Liberating ideas
Advertising powerhouse Sir John Hegarty says the key to creativity is to be aware of your surroundings
You could walk past Sir John Hegarty on the street and never know that you had brushed shoulders with one of the greats of the advertising industry today.
With a mopful of tousled grey hair, a crumpled casual jacket and mismatched striped Paul Smith socks peeping over the tops of grey lace-ups, Hegarty embodies one of the key concepts he writes about in his first book, Hegarty On Advertising: Irreverence.
"Irreverence encourages you to be challenging and it doesn't accept the status quo. It injects into your ideas a sort of vibrancy that makes people want to find out, why are you saying that, why are you challenging? And because we live in a competitive world, that's exactly what you have to do," says Hegarty, 69.
It was that attitude which turned Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), founded by Hegarty, John Bartle and Sir Nigel Bogle in 1982, into one of the powerhouses of the advertising world today. Their first major campaign over three decades ago was for Levi's black denim. It featured a sea of white sheep, with a single black sheep facing the other way. The slogan for it was "when the world zigs, zag". It was so successful that BBH adopted the black sheep as its logo, and the campaign's slogan as its motto.
Hegarty was in town earlier this week to promote his second book, Hegarty On Creativity - There Are No Rules. The 128-page book is a collection of aphorisms and observations on creativity, distilled from Hegarty's years of experience in the industry, accompanied by a few of his light- hearted doodles.
Speaking to SundayLife! from BBH's Singapore office in Clarke Quay, Hegarty says: "I felt that somebody needed to write something on creativity. Everybody talks about it... but nobody talks about what is needed or how to be creative, what you should do and what you should expect."
Having been a stalwart of the advertising industry for more than three decades, Hegarty, who is divorced, has seen it through its ups and downs. "This is probably the most exciting time to be in advertising because of what's happening with digital technology. It's coming at us like a tsunami, and understanding how to use it is actually quite difficult.
"People often say that digital technology has revolutionised the communications industry, but I keep telling them, 'No, I don't think it's revolutionised it, it's liberated it'.
"What it's allowed us to do is have an idea, and take that idea in an interesting way to a community of people out there, which we couldn't do before."
Hegarty, who was knighted last year, says that it will take time for creative minds to wrap their heads around the potential of the digital age. "When you look at the development of any piece of significant technology, there's always what I call the creative deficit - nobody knows quite what to do with it. When the Lumiere brothers invented the moving camera, they didn't realise they had invented Hollywood. It takes creative people to go, 'I think we can do this with that.'"
In order to be one of those creative pioneers, Hegarty says that the key is to constantly be aware of your surroundings. He is notorious for his disdain of headphones: "One of the things I always say to creative people is, 'Please take off your headphones.' If you wear them, you create a little bubble to walk around in. Great creative people absorb all the time, and that comes back out in your work without you realising it."
While Hegarty thinks that the advertising industry is now in the "creative deficit" phase of its approach to the digital age, he is optimistic about its future. "I think it has a phenomenal future. A creative industry constantly evolves, constantly questions and constantly challenges," he says.
"But increasingly, as there's more and more stuff out there, the need for the disciplined thinking of advertising is ever more essential."
Hegarty On Creativity - There Are No Rules (2013, Thames & Hudon, $15.90), will be available at major bookstores from Jan 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment