ITIAPTWC Episode 3 – Vicki Maguire
Vicki Maguire is the joint ECD of Grey London.
If you listen to our chat you can find out how…
Working on a market stall and plying an older gentleman with alcohol can make you a better writer.
Paul Smith taught her the value of generosity.
Declining a placement can get you a job instead.
You can learn more from arseholes than good people.
Going to D&AD with a less ‘fashionable’ agency can have unexpected benefits.
Working at O&M is different to working at W&K.
The East End needs to stay shitty.
You can open a sweet shop.
Then tension between old clients and new ways of working can be a good thing.
Being a copywriter can literally save lives.
Lifepaint may not be as terrible as I thought.
My Moral Arbitration Ceremony is essential for the good of the industry.
Thanks, Vicki. I really enjoyed our chat, so if you’re ever in LA do pop round for a cup of tea or a kale smoothie.
(If any of you were hoping for Jeff Labbe, a technical hitch means that’ll happen sometime in the future. Next week: the great Mark Denton.)
Amazingly, you can now just subscribe to this podcast, like proper podcasts, by looking up If This Is A Blog Then What’s Christmas on iTunes. Or, if you prefer, listen to it on Soundcloud.
Here’s some of Vicki’s best work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILxjxfB4zNk
Another good one
Mark Fairbanks left this comment, but it seems not to have materialised. Anyway, here it is, and thanks, Mark. Good to hear from you:
Vicki is beyond humble for what she’s achieved. She has always been head of her time. I remember talking to her in the dark days at Ogilvy and she told me this great idea she’d had for Dove about celebrating real women and not the usual beauty ad nonsense. No one bought it back then. Lo and behold, 4 years or so later and that thinking created the most lauded campaign of the time. But she’s never got any credit for it. Or for a lot of the things she’s done. I’m glad you started to redress that in this excellent podcast Ben.
Mark
PS I’m genuinely enjoying this series and looking forward to the next episodes.
Good stuff once again. Always enlightening to hear about different people’s routes into, and perspectives on, the industry. On a slightly pedantic note, I’m pretty sure that the older gentleman who Vicki plied with booze would not have been John Merriman but rather his then partner and genius writer Chris Herring. (Other old-timers like myself will remember them as ‘Merriman and Miserableman’.) Chris was a generous teacher who certainly helped me with the craft of writing- with pints of London Pride and Irish whisky chasers always playing a major role in that education…happy days.
How many people was Chris/John teaching? And is he now a recovering alcoholic?
As an Account Man I knew the best way to get Chris to deliver the copy that was (over)due was to offer to take him to the Sun & 13…have a chat about that stubborn clue in the Guardian crossword, and the mistakes the England cricket selectors were making.
One of the very best writers in the business.
Glad to entertain.
I’m sure Vicki would be amazing to work for.