I came through the ranks of one of the world’s most competitive and consistently brilliant creative departments, Saatchi & Saatchi London - joining as a junior copywriter on Currys and leaving as a Regional Creative Director for Procter & Gamble.
For 15 years I worked with some of the world’s greatest CDs; the legendary Paul Arden, Alex Taylor, John Pallant, Adam Kean, James Lowther, Simon Dicketts, Cliff Francis and the all-conquering David Droga.
And wrote advertising for quite a few of the world’s most famous household names; The Times, Ariel, Pampers, Toyota, The Army, The Daily Mirror, Cheerios, Hewlett Packard and Baby Bel, to name but nine.
Mike Sands and I were asked to join Grey to look after some of their P&G brands - Pringles, Flash, Bold Pantene and Fairy. We stayed for three years, helping raise the profile of the agency, mentoring quite a young department and winning some prizes for Flash.
I then returned to Saatchi & Saatchi as Regional Creative Director on the Ariel business for Western Europe, developing work across the region and helping grow Ariel to number one in the UK.
More recently I’ve been operating as a consulting creative director too, working both with smaller agencies and direct to client, getting my hands dirty every day and getting my head properly around the digital environment – while still stretching budgets and finding smarter innovative solutions to traditional issues.
A couple of years ago I decided to have a look at working In-House and became Creative Director at TED - the in-house agency for for Lucozade and Ribena, looking after the strategic and creative output across all the brands and leading the department.
I’ve also set up a creative collective – Horse’s Mouth, essentially a pop-up ad agency for people who are a bit fed up with ad agencies. The collective offers access to some of the best creatives in the world for a fraction of the cost – it’s not for everyone but some brands seem to love it.
And finally I’m doing a Professional Doctorate - looking at knowledge transfer across agency creative departments, and how experience and expertise are valued.
My views on the industry haven’t changed materially over the years.
I still think a big idea is more important than big data.
I still think that technology’s role is to support the idea not drive it.
And I still think that advertising is less about doing research, winning awards or starting conversations than about getting more household names into more households than before.
Simple.
