STUFF FROM THE LOFT - Dave Dye

It’s weird, I only interview people whose work I really like, but whenever I lay their work out end-to-end, I’m always surprised at how much better it is than I’d remembered.
It could be that there’s much more of it, the sheer consistency of it or that it appears better with the benefit of time and a bit of distance.
All three are true of the work in this post.
Tony does a good job of shining a light onto how he produced it, hope you enjoy it.

‘Art Director’ is an unhelpful title.
It has nothing to do with Art and very little to do with directing.
Some think it’s about making stuff look cool, I think it’s about communicating at speed.
We work in a medium people are actively trying to ignore, so we can’t hang around.
Art Director’s can only communicate quickly if the understand:
a) Their basic toolkit; photography, film, illustration, editing, cropping, fonts, colours and the rest.
b) The world around them: how humans behave, the meaning of gestures, what’s fashionable, what’s unfashionable, the difference between someone looking excited and crazed, whether to it’s funnier to cast the tall skinny guy or the short fat guy, whether it would be more dramatic to fill the frame with sea and have a thin strip of sky or vice-versa?
I don’t know an Art Director who understands both better than Mark Reddy.

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.

The arc of most creative agencies tends to be very similar; start idealistic and creative, become less principled and duller over the years as the realities of finance, earn-outs and fatigue start to kick in.

Adam & Eve are like the Benjamin Button of ad agencies.

They started burdened by the financial realities due to a situation called ‘Sorrell’.

Having come through the early sensible years they seem to grow more creative as each year goes by.

They won no creative awards in their first year, they’ve won more than anyone else last year, they’re currently top of the Gunn Report, their 10th year.

Ben Priest has overseen their creative journey.

We had a great, very candid chat, hope you enjoy it.

My 7th boss.

Former hitch-hiker,

copywriter,

Frankenstien re-animator,

ECD,

David Abbott replacement,

D&AD President,

ITV sitcom creator,

Radio 4 drama writer and

cousin of Showaddywaddy

lead singer Dave Bartram.

Read any article on good copywriting and you’ll find the same names appear.
David Abbott and Tony Brignull usually battle for the top two slots, Tim Delaney and John Salmon fight it out for third place.
But talk to writers about the same subject and another name appears; Richard Foster.
Richard is the only one of the five who has worked under the other four.
(He may well be the only writer to have worked under the four?)
For a number of reasons, the other four are better known.
Two have agencies named after them.
They were all Creative Directors, (or Chief Creative Officers as we call them today).
Each took on the title of Chairman.
All four became President of D&AD.
With those roles came P.R.
Whereas Richard wrote.
He wrote for everyone, from 14 year old girls (Lil-lets) to Captains of Industry (The Economist).
He wrote for products from 1p up to £100k.
He wrote ads that featured in 29 D&AD annuals.
He wrote the best section in D&AD’s ‘THE COPY BOOK: How 32 of The World’s Best Advertising Writers Write Their Advertising’.
We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.
Dx

The best ads appear effortless.
As if created accidentally, the result of a chance corridor meeting by people letting off steam on their way to different, grown-up, serious meetings, probably ones involving charts, numbers and mashed-up new words they get the gist of but aren’t 100% confident of their meaning.
The truth is that it’s hard to create work like that, it’s like catching lightning in a bottle.
A few creatives have been in the right place at the right time to grab a bolt, barely any catch it on demand.
Gerry has been doing it on a regular basis for the last twenty years.
Just as impressive; he’s a gooner.
We had a great chat, hope you enjoy it.

Unfortunately I seem to keep writing the same intros to these interviews; ‘Wow! I knew Person X was good, that’s why I wanted to interview them, but having gone through their archives I’d forgotten just how much great they’d done’.

But never has this been more true.

Today, in the ad world, Paul is best known as the director of the Walker’s Crisps ads featuring Gary Lineaker. (He’s shot about 150 of them over the last 20 years.)

It’s probably the longest running tv campaign in Britain and possibly the best known ad campaign amongst the British public.

There are obviously plenty of upsides to this, the downside is that it can mask everything else he’s done.

I did consider trying to put all of them together on one reel, but then decided the work would be too weighted towards Walkers, So I’ve only included a handful.

We had a great chat, I hope you enjoy it.

‘Chris is one of the few very, very bright people around.’
– CHARLES SAATCHI.

‘On his day he’s a much better writer than I am.’
– DAVE TROTT.

‘He is intelligent, witty and versatile and I’d say he’s probably one of the best three copywriters in the country.’
– JOHN WEBSTER.

‘He’s just done a podcast with me!’
– DAVE DYE

Since he quit advertising, Dave has had a big effect on it.
First, with Howies.
His mail order catalogues built up more than customer base, they built up a fan base.
They were, and still are, traded on Ebay.
Not for their clothing, for their vibe; that decent feel-good, smart, happy, moral life is for living, do the right thing voice. (Dave: Did I miss anything?)
Their writing and ideas were ripped them off mercilessly by ad agencies, constantly being used as reference for tone of voice or stimulus for manifestos… or just used.
One agency I used to work for copied and pasted one of Dave’s pieces to use as a manifesto for a pitch.
They won, but lost it a few weeks later when client found his shiny, new manifesto in an old Howies catalogue.
Howies was admired by the guys from Innocent, they visited Dave (and his wife Claire), for advice on setting up a business and building a brand.
To me, that whole Innocent vibe, which was also copied and ripped off, was totally ‘inspired’ by Howies.
I’m guessing they were also ‘inspired’ by Howies practice of printing random messages on their clothing, inside a pair of jeans you may stumble across ‘I stink, wash me’ or underneath the washing instructions on your t-shirt might be ‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore’.
Since he left Howies, Dave & Claire have continued to give ad agencies stimulus and reference material via the Do Lectures, Hiut Denim and Do Books.

I had a great chat with Dave, hope you enjoy it.