John Hegarty Talk

Went along to hear what John Hegarty had to say about advertising from Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty today.

It was interesting to get some professional insight into the industry seeing as I am not an advertiser and don't aspire to be one, even though I recall a short stage in first year when I thought it could be an interesting path to walk down eventually. Having said that, in many ways (with no disrespect intended), it kind of made me feel glad I wasn't getting walking that path. What I mean is, I accept that the world needs advertising to keep going (capitalism), however I don't believe in massaging the ego's of brands to the extent at which organizations spend vast ammounts of money on doing so.

Especially when it is immeasurable to calculate the effectiveness of advertising and profit from creating adverts. A lot of the examples he showed could have fallen into any of the categories he brought up which made it even more confusing. Perhaps the talk was aimed more purely towards aspiring advertisers, but with someone like me who questions this kind of ethos found it difficult to understand the reasoning behind most of it anyway.

One thing I did like was "to get under the skin of a brand is the only way to deal with the brand". Obvious again, but if you think of it in literal terms... not only is it bloody and violent, but I guess it really means business in terms of "consideration" and "research".

I do appreciate that a lot of advertising is free roaming creative thinking (or is it?). Sometimes I do wonder how and why a client would choose some ideas, both for good and bad reasons. I still have a lot of admiration for BBH, I just don't feel that the talk encouraged me towards advertising as a career path. but then again, he wasn't there to recruit students.

Hegarty was a humorous man, he mentioned things like 'making yourself standout from the crowd' which to be honest, is blatantly obvious. He knew how to entertain a crowd, his presentation skills have probably become second nature... a skill quite useful! Especially if you wear a matching yellow and brown chequered 3 piece suit. Every agency wants someone special, useful or different, the only problem is, being different nowadays is often being part of the mould.