The Way I See It: Dave Trott

Dave Trott, 63, one of Britain’s best-known creatives, is responsible for campaigns such as Courage Best Bitter’s Gertcha, Pepsi’s Lipsmackin’thirstquenchin’…, ‘Ello Tosh, Gotta Toshiba? and the Anti Third World Debt shocker Toilet. He’s married to art director Cathy Heng, and their children, Lee and Jade, also work in advertising.

How would I describe myself? I like to think I’m like William Munny in Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. But my son, Lee, says I’m more like Sid James in the Carry On films.

When I look in the mirror, I see my dad in a wig.

I grew up in Barking in East London – the biggest council estate in Europe, according to The Guinness Book of Records.

My biggest influence was my elder sister, Shirley. She’s the tough guy in our family. Also, my dad and all my uncles were sergeants – in the police, the army and the marines. It was a very large, rock-solid family. Very loving and very strict.

My first memory is of the entire extended family (all from Mile End) going hop-picking in Kent. It was the only way poor people could afford a holiday. I loved it to bits, with my grandma, all my uncles and aunts, and cousins.

I failed the 11-Plus (school entrance exam), so I went to the worst school in our part of East London. The older kids all had moustaches and flick knives.

My main problem at school was with the teachers. I had the class record for being caned the most. Not for being violent – just for talking, playing about, telling jokes, doing whatever I wasn’t supposed to be doing.

I was very bored, which came across as being a bit thick. The best job anyone from my school could get was an apprenticeship. At 16, I started work as an apprentice electrician on the cranes at the docks in Wapping. Then I worked as a toolmaker in a factory in Barking. I decided I didn’t want to do that for life, so I asked my dad if I could go back to school to do A-levels. That was followed by a foundation art course at East Ham Tech.

Then I got turned down by seven UK art schools. Meanwhile, my big sister, Shirley, had gone to live and work in New York. She said, “Screw them, they’re stupid. Come to art school in New York instead.” And she got me a scholarship. Everything that happened since is down to Shirley. Without her I wouldn’t have gone to art school, or New York, or discovered advertising. The funny thing is, when I came back to the UK, the art schools that had turned me down paid me to go and lecture.

At first, I was really disappointed in New York. In 1967, I was a mod and London was the fashion capital of the world. There was no style anywhere in New York; it seemed stuck in the 40s. Everyone dressed like slobs, and they thought I was gay because I cared about what I wore and used hairspray. It took me about six months to adjust.

One day, on the subway, I saw a series of posters that said: ‘You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye’. One had a cute little black kid eating a sandwich. Next to it was the same poster with a Chinaman eating a sandwich. Then a Native American eating a sandwich. Then an Irish cop eating a sandwich. I’d never seen advertising that celebrated racial diversity before; most advertising portrayed the ideal as white and blonde and perfect. I thought, ‘Ye-es!’ I knew then that I wanted to be part of that; it felt like bringing everything that had previously been hidden out of the closet.

My college was in Brooklyn. We would learn all the visual crafts there, but every week they would send us to Madison Avenue to learn advertising from the pros. It was like someone switching a light on for me.

The first TV commercial I did was for Unigate, Benny Hill singing Ernie the Milkman. The second was for Pepsi. I tried to get the entire brief into the strapline: ‘Lipsmackin’thirstquenchin’acetastin’motivatin’goodbuzzin’cooltalkin’highwalkin’fastlivin’ evergivin’coolfizzin’ – Pepsi!’

I think growing up in East London and New York, I learned to be streetsmart. That is really, really useful. If you’re middle class and English, you’re brought up to believe it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, it’s how you play the game. In the East End or working class New York you’re taught to think, ‘I’m gonna win this and it doesn’t matter how’. And that’s creative thinking.

One example of me thinking creatively was when I wanted to get a job in London, one of the guys in New York had loads of ideas that he hadn’t used and I drew them up and put them in my portfolio. I got the job and six months later John Webster doubled my salary. I told him then that half the ideas in my portfolio were not mine. He went bonkers, but I said, “Hang on, you just doubled my salary after six months. So obviously I didn’t do anything I couldn’t back up.”

The campaign I am most proud of is Anti Third World Debt, because it was created from nothing. There was no client, no budget, no media, no agency. We made dozens of commercials, press ads and posters to publicise five million children dying each year in order to make profits for the banks. We got production companies to shoot them for free, and cinemas and newspapers to run them for free. Now, at least, Third World debt is a topic that people have heard about. It’s on the agenda, it gets discussed. If you want to do something, you shouldn’t wait for permission.

My worst experiences in advertising? Two stand out. After ten years at BMP, John Webster decided to make someone else creative director. Then, after ten years at GGT, Mike Greenlees decided to make someone else creative director. Each time, I didn’t want to work for that person so I left. The best experiences were the ten years before that happened.

When I started in advertising we were making up the rules, and what I find difficult now is people coming in and quoting the rules back to me. Kids straight out of university believing in planning as though it’s come down from the mountain on two tablets of stone. I feel like saying, “Hang on, we just made that up one day.”

My generation (baby boomers) were rebellious, so advertising was fun. Nowadays it’s a bit more conveyor belt and it seems to be all about how much money you make.

I decided to write a blog for Chick Smith Trott because we needed to get the profile of the agency up, and we needed people to visit the website. Our MD said to me, “You’re the most famous asset we’ve got; if you wrote a blog it could attract people to the website.” So that’s what I started to do. Some regard blogging as a form of vanity, but so is wanting people to see your name next to your ads in D&AD, or wanting credit for telling a funny joke, or buying a round in a pub, or being a good dad or anything else. What’s the difference between vanity, recognition or validation? Personally, I can’t stand people who comment on blogs by signing themselves ‘anonymous’. If it’s worth writing, put your name to it. If it’s not good enough to put your name to, don’t do it.

There’s nothing wrong with money, but it’s the means to the end. You make money to buy stuff; you buy stuff because it makes you happy. So the actual goal is to be happy. If you can find a way to be happy without so much stuff, you don’t need so much money.

Is there a stigma attached to working in advertising? Compared to working for Oxfam, or Save the Children or Amnesty International, yes there is. But compared to any other job on the planet, no. Unless you’re a Guardian reader, like most planners.

The most expensive thing I’ve ever bought is the house we live in. I always wanted a big, detached house so I could play the stereo without the neighbours banging on the wall. My wife didn’t care about that, but she always wanted to live in Hampstead. So we compromised and bought a big, detached house in Hampstead.

I don’t have an art collection; I’ve got a friend called Chris, who can copy anything I want. So that’s what Cathy and I do. We see something we really like, measure the space we want it to go in, then we get Chris to do a copy to that size. It’s a Chris collection.

Advertising is changing, but whatever the changes are, I have to find a way to use them in a better, smarter, more effective way than anyone else. That’s what clients pay me for. Isn’t that what we should all be worrying about?

I think the reason there are so few female creatives is that the creative department tends to be like the school playground. Boys muck about, then just before the deadline they cram and do the exam. Whereas girls work steadily, day-by-day. But you can’t gradually, conscientiously, work your way towards a great idea. It’s more of an explosive process. Girls aren’t as comfortable with that as boys, which is why they make better account handlers, CEOs, producers, planners – anywhere that you can’t afford for it to go wrong. As Maggie Thatcher said: “If you want something said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

Having said that, women like Mary Wear or Anna Micheli are some of the best creatives who ever worked for me, just because they think differently to men, which gives them an edge.

I always try to react to advertising like a consumer – that way I’m more useful. Look at it this way. Everyone in the country sees about 1,000 ads a day (TV, posters, radio, online). Name any ads that you remember from yesterday. You can’t? Not even one? That’s the scale of the problem, that’s our job. While we were behaving like a consumer, 1,000 ads went by and we can’t remember any of them.

I watch way too much TV. Anything on the Discovery channels: history, military, machinery, industrial revolution, Fred Dibnah (there should be a channel called Bloke). My wife watches all the cookery shows: Nigella, Rick Stein, Carluccio, Barefoot Contessa. Whoever doesn’t get to the remote in time has to watch the TV in the kitchen.

I don’t think I despise anyone. There are some people I’m not comfortable around, but then lots of people aren’t comfortable around me, either.

How would my enemies describe me? In a newspaper article about me, one of them said, “I wouldn’t give him the steam off my piss.” I think I’m like Marmite. You love me or hate me.

When I was young, at BMP, I used to get very upset about juries giving out awards for the wrong things. Martin Boase once said to me, “Calm down Trotty, awards aren’t the real world. They’re just the little bit of froth on top of the pint of beer. They’re not the actual pint of beer.” [But] Cannes’ influence is harmful, because the juries are international. With D&AD becoming international also, commercials that depend on language fall out of fashion because regional speech, jokes and differences don’t translate. So international awards tend to make everything visual, and everything similar. I don’t want everything to be standardised. I like the differences.

The best advertisement I’ve ever seen? For students of advertising, Charlie Saatchi’s ‘What happens when a fly lands on your food?’ (the Health Education Council poster from 1970) isn’t a bad place to start.

I can’t think of any products I would never work on. If it’s legal it should be okay to advertise it. And if it’s not okay to advertise it, it probably shouldn’t be legal. In which case you should work on advertising to get it banned.

Advertising is not a stressful industry. That’s bollocks. Try working your whole life in a factory, doing the same job day in, day out, all the daylight hours. Or try being unemployed with no hope of any job, ever. That’s what real stress is. We get to work in light, airy, modern offices and – as long as we deliver the goods – we can come and go, where and when we want. We work with intelligent, attractive people. We get paid to have fun. We spend all day either writing, or drawing, or recording music, or recording famous people, or making films, or taking photographs. This is the least stressful, most rewarding, highly paid job there is.

I don’t do much to stay healthy. I’m a vegetarian, not for health reasons but because I hate killing animals, so that’s accidentally healthy.

I get bored with routine. So when I was young, I’d use drink or drugs to escape the routine. But eventually the drink or drugs become a habit; they become the routine. So I got bored and quit.

I’m not a very emotional person. Generally, problems come from emotion, and good things come from reason.

At its best, being British is about being genuinely civilised. Being polite to, and looking after, people you don’t actually want anything from. The people below you in the pecking order: the cleaning lady, the doorman, old people. It’s about the strong looking after the weak. At its worst, it is crippling inhibition, brought about by worrying what other people will think.

I think I’ve voted differently in every election. Last time I went in the voting booth, I put down a cross and yelled, “House!” Politically, I agree with Bob Hope. He said, “You can tell when a politician’s lying: you can see his lips move.”

My greatest weaknesses are laziness and boredom, which feed off one another.

My greatest strength is… I’m really good at making complicated things simple. I used to be embarrassed about this, because I thought it meant I was thick. Recently people have been telling me it’s a strength and I now think it’s true.

What makes me really angry is… smugness.

How well I take criticism depends on the criticism. Constructive criticism is great; it’s always the step towards making something much better. Destructive criticism is negative and a waste of everyone’s time. Don’t just tell me what’s wrong, tell me how to make it better. But if you can’t, then STFU.

The person I am closest to is Cathy Heng, of course. We’ve been married for more than 30 years. It would be dopey to spend that time with someone you’re not closest to. I met Cathy after I got divorced. She’s Chinese and her dad had two wives. After I met him the first time, she asked me what I thought. I said, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of a bloke having two wives.” She said, “That’s strange, because he’s not sure he’s comfortable with his daughter marrying a man who just gets rid of his wives when he’s finished with them.”

I’ve always thought that building another human being from scratch was the most important piece of creative endeavour you could ever be involved in. Not the biological part of being a parent – I don’t think that’s important. But the shaping and creating of an entire human being, from birth to an adult.

I’ve never had therapy. I like the idea of learning how to fix yourself. Something that used to be called EST (now called Forum) worked brilliantly for me. EST is thinking the unthinkable. Getting upstream and questioning the question. Like great advertising it has blinding clarity, focus, disruption and contextual repositioning.

I am afraid of dying, but what’s the choice? I always envied the Aborigines in Australia, the Jains in India, the Buddhists in Tibet and the Native Americans. They have what are called ‘sky burials’. They leave your body in the open for the animals and birds to eat. I really like that idea: getting recycled as fast as possible. Eaten, pooped out, spread around. You get back in circulation very quickly.

I am an agnostic. Belief is what you have when you don’t have knowledge. Believers are committed to claiming that there is a God. Atheists are just as committed to claiming that there isn’t. Both of those positions seem closeminded to me. The truth is, we don’t know.

At Christmas, I usually watch It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart. It’s an awful movie: dull, moronic, badly made in every way. I can’t even watch it the whole way through, it’s so boring. But during the last half hour, when he gets a chance to live his life over again, I always get a lump in my throat and my eyes get moist.

Compared to people who have had really bad things happen to them, I’ve been a very lucky boy. The worst thing that happened to me wouldn’t scratch the surface of their lives.

What gives me real pleasure… is being with my family, all together. An ice-cold beer on a hot sunny day. Having a great idea (not just about advertising). Going to the Tate Modern with Cathy on Friday evenings.

What, in the end, really matters? There’s a Zen Buddhist quote I love: ‘The answer asks the question’.

Dave Trott
Co founder and creative director of Chick Smith Trott (CST)
KEY WORK
Anti Third World Debt Toilet
CGT 1980-90
Toshiba 'Ello Tosh, got a Toshiba?
Ariston Ariston and on and on and on
BMP 1970-80
Courage Best Bitter Gertcha
Pepsi Lipsmackin'thirstquenchin'...