Unwashed and slightly dazed

Saatchi’s Sydney CD David Nobay is in Buenos Aires at the moment, judging the Andy awards.

While he’s over there he’s posting an online diary (of sorts) on the Campaign Brief blog.

Never one to do things by halves, Nobby’s first post is littered with the casually dropped names of advertising bigwigs.

One that I found interesting was Bob Greenberg, head of R/GA, who was described as having a CV that lists previous lives as a boxer, biker and film producer.

Nobby goes on to compare this to Neil French, whose CV includes matador, rock band manager and debt collector.

I love these kind of well travelled creatives, I really do.

By ‘well travelled’ I don’t mean over paid art directors who go on a lot of big budget tv shoots.

I mean people who lived, worked and experienced life before heeding the call of adland.

Even your humble Brand DNA scribe spent time as a scale mechanic, weights & measures inspector and short order cook before putting a homemade folio together.

In AdAge today Mike Byrne, creative head of Anomaly in the US, had this to say:

"I met with a guy last week who, when he was 18, got a DUI, drove into a ditch, ended up going to the Army instead of jail. Then he decided to design tattoos and did this documentary on this Christian rock band he followed around. He's never done an ad in his life, and I'm going to hire him. For me, that's the future. These self-made pioneers who are ambitious, have an incredibly strong work ethic and are conceptual-driven by big ideas."

I’m not advocating our young folks walk away from their advertising degrees and creative courses. Far from it.

I just think we need a few more maverick Ted Horton types in our industry. Ordinary people who are anything but ordinary.