Dave Trott
Campaign
Contact Dave
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Past articles by Dave:
Why the first brief is wrong and lazy
Recently I saw a post from someone called Annie, she said: “Every time I have a programming question and I really need help, I post it on Reddit and then log into another account and reply to it with an obscenely incorrect answer. “People don’t care about helping others, but they LOVE correcting others. “Works 100% of the time.” This is very smart on Annie’s part, but it turns out Annie is using… → Read More
I never picked up a needle
The Embroiderers' Guild is pretty much what it sounds like. A 115-year-old charity with 175 local branches and around 5,000 members, mainly ladies between 50 and 80 years old, who love to do embroidery. They like to meet up to chat about embroidery, have a cup of tea, raise money with community events, teach youngsters. But in 2010, the trustees of the guild wanted a more dynamic presence to… → Read More
Fear creates complexity
There was an interesting article in the paper, after Manchester United were beaten 4-0 by Liverpool. It was the end of Ralf Rangnick’s time as manager, which meant he had nothing to lose by speaking freely (instead of the usual way football managers and politicians and advertising people normally speak, by trying to appear as if they’re saying something without actually saying anything). The… → Read More
Straw man advertising
In 1952, Richard Nixon was running for vice-president – he was accused of stealing $18,000 of campaign contributions for his own use, so he went on TV. He compared the gift of money to the gift of a dog his family had received: “It was a little Cocker Spaniel dog, in a crate a man had sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, six years old, named it… → Read More
Catenaccio advertising
Italy has a reputation for great defenders. This stems from teams like Milan. In the 1960s and 70s Milan won the Serie A twice, the Coppa Italia three times, the European Cup twice, the Cup Winners’ Cup twice, and the Club World Cup. Milan’s game was based on the Italian defensive system called Catenaccio. Catenaccio means door-bolt, the “door-bolt” being a free-ranging defender behind the team.… → Read More
Too obvious to see
Railways are only 200 years old. But actually they’re 2,000 years old, so how does that work? It was one simple thought that changed them from small local wagonways into a system that revolutionised global transport. It was the simple thought that made it possible for steam engines to use railways. So what was that single simple thought? The ancient Greeks were using wagonways in 600 BC. If a… → Read More
Desperate to believe in whatever's new
In 2003, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Harvard to start a company called Theranos. She was only 19 but she was smart, driven and charismatic. Everyone was desperate to believe in something new and she was it. She was young, female, had piercing blue eyes, dressed like Steve Jobs – she was the future. Everyone who met her said she convinced them she was going to change the world. She knew she… → Read More
An advertising story
In 1950, radio was the biggest entertainment medium, every family listened to it. The programme most families listened to was Dick Barton – Special Agent at 6.45pm. It was a typical cliffhanger – every episode ended with Dick Barton about to die, only for him to have miraculously escaped by the next episode. At the same time, the BBC was producing radio programmes for farmers. (Britain imports… → Read More
A good team beats great individuals
One of the best political speeches I ever heard was by Elizabeth Warren, in 2011 when she was running for the Senate. Warren was campaigning for the super-rich to pay more taxes. She was accused of “class warfare”; this was her response: “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. “You hired workers the… → Read More
Where aren't they fishing?
In 1996, Will Smith had a dream: to be the biggest movie star in the world. The problem was he was just a rapper with a TV show, he’d only made one movie. Smith knew there was no point waiting and hoping for it to happen – so at the opening of Planet Hollywood, he walked up to the three biggest movie stars in the world and asked them what he needed to do. Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis were… → Read More
We don't control the conversation
We like to think we control the conversation, but that isn’t how it works in the real world. For instance, in 1973, there was a run on the Toyokawa Shinkin bank: two billion yen was withdrawn in a matter of days because of a rumour of bankruptcy. The police investigated to see if a crime had been committed. They traced the rumour back to three schoolgirls on a train. On 8 December, the girls… → Read More
We can fake integrity
Recently on Twitter, Richard Shotton quoted Leo Burnett: "A company in which anyone is afraid to speak up, to differ, to be daring and original, is closing the coffin door on itself." It is an inspiring quote, and a powerful sentiment we should all live by. But I thought the reality was rather different when I visited his agency, years ago. I replied on Twitter: “Nice sentiment, but I was once… → Read More
'Trendspotters' aka 'Opinion followers'
Jeff Bezos said: “People always ask me what’s going to change, but there’s a much more powerful question: what’s NOT going to change?” Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos MORI, gave a similarly themed speech: “We Need to Stop Talking About Change.” He said: “We’re consistently looking for new needs and new ways of fulfilling those needs, but actually there are no new needs. Human beings still eat… → Read More
Equal doesn't mean the same
Aimee Scott is 21, she teaches eighth grade (seven-year-olds) in Utah. The kids are new to school and some of them have special needs, so Aimee has something she does with them before she starts lessons. She asks the class if anyone has ever fallen over and scraped their elbow. Obviously all the kids have, so they hold their hands up. She asks one of them to come up to the front and tell the… → Read More
I don’t know what I want, but I want it now
In 2005, Kyle MacDonald wondered if you could trade a paperclip for a house. Obviously not, but what if you traded it for something better and kept going, bit by bit? He decided to see if it was possible, and opened a website called “The Paperclip Challenge”. Two girls offered to swap the paperclip for a fish-shaped pen. Someone saw the pen and offered to swap a hand-sculpted doorknob for it.… → Read More
Jamais l'audace
In 1792, the French Revolution was falling apart, the provisional government issued extreme emergency measures. These terrified everyone, they felt like the result of fear and panic. Then Georges Danton made a rousing speech, which is still quoted two centuries later: “L’audace, l’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace.” In English, that means: “We must dare, and dare again, we must always… → Read More
The big idea starts in the brief
When she was young, Nora Ephron thought writing was solely about writing. At high school, she learned that writing, like most things, is much more about thinking. She tells the story like this: “My high school journalism teacher, whose name is Charles O Simms, is teaching us to write a lead – the first sentence or paragraph of a newspaper story. “He writes the words ‘Who What When Where Why and… → Read More
Are we selling the forest or the trees?
In America in 1991, Subaru were small and they weren’t growing. The problem was, compared to Toyota and Nissan, they had no image. Subaru felt, in order to compete, they would need a similar mainstream image. This is standard dumb, advertising thinking. It never occurred to Subaru that Toyota and Nissan were many times bigger, and that copying them would just be seen as a poor imitation. You… → Read More
One man's fish is another man's poisson
Japan, like other countries, has been forced to adjust to the cashless economy. Due to the pandemic, it happened faster than anyone expected. People are paying for everything using plastic – consequently, people don’t need cash. If people don’t need cash, people don’t need 24-hour cash machines. So banks across Japan have been closing their ATM sites. Being Japanese, these aren’t just the… → Read More
Algorithms can't do context
When I graduated art school, I worked on a tramp steamer. After a couple of weeks at sea, we stopped in Buenos Aires to unload farm equipment and load coffee. As the most junior deckhand, I was given the night watch. I got chatting to a group of Argentine dock workers – well, not chatting because I spoke no Spanish and they spoke little English. But they were very friendly and we gathered round… → Read More