postens wor y Youve got to have a life David Abbott, one of the pre-eminent advertising creatives of our times, co- founder of Abbott Nead Vickers and of ten dubbed “the master of gentle per svasion™ or “the master of long copy,” {uit advertising in 1998 and is now wii ing a novel. Jacqueline Lai spoke to hin in his quiet office near Sloane Square in london. LA: Mr, Abbott, I hear you are com- puteriterate now. David Abbott: Yes, | had to learn it when Heft the agency and no longer had 2 secretary. But now I love it and find it quite difficult to write longhand. It's ‘much easier to revise as you go along. 0 get caught up in constant polishing, which of course makes me slow but its enormously enjoyable. LA: You are presently working on a novel. Do you find the process of writing fiction different from copywriting? David Abbott: Yes i's very different for ‘me, | fine-tune much more carefully. edit it much more thoroughly now than used to when I wrote copy. LAs Is that because you have more time? David Abbott: Yes, because | have no deadlines. It has a lot to do with time. You scroll through the text and come across pages you might have written three or four months ago, and the temp: tation to fiddle with them is immense. r you see something you haven't seen before, like the repetition of a word within four, five lines. You sit there, ty ing to think of the altemative, and rewrite bits here and there. | never used to write copy on the computer. If | had done it that way, | don't know ift would have made me a better writer or a worse writer - but it certainly would have made me a slower writer. In a way, how: ever, | think its stil the same thing. You ty to communicate clearly and as quickly as possible, And cut out flab. Use exactly the right word. Copywriting is a bit like poetry in a sense that the fight word can make a real difference. nd the wrong word can kill a piece of LA: Do you think that, as a novelist, you can express yourself more than you used to be able to as a copywriter? David Abbott: You obviously have more licence to do that. But, even as a copy: writer, | used to cannibalise my life quite 2 lot. | tended to be quite a personal copyuriter. | used my own feelings, my ‘own experiences, probably more so than Dovid Abbot ot workin London. some other copywriters did. Hopefully not to the extent that it got in the way lof what | was trying to sell. But! used to believe, and siill believe, that if you put Something of yourself into a piece of communication, you are more likely to make the comection than if you don't It's just the way | communicate, | always. used my own feelings and life in copy as far as | was able. You know the Father's. Day ad for Chivas Regal? | suppose it's the most obvious example of that. But | have always been a confessional writer, which of course some people don't like. They call it sentimental or whatever, you know that’s the danger. it's about keep- ing a balance, which | think you can do by using simple language and by trying to avoid the excesses of emotion LA: Have you ever had personal re- sponses from readers? David Abbott: Oh, yes. Not just me, good advertising does get a recognition from people: “Oh yes. ! do that.” Or “I recog- nize that.” i's because they see them: selves in the situation. It's a slightly ex- aggerated situation but they still recognize basic truths in it. So | mean | had lots of people on the Father’s Day {ad respond very personally because the ad reminded them of the relationship they had with their own father. Or sim- ple things like the BT commercial, where there is a man in the hall and the phone fings. It's his daughter calling from uni versity. And he just picks up the phone and he says, “Oh, hi, I'll get your mother." That notion of a man who never wants to talk and. always hands the phone to whomever there is. We had 2 lot of response to that. All great cre- ae Photo: Jacqueline Lo} ative advertising has some sort of in- sight about human behaviour, human reaction, telationships. t's why Bern: bach started by talking about “we,” making the company “we” rather than “Ford.” You say, “We do this” or what: ever, It's more personal, Of course you ‘can go too far. It can become insincere if You are not careful. It has to be true. LAs Do you think a creative has to be a ‘good person before he or she becomes 2 great creative? David Abbott (laughs): No, | don't think you have to be a good person to be a g00d communicator. Goebbels was a fantastic communicator, Hitler wasn't bad. At AMV, we used fo make a point of only hiring people we thought were nice people. Not necessarily because we thought they might be better communi ators but because we didn’t want to spend tine with people we didn’t like or want to work with. With advertising, you can be in the office fifteen, sixteen hours 2 day. Why would you choose to spend it with people who don't make you ssmile? Or make you happy, or that you care for? That's one of the advantages of setting up your own company ~ you get to choose who you play with. LA: Would you say a competitive envi ronment is good for the creative prod: uct? David Abbott: | think if you create a rather brutal and overly competitive en: vironment, then you are almost encour- aging people to behave ina brutal and overly competitive way. If you give jobs ‘out to three or four teams and ask them to compete, itis not as good as giving a job to one team. They know it's theircau property and it seems to be more of an incentive to do @ good job. Then the ‘other teams will know that, when their tum comes, they'll also have the secu- ty of working on it to resolve it. But there are lots of ways to run creative de- partments. A lot of successful agencies have had a much more competitive regime than we had at AMV and they produced great work that way. But, for me, it was just how 1 wanted to spend my days. And | do believe that people perform better over a longer period when they feel secure. It seems to me there are two ways of doing it but | al- ways preferred a kind of calm atmos- phere. Creative people are intrinsically competitive. They're essentially selfem- ployed. They work for themselves. They don’t need somebody telling them that they've got to do a great ad. They look at the annuals, they see what their friends are doing, they know what the agencies down the road are doing, and they aspire to do better. So | think you need to remove as many traumas from their lives as possible so they can get on with that primary consideration of doing 2 great ad. LAL: What were some of your criteria for hiring people? David Abbott: | have hired so many peo- ple since | started doing it in 1966, 1967, ‘and | never hired anyone | didn’t think ‘was going to produce outstanding cie- ative work. | wasn't always right, But generally | was. | hired some dificult people. Not unpleasantly dificult people ‘but strong-willed people. 1 think you ‘need to be strong-willed. All the people I hired | thought were capable of doing risky work. | don't think good work is risky. | think safe work is risky. ! never hited anyone consciously thinking they were a safe choice. | hired them because thought they were capable of helping the agency do good work. LAs What about taste? When you find that someone has different taste from yourself, would you stil hire that per son? David Abbott: Oh yes. You have to judge every piece on its merits. | mean | wouldn't have approved those feuk ads, for instance. LA: That's why you wrote that letter to Campaign Magazine protesting their awarding it the “Campaign of the Year” prize? David Abbott: | wrote it because | did't think that this campaign was worth the acclaim it got, that it was the best ad vertising campaign of that year. | thought the Volkswagen campaign was. ‘And | just thought it was strange for fcuk to get the Best Campaign of the Year award when there was better adverts: ing. | was annoyed by that campaign for a while I think | exaggerated its impac It was just another sign of the times, 1 Suppose. I risked coming across as the male Miss Mary Whitehouse by waiting that letter. It was my parting shot and ! don’t regret writing it. It sparked a goed debate. And there were plenty of places in the world that agreed with me. The ‘campaign was not allowed to run in New * York, or in Hong Kong and other parts of the world. We just had a slight differ- tence of opinions. Trevor Beattie’s a very 00d writer. And, no doubt, it's com- mercially a very successful campaign, LAs But that was a campaign that def- nitely would not have come out of your agency? David Abbott: ! wouldn't have approved it~ because there’s always another way of doing it. LAs Did you actually tell people what you don’t want? Or did you just lead by example? David Abbott: Well if you are advertising Sort of youth products such as Kiss Fit fr things lke lingerie, sexuality is part of the product. It's also part of the major preoccupation of the audience, so you can't ignore it. If the fcuk campaign had just been in the teenage press, | would n't have objected to it. But because it ‘was on outdoor, because it was seen by everybod) tely, | thought it ‘was more intrusive than it needed to be. Or course part of the strategy was to ‘create some sense of outrage. | recall stances where a brief would say this isa ‘sexy product and you need to talk about that. You just find the right way to do i So the brief would go out to a team and they would come and show me the work and I'd say, that’s fine, that one goes too far, that one doesn't go far enough, bbut there was a general tone about the agency. We tried to respect the lan- ‘guage, respect the consumer, It's always the question where the line is, where do you stop, where do you cross it, Of course all good advertising pushes the line. You know when we did the advert of a pile of dead dogs, a lot of people thought that was deeply unpleasant Defining where the line is to be drawn is always a tricky question. We never hada checklist saying no swearing, no nudity, ‘no unpleasantness, no lavatory jokes - you know, things like that. It's just what happens when somebody's supervising. For 3 long time, | supervised all the ads. We didn’t really have a structure. WePHONE = didn’t have copy group heads or things. So, basically, everything more or less came through me. But I didn’t want just to be tied down with the administration because | wanted to carry on with my ‘own writing. A lot of people we hired were creative directors of other agen cies. A lot of very senior teams and, by and large, I let them run their own ac counts. They used to show me stuff and | didn’t have to change it or tune it. So there was a kind of a seltpolicing about what we did, But ultimately, if you are the creative director, you take responsi- bility for it. When we did occasionally make a misjudgement, it was my faut. It happened occasionally, but not very of- ten. And it's a difficut balance, you know, because you are always trying to push things a bit more. So it's hard. But shock is too easy. We all di that in the 60s, you know. You'd just say “Bol lacks” in 4o:point type. You can only do that once or twice. But i's too easy and that was slightly my feeling about the feak campaign. Swearing just doesn’t ‘seem to me to be the greatest creative idea. Might be great commercially. So it's not just a matter of social taste. t's 8 matter of taste about advertising. I's not effective just to do shock anymore. Because we've become unshockable: af- ter 911, what? The world is full of shock- ing events. People have become im: mune. | believe there are better ways of making the connection. LA: Do you think people are less inter. ested in finding out about a product to- aay? David Abbott: We used to have that con: versation every decade: the death of long copy, that people do not want to read facts any more. | think advertising goes through phases. And now, it seems, different media is used to do dif. ferent things. You look at TV car adver: tisements - they are just about the brands, they say one thing, they posi tion the brand. They use brochures to ‘extend the print advertising to get infor mation across. | think the next move for TV advertising will probably be to have lats of facts. Because it's a tactical thing and they all want to do what the other person is not doing. So | think there is little change on the whole. And people, when they make major purchases, are sill interested in getting a lot of infor- ‘ration. They may no longer get it from advertising but from the internet or they ray get it from brochures or direct mail You are not going to buy a car without having quite a lot information about it And you are not going to get financial services without being reassured of the probity and resources of the company. | think people still need information to make decisions. The percentages of ra- tional versus emotional vary with the im- portance of the produc you want to buy. There is hardly a rational input with a candy bar, but quite 2 lot with a big car It's just common serse, really LA: Do you think one can learn to be a copywriter? David Abbott: | think you can learn it, yes, up to @ point. Certainly | was taught. I went straight into a copywriting job without having done any copywrit: ing before, so | was taught. But | used 10 say, when | still hired, that | always went for intelligence first because I can teach somebody how to write or how to do ads provided there is a basic intel gence and curiosity and attitude and willingness. I can help point them in the right direction and teach them how to sting sentences together. But you have to teach yourself. | taught myself a lot about copywriting by reading The New Yorker and studying other people’s ads and getting all the annuals and memo: fizing ad copy. | used to memorize Bob Levenson's copy and pick up cadences and shythms. It's like that now. | am learning how to write a novel. | learned how to write copy by reading other peo: ple's copy. And reading books about copy. And being ferociously interested. When | was a copywriter, I never wrote anything else, | never wanted to write a book. | wanted copywriting to be the ‘most important thing. | didn’t want it to bbe something | did to pay the rent ~ my real writing done at the weekends on my novel. | wanted to be a good copywriter. ‘And so I think you learn from all kinds of places. My copy was a kind of amalgam (of Ogilvy and Bernbach. And there was a bit of myself. But | don’ think you're fever aware, when you are writing your ‘own work, that you have a particular style. | am always surprised when peo- ple say | do, LA: Do you think getting good clients is 2 steoke of luck oF something that is hard earned? David Abbott: Well, both really. | think you should be as careful about the clients you take as about the people you hire. We always tried to take clients who believed that advertising was important. IF its important to them, they will give you due attention and the right level of investment. We had to ike them per sonally, feel that we could get on with them, you know? Sometimes, you make mistakes but you find out in early meet ings. You have to be honest about things. And then you have to deliver. Be: cause they like you more, believe you more, and trust you more if you deliver. They see the effect the right work has on their business. They relax. And they go along with you until you let them down. Ina good relationship, you can make a few mistakes, they are tolerant. Any mistakes that are made are always joint mistakes. | mean an agency never goes to a client and says, here's an advert, you've got to run it. The preparation of the ads, the strategy ~ itis a collabora tive business. So we were lucky with clients. We started with the Sainsbury's campaign, which was a real change of direction for supermarket advertising. It was because we had a client at that time who wanted a real change of supermar ket advertising, We did it together. LAs Is it true that you told new clients