Walt’s Story
Showing your work to Walter Campbell for a bit of improvement advice was always a brilliant experience.
He’d give you an elaborate handshake involving finger clicks, take you into his office, tea would be offered, you’d try to find a seat (Tom and Walt’s office was by far the messiest in AMV, if not Europe), then he’d tell you stuff that made your ad better.
One time he did this, he said he had a story that explained what advertising was all about (I apologise, because I’m going to get the details wrong but the essence right):
A boat was shipwrecked and everyone aboard, fifteen men and one woman, were washed up on a desert island.
Eventually the men killed the woman because they couldn’t come to terms with what they were doing.
Then they buried her because they couldn’t come to terms with what they were doing.
Then they dug her up because they couldn’t come to terms with what they were doing.
Walt offered no further explanation, but I believe he was referring to the dynamic of leaving the audience to fill in the blanks/complete the circle.
And however that tale affected Walt, from what he said, it was part of what made him (along with Tom Carty) by far the best TV creative of his generation: