ITIAPTWC Episode 12 – Nigel Roberts
If I had to go on a show that will never exist, called ‘Desert Island Headlines’, I think at least half my picks would be from the pen of Nigel Roberts.
Why? Well, I think you could fool a lot of people into thinking Mark Twain said, ‘Why learn from your mistakes when you can learn from someone else’s?’
And I’ve bought my wife flowers many times when there’s been nothing wrong, I didn’t need anything and it hasn’t been her birthday.
And although I’ve heroin never taken heroin before, Nigel’s heroin work has heroin definitely heroin made heroin seem heroin delightfully moreish. Heroin.
Anyway, I had the privilege of watching him improve my own work on many occasions, so I’d like to point any budding, mediocre, decent or brilliant copywriters in the direction of his website, because you’ll all learn something.
As you will from our conversation, which includes such nuggets as…
Why advertising is more alluring than farming.
How to decide if you should be a copywriter or an art director.
How the recession led to Nigel’s most enduring partnership.
The interesting story behind the move to Leagas Delaney
Where that Patek Philippe line came from.
How those great Waterstones ads happened.
Why the best headlines give you something to think about.
How a lack of interference is one of the keys to the best work.
Why you should look for undeniable truths.
Why the best kind of advertising makes you think.
What it’s like getting 5 Pencils and 50-60 D&AD entries in a single year.
How looking for ‘the most miserable books on the plight of the homeless’ can lead to great work.
And how Gillian Wearing was recruited to help prevent child abuse.
Which Economist Ad is Nigel’s favourite, but why the less good ones strayed a little close to Roy Walker’s TV show.
Whether there’s a method to compiling a creative department.
How more work in less time unsurprisingly makes it harder to do your very best stuff.
Why the return of respect for agencies will be very important to the quality of future work.
And for those of you who can’t be arsed to click on the link to his site, scroll down for some of my favourites.
Here’s the Soundcloud link, which contains the entire episode. Due to this chat being a little longer than the MB that WordPress will allow, I’ve had to divide the iTunes link and the embedded thingie into two parts. Apologies for the inconvenience, but I thought that would be a better solution than truncating any of Nigel’s words of wisdom. Anyway, Soundcloud does it all in one go if you really need it that way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUx3ZF3sTtg
WordPress again failing to put up a comment from Mark Fairbanks. Here it is:
I owe my career to Nigel (and Peter Souter). He got me over from O&M to AMV and the 11 years I spent there were amazing. And, as a writer, I couldn’t have wished for a better teacher. He pushed and pushed and pushed. Then he pushed some more. Sometimes I would think what I had couldn’t be improved. Nigel would say it could. I can’t remember a single instance where he wasn’t right.
I worked for Nigel for a bit. Although I got the impression that I was exactly the sort of person he disliked I enjoyed the experience a lot.
Hi there. I do have a good mic, but the problems are that it makes the input volume inconsistent because the other source is a Skype call. And the other person won’t have a mic for their end, so it’s ultimately a bit pointless. I only do about 10-20% of the talking, so it’s more the other person’s sound quality that matters.
But thanks for the input/help/concern.
Another excellent episode, thanks Ben, Nigel. He comes across as extremely modest and unassuming given his work and his reputation, and his thoughts on the ad industry at the end are spot-on. I can’t help thinking that if people like him had more of an influence currently, the business would be in a far better place.