I am very lucky that I have worked at some amazing agencies over the years.
But despite that, there’s still a few I wish I had had an opportunity to experience.
There were a bunch of reasons it didn’t always happen.
With BBH for example, it was always down to timing. On four separate bloody occasions.
With Cliff Freeman, it was down to them basically thinking I was shit.
And while there are a bunch of other agencies that intrigue and excite me – including a bunch, like CDP and Simons Palmer that have sadly disappeared from our industry landscape – there’s one that I have always held in the highest regard.
Abbott Mead Vickers.
My god they are good.
Hell, they’ve been good since they started in 1979.
The quality of the people and the work is, in all probability, unparalleled in UK advertising.
Not only that, but if you look at the people this industry holds up today as beacons of awesome, many of them got their break at AMV.
They taught you how to do things properly.
They taught you how the value of great thinking, ideas and craft.
They basically taught UK adland what is possible when approached with excellence.
Of course other agencies also had an incredible impact on the industry – both in the UK and the World – the aforementioned CDP, my beloved HHCL and the original Saatchi&Saatchi to name but a few … but AMV had the distinction of being both brilliant and utterly gentlemanly which gave them an air of ‘properness’ that other places never quite managed to pull off.
But ‘properness’ should not be mistaken for passiveness which leads to the point of this post.
Recently I was sent a letter that David Abbott – the A in AMV – sent to his agency about ‘doing the right thing’.
In some ways it was a reminder – or a reset – about process.
I don’t mean process in the way WPP would mean it, I mean it in terms of principles, standards and expectations.
Or said another way, the stubbornness needed to maintain your principles, standards and expectations.
What I love about what he wrote is that he acknowledged that everyone plays a part in the journey to great work. It’s not just about the creative department, it’s about the actions and decisions of every person and discipline connected to the process and so unless everyone shares the same principles, standards and ambitions … it will all fall apart.
Collective praise. Collective blame.
Despite the fact he wrote it 21 years ago, I think his memo is as meaningful and as important as it has ever been.
So if you work in adland or know someone who does, send them this post and point them to pages below.
Tell them to hold it close. Treasure it. Think about what’s being said and then act upon it.
It’s that good.
Which is why AMV are that good.
Hey, I am not being a judgemental bastard, I was probably like them as a kid [and I would most certainly be like them as an adult] … the key difference is that way back when I was a kid, apart from that technology not being around, I wasn’t allowed to not be interested.
Yes, that’s right, I was made to appreciate what I was seeing/hearing/experiencing.
And how was I ‘made’ to do that?
Because my parents and teachers made it interesting for me.
It wasn’t a case of being dragged around a museum and told to “look at things”, my parents and teachers told me what I was seeing in a way I could relate to. The history of the work. The reason it should be seen and celebrated. Why I was lucky to experience it.
In other words, they found ways to make me care.
Now I don’t know what it’s like today at public schools – I guess I’ll find out in a few years – but what is seemingly apparent is that the whole purpose of education has got lost along the way.
Not just with students … but with teachers, parents and governments.
In the past, the role of public education was to help build a better society in the future.
It was not just about personal progress, it was about national progress.
As Malcolm Forbes said:
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one”.
But that doesn’t seem to be the case any more.
Now it seems public education is evaluated on what it costs rather than what it delivers.
Built on minimum standards rather than maximum potential.
In short, it seems we have gone from valuing a society filled with educated people to one that celebrates average.
I would happily pay more taxes to help public education be improved.
To give students better facilities to let them experience more of it.
To give schools better infrastructure to let more people benefit from it.
To give teachers a better salary to ensure talent stays within it.
I would happily pay more taxes to stop parents thinking private education is the only way forward.
To stop universities acting like a business rather than a place of advanced learning.
To stop governments lowering standards so they can use the figures to pretend they care.
To stop councils selling schools because they care more about the value of the land than the value of education.
To stop kids going into a lifetime of debt for a degree that makes a mockery of what a degree used to be.
To stop business alienating against those who don’t go to university.
Quality public education should not be a gift … it should be a right.
Everyone benefits when everyone benefits and so we need to get away from box ticking and averages and get back to finding ways to make people care so they can be better than they thought they could be.
Not just because it will give them advantages in life further down the road, but because it will give advantages to everyone further down the road.
Public education is the last defence against a World of FOX News readers.
If anything should give you a reason to lobby government to treat public education with the respect it deserves, it’s that.
Despite my wife being one, I’ve given designers get a lot of stick over the years.
To be honest, they have brought it on themselves with shit like this or this.
Of course not all designers are pretentious tossers who make planners look down-to-earth, there are those who are brilliant problem solvers … like the guys [whoever they are] behind the new SONOS corporate identity.
On first glance, it’s nothing special … but the moment you scroll the logo up or down, it suddenly looks like sound is pulsating out of it.
Go on, try it.
How brilliant is that eh?
I’ll tell you how brilliant it is … it’s sheer, utter, simple brilliance.
Of course there are many audio companies who have incorporated music/sound cues within their corporate identity – lets face it, it’s a pretty obvious thing to do – but as far as I know, none have done it in such a clever way.
Whoever was behind this really thought about the challenge.
You can tell they really sweated over the solution as opposed to just heading towards the obvious or the easy.
Maybe their starting point was reframing the challenge.
Maybe it was something like this: how do we make a static logo produce sound?
The reason I say that is because when you phrase objectives that way, it forces you to be creative in your response.
And when I say that, what I really mean is it forces you to be creative in your thinking.
I’ve always been a big believer that obstacles make you more creative.
Maybe that’s why I love working in China, because apart from the cultural barriers, there’s the fact the government are very strict on what can/can’t be said so you always have to try and think one step ahead.
Barriers liberate creativity. Too few people understand that … but they do.
The bigger the barrier, the bigger the potential for glory.
The fact is problems make you smarter … they improve your skills and hone your talent and if you don’t believe me, take another look at that SONOS identity because the people behind it managed to overcome the rather major obstacle of turning a static, silent medium into one that produces sound.
Filed under: Comment
I’m back. Again.
I know … I know …
If it’s any consolation, it wasn’t much of a holiday. My wonderful Mum got rushed into hospital so I flew over to be by her side.
Thankfully the wonderful people at Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham managed to stabalise her and she even managed to come home in the time I was there.
I cannot tell you how traumatic it all was – or how grateful I am to the NHS as it genuinely was touch and go – but what this means is a week from today, she will be going back into hospital for major heart surgery as she has a weak valve and that is the cause of all her recent ailments.
I’ll be there and staying for a month so this blog will be intermittent over this time so as I know all this coming and going is probably playing with your mind [cough, cough], I thought I’d ease you back into my rubbish with this simple fact.
The founder of Spotify is worth approximately 3 billion dollars, which is about 2.4 billion dollars more than Paul McCartney – one of histories richest and most successful composers and performers – despite having never written a single song.
Which all goes to show that while creativity may have the power to inspire, it’s the people who know how to monetise its power and control it’s distribution that makes the real money.
Might be a lesson adland could do with remembering.