"The ads have just got worse, [but] television, for instance, is going through a golden age. Our work is not matching the quality of writing and thinking that's going into all those great TV productions."
"We need to re-invigorate creativity in our business", said Hegarty. "We need more creative people taking an active role in driving their agencies and taking responsibility. It's always been the case that creative people in the past made the running in our industry. We need more of them doing it for the future."
Having founded BBH in the 1980's, he led a host of iconic campaigns for clients ranging from Levis and Boddingtons, to Barnardos. When contrasting the 1980's as an era for doing business and creating great work, he said today's advertising industry was ripe for new agency startups compared to when he started out: "There's more opportunity, more confusion and very poor work out there. So surely this would be a fantastic time to start."
He thinks we need less product selling and more storytelling — agreeing with a reader that we need a persistent conversation with brands, not just the delivery of beautiful sermons from them: "Brands in a way are just an accumulation of stories. Spreading the word is part of building those brands, [but] today we've got persuasion and promotion confused. There's not enough persuasion and too much promotion."
"Les Paul invented the electric guitar, [but] he didn't create Rock 'n' Roll. Our problem today is we haven't yet worked out how to use all this new technology creatively. That will take time."
Rather than focus on the next big thing, he said we should be focusing on how to use what we've got to better effect. "Great advertising should inspire people, but there's far too much talk about second guessing an audience. That's what leads to such bland work."
He concluded the Q&A by saying that despite this decline in quality work which we've seen, there's still room for advertising to delight and entertain, so long as advertisers play by the new rules brought about by connectivity: "I still think our audience want inspiration. They're attracted to it and admire it. Today however, an advertiser has got to be a lot more truthful and transparent. But isn't that great?"
