On My Radar: Chris Barrett

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

Interesting question. The first thing I do when I get into the office is look at shots (honest), Campaign, Adage and David Reviews to see what’s new and interesting. Suffice to say, if you do this, you see a lot of new work. Some is good, some is ok, and a lot is terrible.

The one spot that really sticks in my mind is the Halo Ice cream spot, which isn’t that recent any more, but that’s only testament to its efficacy. In an environment where advertising films are often coalescing into various well-trodden tropes,  it’s just refreshingly bizarre. Obviously it’s a one-off spot and not a campaign, but it has a core idea that can be applied to an ongoing campaign. So, still gets the thumbs up from me.

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

It’s a bit sad but, as above, it’s shots, Campaign, Adage etc. I’d love there to be an industry gossip site, like Popbitch was, but for our industry. Can someone do that please?

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

I bought a projector recently, for my living room. I love the experience of cinema, and being able to do that in your own home is incredibly rewarding. As much as I love the collective experience of going to a cinema, I also really like sitting in my home and not having some guy with a man-bun obscuring my view and eating crisps loudly.  

What’s your favoured social media platform?

I read a great book a while back called The Shallows that Jaron Albertin had mentioned to me when we were shooting in Prague. It’s all about how bitesize consumption of social media inhibits useful and deep thought. As an experiment, I came off Facebook and ended up actually calling and seeing my friends more often. So, I never went back on it.  I use Instagram a bit, but I’m of more of an occasional grazer.

What’s your favourite app on your phone?

I use Shazam a lot. I love having a record of songs I hear and don’t know, or ones I forgot I cherished.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

Well, it’s an old one now but The Wire will always be my first true love. It changed the landscape of TV, how characters are crafted it also re-defined how people watched the medium. In a period of extreme individualism, and the tribal nature of music seemingly dissipated, TV still seems like something that unites us all in a small but meaningful way.

I’m not one to blind my eye to progress, technology and how fewer people are watching broadcast TV, but as long as there’s an instinctive human desire for people to be part of a collective experience, then we should remain supremely confident in making TV commercials. For a little while at least.

What film do you think everyone should have seen and why?

Ok, hard one. I like watching directors' early films and would encourage people to do the same. The ones that directors did before they made their breakthrough film. Like Hard Eight by Paul Thomas Anderson. Or watching Quentin Tarantino’s Sundance workshop for Reservoir Dogs [below]. It’s a good reminder that directors don’t always come to the table with their best work, but you see the spores of genius in between the cracks. And that’s what agencies should look for in reels, and that’s what production companies should always be looking for in signing and building new talent.  

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

Usually it’s on holiday o, recently, after a stint in hospital. Work-life and home-life are too hectic for me to get genuine inspiration.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

My hair line. I had a FULL head of hair and now it’s largely gone. Apart from that I’d say lack of trust – and this is something that has spread into all areas of the industry.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

Fewer award ceremonies please. It’s getting a bit ridiculous isn’t it? Having said that, Olly Calverley from VCCP and I have often thought it would be interesting to do an awards show for bad advertising. A sort of Razzies for our industry. As much as we should celebrate the good, it would also be a fun counterpoint to laugh at and shame the bad. Can someone do that please?

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

It was probably two creatives at Saatchi called Julian Dyer and Keith Terry. It was back in 2001 and I was working in PR at the time. It was a job I got straight out of University. It was a fun job, but I was split over two different teams which was quite weird. For half the week I’d be working on b2b insurance accounts, and the other half was doing crazy guerilla marketing for more consumer brands.

One of the accounts we had was Jammie Dodgers. Someone had the crazy idea to get someone to run for the General Election as a Jammie Dodgers character from their advertising campaign at the time. The character they chose was a half man/half crab with ginger hair called Ginger Crab.

There was no money to get an actor.  

I was ginger.

It was told to do it.

We worked alongside Saatchi & Saatchi to put a party political broadcast together and Julian and Keith were the creative team. I’d always been interested in production and had made short films at university. Working with them doing this film was infectious. Whilst we were making it, the PR firm I worked with was calling and ordering me to come back to the office to carry on with my job. I just ignored their calls and finished up the film with the guys. I knew I didn’t want to be in PR any more.  

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know.

Having changed my legal name by deed poll to Ginger Crab, I got 100 votes in the 2001 general election, running as a giant ginger crustacean against Michael Portillo in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea [above]. David Droga, a resident of Kensington & Chelsea at the time, signed my council form to endorse me as a candidate.