Don’t try to change what people think.
Try to change what they do.

Sir John Hegarty must be sick of me. I met up with him last week to interview him for the podcast (and a forthcoming book I’ll give you more details about soon!) And then last night we did an event together at the BBH office. As you can tell from the little halo above my head in the photo, I was on my best behaviour.

The evening was the first of a number of discussions organised by the School of Communication Arts focussed on the future of the advertising industry. Which, as you may know, is something I’m pretty interested in.

We were also lucky enough to be joined by the always-entertaining Robin Wight, founder of The Ideas Foundation and president of The Engine Group. And the room was filled with lots of other great advertising people, a representative from the Sector Skills Council and a number of star students from the school.

I wanted a record of the night, so I popped my digital recorder on the table for the duration of the event. So if you’ve got an hour and a half to spare, you can have a listen to what was discussed right here:

UPDATE: You can also see a film of it on the School of Communication Arts site right here

So here’s something I was involved in a few months ago with The Viral Factory. It’s a new charity I came up with for a VH1 show. It’s called ‘Give A Shit’ and it simply asks you to spend your time thinking about something worthwhile when you drop the kids off at the pool/rake out your cage/crimp a length/chop a log/lay some cable.

The video – starring some foxy bint from Twilight – tells you more. Or see the website here.

A couple of weeks back I sent an email I didn’t expect to get a response to. It was to the legendary Art Director, George Lois. And much to my surprise he responded and invited me around to his New York apartment to interview him for the podcast.

Wow! What a scoop!

George was right there at the creative revolution, working alongside Bill Bernbach. He is the hero of many of my heros. And his influence has been so great it’s spread well outside of the advertising industry.

There are so many things I want to ask him. But I don’t want to keep it all to myself.

What questions do you have for the great man?

Next up on my forthcoming interviews we have Sir John Hegarty.

Few people have had such an impact on British advertising as this man. And I’m over the moon that I’ve managed to grab some of his time.

I’ll be talking to him about his book. And asking him about the future of the industry.

But what would you like to ask him?

Fire away in the comments area.

I’ve got a bunch of incredible interviews coming up in the next few weeks. Truly incredible. I’m prodding some of my heros in the face with a microphone. And I want to make sure that I ask them the questions my listeners want answered.

So I’m asking for your help.

Please, use the comments section to tell me what you’d like to ask these advertising heros.

First off – Mr Steve Henry.

He’s responsible for so many campaigns I wish I had in my portfolio. And he’s one of the very loveliest people I know.

So what do you want to ask him? How he judges creative work? His opinions on the role of research? Who he thinks is producing the most amazing work at the moment?

Just add your questions below.

And stay tuned.

And I neglected to ask him what exciting stuff he was doing.

How rude of me!

The next morning he was up bright and early to be interviewed by Evan Davis on Radio4.

His life is clearly far more exciting than mine!

I’m not sure how long Radio4 keep their programmes online – so I cheekily snaffled it and put it here for your listening pleasure.

Enjoy!

Yesterday Marc Lewis and I received some stats on the online viewing figures for our 140 Characters pilot show.

It was considerably higher than we were expecting.

By a couple of thousand!

For all those who missed the show – and would like to see it again – we’re hoping to get it back up on 140characters.tv some time this week.

For those who tuned in on the night – thank you. We’re blown away by your support.

On Tuesday I announced that the podcast was now being sponsored by the School of Communication Arts. I may have mentioned that I’m really excited about it. If not, please understand that I am REALLY exited about it. And to celebrate the new tie-up, the students split into two teams and hit the streets with the guys from buymyface.com to drum up a few more listeners.

And here’s what happened.

Team 1 took Soho (accompanied by the amazing photographer Julian Hanford)

And team 2 took Shoreditch.

As you can see, they blagged their way into agencies. And this is how many each team succeeded in gaining access to:

Each team also tried a bit of tweeting. This is a record of their activity:

Both teams also tried a bit of underhand bullshitting. This is how I think they fared at that game:

And, from tracking the hits on the addresses I gave them, this is how many downloads each team succeeded in getting:

Can you tell who won?

We’ll, in this visual team 1 is ever so slightly ahead with 170 hits to 167.

But then I remembered that I had to adjust the figures. We had tested the URLs before the day to make sure they worked. And I needed to subtract the test hits to get the true figures. And that changed things ever so slightly to:

Team 1 >>> 161 hits

Team 2 >>> 162 hits

Yup! It couldn’t have been closer. There’s just one hit difference.

The most impressive thing is that their work has contributed to a whopping 804 podcast downloads in a day and a half. Which is considerably higher than the usual level.

Well done to all the students who took part. In particular I’d like to think the winning team of Sophie, Charlie, Elen, Thirza, Helen and Rasmus. Especially because they also succeeded in getting the podcast featured on It’s Nice That too.

There’s more podcast fun coming from the SCA2 students soon. They’ve also come up with a bunch of amazing ideas to promote the podcast to the industry. I’ll be telling you more about that stuff very soon.

This morning I launched Episode 8 of the Future of Advertising Podcast. And to celebrate the fact that it’s now sponsored by the School of Communication Arts, the students went out on the streets of London to drum up more listeners – accompanied by the guys from BuyMyFace.com

They split into two teams – with a unique web address and QR code each – and went in search of unsuspecting advertising people.

I won’t know how they’ve fared until my stats update at the witching hour. So, come the stroke of midnight, I’ll be checking to see which team won.

I’ll let you know on Thursday when I go into the school to announce the winners.

In the meantime, if you want to boost the stats for one of the teams, click on one of these two links to visit the download page:

getadditive.com/team1

getadditive.com/team2