This week on The MCA Prodcast Pat Murphy talks to John Hegarty, Co-founder and Creative Director at The Garage Soho & The Business of Creativity. He was a founding partner of Saatchi and Saatchi in 1970 and founded Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1982.

John looks back on his career, including launching Saatchi and Saatchi and reveals why his name isn’t above the door! He also tells the story of receiving his knighthood from The Queen and describes the event as ‘all the pomp without the pomposity’!

When it comes to modern marketing, John argues that brands have a tendency to forget two crucial ingredients - persuasion and promotion. John suggests that many brands’ approaches to advertising can verge on stalking their audience rather than trying to engage them, and suggests ways this can be avoided. Have brands and advertisers become too obsessed and reliant upon measurement? Successful ads create empathy with the brand but ‘trying to measure that becomes an impossibility’ says John.

John also suggests that brands can be persuaded too by market research and tend to avoid using gut instinct. He uses the example of Abba having recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo. At the time, the British public gave the song nul points. That is arguably consumer research that didn’t suggest the song would do very well, however it went on to become a huge hit!

John shares the creative process behind some of his most iconic ads, including the 15-year campaign for Levis. John explains the process that would involve creating as many as 50 ideas on paper, whittling them down, scripting and turning the best ideas into ads. What skills and specialisms are required to successfully turn an idea into reality? John also highlights the importance of music in advertising and explains why it should feature highly on any production budget.

John and Pat also discuss what creativity is, fundamentally. How are we creative? How does our creative ability separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, and to what extent can AI begin to replicate human creativity? John explains how you can take part in his course ‘The Business of Creativity’ and how it is for everyone in all organisations to help them understand the role of creativity and how it leads to success. It’s not just for creatives!

For more from John, read his books:

Hegarty on Creativity: There are No Rules

Hegarty on Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic

Watch John’s favourite ad: Volkswagen - Funeral

Hosted by Pat Murphy

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