Sir John Hegarty: King Pin on the Croisette

Really, Sir John Hegarty needs no introduction, but for the sake of form and anyone just returning from a decades-long lunar exploration it would, I think, be safe to describe him as one of the godfathers of advertising. Certainly the godfather of British advertising, and he has been at the forefront of the industry since joining it.

After studying at the London College of Printing [now the London College of Communication] he started agency life at Benton and Bowles in 1965, from which he was fired [more of which later]. He was a founding shareholder in Saatchi & Saatchi London and co-founded TBWALondon as creative director. In 1982 he started Bartle Bogle Hegarty with John Bartle and Nigel Bogle and BBH has gone on to become one of the most successful agencies – by any measurement – in the world. Responsible for iconic campaigns for brands such as Levi’s, Audi and Lynx, BBH now has offices in London, New York, Singapore, São Paulo and Shanghai. The recipient of innumerable industry awards and honours, he was also knighted in 2007 for services to the advertising and creative industries. This year Hegarty will preside over the Film jury at the 60th Cannes Festival of Creativity.

What was your first reaction when Cannes approached you to be president of the Film jury?

“Oh no,” I said, “Under no circumstances whatsoever.” And then they said, “Well, John, it is our 60th…” And then I thought that was slightly different. I think it’s a difficult role. You’ve got to balance many people on the jury. [All those] egos, global egos too, so they come in different shapes and forms and speak different languages and demonstrate ego in different ways.

And you’ve got to try and ensure that the judgements they are making are… I’m sure they are the right ones but sometimes you have to guide a little bit and say, “Well, are you sure about that? Haven’t we seen that rather a lot? Has it been done differently? Are we adding anything to it?” Remember we are all going to be judged by the work we judge. So it’s about ensuring that happens. And obviously making sure that there’s no sort of block voting in any shape or form, but I think the judging system that they’ve introduced, and have had for quite a long time now at Cannes, ensures that that doesn’t happen.

But you’ve always got to be wary of that. There will be cultural differences and that’s fair enough. Obviously they should always vote for those things that they particularly like. But to vote on it because it’s from Asia, or because it’s from an Anglo Saxon or South American background would be wrong.

So you see your role as a guide, an overseer of a harmonious atmosphere?

Yeah, and bringing the experience of 40-odd years in advertising, I think one of the things I would say about our industry is that we must be one of the few creative industries that really doesn’t celebrate its past and past great work. If you are studying architecture you will know about Van Doren Shaw, you will know about Frank Lloyd Wright. If you are studying painting you will know about Rubens and Leonardo and all of the great artists. Music; you will know about past composers and what they did. Our industry doesn’t celebrate its past. I’m quite shocked sometimes to realise that people don’t know of the great work that has been done. Even gold Lions at Cannes, even the Grands Prix at Cannes. 

Is that because advertising is obsessed with the cult of the now?

Yes. I think it’s obsessed with now and the future, therefore anything that has been done is not relevant anymore, and therefore [the industry] won’t look back. And I’m not saying look back because we should be looking back, but look back to learn. Look back to realise that a great spot has been done like that before and actually done rather better; the quality of it and the quality of writing, the quality of editing, the quality of all those things if you are talking about film. We’ve got to learn from those things.

I was looking at something recently, I won’t mention any names, it was for a beer and it was being raved about and I had a look at it and I thought this is decidedly ordinary. The performance is ordinary, the idea is ordinary, even pedestrian. And I thought, haven’t these people seen Heineken, haven’t they seen Water in Majorca, haven’t they seen some of the great Guinness ads? I think we suffer because of that. We suffer because people don’t look back and they don’t learn and then take that learning into the future.

Do you think that advertising now is as creative as it should be?

Well the answer to that is simply no. And that’s not just my opinion, and I keep saying this so I’m not saying anything that I haven’t said before, the audience we’re speaking to says it. There is empirical evidence, there’s research to show that the quality of what we’re producing is not as good, our audience says, as it was. So what are you going to do about that, guys? And just at a time when it needs to be more competitive, more creative, more involving, more inspiring because there are many more things to tempt people away from watching the TV spot. So just at the moment when we should be even more creative we’re not.

Your comment on the Cannes Lions site says that you believe that television is still the most powerful medium open to advertisers; why is that?

Because it just is. Television is having a golden age. I’m not sure about America, but certainly here in the UK [and] probably in the rest of Europe television viewing is going up, it’s not going down. But we’ve suffered from this belief that says the digital world has changed everything, and that television isn’t relevant anymore, which is just absolute crap.

It’s probably one of the reasons why film isn’t as good as it could be because clients are suddenly going, “Well, maybe it’s not as important as it was and I should be doing it over here.” So they are not putting value into it, not paying attention to it. But television is the most powerful medium that was ever invented for advertising. More powerful than digital is or ever will be. It is the most incredible medium.

And I think one of the problems today is that we confuse persuasion with promotion. And television is a persuasion medium, and persuasion is wonderful. If it’s executed with integrity, with openness, transparency, truth, wit and charm, [it’s] fantastic. And persuasion is … virtually every conversation we have is about persuasion. I’m trying to convince you that my point of view about television is right. You’re going, “I’m not sure, John.” Two people sit in a pub after a football match, one will be trying to persuade the other that their team is the best.

We shouldn’t look down at persuasion. The term ‘the hidden persuaders’, implies that you’re doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. As long as it’s done with openness and wit and integrity then it’s fantastic. But we’ve confused those two things and I think mostly the digital world is about promotion and you can’t do one and not the other; in this world you’ve got to do both.

So I thought I’d say that about film because I kind of feel that – I’m having a go at Cannes really here – they’ve levelled everything out. Everything now gets a Grand Prix and you go, wait a minute, look how much money is spent in this medium. Someone gave me a figure globally, it’s billions and you’re relegating it to the same as a poster, a leaflet. What? I think it’s daft.

Do you think the past 12 months has been a strong one for Film?

I’m always very wary of commenting on that. I’m always wary of making a pronouncement before I’ve had a chance to look at the work. I think we’re always looking for highlights, we’re always looking for wonderful pieces of work that become a kind of a yardstick for quality and creativity, for insight, for all of those things. There is nothing that immediately comes to mind. So I’m holding back on that. I’m just waiting [to see it all].

Do you think that rather than killing it, the digital and technological revolution has allowed film to expand and to permeate more, despite people such as Trevor Beattie recently saying that five seconds is as much as anyone’s attention can be held nowadays?

Absolutely. And I think that it has made television more powerful. So the idea of executing a great story now, the idea of doing something that is really quite extraordinary, has ten times the value of what it had 20 or 30 years ago because suddenly it goes into social media, it goes into social networking, people start talking about it. Your audience expands enormously because people go, “I haven’t seen that,” they go onto YouTube, “Now I see it.” So you do a brilliant piece of storytelling, create a fabulous piece of film and suddenly you’ve expanded your media coverage tenfold, twentyfold, thirtyfold.

I completely disagree with the five second thing that Trevor is on about. I think he must have had a bad day because he usually says very sensible things. But he’s gone barking mad. [BBH] has got the experience to say that there is a different way of doing it.

With our Yeo Valley work we did the first spot in X-Factor and it was two minutes long and phenomenally successful. We did it with The Guardian with Three Little Pigs; phenomenally successful. We did it with St John’s Ambulance; phenomenally successful. But it’s got to be great. I think if you say I’m reducing it down to five seconds it’s like doing classified ads. I agree that the 30-second commercial is dead. I think it’s got less and less value. But the idea of creating a blockbuster and using television to create and start a debate is hugely powerful.

Do you think television advertising still has the power to impact on culture in the way it used to?

I certainly think it can. I think a mass broadcast medium can do that if creative people are being set the challenge. I think the problem today is that people are so obsessed with an integrated idea, they start from ‘this is an integrated idea’ rather than ‘this is a fantastic idea, now let’s see how we integrate it’. I think the emphasis is put in the wrong place, that’s why I’m very sceptical of the Titanium Lion. I think it’s very nice, very wonderful and all that but I don’t look at it… there’s more concern about its integration rather than asking if it is a fantastic piece of thinking. And you look back at any of the great work and it would have integrated brilliantly because they started with something fantastic.

You look at any piece of great art and it integrates fantastically, you can take it from one medium to another medium. Leonardo’s Mona Lisa has integrated brilliantly; it’s on mugs, on aprons. He never said, “I’m doing this because it’s an integrated idea.” He painted an amazing portrait and people wanted to take it and put it on all kinds of things. People have used it in a thousand different ways and I think the problem today is that we are more obsessed with the integration of the idea rather than the idea. 

BBH is renowned for its attention to craft; how integral to the success of a spot is that element?

I think you can’t separate it out. I constantly say advertising is 80 per cent idea, 80 per cent execution. The thing that bugs me slightly today is that we have creative teams coming in and you ask which is the art director, which is the copywriter and they go, “Well, we kind of do both.” And I sort of think, that’s very interesting, that’s nice, and then I say, “Well, there are two problems I have with that. The first one is if I don’t like the art direction, who do I kick? I can’t kick two people at once. I’ve tried, it’s very difficult.” And the second is I’ve Googled ‘Shakespeare’ and ‘painting’ and absolutely nothing has come up. I’ve Googled ‘Picasso’, ‘author’; nothing, nothing at all.

I think we suffer today because we have people who want to do everything. I’m not saying don’t play with things, but be a specialist in something. It’s wonderful that everybody can do everything but it doesn’t mean to say you should. People think craft doesn’t matter as much. It does. It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Is advertising as interesting and revolutionary now as when you first entered the industry?

There is no revolution [now] and I feel that’s quite sad in some ways. And when will the next revolution occur? I don’t know. I certainly don’t think it’s digital, I think that’s just a means to talk to people in a broader way, you’ve got more choice with digital. So not experiencing that revolution means that you just come into it and think, “This is great, this is what advertising is.”

Everyone now accepts that it’s creative and you do this and that, and you’ve got to win an award and if you don’t…  I mean, Martin Sorrell is worried about whether his is the most creative group in the world. Twenty five or 30 years ago, if he’d been around then, he wouldn’t have given a shit.

You mentioned in an interview once that you were fired for being a ‘pain in the arse’ and that it was important to be fired once in your career. Do you really believe that?

I do believe that actually, yeah.

So do you think that being a pain in the arse is underrated now?

I think it is. I think we’ve all become very reasonable. I think we’ve accepted that we are all creative and that’s it, everybody wants to do it and be a part of it. I think in a way we’ve lost a little bit of the passion and the desire to really break the mould and be different and try and stir things up.

Today we talk about collaboration and all these words that are wonderful in a certain sense but also they carry with them the seeds of consensus and a sort of smoothing everything out and making it all acceptable. A few more lunatics is what we need. I was described recently as a contrarian. I was actually very pleased about that, I rather liked it. Yes, good.

Apart from the judging, what are you looking forward to most about Cannes?

I do think one of the lovely things about Cannes [is that it’s] a celebration of creativity that we all support. But it’s also, because this has become a global industry, great seeing the people from other continents, other countries. I know many more people now from around the world which, 30 years ago, wouldn’t have been the case. But it’s lovely catching up with them, lovely talking to them about what they are doing and why they are doing it and sharing experiences.

Finally, you’ve said that you will never retire; do you mean from advertising specifically or working life in general?

When I say that I mean whatever I do, I will go on working. I won’t obviously be at BBH [in 2012 the Publicis Groupe bought the remaining 51 per cent stake in BBH after acquiring 49 per cent in 2002. Hegarty will remain in place as worldwide creative director until 2014] but I’ll be doing other things hopefully related to advertising and marketing products and brands. I think this is a fantastic industry, I’ve got a huge amount of experience, why would I not go on employing that?

Does it feel strange to know that you’ll be leaving the agency in the not too distant future?

Yes, it’s a very strange feeling. In some ways it’s a bit like your children; you have to let them go and you hope you’ve given them the right education and background and stuff like that. And they go off and do wonderful things and you’re engaged in what they do. Yeah, there’s a great degree of sadness to it and there’s a great degree of happiness. It’s both things. It’s been a part of one’s life. 

This interview is taken from issue 143 of shots magazine, the Cannes special. Copies can be picked up in the Palais or at the YDA screening on Thursday at 5pm.