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Assorted Nuts

Assorted Nuts: "There's no magic in what advertisers do any more" claims Another Film Company director Jeff Stark

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By Gillian West, Social media manager

April 16, 2014 | 5 min read

“There is no magic about what advertisers do anymore,” warned Jeff Stark, director of Another Film Company and one of those featured in the upcoming Assorted Nuts coffee table book featuring some of the greatest creative minds in the UK.

Prior to the release of Julian Hanford’s Assorted Nuts, commissioned by The Drum and featuring exclusive portraits of some of the UK’s top creative minds, The Drum has released an interview with Stark conducted by editor at large, Dave Birss.

Speaking of his early career Stark revealed he went into advertising with a “youthful mixture of huge self-confidence mixed with low self-worth” and managed to wing his way through an interview to be the assistant to the advertising manager at Curry’s with a faux-Sean Connery accent. After realising he’d “gone into the right industry but through the wrong door” Stark moved to a small ad agency before moving into the wold of mail order, something which he describes as “like National Service for copywriters”.

After a number of years freelancing at the age of 33 Stark landed a break at Saatchi & Saatchi, learning the “Saatchi way of writing an ad” and sussing out that it was “all shock value” before being paired with Paul Arden and in 1982 he left to form Hedger Mitchell Stark which he later sold to Saatchi & Saatchi after a personal invite back from Charles Saatchi himself.

“He [Charles Saatchi] phoned me and he said he wanted me to come back, I told him I couldn’t really do that as I had 40 people here and we we’re doing ok, I was also a shareholder who owned a third of the agency so he said ‘OK we’ll buy it, we’ll give them all jobs’.

“I always said I wanted to get out of the business at 45 and the reason for that was because when I joined the business in the 60s there were all these guys in the 40s who were wearing bow ties with carnations in their button holes and they were just relics from another era. I thought I’m not going to become one of them…I always wanted to sail round the world…I got halfway round and I got really bored of sailing and realised I had more fun making the money than I was spending it.”

Having worked as a director for more than 20 years Stark has seen the industry change first hand and believes “you can’t be a temperamental genius anymore” as “clients are less in awe and less reverential about what we [advertisers] do.” He added: “There has been a demystification of what we do which has consequently devalued our contribution. There isn’t the respect and reverence for what we do anymore, plus above-the-line advertising is no longer the nuclear weapon it once was.

“Plurality is changing everything, the creative person in the advertising agency, the hot shot writer, is no longer the kingpin that he once was.”

Of the industry’s future Stark predicts the demise of the traditional full-service advertising agency as “clients will buy in a more ad hoc way”.

“It will become more and more a jobbing business and the role of account handling will be done within the clients’ organisation…it follows on from what I was saying about there no longer being a respect and reverence for what we do…people aren’t prepared to pay big dosh for what we bring to the party anymore.”

On that note Stark advises young creatives to consider other avenues for success with “the media industry representing 10 per cent of the whole economy but it is what 90 per cent of bright young people are trying to get into,” he stated.

“I wouldn’t bother with advertising; it’s oversubscribed…if you’re truly creative advertising is not that special.”

See here for more information on Assorted Nuts, which also features creatives such as Flo Heiss, Adam Kean and Sir John Hegarty.

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