recording is a bit shit. Check out the visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/?p=606 

Dan and Hugh meet up [virtually] with legendary fashion photographer and director, publisher of 4 magazines to date, the man, the brand - Rankin. Whether he is photographing the Muppets or shooting Dove’s seminal "Real beauty" campaign, Rankin has built a career on taking risks. Along with his portraits, he has created editorial and ad campaigns for Nike, Diageo, Vogue and Rolling Stone among others, and launched four magazines, starting with culture bible Dazed & Confused in the 1990s.  For visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/2020/11/11/episode-17-rankin/

Dan and Hugh talk to Publicis ECD Dave Monk, covering his creative career through BBH, Grey and Publicis including his OOH work for Lynx, Sunday Times and Tourism Ireland - See the visuals here: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/2020/11/04/episode-16-dave-monk/

Dan and Hugh meet with Mark Roalfe, to talk pandemic, posters, partnerships and process.  View the visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/mark-roalfe/

Dan and Hugh virtually meet with Sanjiv Mistry and Jamie Mietz from McCann to talk about the XBOX Survival Billboard. Check out the visuals here: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/?p=520

Dan and Hugh talk with Alex Taylor about her incredible career creating some of the best billboards the UK has ever seen for Silk Cut, XXXX, The Army and Parkinsons. We also talk about life in Agency land in London and presenting to work to people like Charles Saatchi. Check out the images to support the show here: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/2020/10/14/episode-13-alex-taylor/

Hugh and Dan talk to Ant Nelson and Mike Sutherland about Outdoor, Billboards and creativity throughout their time as a creative partnership all the way to their current roles as ECDs at Adam & Eve DDB.

See the images at: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/?p=462

Hugh and Dan catch up with Dave Dye on all things billboards and creativity. What's been happening over this summer, and some of the career highlights from Dave's huge and wonderful portfolio of work. See this link for the visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/?p=433

There have been a couple of recurring themes in our Behind the Billboard series to date: our guests always seem to reference Dave Dye and cite The Economist work as their favourite. So we thought we’d bring the great man and great campaign together in EP10 for an Economist special, where we’ve delved deep into what goes behind possibly the most famous billboard campaign of all time.

Follow along with the visual here: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/2020/03/18/dave-dye

One of Dave’s recent favourites in the billboard world creatively has been Oatly - “it stands out, it’s funny, and it’s done it’s job of teaching us about Oatly”.

Also Spotify from Who Wot Why. Of course.

Dave thinks the good Outdoor really stands out, mainly because there’s so much average [and below] work out there. We’re not in a golden age of Outdoor, but there is a nice semi renaissance of good applications of Outdoor.

His first billboard was for Appletiser… 5 points for anyone who can find a pic of it online!

Given this is the Economist special…. We moved quickly onto the enormous body of work, the account and the history of the famous billboards. He talked about the pressure he felt taking on the client given the rich history of award winning work… but the need to help it evolve and to get his stamp on the work to ‘push it on a bit’.

One of the first things Dave implemented was opening the creative process to the teams… no more creative direction behind closed doors. Dave brought in ‘the wall’ - where work would go up… and teams could come in and see where the work was and help push it on.

Briefs from the Economist came in each quarter… but to Dave the briefs seamed quite similar: Read it, get more intelligent. The responses to brief were open to the entire agency. Top to bottom.

When Dave came in there was around 4 campaigns a year and it had been running for 10 years. Fag packet maths said there would have been over 8000 concepts seen, with 320 sold over the 10 years. Creatively Dave felt it needed a kick.

One of the first posters we talked about was the Venn diagram, the first campaign since taking over the Economist responsibility. Inspired by a Vanity Fair piece that featured a Venn diagram, and Dave thought it looked like an Economist ad. The plan was to do 8 in this style for the campaign. Dave likened the writing of the ads to some sort of Mensa test.

Unfortunately the CEO Andrew Robertson [and as it turns out ‘King of the Pun’] came in at the 11th hour and said it couldn’t run for all 8 elements of the campaign. Mainly out of respect for AMV founder David Abbott, and the fact that his ‘Red Campaign’ was his ‘parting gift to the agency’.

We moved on to the Too Many words example. A bottom drawer idea that was held back and got in eventually following some extra direction… and won a Gold at Campaign the following year.

We also talked about the Jigsaw creative. For weeks Dave walked around the teams trying to find out who’s mockup had landed on his desk. Dave had done some development on the concept and worked it up into the full idea…. But he couldn’t locate the initial scamp artist. Eventually Dave Abbott scuttled in and saw it worked up… ‘Oh you liked it then’.

Something we’ve spoken about before on the show is a piece of work for reception showing the ‘Funnel’ of work through from ideation to delivery on the Economist.

We wrapped up on the Economist with some of the work post Dave and we talked about how it’s changed over the years.

Thanks so much Dave for your fascinating insight into the work. And for Dave Dye fans out there wanting to hear more about his other Billboard work - Adidas, Adnams and Merrydown among others - we will be doing a Dave Dye part 2 later in the year.

So we’re running a competition for you listeners out there to guess what you think Dave’s top Billboard campaign of all time is. Comment on our social and the winner will win a signed copy of Mark Danton’s book. [Hugh’s copy - he’s gonna buy another one].   

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