stevehenry

In the last fortnight I’ve been shuttling between the past and the future like Doctor Who on speed, who thinks he’s left the gas on.

Past – writing a piece on the 1982 D&AD annual for their Golden Jubilee, which meant researching the “golden generation” of Britain’s mad men, plus going to the book launch of a photographer friend of mine, Jim Lee, who was mega back then (and still doing very cool stuff now).

Future – Speaking about Decoded at the IPA Creative Pioneers event in Hackney House.

Looking at the D&AD annual for 1982 didn’t just make me nostalgic – it made me think. The industry really seemed to be more powerful back then, with viewers preferring the ad breaks to the programmes and British creativity leading the world.

I’m convinced that advertising was  more part of the culture then, than it is now.

How did the industry do this ?

By being uncompromising about creativity and (simultaneously) not taking itself too seriously.

As Frank Lowe said in Campaign recently – “We got into advertising because it was a lark – you got paid lots of money, there were lots of lovely girls and you got a nice, fast car … You just couldn’t believe your luck.”

And I know that Jim Lee would endorse all of that.

Compare now. When, for me, far too many people in the industry feel like vocational estate agents.

Guys – don’t be vocational, be vacational.

Now, for the future. The IPA “Creative Pioneeers” event was set up by the very wonderful Nicola Mendelsohn. There’s a lady who can grab any bull by both horns.

All the talk was of Silicon Roundabout, although I was able to point out that graphene is going to replace silicon very soon, and we needed to find Graphene Roundabout quite urgently.

It was all very stimulating and everybody was, if not embracing the future, at least trying to grope it. I was speaking about the importance of learning code, the creative language of the future.

And the key reason to do this is to bring back a love of, and respect for, creativity.

The internet should be the place where creativity goes ballistic.

Whereas right now, in our industry,  it feels like it’s owned by the number-crunchers.

I love what Paul Polman, the visionary CEO of Unilever said in an interview recently – “There is too much logic (in marketing), too much trying to be rational, too many numbers – with marketing almost being run by the accountants.”

What does he mean, almost ?!

Compare what Barry Schwabsky, art critic for the Nation, said about Jim Lee’s work in 2011…

When I first came upon Jim Lee’s images little more than four years ago, I experienced a kind of shock. Here was something really rare: imagery made under the aegis of the fashion industry, but with content way too hot to be contained by the cool surfaces of desirable apparel or appeased by the anodyne comforts of shopping. Pictures embodying complex, ambivalent metaphors about love, war, identity, conflict. And all done with such a consummate sense of style that they could pass in the fashion world.”

Jim was in the industry … but also outside of it.

I think the best people in any commercial art form love the medium they’re working in – and really f*ck with it at the same time.

In two weeks’ time, I’m going to be talking at another book launch. Erik Kessels, the great advertising maverick, has put together a volume called “Advertising for people who don’t like advertising”.

Love it.

Meanwhile Jim’s wonderful pictures are in a show called “Arrested” at Somerset House 16 May – 5 June.

Let’s try an experiment.

1.    What do you think should happen to someone who is found with a false passport, evidence of training in guerrilla techniques, manuals for making explosives, maps of strategic targets, ammonium nitrate crystals, benzene and fuses, and a detailed plan for a guerrilla onslaught against the country he’s living in, to be backed up by invasion forces from various enemy countries ?

Actually, that’s a description of  Nelson Mandela in the early 1960s.

2.    How would you feel  if you were caught by the police and one of your co-defendants turned state’s evidence against you, to secure complete immunity from prosecution, leaving you to receive a sentence of lifetime imprisonment in one of the most brutal regimes in the world  ?

That’s Mandela again, and when he bumped into the man in question, Robert Hepple, many years later, he walked up to him with a broad grin and embraced him in a bear hug.

Now why are these two answers interesting … ?

Because they’re surprising.

If the answer to the first question had been an easily recognised enemy like an al-Qaeda terrorist, we’d know where we were. To find out that it’s one of the few heroes the world has, is quite shocking.

Similarly in the second case. Anybody normal would feel nothing but revulsion for a man who betrayed his trust and friendship and whose actions led to a lifetime prison sentence. But Mandela was able to do the surprising thing, by calling on resources most of us can only dream of.

Here’s another question …  not about Nelson Mandela this time.

3.    What did Ann Romney, the wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, say when critics complained that her husband was “stiff” on stage ?

She said “We’d better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out”.

Now that’s pretty surprising, too.

And it makes me wonder if that was possibly why he was stiff in the first place.

I mean, if you’ve got a wife who suggest unzipping you in public, that would probably make any of us feel a bit “wooden”.

I love all of those stories. I’ve included them in this blog because they’re the sort of things I like to share with other people in conversations, both real and virtual.

And my belief is that actually surprise is the most consistent element of what makes up interesting conversation.

If I tell you that Doris who lives down the road is wearing the same jumper she wore last week, that isn’t very interesting.

Consistency, by itself,  is never very interesting.

And our industry is all about the currency of conversation.

We talk about word-of-mouth and that’s what’s at the heart of all great marketing campaigns.

But unless they’re surprising, they stand precious little chance of being talked about.

I’d like to see a situation where, when people are analysing creative work, they actively look for an element called “surprise”.

Without it, work is vanilla, wallpaper, invisible.

And I don’t believe Mrs Romney would ever approve of that.

You know those phone competitions they have on ITV ?

Where you can win a brand new car and a home cinema system if you happen to know which city is the capital of France ?

They hit a new low last week. I was watching Loose Women in my local gym (that’s why I joined it, actually)  when a break-bumper quiz asked me “what is another name for a set of twelve – a. Pair b. Trio c. Dozen ?”

Then one of the presenters sincerely wished me good luck in finding the answer.

Now with questions like that, it’s debatable whether the people taking part would know, if they did win the prize, the address it should be sent to.

But the thing about contemplating others’ stupidity is that it’s not long before you realise that you can be a bit of a knuckle-grazing bottom-feeding mouth-breather yourself.

I got this feeling when reading a book which showed me a new side to something I’d struggled with before.

Conservative, risk-averse thinking.

Jonathan Haidt’s book, called “The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion”,   is about the difference between right-wing and left-wing thinkers.

And at one point he defines them specfifically by their attitude to risk.

He shows that some people’s brains are less alert to threats and they take particular pleasure in novelty and diversity. They become liberals.

People who are wired to be more cautious are more likely to become conservatives.

But if you think that’s unfair on conservatives, you can relax because the most interesting thrust of his argument is on the limited vision of liberals.

Haidt argues that liberals have an incomplete understanding of the world they’re trying to help -  it’s as if they have the equivalent of only 2 out of the 5 possible taste receptors on their tongue.

So liberals’ main concerns could be summed up as being about protecting the vulnerable in society and preventing suffering.

Haidt believes that conservatives have these concerns (debatable, but let it go for now) and also an understanding of things like the need for authority, group loyalty, religion and a society which rewards hard graft.

Now I hate most of those things – as a creative person, I’m stuck in an almost permanent adolescence – but, more seriously, they look to me like they’re over-complicating the picture.

And whether you agree with those specific themes or not,  I think it’s right to say that liberals have a “simpler” attitude to life and conservatives a more complex one.

Why is this relevant to advertising ?

Because the battle to get great creative work out is often a battle between risk-takers and  risk-haters.

And that can feel very frustrating.

The risk-hater will feel like they’re seeing a fuller picture than the risk-taker.

They feel that they see the problem in 3-D – while the other is only seeing it in 2-D

From the other perspective, it looks to the risk-taker that the risk-hater has paid a lot of money for a pair of glasses which aren’t much use in real life.

Both look stupid or unhelpful to the other.

This isn’t  a simple agency/client split or  a creative/suit split – it can fall anywhere.

But if we could understand that dynamic more, maybe we could deal with it better.

And get better work out as a result.

Haidt is making his arguments not because he is anti-liberal but because he’s desperately trying to bridge the chasm between the 2 world views.

As he says, neither side has a monopoly on solutions – they both have useful stuff to bring to the party.

And it’s the same with risk and creativity. Finding a way for risk-takers and risk-haters to work together more efficiently would be wonderful.

But who knows ?

Maybe the whole idea is just stupid.

In a film from long ago, Chevy Chase is sitting on an airplane and he asks the stewardess for a Coke.

“Do you want it in the can ?” She asks.

“No, I’ll drink it here”,  he replies.

That’s how some people feel about Cannes, junket city – that it’s basically a synonym for toilet.

But I’m quite fond of the overpriced old tart, and last week found me in Cannes at the MIPCube conference, a gathering of the digitally savvy just prior to the  big TV festival. Read More »

While he was still alive, my dear old Dad was regularly convinced that he had discovered “the secret of golf”.

Although after he died, his interest somewhat tailed off.

He died many years ago, I should explain. But he’d been a single figure handicap player, and he was obsessed with minute adjustments to his grip or stance or swing. Read More »

I have seen the towers of Trebizon ablaze after an attack by a pirate fleet and I have thought – why is 95% of advertising  garbage which doesn’t  work ?

I have seen a thunderstorm revive dying elephants by the Tannhauser Gate and I have wondered – surely it’s got to be easier than this.

I’ve carried dead soldiers over the deserts of Ulan Bator – oh get on with it, Steve. This is supposed to be about advertising. Not the end of f*cking Blade Runner. Read More »

I was in the Garrick Club in Covent Garden the other day, having afternoon tea in the morning room.

And I found myself staring at a young French girl bent over someone’s knees and being spanked on her bare arse.

(I know what you’re thinking , but I’m afraid I can’t tell you offhand what the annual subs are.) Read More »

TS Eliot famously said that April was the cruellest month, but I f*cking hate January.

I’ve been rushing around like a blue-arsed headless chicken-fly with its blue arse in flames and a blue-arsed-chicken-fly-eating alligator on roller blades having turned up instead of the fire brigade.

I’m gonna be in Campaign soon in the “My Desk” feature, which paints a ridiculously inaccurate picture of my existence, because the latter seems to be spent rushing from one meeting to another while trying to catch up on 200 unread emails on the Tube, while the former makes me look like a zen monk with a water-pistol fetish. Read More »

I spent New Year in the tropics immersed in my favourite comedians – reading Frankie Boyle’s new book and watching Stewart Lee on my iPad.

God, I feel depressed.

I mean, those guys are clever and funny, but they’ve got a f*cking bleak view of the world. Read More »

What a year 2011 was.   Makes you wonder what the hell is going to happen in 2012.

Ah well, here’s my present to everybody:  a poem from a wonderful book called “Ten Poems to change your life” which was given to me by my old mucker Alex Gulland.

I’ve long believed that poetry was due for a come-back. Read More »