ITIAPTWC Episode 43 – Ben Priest
I sent Ben an email a while ago to ask if he’d do the old podcast.
He kindly and politely declined, saying he’d done a few already and didn’t want to repeat himself.
So I waited a bit then asked him if he’d do a more start-up based conversation and he even more kindly said yes.
We had a delightful chat, after which Ben revealed to me that he’d just done Dave Dye’s podcast.
Darn, I thought. Dave’s podcasts are much longer than mine, so he’s bound to have covered everything I did, and more.
So I listened to Dave and Ben’s chat to see where any repetition might have occurred. I’m not going to lie to you: if you’ve heard Dave’s some of mine will sound familiar. But (oddly enough) there are enough differences that you’ll hear a ton of really good stuff here that isn’t covered by that conversation. This makes me think that there’s one really great 2.5-hour Ben Priest podcast that you could create by splicing the two together.
Anyway, as I said, this one is more about the genesis and progress of A&E DDB and…
Starting in account management.
The promised land of Lowe Howard-Spink.
The loneliness of the creative director.
Slight rewind to Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow and Johnson: one week on placement and an ad in the Book.
Olympus.
The leap to CD.
Finding the other founders of Adam and Eve but doing nothing about it.
Then doing something about it.
The importance of chemistry.
A ‘difficult’ legal situation…
We ignored all the advice/It’s not rocket science/Everyone’s winging it.
A bit of an outsider.
It feels like it’s all happened to someone else.
The name.
Never do any training.
John Lewis Superbowl.
Starting up is the most fun you can have in advertising.
The good thing for lazy old me is that Dave already collected Ben’s best work together on his own site, so check it out there.
So here’s the chat, the iTunes link and the Soundcloud link:
