A “Knight” with Sir John Hegarty…
My first ever visit to a Creative Networks event and first off, wow - what an well organised event it was.
Arrive, get your name badge plus three tokens; one for food (which was way better than it needed to be) and two for drinks - punch to be specific.
Eat your food, drink your drinks and mingle for half an hour or so before being led into the lecture theatre for the talks - and will there be a more eagerly anticipated speaker this year? For the design and advertising fraternity, I very much doubt it.
I’ll not go into Sir John’s background (a simple google search will deliver a plethora of info on the man) but, ever since my days at art college and later on at Uni, his name (and that of his agency, Bartle Bogle and Heggarty (BBH for short)) has always been one I’ve looked out for. Over the years they’ve been hugely successful commercially and have produced some absolutely outstanding advertising - I was expecting fireworks!
So the talk then - 10 reasons why now is the best time to be in advertising.
I can’t remember all 10 - actually I can barely remember any of the 10 - but the central theme seemed to be the use of modern technology - internet sites like YouTube in particular - to get ads out in the public domain that previously wouldn’t have seen the light of day.
Getting clients to run a “soft” launch online first if they either, didn’t have the budget for conventional mediums or didn’t have the courage/confidence in the idea/ad itself.
Sounds good in theory but what happens if the ad goes down a storm online…. but for the wrong reasons? Very, very quickly you’ve got a successful viral ad on your hands (in terms of viewing figures), seen by millions but delivering a message you never intended too - what then?
Once an ad arrives on line, it’s there forever - you can’t just yank it off the airwaves like you did in the “old world”. (Joss Stone’s homemade music video anyone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s6WHJWdD9U)
We did however, get to see a number of BBH ads, including a particular favourite for Xbox:
The ads were great, in the main, but it was a conversation I had with someone afterwards that made me think.
He pointed out the use of sex to sell - in particular in ads for the brands, Lynx and Smirnoff - “look at the sexy people, aren’t they great….etc etc”. He then countered that with an ad for Barnardos where a young girl was overtly sexualised to highlight a bad thing. A touch of hypocrisy there perhaps?
I’d also read an article on the Independent website (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/john-hegarty-master-of-creative-rebellion-510356.html) about him earlier in the day where John was commenting on the press presenting people in advertising as, “objects of ridicule and scorn”. Later in the article he then states, “When I look at most journalists and newspapers, all they do is copy each other. The amount of originality in journalism I could get on to my little finger.”
I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions with that one…
This wasn’t meant to be a bad review, in fact, I liked John, as a man. I thought he came across as a good guy; wise, intelligent just the right side of humble, but I didn’t get that something, that buzz, that feeling of wanting to run out of the lecture theatre and start “creating”. I found myself becoming a cynic too - and that was unexpected
I hoped, maybe even expected, to be inspired by the man, so I can’t help but sit here this morning feeling slightly disappointed and uninspired.
As the saying goes, “don’t meet your heroes”.
