My Biggest Lesson: Neil Dawson

Neil is a multi award-winning creative director with over 30 years experience in the advertising business. He was the first CD to win back-to-back Grands Prix at the Cannes Advertising Festival. His VW Wedding ad is the most awarded print ad in advertising history.

Neil has creatively led many international accounts in his career including Johnnie Walker, Philips, Bacardi and Nissan.

In 2011 he founded BETC London for Havas. Neil is well travelled having worked in New York, Berlin, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Dublin and London.

In 2019 Neil started his own business and amongst other accounts has been creating global work for ASICS. A passionate advocate of creating emotional connections between brands and consumers, he has just completed the feature documentary, Mind Games - The Experiment for ASICS. It is streaming now on Amazon Prime.

I’d like to be clear up front that I’ve made more than my fair share of mistakes in my career. Loads in fact. 

From losing £11,000 (a lot of cash back in 1989) on my first failed photographic shoot to trying to explain my role to Michael Winner.

But there have also been significant moments I’ve got right by doing what we ask clients to do all the time – To trust one’s gut.

It occurred to me that many of these moments were preceded by a naysayer giving their ten pence worth. This of course meant that succeeding was all the sweeter.

Mine started very early in my career. My first TV brief ever. As it landed on my and my writers (the very talented Richard Russell) desk we were quickly told by some old lag, “You’ll never do anything good on that, it’s P&G…”

Richard and I were frankly too excited and naïve to listen to that old guff. We had a TV brief for Biactol Facewash and we were going to give it our all. And blow me if we didn’t come with an idea that was not only liked by our ECD (the very scary Dawson Yeoman) but was also an idea the client couldn’t not buy, as it was based on their own side-by-side test.

We were off into production! Our producer, the very handsome Graham Light, asked who we would like to shoot our lovely ad and we simply & naively said, “Doesn’t Paul Weiland do funny? Let’s ask him”.

Cue another naysayer, the Welsh fella from the next door office…”You may as well ask Spielberg.” It was meant in jest and we chuckled but Graham went ahead and contacted the Paul Weiland Film Company. Together with Paul and a fledgling post house called Framestore we created P&G’s most successful ad ever. Only destined for the UK it ran across continents and also picked up a few awards along the way. Fortunately it wasn’t just us who had filtered out the naysayers – We found out later that the day before the shoot a senior account lady had implored Dawson to pull the shoot, believing it was going to be a ‘total disaster’…

Not too many years after this I was getting itchy feet. Now working with Clive Pickering and after seeing a certain BMW Mouse ad we set our sights on moving to South Africa on the eve of their first elections.

I had visited SA in the late '80s with a school pal and his family. They are of mixed race so I travelled the country meeting his huge family and seeing the Non White side of life. A year or so later I was able to welcome my pal to the new, democratic South Africa.

No one left the London Ad scene….Going up to Manchester was seen as going into the wilderness so Joburg looked like madness to most of our colleagues. In fact at our leaving lunch my senior Art Director told me firmly, “You’ll never work in London again…”

Don’t get me wrong, I was a little bit nervous. I thought he might be right. But there was no going back. After an ‘hilarious’ leaving speech from our ECD, Giles Keeble we headed to SA for three years that transformed us and our careers. We returned and got a job at BMPDDB (Now Adam & Eve) thanks to the gorgeous Jeremy Craigen & Tony Cox. Our first brief was VW Surprisingly Ordinary Prices.

In 2001 BBH came calling, asking us to run the Johnnie Walker account. KEEP WALKING was in its infancy and struggling to get to its feet.

We were so very happy at BMPDDB so it was a bit of a wrench. But we relished the challenge. Many folk, (this time with our best interests at heart) tried to talk us out of it. And to be fair they were right in that the culture did not suit us. The BMPDDB way was the only thing that mattered was the work. This was something different.

What surprised us more was the number of naysayers in our new department. Many thought we were nuts to join to work on Johnnie Walker!

The words, “You’ll never get any good work out on that account” was ringing in my ears once more.

After trying (and failing) to coax work out of multiple teams we realised that we would have to lead by example as we truly believed KEEP WALKING could be good.  

We wrote ‘Fish’. Then with the help of Danny Kleinman and a hugely successful post house called Framestore we created a film that rebooted (I’m here all week) KEEP WALKING and ran in over 100 markets.  

Cut now to 2004 and I’m a creative director at Ogilvy in the Wharf. My first gig as a solo CD. I was happy and created award winning work for Harrods British Tailoring Room, Lucozade and even BP.

And then I got a call from Jeremy Craigen at what was now DDB London. The global ECD gig for Philips was up for grabs. I asked around and everyone said I should run a mile. But my gut felt differently. Philips made some decent products. The clients were demanding change. And I would be supported by Jeremy in London and Bob Scarpelli in Chicago. Five very happy years later we had won multiple Lions including back to back Grands Prix. Trusting my gut had paid off once more.

My last example wasn’t my gut but that of a dedicated account lady on her way to a client meeting to secure the budget to make Cow & Gate Supergroup. This ad involved letting a multitude of kids loose with musical instruments in a recording studio. Halfway to Trowbridge she gets a panic-y call from the senior planner. “I think they should have toy instruments. And the MD agrees with me…”

Despite being put under this pressure she went with her gut feel. She felt that toy instruments would have ruined the concept. And she was right. She stuck to her guns and the result was one of my most favourite ads I’ve been involved in.

As I said up front, I have made more than my share of mistakes over the years. However, trusting my gut has served me extremely well too. Ignore it at your peril.