Rule Number One: "Don't Be a Shit" Advises Jeremy Craigen

Jeremy> Well, as a child, I used to recite ads. Not always the good ones, but I just loved advertising. It’s a brilliant thing, and it wasn’t like the dirty word it is now. I remember my uncle John asking my opinion on stuff from an early age. ‘What about this scene? What about that scene?’. It opened my eyes to the industry, what made work good or bad, and I just found it all so exciting.

Jeremy> Listening. Listening to your creatives, account people and planners. And yes, even clients! You should never be afraid to change your mind (this comes back to listening). Sometimes you get it wrong the first time and you have to let your creative team ‘appeal’. But I think the most important thing is to create an environment where people really want to come into work, have fun and produce great content. It really is that simple.

Jeremy> I absolutely love working in the international world and trying to understand the cultures. So much work now is just about how we can win awards and tick boxes. It’s why I especially love Thai work - because it’s mad. I find that at least the culture speaks. This is also what I love about judging Adfest and Madstars in Korea.

The first thing I did when I was a jury president was to really gain knowledge of different cultures, like the changes from India to Thailand to Japan, and I just fell so in love with being in these different places. When I first started, I tried to find the right local people who understood how to do it - not to tell somebody from Korea how to speak to a Korean person, or someone from India how to speak to an Indian person. I would just go, ‘I like it’ or ‘I don’t get it’. There was stuff I saw that I just didn't understand the inside of, like having a period in India a few years ago was a taboo subject. Well great, but you have to advise me on that. 

There's nothing worse than being a control freak in a global role. If you've put people in place, you've got to let them get on with it. Sometimes I would love to have made a couple of changes because I didn't feel that they were getting it right on a cultural level, but it's just a case of - hire the right people, and trust their judgement. Especially when it comes to cultural things.

Jeremy> Don’t be a shit. It’s a people business, so respect the people around you. We’ve all made mistakes, and I know the new generations might see it differently now, but I think these values are really important. I started in a really bad agency, there were some really nice people there but all I wanted to do was leave. As a young creative, I’ve seen people being really rude. Just remember, you’re seeing or hearing maybe 100 ideas a day, and you’re gonna get it wrong sometimes - you just need that space. I used to get to work really early just to clear my desk and look at the stuff that I missed - and when you’re judging work abroad on a phone, you miss stuff. So it’s really important to reflect and take a second chance, because maybe you’re wrong.

 

Jeremy> I think the thing I’m proudest of is a segment I did with ‘Top Gear’. I remember watching, many years ago, an episode with the show’s hosts being judged by different artists, which sparked an idea. I thought, well, why don't we try and get them to write a Volkswagen ad? I talked to the account people at the time about it, but it never happened. About three years later, a new business director came to Volkswagen and I brought it up again to him. He contacted the producer of ‘Top Gear’, who said it was quite apt at the time because they'd done a recent segment on Mercedes which was echoing our ‘Night Drive’ ad. We said, ‘Well, you've ripped off our ad, so why don't you try and write one for yourselves?’, and apparently Jeremy Clarkson immediately went ‘Yes!’.

We asked if they could do a Sirocco ad, because we had no budget for it at the agency. They said they were going to focus on the Scirocco Diesel, because they hated diesel at the time and they wanted to give it an edge. It was a very funny programme. Completely politically incorrect, but a lot of fun. I mean, absolutely childish. Clarkson was drawing pictures of penises on things, and when they went out for a cigarette during the break, it actually stopped traffic. It was hard though, because we were strictly told ‘Don’t laugh!’, so when we were filming our interview with Jeremy and James, I was sweating profusely trying not to.

The thing is, 90 million people watched ‘Top Gear’ at the time, and then obviously through Dave and channels like that, it’s repeated and repeated and repeated - and I can't tell you over the years how many people still recognise it. Maybe not so much now, but it reached so many people. And to think this was before branded entertainment was invented. I was proud that we managed to get 20 minutes on ‘Top Gear’ with no funding whatsoever, and the client wasn't even involved. 

The German clients came to us afterwards and said: ‘You guys are crazy! Why did you do that?’ and you go, ‘Well, you got 90 million views for free’. It kind of beats winning awards, even though it did win a few things, like at the London International. But I just know - it was good. 

Jeremy> Well, I’m a luddite. One of my clichés that I always say is about collaboration - about having a skillset and understanding so specialists can collaborate. So being with a tech company at the moment, I think I just want to trust these guys as to what they’re doing and then bring in my own skillset to complement it. I’m never going to be technical. I’d be a fool, and nobody would have believed me. It’s definitely a change of direction, and a lot of my friends went ‘What!?’. It’s just about bringing your own skills to something that people already know.

My role in this company is really managing relationships between retailers and advertisers. What I loved about being a global chief creative officer is that you put the right people in the right place, and then talk to clients to make sure they’re happy. That’s all I’m going to do with this new company. It’s just mapping the process well so that you don’t have these awkward conversations. 

What I’m proud of, looking back, are campaigns like the ones for VW - you could talk to people at a dinner party and say what you do, and they’d have an opinion on the ads that they liked, didn’t like - whatever. But now, it’s like nobody knows, because they’ve been run online, once probably. They’re legitimate enough to win awards, but with no real substance.

Even now, you see silent creatives in the office with their headphones on. I mean, I would work with my partners with our feet on the desk and a pad in my hand. I am 100% sure that many young creatives will now get a brief and just Google the key words. They won’t start with ‘what do I think or feel?’. That’s why a lot of work is so similar now, because there’s just nothing insightful. And then you have all these conversations about AI taking over, but you’re kind of doing it already, because people aren’t simply sitting there and just thinking about it. I don’t think I can count on one hand how many good ads I’ve seen this year. Younger creatives are not talking to the consumer, and you can see it. It’s crazy, because you can still do great work for a consumer - it’s happened for the last 50 years!