Dave Trott

But what I liked best was the matter-of-fact way we talked about it. Nowadays, of course, if anything is controversial we don’t talk about it. We sweep it under the carpet. Just in case, God forbid, it should make us uncomfortable. So we avoid talking about things. And that can’t be good. Stopping talking about things is the first stage in stopping thinking about things.

As the philosopher Bertrand Russell said, ‘The problem with the world is that the ignorant are arrogant and cocksure, while the intelligent are full of doubt.’ Because thinking is more difficult once we realise there is no right or wrong. Just the same thing viewed from different perspectives.

As the economist J.M. Keynes said: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas, as in escaping from the old ones.

So if we can find a natural rebelliousness within ourselves (and presumably that’s why we went to art school), if we can harness that, we have an energy that we can turn into something useful. Something exciting and different. We can be outrageous to a purpose. That, for me, is great advertising.

Don’t try to force or nag people into doing what you want. Accept that they are free to choose. But you help them choose what you want.

We don’t keep competing inside a competitive set where we can’t win. We change the competitive set, change the perspective.

Our whole world is advertising, so we think everyone’s whole world is advertising. That’s why so many of us are so bad at it. We don’t think it’s our job to talk to people outside advertising. We think it’s their job to pay attention to us.

What gets action is what gets attention. What gets attention is what gets seen. So being visible, being impactful, is the most important part of any communication designed to change behaviour.

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Enemy spies reported back to Germany that the reason they were losing so many bombers was the deadly ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham. And for a long while the Luftwaffe bought that story. They lost a lot of bombers to radar before they discovered the truth. Because a simple lie is often more powerful than a complicated truth.

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, had a similar view. He didn’t believe in research. He said, ‘It’s not the public’s job to know what they’re going to want. It’s my job to know what they’re going to want.

Brand is another word for reputation or image. And you don’t get a reputation just by claiming something.

People who are good want to grow. They want to get off this rung and onto the next rung. They want to get all the way up the ladder. So they’re not looking for praise, they’re looking for criticism.

One of the best advertising people ever was Carl Ally. He said the true creative person wants to be a know-it-all. They want to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineteenth-century mathematics, modern manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and lean hog futures. Because they never know when these ideas might come together to form a new idea. It may happen six minutes later or six years down the road, but they know it will happen.

As the author Anaïs Nin said, ‘We see things not as they are, but as we are.