:00:00. > :00:00.are mostly in positive territory. More now on the top stories. It's
:00:00. > :00:09.time though now for the Meet the Author with Nick Higham. Sir John
:00:10. > :00:13.Hegarty is one of Britain's most successful advertising men. He's
:00:14. > :00:19.been the creative direct over of the agency he helped to found, BBH. Two
:00:20. > :00:25.years ago, he wrote a book, Hegarty on Advertising, part memoir part How
:00:26. > :00:31.To manual. He's followed it up with this slim volcano yum called Hegarty
:00:32. > :00:38.on Creativity, but its style is, there are no rules, which gives you
:00:39. > :00:41.some clue as to the Hegarty approach -- volume called Hegarty on
:00:42. > :00:54.Creativity. John Hegarty, it seems to me,
:00:55. > :00:59.there's a possible flawed premise at the basis of this book. Creative
:01:00. > :01:04.people are surely born, not made. You can't teach it, can you? Well,
:01:05. > :01:10.no, you can't, but as I say, in the book, we are all creative, it's just
:01:11. > :01:15.maybe, you know, great artists, some of us shouldn't exhibit. But we are
:01:16. > :01:20.innately creative. Some people are living by it. What you can do is you
:01:21. > :01:24.can learn how to get better. Just as we can all dance, just some people
:01:25. > :01:34.aren't very good at it, but you can train people to be better dancers
:01:35. > :01:40.than they are. Understanding a bit about a creative profession would be
:01:41. > :01:45.good. You founded BBH. Let's start with one of the earliest defining
:01:46. > :01:52.ads of that agency which was an ad for black Levis in which you adopted
:01:53. > :01:58.eventually as the logo. Just explain that? It was in 1982. They were
:01:59. > :02:01.launching black denim, they came to us, we'd won the account and they
:02:02. > :02:05.wanted quick posters for the launch of black denim and they wanted
:02:06. > :02:08.something for it. We came up with this idea, we thought it was like
:02:09. > :02:12.different from everything else, obviously, and that's what we wanted
:02:13. > :02:16.to advertise, difference. So we came up with this idea of all these sheep
:02:17. > :02:21.going in One Direction and the black sleep going in the opposite
:02:22. > :02:27.direction and said, when the world Zigs, use zag. It was a wonderful
:02:28. > :02:32.moment. Levis said, where are the jeans and we said, don't worry about
:02:33. > :02:36.the jeans, people know what they look like, you are selling black.
:02:37. > :02:40.Eventually they bought it because they thought, we have hired these
:02:41. > :02:44.lunatics to give them a free hand. It did well for them. Because of
:02:45. > :02:48.that, it's kind of, there's a good example about how your own
:02:49. > :02:56.creativity develops your own philosophy and we realise that that
:02:57. > :03:00.was what we believed in. BBH, we didn't say we are about the world
:03:01. > :03:07.being Zig and zag, we just realised that's what we were about.
:03:08. > :03:14.Levis did very well for BBH and perhaps the most famous commercial
:03:15. > :03:21.the agency produced was an ad for Levi 501s in which Nick Kamen famous
:03:22. > :03:25.famously stripped. Changed fashion and did wonderful for the sales of
:03:26. > :03:29.boxer shorts. One of the things you say in the book is there's a
:03:30. > :03:33.ten-year rule that applies to creativity. A lot of people do their
:03:34. > :03:38.best working at a ten-year period. BBH has been going for ten years, so
:03:39. > :03:41.how have you managed to buck the rule? I think that's true. If you
:03:42. > :03:45.look at architects, musicians, painters, you tend to kind of find
:03:46. > :03:48.your voice and you keep repeating that voice. If you are in the world
:03:49. > :03:53.of advertising, you have to come in every day and have a new idea. That
:03:54. > :03:57.can't be like yesterday's idea. So constant reinvention is what you are
:03:58. > :04:04.about, it's an intense intensely creative atmosphere, so how do you
:04:05. > :04:08.keep that going? First of all, you don't become a cynic. You don't
:04:09. > :04:12.chase the money, you chase the opportunity. A lot of people chase
:04:13. > :04:18.the money, not the opportunity. And thirdly, you keep yourself totally
:04:19. > :04:21.open. Constantly absorbing new ideas, constantly talking to people,
:04:22. > :04:29.constantly trying to see what is going on in the world. I think the
:04:30. > :04:34.people are messengers, they receive the information and they come out in
:04:35. > :04:38.another form. So staying aware and connected to the world is
:04:39. > :04:42.fundamentally important. Read things other people don't read, constantly
:04:43. > :04:46.see all the great work you can see. Do you get cross when people who
:04:47. > :04:51.work with you go round with head phones on? Listen, this is an
:04:52. > :04:55.example. Just the other day, I was walking in, there was a woman
:04:56. > :04:59.carrying two heavy bags. As she put the bags down, a horn went and it
:05:00. > :05:04.knead most fantastic kecktion. As she put the bags down, I thought,
:05:05. > :05:08.I'm going to use that. That's a funny things. If Eidar had the head
:05:09. > :05:12.phones on, I would have seen a woman putting a couple of heavy bags down,
:05:13. > :05:16.would it have registered? You are cutting yourself off, you can't do
:05:17. > :05:20.that, you have to stay open, awarer, involved and connecteded to the
:05:21. > :05:24.world. You talk about the difficulty of running creative organisations.
:05:25. > :05:28.There's always a tension between allowing absolute freedom, almost
:05:29. > :05:31.anarchy for people to have wonderful ideas and the fact that you need
:05:32. > :05:34.system and process, particularly if you are in an industry like
:05:35. > :05:39.advertising where you have deadlines, clients that have
:05:40. > :05:42.expectations. How do you make that, how do you negotiate that tension?
:05:43. > :05:47.You can tell when a company is in decline when process overtakes
:05:48. > :05:50.innovation. When the company is more interested in the process of doing
:05:51. > :05:55.something, rather than innovating. Of course process is fundamentally
:05:56. > :05:59.important, you know, we can't live without that, but if we don't allow
:06:00. > :06:04.innovation to kind of constantly be the driving force of the company,
:06:05. > :06:13.then you collapse. The thing I thought was amazing was January 2012
:06:14. > :06:20.Kodak files for bankruptcy. June 2012, Instagram is sold to Facebook
:06:21. > :06:25.for $1 billion. They are both in imaging. Kodak was obsessed with
:06:26. > :06:29.producing film. It wasn't standing back and saying, what are we about,
:06:30. > :06:35.we are about imaging, why don't we do it in a different way. Process
:06:36. > :06:39.had overtaken innovation. You are rather negative about the present
:06:40. > :06:42.state of advertising and advertising creativity, you say television
:06:43. > :06:47.programmes have got better and better, the commercials haven't kept
:06:48. > :06:53.up. Why is that? When you get new technology appearing, you get a
:06:54. > :06:59.creative deficit. Everybody becomes obsessed with the technology. So you
:07:00. > :07:03.look at the Lumiere Brothers who invented the camera, moving
:07:04. > :07:07.pictures. They didn't realise what they'd done and they gave up on it
:07:08. > :07:11.or Les Paul who created the electric guitar, he didn't write a
:07:12. > :07:16.rock'n'roll song, it took a creative person. You get that deficit. I
:07:17. > :07:20.think because of digital technology, which is fantastic, don't get me
:07:21. > :07:23.wrong, we are not sure how to use it. We have become obsessed with the
:07:24. > :07:29.technology, not with how it can help us tell a story and story-telling is
:07:30. > :07:32.fundamental to Brands and our existence and fundamental to dull
:07:33. > :07:36.culture and all the things we believe in. But what's happened is,
:07:37. > :07:40.we think we can put that to one side and become obsessed with the
:07:41. > :07:49.technology. John Hegarty, thank you very much indeed.
:07:50. > :08:00.It's been a cloudy, damp day for many of us. Temperatured briefly
:08:01. > :08:03.popped up to 15 today. You can see where the cloud is dominating. It's
:08:04. > :08:05.thickening up elsewhere