Conversation with a Master: Neil French at AD STARS Busan 2011

GLOBAL – SEPTEMBER 2011: “Life is all about experience. That’s all it is, it’s only experience,” begins Neil French in his conversation with Prof. Chong Sang-Su at the recent AD STARS Festival in Busan, South Korea. “If you follow the rules, you can’t be original, so therefore you won’t be any good. Either way, it’s just another form of reference but you shouldn’t take it seriously.” 

 

There are always two questions that come up in judging. First of all, do we judge it on how successful it’s going to be or do we judge it on how clever it is? Now the answer is neither. Because you don’t know how successful it’s going to be. Nobody does until it happens. You can’t say this is going to be successful, and that’s not going to be successful. That’s impossible. 

 

On the other hand, what you’re not looking for is art. A lot of people do that and say, “No, this is not a wonderful piece of art.” In my view, what you’re always looking for is a relevance to the consumer. 

 

Beyond that, you’re looking for originality. And originality is terribly important because otherwise every ad looks the same… which in my experience is one of the problems in Korean advertising.

 

My whole life has been dedicated to irreverence. Everything I’ve ever done is irreverent. Everything.

 

Irreverence works if you’re English. It is a nation of irreverent people. It works for Swedes and Nordic people. It doesn’t work so well with Mediterranean people. It worked in Singapore because it is a very tight society in those days. Not now, it’s much looser now. But it was very tight, and so people were naturally trying to find some way to be irreverent, to escape. I’m not sure it would work in every country. The more experience I have, the more I wonder if it could be overdone. 

 

Hispanic markets don’t really go for irreverence. They go for a different sort of humor, but not irreverence. But as a general rule, everybody wants to be a rebel. Even the little man walking the street, with his briefcase, going to work in the morning, inside he’s a rebel…The housewife sitting there, doing their washing up… Inside she wants to break everything, throw it through the window, and go get her self a toy boy. That’s really what she’s like inside. So you have to know that.

 

The key to all advertising, like all communication, is knowing people.  And you’ve got to know people. You should listen to the taxi driver or the policeman who comes to give you a ticket for speeding. Listen to what he says, find out about him. Are you married? Where do your kids go to school? Find out what he thinks. Because only in that way are you then able to communicate. If you don’t know somebody, you can’t communicate. 

 

Obviously, the internet is here to stay and there’s never been any doubt that it’s here to stay. It’s a very good tool. I use it all the time. Nobody has quite understood how to harness it, this particular horse. They don’t really know how to do it. So they do it the same way that all advertisers are doing, which is interruption. 

 

So here we are having a conversation and a man walks through that door and stands between us and says, “Could I interest you in rice crispies?” And that’s how internet advertising works. In television the same applies, but that’s why television advertising is entertaining, because it’s got to apologize for butting in. I’m sorry, you’re in the middle of a movie, in the middle of a Formula 1 race, but I just got to tell you about this car. And that’s what I’m saying, I’m really sorry to interrupt you. And that’s what internet advertising doesn’t do. It has no sense of apology. 

 

In newspapers and magazines, of course, it’s not necessary because it doesn’t interrupt you. All you do is (turn the page) and it’s gone. And then it becomes part of the reading experience. So an ad in a newspaper or magazine should be part of the reading experience. Why did you buy the thing? For news or entertainment. The ad has to either be newsy or entertaining. It’s hardly brain surgery, is it? It’s not difficult. 

 

So what will happen in the future? The media will change. The principle of communication won’t change us because people will still be talking to each other. An ad is only a person talking to one person, multiplied by millions. That’s all it is. And so those principles will remain the same but the media will change. TV will probably be about the same. 

 

People have their own methods now telling their stories on a camera. All technology will get better and people will be able to make their own films. Well, they will never have the cast of thousands, but you can do almost everything else with a Mac. I do. You see the commercials for my book? I made them. It took me an hour. From the moment I put on the camera–took all the shots I wanted, put it in the editing machine, made into a one-minute commercial–for my own book, was an hour. Oh, it’s pretty and everybody likes it. But I’m just saying is the production process is just getting easier and easier and easier. And if even an old dinosaur like me can do it, people out there would be able to do it.

 

The way we present the argument will only change with technology and what people are interested in. You can’t talk to them about what they’re not interested in. But the media will change. This will always be the same. It will only be me and you talking, and maybe several million people listening. 

 

I never believed in half doing your job. Do it or don’t do it. So I won’t do it. So I went to Spain, took my son, brought my son out there–he’s now a great big fourteen year old. And then to be honest, the manner of phone calls I got asking me to go places and give speeches got smaller and smaller and smaller, and I’ve got nothing to do… I thought, actually, before it’s too late, I’d write down what I’ve done in the past. And also because my son who doesn’t care what I’ve done in the past – and why should he? Nobody cares what their father did. So one day, he might think, oh I wonder how my old man got there, so I thought I’ll write it down, and so I started to write. 

 

And it becomes interesting because it becomes a marketing story, in a way, because I have written it down in my own language, funny and irreverent, and all those things. Including some advertising and then away from advertising and then back to advertising and away… exactly the way life is. Taking in the advantage of the surprises, never being frightened. An absence of fear is the most important thing in advertising. Never be frightened of anything. I’m scared of nothing that walks unless it’s carrying a gun.

 

It became an interesting book to write. When I finished the book I realized I needed pictures. Now this is the hard part: I had to art direct every page. The words come next to the picture. Some books, all pictures come and you have to look them up. That infuriates me.

 

I wrote to a few of my friends who are better connected than me to write to a few publishers. Nobody was interested. And one of them said, "We can do a book with no pictures." And another said, "We can do it on really cheap paper." Not cheap paper, no. So I realized, this was a crusade. And if I’m going to have the book that I want, the only book that I intend writing, it’s going to be top quality. Not little bit top quality, 100% the best. 

 

Then I went to a printer and I saw the cost and I was, oh my God, I thought. But that’s the price you pay. If you want a Rolls Royce, you pay for it. And it’s limited edition, so I’m not going to print many, just enough, I think, fill the market. So I’ll publish it myself. It’s all me. If something’s wrong with it, it’s my fault. On the other hand, if you like it, it’s my fault. 

 

So you put it on your bookshelf. I’m not asking you to read it now. One day when I’m long gone, when I’m actually on the sea, then one day you may want to read it. And if you don’t, I won’t be angry. If you do, I hope you enjoy it. And it’s written for him (his son), written in the language that he will understand. It’s not difficult, it’s not hard, it’s just adventures in business. Really, that’s all it is. I’m not going to advertise it, I don’t believe in advertising (laughs). Advertising is rubbish!