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