Ad Icon: Chris Palmer

He has long been the definition of thriving and surviving as a creative soul in adland. In three decades, he has gone from creative to director to running arguably the most successful production company in the history of advertising. Currently nestled in Los Angeles, expanding Gorgeous Enterprises in the US, Chris Palmer gives Simon Wakelin his thoughts on creativity, the state of the industry and why treatments really piss him off.

After a recent move to Los Angeles, Chris Palmer is enjoying an angst-free existence. “I’m not interested in stress,” he explains, sitting down after a lengthy conference call. “New York is full of adrenaline and anxiety and that’s OK in short bursts. I just prefer the West Coast because it’s beautiful and stress free. I smile a lot. Even the drive to work is exhilarating.”

Palmer is busy these days anchoring the Gorgeous brand stateside with new EP Eriks Krumins. “America is huge, it’s crazy not to have a presence here,” he offers on opening up shop in LA. “I don’t know whether it’s hugely different from the UK because everything is international now. When we started out as a boutique shop it suited the UK market, but now it really doesn’t matter where you locate yourself on a global scale. Plus, as a director, you never know where you’ll shoot – London and LA are so expensive.”

Palmer began his creative career at Central St Martins College of Art & Design in London, and soon fell into advertising. “I went to art school doing illustration, animation, graphics – basically all the lonely professions,” he explains. “There were two girls attending a course on advertising who needed ideas. I gave them some and they went down really well, so they kept coming back for more. I finally went to a D&AD evening class in my third year. I was hooked. I loved it because you didn’t have to do any work but had to come up with good ideas. You didn’t have to illustrate or animate anything, and I found it easy, plus people liked my stuff.”

Knocking on the right doors

Working as a dispatch rider to earn some green while studying, Palmer motored around London delivering to a slew of companies – including top-notch ad agencies. He recalls how on one visit to BBH he bumped into Rosie Arnold, who told him about a job opportunity.

Palmer remembers falling head first into the agency: “I dropped off my book and ended up working with John Hegarty. Then I decided to work with Mark Denton, who joined BBH for a spell, before I eventually moved on to Lowe and Partners.”

The move from student to adman was a drastic change in Palmer’s life, but one he embraced full pelt. “It was amazing to live agency life,” he explains. “You’re suddenly off shooting a million-pound commercial on the other side of the world. I could have easily ended up designing toilet roll packaging or something, so I really loved and appreciated the profession I had found. You get ideas, you make them, and you get to see them on TV.”

After three years at various shops, Palmer decided the time was ripe to set up his own agency, becoming a founding member of Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson, drawing energy and inspiration from a number of creative admen on a daily basis.

“You had John Hegarty at BBH, Paul Arden at Saatchi, Dave Trott – London was full of great characters, a lot of competition and so many people doing brave work,” he recounts. “I’d only been around a short while and was extremely spoiled on work for Nike and God knows what else. I was fairly outspoken but had a good picture of what I wanted to achieve. The agency became very successful creatively, won a lot of awards and employed people who went on to become major figures in the industry.

By 1996, Palmer was set to launch Gorgeous Enterprises, which became a fully fledged production company the next year when Frank Budgen and Paul Rothwell joined as partners, creating a company run by three ex-agency people (Budgen and Rothwell were colleagues at BMP DDB in the late 80s, and worked together at the Paul Weiland Film Company for five years).

“Frank’s a great friend, but not a quick mover,” explains Palmer about the delay in Budgen joining Gorgeous. “The plan was to set up a production company together but I went ahead and started Gorgeous myself and saw Frank twice a week. Then one day he called me up and said, ‘Hey, I’m thinking of starting work on Monday.’”

Culturally, Gorgeous has changed little over the years, keeping itself busy carving out some of the most progressive ads the industry has ever seen, collecting an extensive list of awards for its clan along the way. Yet the company has never become complacent.

“Obviously, it’s great to win awards but they don’t mean anything on the next job,” Palmer explains. “You still have to persuade someone you can do the work. There’s always something new. You’re just busting your nuts to do the best you can. It’s just flat out – and that can drive people crazy. You’re not trying to be successful, you’re just trying to do the job. Do your best work. Some of them win awards, some don’t.”

With success comes the inevitable, thudding crash back down to earth. “All the guys at Gorgeous have been cursed in the sense that we could go full steam as creatives and clean up at the D&ADs,” he says. “The same as directors. But the very next day you’re back to zero with a blank piece of paper. You go back to useless. That’s a blessing and a curse. I was always trying to figure out the next job, give it 110% – Tom [Carty’s] the same way. None of us have ever rested on our laurels, even though everyone has been successful. You have no choice other than to do your absolute best whatever the circumstances. It’s the only way to move forward.”

Does being an ex-agency guy interfere with or benefit the production process? “It’s harder to be a nice guy because I know a little bit about advertising,” he answers. “It can go either way. You don’t want to be a pain in the ass. It’s great when you work on a job with someone who embraces your approach because you get to knock around some ideas. You also know more about the process because you’ve been through hell and back as a creative.”

The controversial subject of director treatments comes up. “Back in my agency days you never had treatments kicking around,” he explains. “You picked a director, you’d speak to him and if he scared the pants off you then you’d go with another one.”

“When directors write treatments against each other it effectively disempowers creatives because they don’t get to say who should direct the idea,” Palmer adds. “Whether or not advertising has become better because of treatments is up for question. I don’t think there is any evidence that ads suddenly became better because of them. Maybe it’s the opposite.”

Treatments get the treatment

One of Palmer’s main beefs is the slick nature of treatment writers who work in the business to shape pitches for a host of directors. “I’m half-decent at directing but am not a treatment writer, so can lose a job against a well-made treatment,” he explains. “Most ads I see are agonizingly bad, and the amount of money spent on treatments in any given year is probably obscene. Everyone talks about being ecological, but if production companies revealed what they spent on treatments in a year, the amount would be staggering.

“I realised quickly in my career that most directors who talked the talk just plain sucked,” Palmer adds. “Quite often the people doing incredible work weren’t particularly articulate about it. I talked to Frank [Budgen] about the way he shot square-on in many of his award-winning ads, and asked him why he shot so much using that method. His only response was, ‘Oh, do I?’.

“Frank is a genius. None of his ads that you love were based on treatments. How can you encapsulate something in written form three months in advance of the shoot? It’s like asking me what kind of husband I’ll be if you marry me. So I write you a treatment, but it might not relate to how it really turns out. Even if the girl marries the guy that wrote the best treatment it doesn’t help matters. It’s like Blind Date. You write a treatment, pick the best one and pray that it all works out. It’s a flawed process. Perversely, I quite enjoy doing them – but they are just treatments. Your reel is evidence of what you have delivered in the past.”

Palmer also notes a new anxious streak in many agencies, something that is palpable as he meets and greets. “There’s a lot more fear than there used to be,” he says. “I’ve sat in meetings where clients have said outright how important it is for me to create an amazing, mindblowing commercial. That’s the fear of failure overriding the desire to create something great.”

Palmer puts this down to character and experience. “Agencies are not getting the right people on board, so no valuable relationships are developing,” he states. “People are making ads that have no experience making them. I can’t remember the last time I sat at a pre-pro meeting where there was widespread respect between everyone. It’s kind of weird. It’s almost like there’s a conference that agency people go to because everyone is doing the same thing. It’s the same people having the same conversation, that’s the spooky part. It’s almost like osmosis or something, it’s the same dynamic across the board.”

Has this situation made it more difficult to score a good creative job? “It’s tough to do a good commercial,” he answers. “It hurts when you’re halfway through a really exciting job and it suddenly changes. If people you work with make the same money whether the work is good or not, and they just don’t care, then the idea gets lost. It’s tough because I’m obliged to deliver something with my name on it that works. There may be people in the mix that don’t care if it works or not, and all of us care very deeply at Gorgeous.”

The answer to such a quandary in Palmer’s eyes is to push forward regardless of circumstance. “You just do it and pray,” he says. “The more stuff you shoot, the more chance you’ve got of doing something good. It’s a lottery. I just think it’s going to be interesting at the end of the year to see just how many good ads we’ve made.”

Too early for predictions

Ask Palmer about the work that is currently brewing at Gorgeous in LA and he’s too wise to give specifics. Having opened only a month ago, the office is kicking into action but it’s too early for details. “It’s very dangerous to say what we’re doing. You know when they make movies and they shoot the making-of upfront before they know if the film is shit or not? It’s always better to talk about commercials when they turn out really well.”

If pushed about the future, Palmer is cautiously optimistic, with no pride or prejudice about where the Gorgeous magic comes from or where it is going. “Gorgeous has always been a bunch of guys in London doing ads that somehow became successful, so I’ve never pondered our success in London or the road ahead,” he admits.

“I will say that America is a good place for us to expand. London is better suited to the boutique-style shop than here because it’s a huge market with lots of work to go around, so you probably need a crop of directors to cope with it. A bigger roster could be healthier out here. We shall see what transpires.”