Andy Bird: Flying High

Not even a sink-school education was going to hold up Andy Bird’s trajectory from a mid-80s YTS scheme to his role as ECD at Publicis London. His inspirations are legion – a hard grafter of a granddad who taught him to paint, and pretty well everyone he ever worked with at BBH. He talks to Joe Lancaster about the business of creativity and how to pass on the knowledge to a hungry new generation.

For someone who never went to university or art college, and didn’t do well at school, Andy Bird is one hell of a student. The 43-year-old, who was appointed ECD at Publicis London in October last year, has spent his entire career sucking up the knowledge of those around him like a ravenous Dyson.

Raised on a council estate in Newcastle in the north east of England, Bird was taught to draw by his grandfather who worked in a shipyard by day and was a secret watercolour painter by night. “He made me draw every single night of my childhood. He was very hard on me,” remembers the ECD. “He was a brilliant artist, but where we were from it wasn’t the thing to do, so he hid it from his colleagues and he burnt all his paintings in the garden one day when somebody found out.”

Learning on the job

On account of attending a sub-standard school, Bird left without the qualifications required for art school, and moved to London on a Youth Training Scheme in the mid-80s. He bagged a job in the photo-transfer machine room at a business-to-business agency where he learned typography from a colleague. A job at McCann Erickson followed, where he met Derrick Hass. “He thought I had some talent, I think. It was through him I realised that it’s what ads are about that’s important, not just what they look like. It’s about what you’re trying to say.”

A couple more (complicated) moves later and Bird landed in BBH’s typography department. His early career start meant he was older than his years and by the time he was 27 had been promoted to head of design. “Art direction and design are incredibly important parts of advertising – having a real craft – and there was no better place to learn about craft than BBH,” says Bird. “I really love art and art direction and when I realised [at that time] that you can influence people and make things look beautiful, that’s when I really fell in love with advertising.”

Two years later, John Hegarty made Bird art director, teaming him up with Nick Gill, who Bird also credits, along with everyone else at BBH, for imparting knowledge to him. “I was working at an agency that was winning everything and I was working with probably the most talented people in the industry. There was just an incredible amount of people who I learnt so much from.” Together, he and Gill won awards for work on Levi’s, Lynx and Audi, among others.

In 1999, when Hegarty was away opening BBH NY, London’s ECD Bruce Crouch invited Bird to open a breakaway agency. He grabbed the opportunity with both hands and Soul Advertising was born. It was the most profound educational experience of his career. “I learnt all about the business of advertising which, when you’re a creative guy sitting in your bubble, can be easy to not think or care about; how the ads get sold, how the ads get paid for, how you get paid,” he admits. “Setting your own agency up and investing your own money in it makes you become far more sensitive to other aspects of the business, rather than just winning awards and what your next ad’s going to look like.”

Soul was successful, recruiting clients including Nike and Coke, and in its fifth year was taken over by Nitro. Shortly afterwards, Bird took a job with Ogilvy & Mather London, “because I’d never worked in a big network before, and it was a new challenge”, and for five years he worked on clients such as Dove and American Express, adding more trophies to his shelf. In 2012 though, he faced another huge challenge and this time, more than any before, it was Bird who would be looked to as the teacher.

When he took up the creative reins at Publicis London in October last year, the agency was in a quiet period. “Publicis is a great agency, it has a history of doing great work, but it’s hard for any agency to maintain that clarity of vision, particularly when there have been changes in creative leadership over a short period of time. I think that’s perhaps shown over the past couple of years,” he concedes. “I inherited a very talented pool of people when I joined and together, with some great new hires, we’re slowly trying to change the output of the agency to make it more creative again. But it doesn’t happen overnight – it’s a two- or three-year job.”

Those key hires include two new creative directors, a head of art and a new head of digital – a crucial role as the agency recently folded its digital arm, Modem, into the main operation and has produced little work in the medium for a while.

The creatively sparkling work is beginning to find its way through. In June, a huge campaign for car insurance comparison website Confused.com was launched, introducing BRIAN the inappropriate robot who will appear in eight TVCs to begin with, as well as on other platforms. “It’s a big departure for that sector to have a bit more narrative,” gushes Bird between chuckling at the ads. “It’s different from just having an icon. We wanted Confused.com to mean something, to be seen as the experts in insurance, and the result was BRIAN.”

A few weeks later came the work for SMA’s Follow-On Milk, led by a touching Tony Barry-helmed TVC that told new mums they were doing a great job, despite their lack of confidence, and at the end of August a startlingly brave campaign for Tourism Ireland will launch. To celebrate Derry-Londonderry’s status as this year’s UK City of Culture, Publicis teamed up with the client to create a mural from 10,000 Facebook profile pictures that will be displayed on a wall in the city, which suffered more than any other from sectarian violence during The Troubles and is still decorated with many murals relating to the traumas that the city and its people have faced. The design will not be unveiled until the mural’s launch. “It’s been a huge thing to get everybody involved in,” says the ECD proudly, although humbly. “You can’t imagine what they [the people of Derry-Londonderry] have been through.”

Thinking out of the cardboard box

When it comes to getting people involved, Bird is pleased to have Erik Vervroegen as Publicis global creative director. “Erik’s doing a fantastic job at joining the countries together. He’s brought together a collaborative approach between markets that’s led to us working beyond the UK with him and other network agencies on some great briefs,” he explains, pointing to hilarious print ads for Belgian client TNT and a pulsating Renault TVC that was written in London and produced in Paris. There’s more too, but we can’t talk about it yet unfortunately.

Perhaps Bird’s greatest achievement to date at Publicis is his work with Depaul, the young homeless people’s charity, and ‘with’ is certainly the operative word. “There are a lot of charities above them in the pecking order and they tried a couple of campaigns like iHobo in 2010 [an app where a homeless man ‘lived’ on your phone and had to be constantly cared for], which was incredibly successful but peaked very quickly then dropped away, but they’re looking for sustainable funding. We thought, ‘Rather than simply asking for money, why don’t we be useful; why don’t we give them a product to sell?’”

Bird and Publicis London MD Will Arnold-Baker transformed Depaul from a charity into a business with the launch of the Depaul Box Co. Cardboard boxes are negatively associated with the homeless but the Depaul Box Co manufactures and sells them with messages about the charity printed on them. The profits go to those in need, and more than 16,000 were sold in the first two months, with tie-ins at estate agents and student accommodation providers, and with resources and media donated by several parties all helping the enterprise to grow. “It’s a new way of advertising, taking a stake [in a business] and going with the client all the way on something. It’s been an eye-opener, but we’ve done it. Depaul is committed to being a box company as well as a charity, so it’s never going to end,” says Bird proudly, also pondering: “Is that the way all charities should go now? Because there’s so many people asking for money.”

Talking ’bout the next generation

Now he’s ECD, does Bird miss getting his hands dirty with creative work? “The hardest thing about being ECD is just the time. You have back-to-back meetings all day. Sometimes you see stuff and you want to change it and sometimes you know you can do better but… Managers have got to stay back and let people find themselves rather than interfere. I want to guide and encourage, but it is quite frustrating when you can’t get involved in everything.” He does however find an outlet for his creative urges in his extra-curricular, mega-respected, high-end fashion magazine The Rig Out. “I let my inner designer out on it. That’s my passion.”

Moving forward, Bird wants Publicis London to become, “a place which does great work, not just on award-winning pieces of work but on big clients. I want my mum and my mates to recognise it,” he says. “I also want this to be a place where everybody wants to come and work. I want us to make a splash again. I know we’re going to make a success of this place.”

Where will the next generation of creatives come from? “This is a bugbear of mine. Back in the 60s and 70s, advertising drew from art school more and people could write and art direct. Now people come from many different backgrounds, most from university courses but not necessarily artistic ones and I think that tells,” explains Bird. “I think there’s a tendency for creatives to rely too much on directors and heads of design to bring ideas to life. It’s a real shame that the days of craft have gone.”

He would like to see the industry draw more from art schools to find talent – although, of course, Bird learnt on the job himself. Isn’t that the best way? “It is when you work at BBH!” he cackles. “I’d love to see a return to agencies and design companies opening their doors to young people who maybe haven’t got academic backgrounds, but it’s easier said than done. We want to attract the best new creative minds but often we don’t look outside of where we’ve looked before. Having said all that, I haven’t done it here yet.”

If he does do it at Publicis, Bird will be able to pass on the knowledge he’s learnt from the best in the game, including Graham Watson, Tiger Savage, John Gorse and of course Hegarty himself. “He was a mentor to everybody at BBH. He’s a master craftsman, an art director as well as a fantastic creative director. He was always pulling me back, telling me I was being too arty and stuff. He told me once to ‘never let the art direction get in the way of the idea’ and that was something that always stuck with me. I always think of that when we do ads now.”

Fine advice for Bird to hand down to his own protégés. Now that the student has become the teacher, let the master class begin.