The Way I See It: Trevor Robinson

As founder of Quiet Storm, purveyor of ‘MindBombs’ since 1995 and the first UK agency to marry production and creative, Trevor Robinson is all about explosive ideas. At HHCL, he slapped the world with the Orange Tango ads and went on to create and direct stand-out work for Martini, Yakult, Haribo and more. In 2009, he added to his many accolades an OBE for his services to advertising and his work on improving diversity in the industry.

A storyteller at heart, he enthralls shots with tales of a machete-wielding brother, a darkly funny mother, and a career spent balancing mild imposter syndrome with a quiet belief in his talents and a “‘let’s have it’, early-Oasis kind of feeling.”

I’m not really like anybody in my family. I have three brothers and a sister. I’m the youngest. I’ve never met my oldest brother. He’s a farmer in Jamaica. He’s quite a notorious, machete-wielding landowner. If you stray onto his land he’ll chop you up! I’ve always imagined going to see him one day and he’d attack me and I’d be like, “I’m your brother! I need those limbs!” I’ve never actually felt a great compunction to meet him... 

My brother Scott is a painter decorator/builder and a personal trainer too, and my other brother, Winston, is a lifelong repeat offender. He’s just come out of prison. If you didn’t know our stories you’d look at Winston and think that’s the guy who’s in advertising. He’s charming, he’s good-looking, he’s a nice guy. He’s off the drugs now, first time I’ve seen him clean in years. 

I grew up on the Notre Dame Estate in Clapham. I left home when I was 17. I stayed with a mate or at girlfriends’ houses. Sometimes I’d go back to stay with Mum if I ran out of money. But I’d invariably get a job after a while. At Tesco or wherever. 

My mum died this year and I realise now that I’ve always been terrified of her dying. I had a lot of time with her at the end. She wasn’t able to talk but she’d squeeze my hand and smile at me. I felt sorry for Winston, they let him out of prison once to see her. I’m sad for him he didn’t get that time with her. 

I’m not religious. As a kid I’d look at people and think they seem so happy with their god! I wish I could get God. Mum would take me and my brother to white churches and to black churches. The black churches were funnier; you’d get the Holy Spirit arriving and women flailing around on the floor. Me and my brother would be pissing ourselves laughing and trying to hide it. My mum would give us this look, but she’d be trying not to laugh too. That’s what she was like. People say I have a dark sense of humour; I got that from Mum.  

My dad came over here from Jamaica and got himself a business together. He was physically strong and a really good-looking guy. People would say “your dad’s really cool”. He was kind of a leader. That was before he descended into booze. He was illiterate but a self-taught builder/electrician/mechanic… everything. I suppose he just had to get on and do stuff. He couldn’t afford to have someone round to fix the telly. How the hell did he fix our telly? What did he know about tellies? 

I can’t even fix a cupboard in our house. It’s fallen off its hinges and I should probably try and go at it with a screwdriver but I’m like, “I don’t really do that type of thing... I’ll get a little man round to do that”. 

I’ve always thought part of my self-belief comes from the pride we had as a family. We had no right to be, but we felt a bit superior, kind of, “We’re the Robinson family. There’s nothing we can’t do.” 

Mum and dad were divorced by the time I was nine. And my dad just disappeared after that. So Mum was a single parent, working night shifts. She was always strong. Nobody would mess with me at school cos of my mum and my two psychotic brothers. 

I always felt sorry for Mr Gauche, my teacher. He had a big bunch of keys and when he was angry he’d yell and throw the keys at the blackboard. I was usually one of the mouthy ones sitting at the back, but I was up at the front one day when Mr Gauche got angry, miss-threw, and the keys landed on the back of my head and cut me. There was blood everywhere. My mum and brothers marched into school and my two brothers were either side of Mr Gauche saying “Mum’s gonna punch you now and there’s nothing you can do about it”.  And she did. 

Mum was funny. She’d tell great stories about my family in Jamaica. For extra money she’d get people in and do their hair and I used to draw her clients. Looking back, the drawings were rubbish; I made them look like monsters, but I’d show them to Mum and she’d go, “these are brilliant! You’re going to be an artist!” She’d show them round to her friends, who’d be like... ‘hmmmm’, but I was very confident cos of her confidence.    

I got myself in debt going to Hounslow College. I couldn’t get a grant. To get there, I used to forge train tickets and change the date on them with a scalpel. I used to bunk off a lot and go and sit in other colleges. There was no security then; I’d just go strolling into St Martins, or Camberwell and sit down at lectures. They’d set a brief and I’d do it and come back and present it and they’d say, “OK, who is this guy?”

“There was no security then; I’d just go strolling into St Martins and sit down at lectures.”

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. My portfolio had fashion design, textiles, graphic design, illustration and advertising. But even at college the guys doing advertising were different to me, they dressed differently and they were already a bit “ooh, we’re in advertising”. I never thought I’d get into it. I thought, that’s where the money is but, somehow I’m not allowed in that space.

At college back then, they’d just get the D&AD book and go, “right, do what they’ve done”. That did my head in. Every time I did that I thought, well, it’s not as good as the original because I’m trying to copy it. So, what is my version? Nobody seemed that bothered by personal visions. 

I met Al Young at Samuel and Pearce, this little below-the-line agency in Richmond. We were doing leaflets for pile creams etc. It was demoralising. I was physically ill with colds and stuff for a year. I eventually realised I was unhappy. My body was telling me to get out. I realised I really liked advertising though. We started meeting up with Tom Carty and Walt Campbell, who were at Dorlands at the time, to work on our portfolios at night. 

Tom and Walt got a job at TBWA and after getting fired from Samuel and Pearce, me and Al were on the dole again for about a year. At the dole office you see people so demoralised, so angry and so dehumanised. I remember seeing people get so frustrated they actually started to take their clothes off. It really struck me. You never see that in the workplace; people getting angry and getting naked, saying, “I fucking hate this! Here are my clothes! Here, I’m throwing my knickers at you!”

People just didn’t want to give me and Al jobs. We didn’t look right; we made people feel uneasy; this black guy and a stammering Scotsman. Eventually we got a placement at TBWA, we only had two weeks there but we won them some business. Then Tom and Walt bludgeoned their boss Murray Partridge into giving us a job. Tom just walked into his office and said, “give those guys a job. Give ‘em a job, Give ‘em a job. Give ‘em a job,” like that Ben Kingsley character in Sexy Beast. I think Murray didn’t really like us. Looking back, I feel a bit sorry for him. He was this lovely middle-class guy who just wanted nice people around him, and we were a bit rowdy; playing football in reception, etc. We were a bit much. 

Me and Al came from the clubbing era, five days a week we’d be going out and staying up all night and coming into work the next day with our eyes bleeding; falling asleep under the desk. We had that ‘let’s have it’, early-Oasis kind of feeling. Sort of ‘this is me, I can’t change me, so I’m going to embrace it’. I’m getting more like that actually. 

I’d been like a street kid. I used to fight a lot. It was only at college I realised nobody fought. If you disliked someone at college they’d just bitch about you. I didn’t know what to do with that. I was like, “Oh, he doesn’t like me, that’s why he’s being like that”. Then I realised it was the same in the ad industry. 

Worst days of my career? I gotta say; getting fired is not the best thing. I was fired from my first job at Samuel and Pearce – quite rightly. The boss pulled me aside and said “I’m gonna give you some money and let you go.” He knew I was working on my portfolio at night and using all their equipment and stuff. It was a nice firing. The most soul-destroying one was when Murray Partridge fired me and Al. It was a Friday and he was standing there holding onto the door and he says, “I’m sorry, I’m gonna have to let you two go”. Al didn’t quite get it; he said, “what d’you mean?” and Murray, who found us a bit intimidating, started backpeddling a bit, saying “well, maybe you don’t have to go right now... You’ve been doing really good work... maybe you can stay.” He started talking himself out of it. And I said “Murray, you don’t mean that. You want us to go don’t you?” And he said, “yes I do really”. So we were on the dole again for a year and a half before we started at Howell Henry. 

Being back on the dole was difficult as we were almost, but not quite, a middleweight team, but we couldn’t get a job on a placement either. We were taking our book around and we’d change it to suit the style of whatever agency we were seeing. But then we met Graham Fink who pointed out we needed to be doing work for ourselves; to develop our own style. That changed everything. 

Al and I shared a very dark sense of humour and that showed in our work. In a way, Tango came out of us taking the piss out of the cause-and-effect concept of advertising; “drink this and something pleasant will happen to you”. We thought, “what if something really unpleasant happens to you when you drink it?” We were laughing about all these horrible things that might happen. Something you hadn’t noticed. Then we had the idea of rewinding to see what the horrible thing was. We thought the client’s never going to buy into this.

The Tango ads were all about a very British humour. We grew up in that Monty Python/Spike Milligan era of surreal comedy. Some of it was quite racist; I used to think I shouldn’t be laughing at this cos it’s derogatory to me and my kind but it was also funny and had a touch of punk about it. 

Probably the work I’m most proud of is the Apple Tango Seduction campaign. Not so much cos of the ads themselves, but because of the story behind them. They’re based on a guy we knew who’d take days off work specifically to stay at home and have a wank. We used to crack up imagining what would happen if his wife came home and caught him at it. The fact that we got that story out as a commercial makes me laugh. The only bit that got banned was a scene when he put down a box of tissues. 

I’m a real film head, I get obsessional. I watched Whiplash and it blew my mind. Then I watched it again straightaway without the sound on. I could hear it still in my head but it allowed me to see how it was cut; what scenes drew me in etc. If you turn the sound off it allows you to see a film in a completely different way. 

I think being given advertising briefs is a lot easier than being an artist and having to drag something from your soul; from a blank canvas. Advertising is a fun thing to do if you strip away the whole manipulation and propaganda and getting people to buy stuff they don’t need aspect of it.

With ads I like to get a bit of psychological truth in there. I got this from Tom and Walt – when they did a shoot they’d leave a bit of time for improvisation, to get the actors to explore and ad-lib a bit. In the latest Moonpig ad I got the actor playing the father-in-law to say, “I hate you” to his son-in-law, it summed up how he really felt about the guy who was shagging his daughter. We all laughed and the client was like, “but Moonpig isn’t a hateful brand.” We had to fight to keep it in, but that’s the bit that people like and remember. 

My brain works in a very William Burroughs, tangential sort of way. I find it hard in presentations to read out my own words in a linear fashion, I like to improvise really. That’s why I need planners. But sometimes really organised people are like robots hitting walls. I see advertising people giving TED talks and they always seem more crafted in what they say. My wife, who’s MD here [Rania Robinson], always says “you sound a bit shit actually.” I just like to say what I’m feeling. 

Quiet Storm is doing really well and we’re hiring and expanding, but at the same time I have that fear about Trump and Brexit and so on; about how money is shifting away from advertising, going to all these new, sterile, in-your-face mediums… influencer marketing etc. 

I was sitting on a judging panel the other day and I didn’t think I was bored at the time until these little vignettes for EuroMillions lottery [Nicer Problems to Have] came on. They were old-fashioned ads that were funny. We realised it was the first time in two hours we’d laughed. Before that people were going, “hmm this is really good because it gets people interacting/or it changes colour, or blah blah blah.” It became obvious that we all craved a bit of entertainment. Something that gets you in the gut so you remember the product, something you like, so that you like the brand for bringing it to you. 

Is marketing getting too clever? You know; your retina gets read when you walk into a shop and you end up buying a handbag you didn’t want. 

Some people say that the industry is getting more diverse, but I’m not so sure. When I go to awards dos I’ll look around to see how many black people there are... and how many black women. You don’t see any black women. Unless they’re PAs or account people. This is shocking. 

I don’t think many people mean to be out and out swastika-waving racists, sitting there in a KKK outfit saying, “oh, I don’t really think you should be here”. But what people do, when they want to choose a prodigy, is they look for versions of themselves, but younger. What happens in the industry is you walk into a room and people feel uncomfortable if you’re different. They just want to see their own kind; it’s a tribal thing. Once they get to know your personality it’s different, they feel comfortable and they kind of don’t see you as black any more. That’s when they say, “ohh, it’s not you, it’s them.” And once you’re in the ‘it’s-not-you-it’s-them’ bracket you know you’ve arrived – they no longer see you as black. I’ve done it myself. I might be prejudiced against some teenager and think, ‘I’m not getting this person’. But then I’ll get to know them and feel differently. 

 “I don’t think many people mean to be out and out swastika-waving racists, sitting there in a KKK outfit saying, ‘oh I don’t really think you should be here’.”

I didn’t feel comfortable at first, being black and being in advertising. When we were working on Create Not Hate [an initiative Robinson set up in 2007 to get young people affected by gang-related violence into creative industries], I had to prepare young black people for feeling that. I said, “you will be the only black person in the room – they will feel uncomfortable and so will you”.   

A Mother's Tear by Create Not Hate

I feel a lack of diversity means we are missing out on some valuable people out there who could really make our industry jump again. I think we are doing such samey stuff – it’s written by the same people, for the same people. Things need to be shaken up, people need to embrace not feeling comfortable.  

I thought when myself and a few other black people began to succeed that it would be a springboard. I thought people will look at me and think, “actually, this guy from the council estate, we didn’t think he’d do that well, but look at him, he’s done all right, let’s have more of that flavour in here!” But people don’t seem to think that way... 

And yes, of course, work should always be given on merit. Nobody should be in a job unless they’re bloody good at what they do. I always feel I have to be as good – if not twice as good – as other people. I guess I still think that I am justified only by what I have just done, and how much money I’ve made for the client. My barometer is my brother coming round and saying “Trev, did you do that ad? That’s a good ad.” And if I can’t tell my big brother about an ad that I’ve done that’s any good – if he just shrugs, that’s it for me. That’s what makes me look over my shoulder.  

The only brand I’d probably refuse to work on is the Tory party. They scare the bejesus out of me, even more than some of the more visibly right-wing groups – at least with them you know where you are. I don’t like the quietly bigoted, angry little people. I was once invited to this police commissioners’ banquet and it was like looking behind a curtain. I’d never imagined policemen as having much money, but there were these super-wealthy guys braying about their yachts and so on. They’d sat me on a table with the one other black person – a Baroness or something. She didn’t like the fact that I was put next to her; that we’d been lumped together on the ‘black people’s table’. A leading Tory politician was the after-dinner speaker and he started telling these horribly racist jokes. I’ll always remember the Baroness and I just looked at each other aghast – everyone else in the room was laughing. When the politician left the stage he walked past our table and he turned and looked straight at me with this smug, challenging look. It made me go cold. 

I guess there are lots of things that you should say you shouldn’t work on cos they’re bad for your health. But so many things are bad for your health. There are probably loads of things we shouldn’t be selling. Maybe we shouldn’t be selling beans. We’re getting people to buy things that they maybe don’t need or want. I’ve got so many things that I guess I don’t need, but they make me feel good...

I get a bit wound up cos the process is so slow, I really want things to get moving. There are lovely people at the Creative Circle Foundation [Robinson is on the board of the awards body’s new, free ad school set up to get more diverse students into the industry] and the CEO Jeremy Green is such an inspiring man. But they want to take 15 kids into the school. I’d like to get hundreds in.

I’m currently working on an afro visibility campaign; it sounds a bit trivial but it’s about black people’s hair and how some women feel they have to straighten their hair and be something they’re not. I grew up with this. Mum used to straighten my hair, and use Betnovate [steroid cream for eczema] to lighten my skin. It was what you did to be accepted and it’s still going on. When you see women wearing weaves and wigs and so on, it can be that they’ve burnt off their natural hair to have straight hair. I’m a bloke and I’ve been affected by it. I even had a fellow black guy in the industry, a nice person, say to me, “Trev, when are you going to cut your hair?” When she was younger my daughter said, “Dad when can I straighten my hair?” and she has this lovely lush afro. She’s nine now and a lot more confident about who she is. That’s cos me and her mum are always telling her she’s fine, but society projects other ideas on to her.

I was thinking about doing the portrait for this feature, it made me look at how I perceive myself. It all feels a bit narcissistic. I suppose my story is that I’m a kid from a council estate who came into this industry feeling intimidated and that I shouldn’t really be here. I felt everyone was better than me. But then I realised… actually, I’m fucking good.