Andrew Jolliffe and I have been friends from afar for a couple of decades now. Though we never worked together while we were at Ogilvy together (Andrew in Paris, me in New York) Andrew was something of a legend.
Often when the Paris office did something special, you'd later find out that Andrew's name was attached. I admired Andrew like everyone else did. He was regarded by many as one of the best--if not the best--of all of the very good Ogilvy manifesto-izers. (Back when Ogilvy was still guiding brands, not doing stunts, the agency used manifestos to set a course for clients. To guide them for years, if not decades. The purpose of a manifesto wasn't pomposity or ego, it was defining a platform that could last for years)
I asked Andrew some weeks ago if he had any inclination to write in this space. Late last week he came across with this gem of a piece.
It might be more poetry than post. A higher standard.
Andrew is a rare bird, and a prized one. He's about the most erudite--and funniest--ad guy around. And maybe the nicest.
Enjoy his:
GUT FEELINGS.
A million thanks, George. Hope this makes the mark.
Around us, political factions shift towards the brink of self-annihilation. And yet the sun is shining. So far, this year has been a year and a half. I’ve written from the heart and for the wallet. Cartoons of Normandy lobsters toasting freedom with vintage champagne and adolescent mermaids experimenting with their first makeup. Films starring trembling, multicoloured dragons, talking figs and swirling watercolours of Robin Hood. Essays on the collective power of a thousand human minds. Stories of Victorian gem-hunters, and our mental awareness at temperatures of minus forty degrees. Poems about how morning train rides make happy minds, and the unbreakable bond between pearls and tears. Rhymes adorned with wild flowers and iridescent bees.
Better still, this isn’t some sort of martini-induced fantasy. I’ll leave you to imagine what happens in those. This is real work. It’s for brands. And it got bought. And made. Yet the great world at large will never see the faintest scintilla of it. Never. And no, I can tell you no more.
That’s the thing about internal work. It’s a bit like watching kitten videos on TikTok or playing the lottery, more people do it than admit to. Unappealing to some because it’s not bragging fodder. Bound in secrecy under the silver lock and key of the NDA, its mysterious subclauses and inexplicable codicils. Thanks, Evelyn Waugh.
And yet in a thousand ways, it’s the plasma, bedrock and vitamin B12 of all our livings. Movement, change, revolution, moments of enlightenment start from within. Fun and provoking internal things are the golden keys to any of us selling and running stuff of worth. I have this itchy feeling that many of us forget that those who pay us thrive on wonder, intrigue and gorgeousness like we do. Sitting in offices very often drabber, browner and a tad more utilitarian than our own iced-cake havens and in a daily smog of power-points, bullet-points and action points, intelligent folk are paid to grow brands.
Buying lovely brand-raising stuff while living in a daily grey is like ordering dinner in your dream Parisian brasserie - if you don’t know of one, I’d be happy to help - while not having a small intestine. It doesn’t happen. If we sat for eight hours a day in a white cube with a rubber plant and a year planner for company, what would we come up with? Maybe an image of a rubber plant checking a year planner. And we’d believe there was nothing more to say.
As Terence Conran said to me once, centuries ago before I was a copywriter after working on the fireworks to open the Design Museum in London, “brighten up a day, and you illuminate an outlook”. Bit dry, but I loved what he meant.
Sell a thought or attitude internally, and the rest will sell itself.
I believe that lovely internal work feeds situations that let movements and briefs become lovely things. Like just the right amount of water, sun and wind that lets a tiny egg become a larva become a chrysalis become an iridescent blue Brazilian butterfly in a rainforest. An ecosystem so gorgeously integrated as we’re all supposed to be.
There again, I would say that. I do lots of it.
Thanks again, George.
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