French Fries Oamp;M

Neil French is one of the most famous creative directors in the world. He has worked in agencies in Asia, Europe and America. And his ads have won more international awards than almost anybody else8217;s. He has held numerous jobs outside advertising as well. Pretty creative ones at that. Hewas the manager of the British rock group Judas Priest, for example. His resume also lists quot;bullfighterquot; under positions held. Other details: He8217;s fifty-plus, likes to dress like a biker, is balding but sports a pony tail.

And, of course, he sometimes carries a riding crop. So now readers have a fair picture of the man leading our Sariska Workshop. He kicked off proceedings by saying he wasn8217;t there to make friends we would have guessed anyway but to improve our work. And that he would judge things by international standards. He was tired, he said, of seeing Indian ads being dismissed by international award juries as quot;not bad for Indiaquot;.

French went on to remind us that ads were unwelcome visitors in people8217;s lives. On seeing a typical ad, a consumer8217;s guard goes up, automatically. The only way to get around it is to make an ad as unlike a typical ad as possible. And he had an ostensibly simple way of achieving this 8212; start with a great idea and express it with as few elements as possible.

Whichbrings us to the questions: How many elements must an ad have? Most people would answer four 8212; headline, picture, copy and logo. But Neil believes it could be as few as one. And most of the world8217;s best ads have less than three elements. A case in point is Neil8217;s own campaign for Chivas Regal.

The ads, which broke every rule of booze advertising, were designed to appeal to the Chinese drinker. This target audience is the very personification of arrogance, so the campaign matched the consumer. And of course they complied with Neil8217;s definition of brilliant advertising: Most of the ads had a single element.

Take one example. The ad was a rectangle of white space. And about a third of the way down it were seven lines of copy: quot;This is an advertisement for Chivas Regal. If you need to see the bottle, you obviously don8217;t move in the right social circles. If you need to taste it, you just don8217;t have the experience to appreciate it. If you need to know what it costs, turn the page young man.quot; That8217;s all the adsaid. No logo. No picture. No headline.

Nothing else. There were 12 ads in all in this campaign. And they were so successful, the last ad didn8217;t even have to mention the brand name! Most clients here would have a fit at the mere suggestion of an ad like that.Going through our recent and forthcoming campaigns, Neil verbally ripped apart the ones he didn8217;t like. But if he liked a piece of work, he suggested how it could be made even better 8212; pointing things out with the aid of his riding crop! Amongst work that he praised were press campaigns for the Discovery Channel, Foster8217;s Beer and Asahi Float Glass.

But this praise, coming as it did after his ruthless demolition of some of our most precious little darlings, seemed 8212; to quote another of Neil8217;s celebrated headlines 8212; merely to be quot;A few encouraging words for the totally incompetent.quot;

Thank you, Mr French. A hard man is indeed good to find.

Sumanto Chattopadhyay is associate creative director, Ogilvy amp; Mather Advertising. His opinions,however, are not necessarily shared by his employers.