“The Best Advertising Is Always In Conflict”: Tony Hale

Advertising is one hell of a drug – just ask anyone in the industry. And that’s exactly what we did. B&T sat down exclusively with The Communications Council CEO Tony Hale to talk about what makes Adland such a fantastic place to be.

“It’s a strange world, advertising. It’s unpredictable and you go into areas that you could never dream of and you could never plan for, which is one of the reasons it’s so fascinating,” Hale said.

“You go into advertising in the morning and know that you might be talking about banks, then talking about chicken, then do something for McDonalds or something else, and you know it’s going to change half a dozen times a day but you don’t know where those paths are going to take you.

“You get on a journey where you don’t know where it’s going to take you. Most industries, you’re on a journey, and you know you’re on the tracks, you know where the stations are, you know where the platforms are, but advertising is much more of a rollercoaster and you never quite know.

“There’s a lot of sharps turns, twists, climbs, drops, and you’ve got to enjoy it along the way because you’ve got to take a lot of good with the bad.

“When you’re in an agency, you were only successful if you were a tightly knit team. When you’re in a team you’re in a situation of contest. You know that over the road you’ve got DDB or you’ve got Saatchi & Saatchi, or you’ve got JWT or you’ve got the McCanns or you’ve got the great independents like Mojo, and you knew you had to be at your best to beat them.

“Advertising comes out of a conflict of ideas and viewpoints. The best advertising is always in conflict, don’t think it’s smooth. It’s not. It’s a conflicting process and you need passionate people expressing a viewpoint of how they see things in a passionate way. And there’s an undercurrent of tension in all good campaigns.

“I’ve always thought, and I still think, that advertising collects the most immensely talented people that you could ever find anywhere. I’d put up the advertising intellect against any industry intellect anywhere. I just think we’d leave them for dead.”

And if you’re keen to see what else Hale has to say, or any of his ‘Industry Elder’ peers for that matter, check out the latest issue of B&T , brimming with industry insights and pearls of wisdom.

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