An interview with David Howard, Head of planning at Fold7 advertising agency Whereabouts did you study? This question has the whiff of nepotism about it! Suffice to say I studied undergrad and postgrad courses in gloriously 'useless' arts subjects at a couple of UK universities, ancient and modern. How did you get your lucky break? Well, as you asked…I was at this party…I’d missed my graduate application deadline, I bent the ear of someone who was doing a graduate intake and they told me I could write a letter (pre-email I'm afraid!) explaining why I should be considered (I was better looking in those days) and I was hired as a 'research assistant'. I quickly discovered it was a made-up position that required me to read decks and data that no one else could be bothered with. Oh the glamour… What’s life like at Fold7 and how would someone go about landing a job at the advertising agency? We are a young company – we’re a few years along but we still have that start-up mentality. We want to excel at everything we do as an advertising agency in London and want all of our clients to believe their investment in us is more than justified. As a team, we always set ourselves high standards, which means no one at Fold7 just 'comes to work'. It is a very energetic place and everyone gets to have a view on the work, which after all, is what it’s all about. Getting a job at Fold7 is all about demonstrating the same kind of 'us against the rest of the world' mentality and being clear about what skills you would bring to the advertising agency. Which advertising campaign stands out for you?
I'm a planner so maybe I take a different kind of satisfaction from campaigns. Generally the kind of work that stands out for me is where consumers have been successfully encouraged to look at a very familiar brand and/or category in a completely new way. The Somersby Cider advert is a good example of that at Fold7. How would you sum up the differences between small and large advertising agencies in London? Advertising is a synthesis of the artisanal and the manufactured. In my experience, brilliant and passionate people, who are committed to what they do; populate all creative advertising agencies, large and small. In some instances, in some of the larger agencies this 'manufactured' aspect of our trade appears to have been 'encouraged' to mutate into 'mass production' with accompanying 'alienation of labour'. This would be a definite difference. (NB: Umberto Eco, author, academic and all round clever Italian guy has stated that The Communist Manifesto should be required reading for all advertising agencies. As an exercise in masterful polemic it certainly gets its idea across). What’s your method of tackling a brief / challenge? Great question. I don't have a set method per se but I do have two habits concerning how I work. The first is kind of a watch-out. I call it 'situationalising' for short. It is where I might have made a thorough job of describing consumer attitudes, product features, sector landscape, competitor propositions etc. without ascribing enough effort to the implications of all of these. It sounds really obvious but I have sat in a few clients’ 'strategy sessions' that have fallen into this trap. The second is I am a really big believer in 'low order processing'. Where the brain is allowed to chew on a problem whilst doing other things (like playing table tennis!) As long as you genuinely want to crack the problem,
your very own 'miracle muscle' will keep on wrangling. Do you have any personal rules or motto? A previous boss of mine (he knows who he is) once suggested I kept a piece of paper in my pocket at all times with the phrase "the client might be right" written on it. I have done so ever since. The other one I have kept close came from a hoary old automotive client who once pithily pointed out to me that "marketing was a term invented to get graduates into sales". We are here to sell stuff. There, I've said it. What do you know now that you wish you had known at 21? That 2003/ 2004 would be Arsenal's 'invincible' season. If you would like to find out more information about David and the rest of the Fold7 team, click here.