Behind The Billboard

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-79-dan-watts

Episode #79 features the charming and super-talented Dan Watts, ECD at Pablo, London.

Hugh & Dan spent a fascinating hour hearing about Dan’s eclectic career that has seen him work at some of the industry’s finest agencies - Fallon / 4Creative / Crispin Porter / Pablo - on some amazing projects.

We discussed how to fit an entire book onto a poster. How to write great ooh … in Ghana. How to ‘Skip the cow’ for Flora in one of the best new product launches of the past few years. How to launch a record label for a chocolate brand. And the toughest of the lot, how to re-launch a Great British institution - GBBO - on ‘edgy’ C4 instead of ‘cozy’ BBC.

Thanks so much Dan for coming in and sharing your stories. And good luck with everything at Pablo.

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-78-andy-jex

After what seems like a lifetime away, we’re back. And who better than Andy Jex, the TBWA\London CCO to usher us into Autumn. ‘Jexy’ as he’s affectionately known, is the epitome of positivity and creativity, which is exactly what the world needs right now. Hugh & Dan enjoyed an hour in his company where many things were discussed:

• Fallon
• Nando’s
• Nando’s billboards
• Why you shouldn’t eat eggs
• Letters of complaint from the Egg Association about telling people not to eat eggs
• Rich & Andy
• 1Extra TV and posters
• The greatest leaving car(d) of all time
• Mother
• The dried noodle king
• A Scalextric world record
• Saatchi’s
• Stanners
• Silburn
• Marie Curie (where Jexy turned interviewer and asked Hugh about ‘The Extra Hour’ DOOH)
• Stealing staff
• North London footy rivalry
• Jaffa Cake v Flapjack
• And most importantly of all, we talked about our Mums.

Jexy, thanks so much for coming on and sharing stories, we loved it.

Hear all about it on the podcast now!

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-77-british-airways/

Sorry for the brief delay, but It’s finally landed ✈️

The story behind the Cannes Grand Prix winning British Airways work is here.

A few weeks ago we sat with Nils and some of the BA team (Nick Stanley, Benny Everett, Ellie & Elisa and ‘Chips’ Pomfret) and discovered the story behind one of the most iconic OOH campaigns in recent times.

It was an enthralling chat. We heard how the pitch was won, how 500 executions came to be, why ‘A British Original’ was only half the story, and how - with virtually no time left - the agency turned to a tick box idea buried at the bottom of a layout pad which eventually became the all conquering idea.

It’s genuinely one of the most intriguing episodes we’ve ever done.

We also squeezed in some chat about the Windows campaign too. Bonus content!

Thank you Nils and all at Uncommon for your incredible generosity in sharing your story. It was business, leisure and much more.

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-76-brian-connolly

Episode #76 features Brian Connolly.

Brian is brilliant on many levels. His billboards are amazing, some of them very close to art. The level of purity and craft is second to none.

He is also a United fan, which is also brilliant (for Hugh at least).

And on top of all that, he’s just a really decent human being who - after many years smashing it in the UK - is now smashing it stateside in New York.

We started with Eurostar and found out how the photographer went to the Eiffel Tower and shot at slightly the wrong angle … meaning a mini re-shoot to get it exactly right. These days it would no doubt be done in a matter of seconds with AI. But there’s something gritty and real about the process back then. The rail tracks merging perfectly into the Eiffel Tower is one of the iconic OOH images of the past 30 years and rightly won all the awards going.

Brian also created the Classic FM campaign which used instruments to portray power, exhilaration, peace and more in another wonderfully minimalist campaign shot by Nadav Kander that won yet more awards and plaudits. The use of white space letting the visuals sing is a lesson to all … less is more. Or as we recently coined … even less is even more.

Army … Harrods … 18-30 … Empire City Casino, the great work continued as did the chat. The ‘bust up’ fight in the Harrods designer room another (black) eye-opening story behind the work.

Thanks again Brian for sharing your work and stories. We really enjoyed it.

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-75-phil-and-graham

Episode #75 features Phil Cockrell & Graham Storey.

Humble, funny, gracious and massively talented, Phil & Graham have quietly created some of the most iconic billboards of the past 30 years.

In that time they have won most major awards including 4 Cannes Golds, 5 BTA arrows, 7 Campaign Poster awards and 26 D&AD in book entries.

It seems a bit of a crime that we haven’t had them on the show before. But due to various circumstances / holidays / other guests taking their slot, we’ve only just got them on.

It’s worth listening for the Nike work alone. Phil flying to the south of France to meet Eric Cantona as ‘research’ for the redemption poster is a classic ‘someone’s got to do it’ story. But it was nothing compared to how the team met Peter Hull the Paralympian who’d run the marathon and became the inspiration behind one of Nike’s greatest posters ever.

Then there was Yellow pages, Toblerone, Virgin Atlantic, The Times and more.

Every campaign oozing simplicity, craft and class.

Thanks gents for coming on and sharing your incredible history. Long may it continue.

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-74-kate-congreve

We love firsts on the podcast. So episode #74 is a treat for Dan and Huge who hosted Kate Congreve our first ever producer. And not just any producer, but a producer at Mother, Campaign’s current agency of the year.

Kate shared many brilliant stories from her career to date, having worked both agency and production side.

We talked Snickers and skateboarding and how she helped put together the shoot for Paul Belford while at AMV. Shot by James Dimmock it’s a beautiful campaign with some eye-opening stories about casting.

Next was another fascinating shoot, this time for Hovis at JWT, working with brilliant creative team Claudia & Verity and photographer Kelvin Murray, managing to shoot everything in camera.

And then the Mother years, packed full of more amazing work. IKEA, Stella Artois. KFC, Uber. Four monster campaigns. Everyone an award winner, crafted to perfection.

The KFC story is particularly interesting. Try promoting a finger lickin’ brand during a time when the last thing you should do was lick your fingers. Hear how the work still ran during the pandemic.

Thanks Kate for coming in and sharing your stories. We loved it. 

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-73-nicola-wood

Podcast episode #73 features Nicola Wood, Executive Creative Director at Ogilvy London, winner of many shiny prizes and someone with a liking for a farty Valentine’s Day card.

Strap in folks. This is an absolute belter of an episode.

The farty card was a good start. But the story behind the Relate campaign shot by Rankin is something we’d never heard before. And we’ve heard quite a bit in the past five years.

We don’t want to reveal too much but let’s just say Nicola’s Nan features quite prominently. And some of the conversations Nicola had to have to persuade Nan to appear naked on billboards up and down the country are quite something.

We also discussed the incredible craft that went into the British Airways ‘New York We’re back’ billboard which rightly won awards on both sides of the pond. Instead of choosing the easy AI / post production route to recreate workers sat on a girder atop a New York skyscraper, Nicola and long term partner Andy Forrest decided to do it for real. Or as ‘real’ as you can as the nation was emerging from Covid. Another brilliant story involving previous guest photographer Adam Hinton (episode #18) a real life girder and a lot of wardrobing.

We also found out how gardening and sex can help reduce STI’s in the over 65’s in another raunchy campaign for Relate ‘The Hornicultural Society’.

Cannes, flapjacks, you people voting, Maaate, Araldite Glue, Tony Cullingham, Nike … we packed a lot in.

Everything Nichola does seems to have a story, an edge, a relevance to popular culture. We may need a part two soon. Maybe with special guest Nan?!

Thank you again Nicola for coming on and lighting up the studio with your incredible stories. 

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-72-rachel-miles

Episode #72 features Rachel Miles, BAFTA award-winning creative and Creative Director at Meanwhile Campaign Start-up Agency of the Year 2024.

Rachel not only brought stories from behind her billboards but also some sensational pies from Great North Pie which usurped Hugh’s ‘tiny flapjacks’ as Dan calls them.

Dan and Hugh discussed many things with Rachel. We covered her six year tenure at BBC Creative where, along with creative partner Michael Tsim she created many iconic campaigns, including setting a billboard on fire for the Perfect Planet series, which made the national news and won just about every award going.

We also featured the wonderfully graphic OOH campaign for This is Our BBC. And a campaign of virtual billboards that appeared in the BAFTA winning Tokyo Olympics trail. Adam Peaty, Laura Kenny, Jason Kenny et al getting the Manga treatment.

We even squeezed in her first OOH work of note at Meanwhile for Lifeshare - a clothing charity - that ran during fashion week just before Christmas. And we had a brief chat on the special build for TravelSupermarket featuring a heavily stacked supermarket trolley. So good.

Rachel, thank you so much for coming on and being your wonderful charming talented self. We loved it (and the pies!).

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-71-steve-hudson

Podcast episode #71 features the super talented Steve Hudson.

Not only is Steve one of the industry’s most awarded creatives, he’s a brilliant director and also the founder of The Power of Advertising (TPOA) platform.

We covered a great deal in the hour or so together, in particular Steve’s prolific time at BBH where together with creative partner Victoria Fallon, he created iconic work for Audi, Levi’s, Polaroid, one2one, Electrolux and more.

Obv we focused on the billboards and two campaigns in particular.

For Levi’s the Original Wearers campaign shot by fashion photographer Nick Knight. A stunning campaign. Idea. Casting. Art direction. Photography. Lighting. Wardrobe. All faultless.

And for Wallis we talked about the Dressed to Kill campaign shot by another legendary snapper Bob Carlos Clark.

We heard how on a train ride to Brighton to shoot Wallis, Steve claimed advertising can be art. Bob begged to differ. Halfway through the debate Steve got a call from the V&A, telling him that one of the Levi’s posters had been accepted into the museum. You couldn’t make it up. Listen out for it. Steve tells it much better.

We also discussed Audi ‘Number One’ - one of the greatest car ads of all time - how it came to be, how it was sold to the client, and how the final line of dialogue was used by yuppie bankers as reference for cocaine.

It was a real pleasure having Steve on the show, not just to hear the stories behind his work, but to feel the passion and energy in the room and his positive outlook for the future of the industry. Thank you so much again Steve for coming on and good luck with the power of advertising, which we firmly believe in.

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-70-paul-banham

Can you project the two moons from Mars into the night sky?

Can you sell over 1,000,000 lights in the world’s tallest building?

Can you build an underwater mobile phone store to sell a waterproof phone?

These are just some of the questions, answered by MullenLowe MENA CCO Paul Banham on episode #70, where we take a deep dive into life as a creative in Dubai.

It’s an absolute fascinating chat and one we’ve been wanting to have for ages. We caught up Paul on a flying visit to London.

So we sat down with tea and flapjacks and a microphone and off he went.

It was a massive eye-opener hearing about life and all things outdoors in the Middle East.

Everything is different.

The weather.
The budgets.
The ambition.

But the one thing that thankfully stays the same is the desire for ideas.

And when those ideas happen, they are big.

And more often these days award-winning, with the previous mentioned campaigns picking up Cannes Lions galore.

Paul it was a total pleasure and we’re so pleased you managed to fit us in on your tour of the UK.

Looking forward to seeing you again in the summer, possibly for a second round and certainly a couple more pints than this time.

Take care and keep applying the factor 50 😎