Another one that never got published until now. I wrote this article back in 2014, in response to the question, ‘Where do all the art directors and copywriters go when they get older?’
For earlier posts, see Part 1: Matt Cumming, Part 2: Adam Hunt, Part 3: Billy Plummer and Part 4: Ben Nott.
Part 5: William* (real name withheld)
October 2014
I’d worked alongside William some years ago. I remembered his gentle manner and sharp eye for design. I tracked him down to see if I could get his story over lunch. He’d seen the ad industry unfold over a few decades, and I was keen to hear about how things had changed. The fact that he arrived at lunch on a Tuesday with a nice bottle of red showed that he believed there’s still room for enjoying yourself. Here’s his story:
As a young man growing up in London, I always loved advertising. I used to wallpaper my bedroom walls with great ads, like Chivas Regal and Benson & Hedges. I considered them art. In fact, I still have about six or seven hundred of them archived at home. They probably belong in a museum of advertising or something.
I thought advertising was interesting. I loved the idea of millions of people as my audience, that it was my job to influence or manipulate them.
At that time, London was the centre of world advertising and the best agency in the world, by any measure, was Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP). Its alumni would later read as a ‘who’s who’ of advertising and film – people like Sir Frank Lowe, Lord David Puttnam, Sir Alan Parker, Sir John Hegarty, Charles Saatchi and Ridley Scott.
So, with a career in advertising set firmly as the goal, I attended New Hampton Art College. Then, within two weeks of completing the school, I saw an agency ad in Campaign magazine. It was targeting potential clients, but I wrote to them anyway, seeing if they had any jobs for me. The agency was called Brunnings Advertising, and they were probably the sixth or seventh largest agency in London at the time. They invited me in for an interview and gave me a job straight away. My portfolio wasn’t that great, but I guess they just liked me. The work that Brunnings did was fairly dull and boring but I was just pleased to get my first job.
Back then, the career progression was much more structured than it is now. Only the very senior people were ‘Art Directors’. There was a whole process to go through – learning about letter-setting, printing and visualising before you could earn that title.
The real challenge was moving from a shit agency to a good one. ‘Top tier’ agencies simply wouldn’t even look at you. There really was a class structure within the industry. So after seven or eight years in London, I decided that I needed to find another market so I could climb the career ladder.
I applied to go to South Africa, due to its proximity to London, but was rejected. After travelling through Thailand, I ended up in Australia. I quickly realised that saying ‘I’m an art director from London’ had some status. A headhunter told me that most jobs in Australia didn’t go via recruitment specialists, and that I should see Paul Jones, the CD at Clemenger. He gave me a job on the spot, and I was earning three times more than my salary back in London.
I got to work with some nice brands. I helped launch Breville, the electrical appliance brand, in 1978. It became a household name and suddenly I became flavour of the month in Australia.
I ended up spending four years at Clemenger. It was an awesome department and I worked alongside people like Phil Atkinson, Rob Thomley, Terry Bunton, Greg Adler, Andrew West and Peter Cherry.
Then, one day I got a call from Dick Greenlaw. He had been the CD at Clemenger before I arrived and now ran his own agency, Phillips Horne Greenlaw. I joined them as a partner and over the next three and half years, helped build it into a good agency. Then Clemenger wanted to buy it, so after selling the agency to the BBDO network, I stayed on for a year before heading back to London.
In 1985, I joined J. Walter Thompson’s London office as Creative Group Head. At the time, they were probably in the top three or four agencies in London so my strategy to move to a foreign market so I could advance my career had worked.
Then, at the age of 38, I launched my own agency in London with two other partners. Our launch was on the front page of Campaign magazine. The only other agency that had launched on the front page was Saatchi & Saatchi.
In our first year, we picked up clients like The Guardian, and part of the Lloyds Bank account. Every agency was becoming a public company in those days and that was our plan too – spend five years building the agency, then launch a prospectus, and float. But the stock market in 1987 didn’t agree with those plans. The crash saw things change very quickly. Lloyds stopped spending money on advertising as nobody wanted a mortgage. Financial duress then put strain on the relationship between the agency’s three partners.
One day, in the middle of an argument with the other partners, I took a phone call from a headhunter. They asked if I wanted a job in Spain. The timing was perfect. So, suddenly, I became the Executive Creative Director of Lintas, working in the Barcelona office. I thought it would be an interesting experience – my kids could learn Spanish, plus Barcelona was hosting the Olympics so there was a lot happening. It was lots of fun, but looking back, it was probably a mistake to go to Spain. I stayed there for two and half years before returning to Australia.
So in 1994, I reunited with Paul Jones at DDB’s Sydney office. Paul had built DDB into a strong agency and McDonald’s were doing lots of good work. It was great department and almost everyone there went on to be CDs and CEOs.
Paul moved to Ogilvy in 1995 as Executive Creative Director and Chairman, and I followed. I stayed there until the end of 1997, before joining Craig Davis at his agency, Doorley Abram Davis & Chapman. I spent about a year there before joining a friend at Samuelson Talbot. I then moved to M&C Saatchi, working out of both their Sydney and Melbourne offices on various projects and I also did a few stints in Singapore.
When I look at the industry these days, I think the advertising environment is changing dramatically. The skillsets and expectations are now very different. I’ve adapted over the years, teaching myself things like Photoshop and other tools of the trade. About thirteen years ago (2001), I realised that if I don’t move with the tide, you can easily be left behind. Many of my contemporaries aren’t really doing anything these days. I’ve seen the landscape shift from being all about ideas to being largely about technology. These days, I think Creative Directors tend to fill the role of curators and ‘presenters of ideas’.
I still work directly with corporate clients. I find that most of my new projects come via existing connections or referrals. I still enjoy the work.
DUSTIN LANE
Brand Strategy | Creative Concepts | Copywriting
Visit risinggiants.co or dustinlanecreative.com
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