John Hegarty

Sir John Hegarty, 65, is chairman and executive creative director of Bartle Bogle Hegarty. During his 45 years in advertising he has created iconic campaigns for Levi's, Audi and Johnnie Walker, as well as helping to launch The Independent newspaper in Britain. He was knighted in 2007. Hegarty lives in Clerkenwell, east London, and at his vineyard in France. He talks to Diana Goodman

I prefer to be called John. Nobody calls me 'Sir John' - only my kids when they're taking the piss: "Is Sir John here today…?"

When you're nominated for an honour, you're sent a letter asking if you'll accept it 'if the Queen accedes'. I felt that I was accepting it on behalf of the creative people within advertising and to have turned it down would have been arrogant, really.

I was born at a lucky time, in 1944, and education was given to us. I wanted to go to art school and I was able to do so, even though at that time art education was something that was done because we thought we ought to have it, rather than believing it had economic value. But remarkably, the creative industries are now the second largest industry in the UK. All of a sudden we've woken up to the fact that creativity is our future.

I was sorry that my mother wasn't alive to see it. She was an absolutely brilliant woman but she died, sadly, very young - at 47. But my Aunt Isa, who's still alive and lives in Australia, did say how proud my mother would have been. Not that I'm religious, but somebody said: "Well, she's up there looking down, John."

Obviously, being Irish, I was brought up a Catholic but at about the age of 15, I worked out, nah, this is bullshit.

I didn't get on with my father; he was a troubled man in a way. He had some interesting sayings, such as: "There's no point in being Irish if you can't get lucky," but he was disappointed in his life and he had his own demons to deal with. I felt very sorry for him.

I've been fortunate in the sense that I can't drink huge amounts; I get terrible headaches. So very early on in my life I was taught to drink less, but drink better. That's why I love wine, because it's something you enjoy with food, it has a culture around it, you can debate the grape and the year, and you're opening a time machine. When I'm opening a bottle of our first vintage, 2003, I'm opening what happened that year. It was a very cool spring, a hot summer…
I can't think of anything else that allows you to go back in time and record it.

We looked around in the UK for a house in the countryside and I just got very depressed by it. I wondered, why am I going to buy a house and drive there every other week and read a book I could have read in London? But then I thought: if I could do something in the countryside, if I could contribute in some way, wouldn't that be wonderful. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, the whole thing about vineyards came up and I said: a vineyard, that's what we should do.

If you work in advertising, it's ephemeral: what I create is here for the moment, then it's gone. With wine, it's almost the other way round. You have to wait for years for it to be ready and you can't hurry nature. I like that. Also, it's quite nice to have your own product, your own brand, after years of working for clients.

People assume I've spent millions [on the vineyard] but I haven't. I've never had a house in the country, I don't have a yacht, I don't indulge in expensive pastimes, so this is my madness, my indulgence.

When I first got a job in advertising, I was a typical creative person. I'd do some work, and the account men would take it away and they'd come back and say: "Sadly the client didn't buy it." And I'd lose my temper: "Fucking client," all that. But suddenly I understood why I was pissed off. I thought I'd been given 500 ideas and I was down to 499… 498. Then I realised, if they didn't like it, fine; I'll do another one. And the more you do it the better you become.

I always describe myself as "cursed" as an optimist. Cursed, because you have to balance things out but I just see the upside and say, "Why not? Let's do it." That's why I've got good partners. They go: "John, I'm not sure it's such a great idea."

What is the worst campaign I've ever seen? I always quote that line of Edna O'Brien's who, when asked what she read, said: "I only read good things, in the hope that it might rub off." Rubbish goes in one ear and out the other. I'd much rather talk about great work.

In the 1970s, Collett Dickenson Pearce was this brilliant agency that produced some of the most stunning work and they did it on big brands: Hovis [including Bike Ride, directed by Ridley Scott], Benson & Hedges, Whitbread beer, Heineken ["Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach"]. My other aunty, who lives in Harpenden, would see them and say, "John, did you do one of those?" "Sadly, no, I didn't."

At that time, creativity was like a necessary evil. The account people would say, "Oh, the bloody creative department. I suppose we'd better get them to do it." And it was only when agencies like CDP came along that suddenly everyone sat up and took notice: "Oh my god, this creativity works! And it's more memorable and the public like it, it's more effective for the brand… maybe we'd better get some."

I think that kind of work changed the way the British viewed advertising and benefited us all enormously in terms of our business and the industry. We don't talk enough about that: how creativity is a way of embracing people, of expanding your message, of getting more people to understand what it is you're about. Even though they're not buying your product, they can appreciate it.

I can remember when people would sit down and watch television commercials even though they were rubbish, just because they couldn't be bothered to get up out of their seat and switch them off. Nowadays, you've got to say something that people are really going to latch on to, because it's so easy to turn it all off.

Without doubt, our industry is going through a time of great upheaval, but I still believe this is the best time ever to be in advertising. What's happened is that technology has impacted our industry - and a huge number of other industries - in a way that people never could have imagined. I mean the iPhone is science fiction! But technology is allowing us to talk to people in lots more ways. We've opened up 50 channels of communication.

The roads to market are also much broader, much wider than they've ever been.
When I came in, it was a television commercial, a print ad, a poster and maybe a radio commercial. And that was it. Today, you sit down and say, well, how are we going to market this product? Where are we going to start? What do we do? For me, that's incredibly exciting.

A lot of creative people are a little afraid of technology, but I believe we should embrace it. You've got to relax and utilise it. Just find out about it and it won't be a problem.

Remember that the electric guitar revolutionised modern music. Without it, rock 'n' roll would still be called folk music and we'd be in open-toed sandals, singing funny little songs. We'd never have had Elvis Presley or The Beatles or Bob Dylan. Technology empowers us; you just have to relax.

Of course there's a fear that this change is going to make loads of people redundant, but technology has expanded our horizons. Today, I could write an idea, go and film it, put it on YouTube and see if people pick it up. It's incredible. When I came into the industry you couldn't even make a television commercial if you didn't have a union card.

One danger of technology is the idea that you can have a one-to-one conversation.
I always quote this great line: a brand is made not just by the people who buy it, but by the people who know about it. So in other words, it's like religion. Getting up on that rock and preaching is partly what a brand has to do. If a stranger knocks on your door, you don't open it and say, yes, come in and have a conversation with me. You say, excuse me, I don't know you, and shut the bloody door. Well, that's what a brand is in a way. It's knocking on your door saying can I come in and have a chat with you? If you know it, you will.

This has always been a very stressful industry, but I actually don't believe in burnout.
I think it's one of those myths. There are moments in your life when you feel a bit, oh, I'm not very inspired today, and that's understandable. But burnout is bullshit. When a creative person says oh, they've burnt out, it's because they've stopped being interesting. I do know people who've become like that and I say they've just become fucking boring.

Having said that, I think that essentially you have about 10 years as a creative person when you do your best work, when you're making it happen. And the trick is, how do you turn that 10 years into 20? It's fine if you're Mick Jagger; you can go around the world singing Jumping Jack Flash and 100,000 people will turn up and applaud you. But they wrote that in 1968. In our industry, you have to come in every day and have a new idea. That is hard; it's a pressure.

I believe the answer is to constantly stay alive to what's going on around you.
Don't become a cynic because if you do, it's all over; that's what your work will reflect and you will destroy your creative edge. Also, just remember that inspiration is everywhere, it's all around you, it's happening all the time. And stay constantly interested. 'Why' is the most important word a creative person uses.

If you have an enthusiasm, an engagement with the world about design, or painting, or politics, it makes you a better creative person. I go around an art gallery and I get 20 ideas for what I'd like to do as a painting, and it goes into my brain and before I'm aware of it, it's re-emerged as an idea.

I was on holiday in New Zealand recently and I was at the Christchurch Art Gallery when I saw someone who looked just like Dan Wieden. "It can't be," I thought, so I wandered around looking at some more paintings, but then I realised it was him and went over to say hello. So there we were: both on holiday in New Zealand and both looking at pictures in the Christchurch Art Gallery.

Lots of my work has come out of things I've seen - not from staring at YouTube videos, but from walking down the street, seeing a man walking with his dog. And you'll do a little scene where you go: I'll put in the man who was walking like that because it was very funny.

One example was a commercial for Club Med which had a man walking through New York. He's come back from the club and he's completely re-energised. But people look at him a bit suspiciously: is he mad, or is it us? They didn't have an ending for it, but I remembered when I was a kid playing on Hampstead Heath and my little boat got becalmed in the middle of Whitestone Pond. A man suddenly stopped, pulled his trousers up, walked in, got my boat and gave it back to me. So I said: "He's in Central Park, a little kid's lost a boat and he just walks in and gets it. And the kid says: 'You're not mad.'" That came straight from being logged in my brain.

My family gives me huge pleasure. I get enormous satisfaction from my two kids [Elliot, 38, and Laila, 35], and I have a great relationship with them. I now have four grandchildren and I've announced that, to them, I'm going to be Yes. I say: "I spent most of my life having to tell you children, 'No, don't do this, no, don't do that', but now I'm yes." I love it. I walk in. Yes!

I love architecture but I've never built a house from scratch.I always think that architecture is sculpture, and that whole idea of creating an environment to live in - and leaving a mark - must be absolutely fantastic.

I suppose if there's one disappointment I've got, it's the number of times I've presented what I think are fabulous ideas to clients and they've said: "This is really good, John, but what it doesn't do is this…" As opposed to: "This is really good, now how can we make it better?" So then you spend your time trying to explain that an idea can't do everything, instead of working out how to get from good to great.

The very first public talk I ever gave was at the Campaign awards in about 1978.
The theme of the conference was Advertising: an Emerging Industry, and my speech was about the fact that our industry will never be understood, even though it plays a vital part in free enterprise. I said, the only way we'll be accepted is to create work that people like and in that way, protect the business. I think that still holds true today.

I've always said that about 90 per cent of advertising is rubbish, but that's true of any art form.

The difference with advertising is that our work is imposed upon people: it's on the television, or it comes up on your blog, or it's on your page. It's an uninvited guest and therefore it should be on its best behaviour so that people say, "Well, they're fun, I'll invite them again," as opposed to, "They were bloody aggravating and annoying and they interfered all the time." We have to do work that not only does wonderful things for the brand, but engages with a broad audience in making what we do acceptable.

Andreas Whittam Smith, who started The Independent, was, without question, one of the most intelligent people I've ever presented work to. He'd say, "Look, I'm a journalist, this isn't my metier, so how should I be judging this?" You could see him working it out: "I drove in today and how many posters did I see? It must have been 40 or 50. So why didn't I notice them?" He had the ability to know when he didn't know, and I think that's a great definition of intelligence.

People say to me, who do you most admire? But I've spent my career admiring and being in awe of ideas. That's the thing that really drives me forward. People are flawed, but ideas are just so powerful. They can change the nature of things, the course of history. And you can have them at any time, on any day, at any moment; you don't need any special equipment, nobody has to give you permission. I love that.