Starting out as a creative is tough.

Most days are divided into two parts, first you squeeze out as many ideas as you possibly can, second you try not to give up when your creative director tells you they are all crap. Occasionally you may get a ‘nice’, that will keep you going until maybe two months later when you may get a ‘cool’, even an ‘ok’ buoy the spirits.

Encouragement is crucial.

The first person of any note to say nice about one of my ads was Dave Waters.

(‘Jan’ was Jan Van Mesdag, Dave’s old partner at GGT and my boss at the legendary Cromer Titterton.)

It was very encouraging, Dave was one of the stars from the best agency of the time GGT.

GGT was not only the best creative agency at the time, it was known to have the toughest regime, weekends there were like Mondays anywhere else,

Also, if you didn’t deliver creatively, either your salary was cut or you were fired.

Dave thrived in this environment.

Dave Trott, the ‘T’ on GGT, called Dave his Roy Keane, saying he was hungrier than anyone, ‘the juniors would do trade ads and if they did well they could steal the bigger tv briefs the seniors were working on and have a crack.

Dave was one of our most senior creatives, he’d do all the big ads and then steal the trade briefs from the juniors, he wanted to do everything.’

We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.