On My Radar: Jim Thornton

Jim Thornton has spent time heading up creative teams at top agencies such as Leo Burnett, Mother, J. Walter Thompson and more in his advertising career but is currently creative director at VCCP London launching work for the likes of Comparethemarket.com, McLaren and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Below, the Stoke City fan tells us about some recent campaigns that have caught his eye - and ear - and about his inspirations and passions outside of the office - including websites in his browser, programmes on his TV and an app that's made his life much easier.

What’s the best ad campaign you’ve seen recently?

Can I have two? I can? You’re very kind.

Funnily enough the first is not one I’ve seen but one I heard whilst judging D&AD radio. It’s from New Zealand for Pedigree, and the idea’s borne from a great insight – that dogs left alone for long periods are liable to get as depressed as humans would in a similar situation. Which led the team to develop an actual radio station – K9FM, natch – to keep dogs left home alone by working owners entertained whilst they’re out.

The station’s endline is ‘Stay. Sit. Enjoy’, which gives you some indication of how lovingly written, produced and curated this idea has been. It’s full of great ideas and is hugely entertaining. I’d urge everyone to watch the equally entertaining case study film (below). Trust me, K9FM is way more entertaining and rewarding to listen to than most UK commercial stations.

The second is Volvo Life Paint. Like K9FM, it’s just one of those ideas I look at and go FUCK, I wish I’d done that. It’s a spray on paint for cyclists that’s invisible in daylight but highly visible when illuminated by car headlights. As a physical real-world representation of the Volvo XC90’s advanced safety features it’s pretty brilliant, but as an actual product designed to advertise a car by potentially saving hundreds of lives, it’s worthy of that most over-used epithet de jour: ‘genius’.

What I love about both of these is they demonstrate our industry at its very, very best - using creativity to solve business problems with ideas that charm, amaze, intrigue, entertain and most thrilling of all, actually contribute something positive to the sum of humanity.

What website(s) do you use most regularly and why?

According to my Firefox new tab landing page, there are six I visit far too regularly: Youtube, The Times, The Official Fantasy Premier League, Twitter, a subscription site called Easynews where you can find almost any TV, film or music reference you could ever want and the one I fear I use the most - The Oatcake Message Board, the board of the Stoke City fanzine.

As a long exiled Stokie, it’s the most reliable source of news, the best place to keep up with the latest ridiculous rumours, and a never-ending source of wildly differing and entirely subjective opinions. Transfer deadline days on The Oatie Message Board are more eagerly anticipated than birthdays or Christmas in our house.

What’s the most recent piece of tech that you’ve bought and why?

Google Chromecast. It’s bloody brilliant and the best £30 I’ve spent this year. Even on Plumpton broadband speeds that aren’t much better than dial-up; it enables us to stream Netflix, YouTube and iPlayer to the telly from phone or iPad. Plus there are also work-arounds available that mean we could live-stream Stoke games to the telly from the laptop. But of course we’d never actually do that, what with it being illegal and everything…

Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

At the risk of turning myself into a 21st century pariah, I have to admit I’ve never really got Facebook. I only signed up so I could keep an eye on the kids’ activity in their early teens, and virtually never update or even look at it except via my Twitter or Instagram feeds.

Call me old fashioned, but I really don’t get it. The fact that neither my family nor closest friends have ever embraced it either probably doesn’t help. We still tend to use that old-fashioned telephone thing to stay in touch.

Twitter and Instagram, on the other hand, I love, although I’m on a bit of a sabbatical from both at the moment having embraced them enthusiastically with all my usual addictive tendencies quite early on. I’ve made some good friends via both Twitter and Instagram, and as an added bonus, have found both really useful as a recruitment tool.

What’s your favourite app on your phone and why?

National Rail Train Times app. As a commuter of some 20 years standing this is the best £5 I’ve ever spent and it has vastly improved my commuting life.

What’s your favourite TV show and why?

I’m currently gorging on Grey’s Anatomy. It passed me by on TV, but at my daughter’s urging I started on the box sets about three weeks ago. I’m now on Season 3 and loving it. Other things I’ve loved recently: Fortitude, No. 9, Friday Night Dinner, Toast of London and House of Cards.

What film do you think everyone should have seen?

God, that’s a hard question. Reducing it to just one is bloody difficult. Normally I’d say anything with Bill Murray, Groucho Marx, Lauren Bacall or Walter Matthau in it; anything directed by Billy Wilder, Bill Forsyth or Wes Anderson or anything written or directed by John Hughes. But if you want just one, it would probably have to be It’s A Wonderful Life.

Where were you when inspiration last struck?

Walking the dogs on the South Downs just above my house.

What’s the most significant change you’ve witnessed in the industry since you started working in it?

The explosion of interactive-always-on channels and media in general. Unfortunately it’s also coincided with the explosion in media agencies who couldn’t give a monkeys about media planning just at the exact moment we really needed them to.

If there was one thing you could change about the advertising industry, what would it be?

I’d ban all degrees and courses in advertising and marketing. They have a vested interest in reducing the disciplines to a series of pseudo-scientific formulas and fraudulently teach it as if it’s a perfect science. Like Mr Gradgrind in Dickens’ Hard Times, they eschew wonder and imagination in favour of facts and data. And it’s all bollocks.

Oh and I’d bring back art schools. Proper art schools that encourage non-conformity, experimentation, dissent and rebelliousness. The world needs many more Bill Drummonds and far fewer George Osbornes.

What or who has most influenced your career and why?

I got into advertising because of John Webster, pure and simple. I didn’t know it at the time but he was responsible for all the ads I’d loved in my youth. He’s still the greatest adman there’s ever been in my opinion and if I were King of Advertising I would insist all clients and agencies watched his reel every Monday, ‘pon pain of death.

In terms of people I’ve worked for, Robert Saville is undoubtedly my greatest mentor and influence. I would have left the business in disillusionment 20 years ago had it not been for him.

Tell us one thing about yourself that most people won’t know…

I have suffered with bouts of severe depression most of my adult life. I’ve never spoken about it before except with my closest friends and family, and it’s largely under control thanks to the miracle of SRIs.

But it’s always there, that black dog hovering over one’s shoulder. It’s time the stigma of mental health issues was removed forever, and it’s accepted and empathised with as a disease of the brain in just the same way as my asthma and eczema are accepted as physical diseases. I’m fairly certain that if the world was run by women, the recognition and treatment of depression would be just one of innumerable things that would be improved.