Sir John Hegarty Meet the Author


Sir John Hegarty

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are mostly in positive territory. More now on the top stories. It's

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time though now for the Meet the Author with Nick Higham. Sir John

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Hegarty is one of Britain's most successful advertising men. He's

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been the creative direct over of the agency he helped to found, BBH. Two

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years ago, he wrote a book, Hegarty on Advertising, part memoir part How

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To manual. He's followed it up with this slim volcano yum called Hegarty

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on Creativity, but its style is, there are no rules, which gives you

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some clue as to the Hegarty approach -- volume called Hegarty on

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Creativity. John Hegarty, it seems to me,

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there's a possible flawed premise at the basis of this book. Creative

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people are surely born, not made. You can't teach it, can you? Well,

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no, you can't, but as I say, in the book, we are all creative, it's just

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maybe, you know, great artists, some of us shouldn't exhibit. But we are

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innately creative. Some people are living by it. What you can do is you

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can learn how to get better. Just as we can all dance, just some people

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aren't very good at it, but you can train people to be better dancers

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than they are. Understanding a bit about a creative profession would be

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good. You founded BBH. Let's start with one of the earliest defining

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ads of that agency which was an ad for black Levis in which you adopted

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eventually as the logo. Just explain that? It was in 1982. They were

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launching black denim, they came to us, we'd won the account and they

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wanted quick posters for the launch of black denim and they wanted

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something for it. We came up with this idea, we thought it was like

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different from everything else, obviously, and that's what we wanted

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to advertise, difference. So we came up with this idea of all these sheep

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going in One Direction and the black sleep going in the opposite

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direction and said, when the world Zigs, use zag. It was a wonderful

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moment. Levis said, where are the jeans and we said, don't worry about

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the jeans, people know what they look like, you are selling black.

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Eventually they bought it because they thought, we have hired these

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lunatics to give them a free hand. It did well for them. Because of

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that, it's kind of, there's a good example about how your own

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creativity develops your own philosophy and we realise that that

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was what we believed in. BBH, we didn't say we are about the world

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being Zig and zag, we just realised that's what we were about.

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Levis did very well for BBH and perhaps the most famous commercial

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the agency produced was an ad for Levi 501s in which Nick Kamen famous

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famously stripped. Changed fashion and did wonderful for the sales of

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boxer shorts. One of the things you say in the book is there's a

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ten-year rule that applies to creativity. A lot of people do their

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best working at a ten-year period. BBH has been going for ten years, so

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how have you managed to buck the rule? I think that's true. If you

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look at architects, musicians, painters, you tend to kind of find

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your voice and you keep repeating that voice. If you are in the world

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of advertising, you have to come in every day and have a new idea. That

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can't be like yesterday's idea. So constant reinvention is what you are

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about, it's an intense intensely creative atmosphere, so how do you

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keep that going? First of all, you don't become a cynic. You don't

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chase the money, you chase the opportunity. A lot of people chase

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the money, not the opportunity. And thirdly, you keep yourself totally

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open. Constantly absorbing new ideas, constantly talking to people,

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constantly trying to see what is going on in the world. I think the

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people are messengers, they receive the information and they come out in

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another form. So staying aware and connected to the world is

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fundamentally important. Read things other people don't read, constantly

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see all the great work you can see. Do you get cross when people who

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work with you go round with head phones on? Listen, this is an

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example. Just the other day, I was walking in, there was a woman

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carrying two heavy bags. As she put the bags down, a horn went and it

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knead most fantastic kecktion. As she put the bags down, I thought,

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I'm going to use that. That's a funny things. If Eidar had the head

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phones on, I would have seen a woman putting a couple of heavy bags down,

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would it have registered? You are cutting yourself off, you can't do

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that, you have to stay open, awarer, involved and connecteded to the

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world. You talk about the difficulty of running creative organisations.

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There's always a tension between allowing absolute freedom, almost

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anarchy for people to have wonderful ideas and the fact that you need

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system and process, particularly if you are in an industry like

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advertising where you have deadlines, clients that have

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expectations. How do you make that, how do you negotiate that tension?

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You can tell when a company is in decline when process overtakes

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innovation. When the company is more interested in the process of doing

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something, rather than innovating. Of course process is fundamentally

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important, you know, we can't live without that, but if we don't allow

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innovation to kind of constantly be the driving force of the company,

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then you collapse. The thing I thought was amazing was January 2012

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Kodak files for bankruptcy. June 2012, Instagram is sold to Facebook

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for $1 billion. They are both in imaging. Kodak was obsessed with

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producing film. It wasn't standing back and saying, what are we about,

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we are about imaging, why don't we do it in a different way. Process

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had overtaken innovation. You are rather negative about the present

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state of advertising and advertising creativity, you say television

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programmes have got better and better, the commercials haven't kept

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up. Why is that? When you get new technology appearing, you get a

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creative deficit. Everybody becomes obsessed with the technology. So you

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look at the Lumiere Brothers who invented the camera, moving

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pictures. They didn't realise what they'd done and they gave up on it

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or Les Paul who created the electric guitar, he didn't write a

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rock'n'roll song, it took a creative person. You get that deficit. I

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think because of digital technology, which is fantastic, don't get me

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wrong, we are not sure how to use it. We have become obsessed with the

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technology, not with how it can help us tell a story and story-telling is

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fundamental to Brands and our existence and fundamental to dull

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culture and all the things we believe in. But what's happened is,

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we think we can put that to one side and become obsessed with the

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technology. John Hegarty, thank you very much indeed.

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It's been a cloudy, damp day for many of us. Temperatured briefly

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popped up to 15 today. You can see where the cloud is dominating. It's

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thickening up elsewhere

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