Episode 22 Paul Catmur is interviewed by Richard Maddocks

Having interviewed much of New Zealand advertising royalty over the years the tables are turned as creative legend and former agency owner Richard Maddocks interviews Paul Catmur. 

This was prompted by the recent launch of his novel, The Gutter Bar, but don’t worry it’s not solely about self-promotion. Richard probes into Paul's chequered past to find out what he was doing in a Bahamas casino, how come he ended up living in New Zealand, what the court case in Australia was  about, his connection with The Tiger King, and some of the biggest disasters of his career. Paul anticipates you’ll enjoy the disasters.

Richard and Paul tend to get quite animated when they catch up so the podcast is quite long, but hopefully you’ll find their rambling to be entertaining. This was Richard's first time as interviewer so it’s all his fault. You can always listen in two glorious sittings.

And, to paraphrase Chairman Mao, the podcast of a thousand minutes starts with a single ear, so please dive in.

Beginning at Y&R London in 1990, Paul made his way down to New Zealand in 2000 where he's worked for the best part of 25 years. He was the creative lead at DDB New Zealand, later extended across Asia Pacific. He's had a short-lived move over to George Patterson Y&R Melbourne before returning to New Zealand co-founding Barnes, Catmur and Friends with Daniel Barnes in 2008, which they later sold to Dentsu finishing up in 2020. He now lives near Matakana spending his time writing, fishing and dog walking. His first novel The Gutter Bar was published in December 2025.

Name checks, in no particular order, go to Mike O’Sullivan, Pete Thompson, Marty O’Halloran, Paul Middleditch, Anita Davis, Russel Howcroft, Sharon Henderson, Jon Ramage, Daniel Barnes, Nick Gallagher, Rob Longuet, Brad Stratton, Kath Watson, Jack Vaughn, John Banks, Rupert Howell, Toby Talbot, Andy Blood, Nick Worthington, Mike Watson, Peter Masterton, Bridget Taylor, Regan Grafton, Tim Lindsay, Jerry Judge, Mike Babich, Dave Trott, Jeneal Rohrback, Paul Ardern, Charles Dickens.

Transcript

Paul Catmur interviewed by Richard Maddocks transcript

January 2016

Hello everyone and welcome to a long delayed edition of the Truth and Soul podcast, which is kind of vaguely about New Zealand advertising and everything. [...] We've been delayed for a few years mainly because of COVID, various illnesses and general laziness which has come over the extensive Truth and Soul podcast crew, [...] i.e. me. But we have a very special edition today because I have a book to promote called The Gutter Bar which is great and available in all good Amazon stores and also Unity Bookstores, hopefully by the time you read this. [...] And I was going to get Graham Norton to interview me because that's generally what you do when you have a book out, you have to appear on the Graham Norton show but unfortunately he's unavailable. So I've ended up with Richard Maddox who has foolishly agreed to step in. He's Australian rather than Irish and not remotely funny which doesn't help either. But we'll do what we can. In case you don't know Rich, he's Australian. He's one of the most talented ad people that I have ever worked with. Previously, ECD of Colenso of Cleminger and Sydney and then Shine in Auckland which then became Bastion Shine and he ran away to do podcasts with me. And the format is a little different as he is going to interview me. I don't know what he's going to say. I deliberately said to him, Don't tell me all the questions beforehand because it could be amusing. So Rich, welcome to Truth and Soul podcast.

Thank you Paul, thank you for having me. I will now take over as the host of this podcast.

Excellent.

Okay. My esteemed guest Paul Capma has led a fascinating and incredibly successful career spanning over four decades. Beginning at YNR London in 1990, before the turn of the century, he made his way down to little old New Zealand where he's been a major and much respected and loved figure in the Australasian advertising industry for the best part of 25 years. Firstly as the creative lead at DDB New Zealand and later Asia Pacific in the early and mid-2000s, what a time. He's had a short-lived move over to YNR in Australasia, which we will cover today. Before he co-founded Barnes, Capma and Friends with Daniel Barnes in 2008 which they later sold to Dentsu in 2016.

[...]

Along with a host of award-winning and iconic work, he's collaborated with such famous names such as Harry Enfield, Pamela Anderson, Peter Cook, Kelsey Grammar, Shane Warren, Terry Gilliam and Darren Wonkham, among many others. He has lived a rich and interesting life. He has dabbled in James Bond cosplay driving around Auckland in an Aston Martin. He's been a Croupier in the Bahamas. He's traversed the Camino Trail. He overcame a terrible childhood tragedy when a well-meaning neighbour took him to see the Queen's Park Rangers play, forcing him to support them for the rest of his life. He single-handedly did his very best to keep Ponsonby Restaurant SPQR in the black. And he was the owner of Auckland's most famous and loved advertising dog George Jr. The Staffy. No offence, Monty. Outside all of this, he's had a host of articles and opinion pieces because he's not a short of an opinion, published in everything from travel magazines New Zealand Herald the Listener. He's written screenplays and now he's published his debut novel The Gutter Bar, which is, as you'd expect, laugh out loud, funny and takes no prisoners. Today is our chance to meet the man behind the famous beaming smile. He is happily retired so he can talk as freely as he likes. So welcome, Paul. Thank you so much for doing this interview, which was entirely your idea.

Thanks, Rich. I think that's great. I think we'll just stop there, shall we? Yeah, we should actually.

On a high. On a high. So you started in 1990 and like most goods or a lot of great advertising people, it took you a while to get into advertising. It wasn't a direct route. You finished high school in 1978. Is this correct?

Yeah, give or take.

Yeah, give or take. Yeah. You didn't start in advertising until 1999. So tell me about the missing 12 years. What happened?

Well, my father used to work in advertising. So that was how I knew that it existed as a job. But unfortunately, he got made redundant in the early 70s, which was a time when people didn't get made redundant. [...] And whilst I thought from the side, it sounded like a good thing to do, he kind of didn't encourage me remotely. In fact, wore me against it because I think it was a bit better back in five. So I went, oh, well, I can't. Advertising is an option. So I'll go and do other things and did university and casinos and whatever. Until finally I went, maybe I should give that that advertising thing a shot.

OK, so you studied politics from you went from high school and studied politics.

Correct ?Politics at Southampton University. Yes. Four years. Three years.

Three years. You finished that and then you went, what am I going to do with my life? You chose to do?

Well, I would say chose to. The early 80s was not a great time in England. And most people who go through university either have something in mind is what they're going to do when they finish or they pretend that they do. And I want to do retail management. I'm going to go into that. I wouldn't be a accountant or whatever. And I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I just knew that I didn't want to do either of those things. So I came out of university unemployed and ended up taking a job in a casino as a croupier because it was something to do.

Right. In London.

In London, yes. Sportsman club in Tottenham Court Road.

OK. Was that fun?

[...] It's a weird job. It was kind of fun. Worked with a lot of great people. A bunch of whom are still mates of mine. One of whom actually lives in New Zealand and we had a bit. Shout out to the Welsh windbag. Gideante. [...] And it's... You learn an awful lot. You learn to avoid gambling. You learn about human greed. And you work funny hours.

OK. And then you went to the Bahamas from that. Yeah.

I'd worked for three and a half years in the London casino. I was bored out of my brain. So it's kind of a fun thing to do for one night, but not for every night. And I thought the shock way to get out of it would be just to leave. And this is something that I've kind of done several times through my life. If you're not happy with what you're doing, you just have to jump and go and stop doing it. And I went up to the Bahamas because I thought, well, it'll be an experience. I may love it and live there for the rest of my life, or I might spend a year or so there and get some money together and option B presented.

Right. OK. So you made some money over there. Yes. OK. And what age are you now? You finished.

I was about 28.

OK. So are you a doer? It's like, I better get on with my life and do something proper. Yeah.

It was very frustrating to work in a casino because I was convinced I could do something more interesting. And I had something else to offer the world and dealing craps to dunk Americans in the Bahamas. Yeah. And so I'd saved up enough money from working over there because the money wasn't bad. You weren't allowed to have a bank account as you were a foreigner. So I literally used to take cash and shove it in a safety deposit box. Right. And after a year, I got enough money that I reckon I could go back to the UK and I could spend a year doing whatever I wanted. Right. With that money. So I kind of invested investing in myself. Yep. Because there were some of the guys out there were just buying flash cars and gold jewellery and going off to Las Vegas and going to a casino in their time off. And I thought this was mental. I just used it as a stepping stone. So I had two things that I thought I could do. One was to go to Greek Islands and write a book. Yeah. Because I thought that would be a good thing to do. And the other one was to go to advertising college in London and probably luckily for myself and everyone else I chose to go to advertising college in London. Okay.

So are you writing at this point? Are you doing any writing at all? Or are you just an avid reader who has a passion for writing? You've kind of always wanted to do this.

Well, I bought a typewriter when I was in the Bahamas and tried to teach myself to touch type. But my manual dexterity is terrible. And that wasn't very successful. And thank God for computers because it wasn't until PCs came out that I could start to do. So yeah, I actually wrote a couple of articles for the local paper in the Bahamas in Freeport Bahamas. [...] But I kind of shelved all the proper writing to write ads for a while.

Okay. Was it hard to get into advertising college? Or do you just have to pay money?

I don't know is the answer to that. I went to the School of Communication Arts and I ended up going like a month just because of the time I had to get back in the UK. It was like a month before the college started. And I applied and I did something vaguely creative. I made ads for myself and sent them along. And the guy who run the school, John Gillard, who was very famous at the time as a teacher in London advertising, he immediately said, Great, you'd start in a month. Now, I don't know if that's because they didn't have anyone else or because he spotted some genius in my application.

Yes, okay. So you hear advertising college at 28, 29. You're by far the oldest person in the room.

I wasn't actually. I was on there definitely one of the older ones, but I think I was the oldest.

Okay, so there's a real mix of people in there. Is it a two-year course?

One year.

What do they teach you? What are they actually teaching you? Teaching you how to think? What are they teaching you techniques? So what are they doing?

It's a very good course and an immediate design school course in New Zealand, I believe, was originally based on that course. It may differ from now. [...] It taught you everything. It was very general. I mean, the first day you turn up, you're like rearing to go doing ads. And I think they spent the first week teaching you how to write a brief. Oh. And at the time, I'm like, you know, I don't need to do this shit. I just, you know, just I want to write some funky ads. But looking back on it, that was such a worthwhile exercise. [...] And I, you know, I've subsequently written briefs throughout my life, or dare I say rewritten them. Yes. Sorry, planners.

Yes, we are going to talk about planners a bit later. Okay. Yep. And so you met Michael O’Sullivan there.

Yeah, Michael O’Sullivan, who Rich and I both know, who was actually on Truth and Soul podcast. She's going to have a listen to that one. [...] So he was from Ireland / Northern Ireland. And we met at college. She was about seven years younger than me. He was an art director and I was a writer. And we saw something. I think we were, we both had an ambition to work hard and to, and to get on. And we met up at college and we ended up working together for five, six years.

So you, so during your year at college with Mike, you went, let's team up, let's become a team. You finished college. Yep. This is post the 87 crash, right? So you think, what's the economy like?

Well, it's kind of interesting. The economy was terrible. Yeah. And we went to Y&R London on the placement, which at times a big agency like 300 odd people. [...] And the luckiest thing ever happened to us, which was the week we were there, they fired a whole bunch of people. What? [...] And suddenly, suddenly, and the people, people were very lazy in those days. And the people who'd left had all these jobs that were half done. And nobody else, none of the senior people wanted to go and do those jobs. But Mike and I would just do anything. We didn't care. We were in an agency and we would do what we could. So we swept up all the nonsense and just worked on everything and made ourselves useful. [...]

So I started in the 90s as well. And everyone was walking around going, you missed out on the 80s. The 80s were an amazing time, dadada. But I looked back on the 90s and the 90s were incredible. I mean, they were opulent compared to now. But you obviously walked in and you and Mike were desperate.

Yes. [...] I just, I set out to get a job in advertising. And the day we were hired, the day that created director, Jack Vaughan, was actually Australian. Oh, Jack Vaughan? Jack Vaughan. The day that he came in and hired us, I said to Mike, I felt like resigning. I felt like, well, I've done that. Yeah. It's very hard to get a job in London advertising. One of the better teams that we were at college with took them three years to get a job at all. But part of that was because they wanted to go to a really good agency. And Mike and I weren't worried. We just wanted to go to an agency.

An agency. What was your salary? Do you remember your starting salary?

Well, we're, we actually got a rate. We run like a weekly, you know, bus fare money of I think maybe 50 quid. And Jack Vaughan at one point gave us a rise and I think we were maybe on a hundred. We were only supposed to be there for three weeks. Yeah. But I went in to, with Mike, Mike was very reluctant to do it. I went in to see, we went to see Jack Vaughan and showed him to work. And I said, by the way, we're supposed to go on Monday. Can we stay? [...] And Jack was a nice, nice guy. And he said, well, you know, you guys have done very well and everyone says you're all right. But we haven't really got any room for you. [...] And I said, well, there's a photocopy room which has no windows and we don't mind. We're quite happy to stay there. Brilliant. And that was a kind of useful lesson to myself that, you know, he put an obstacle. If he'd just gone, well, I'm sorry, no, we can't really do it. There's nothing we could do. But if he goes, we can't do it because there's no room. And we go, well, actually there is room. And he didn't have any comeback. [...] And it ended up being there for nine years or something. Wow. And that, yeah.

So Y&R you said other people wanted to go to a great agency or a good agency? Where was Y&R? I said, what was its reputation like?

It was at the time, I think the second biggest agency in London. Right. So it was massive, but had media in it.

It had direct. Yeah. Had the whole thing.

Yeah. Direct was a bit, a bit separate. But yes, it had media. But just after we joined the CEO was a guy called John Banks resigned. [...] And just before we'd got there, Rupert Howell, who was the head of new business, resigned to start up Howell Henry Childercrop, Laurie HXCL, which the people then advertising as one of the most famous agencies ever. [...] So and Y&R after that went into a free fall. And for the next all the time I was there nine years, it just got smaller and smaller. It was like the carcass of a whale being pecked at by sharks. And it didn't, it didn't have a great reputation. So we were always more analogous swimming against the tide trying to get great work out.

Were you, so were you trying to get out while you were there?

Yes. We got, we did reasonably well. Yeah. [...] For a young, cheap team. But I think in London there was a, there were big stigmas about where you were. And any work out of Y&R or any people out of Y&R was looked down on. Yeah. If I'm sure if we'd done the same work at BBH we, we, you know, could maybe have got a good job somewhere. But we just couldn't find anyone who was, you know, impressed enough or wanted to take a chance. And I think it became over the next nine years. My general position was too good to fire, but not good enough to hire anywhere else. [...]

Interesting. So are you and my scrapping for good briefs? Are you just doing the kind of hard work on the side? Where's your, where are you guys at when you're starting and when do you start to start getting work out? And people go, Oh, actually they're really useful. They're doing well.

[...] From, from the word go, I think I was in the, in the coffee room after three or four weeks and a guy came up to me and you know, you're, you then you're trying to, you know, make friends. And I said, Oh, you know, so what do you think we have to do to get on in the business? And he was an experienced copywriter and he said, Well, I think, I think you need to get a piece of work out. I went, Oh, right. I said, we've got about six out already. And he didn't believe me. And they weren’t great ads, but they were ads. They were things that needed doing. And Mike and I were bottom feeders. We would, in a big agency like that with massive client, there's always a few little briefs that the senior teams don't want to do. And we do them and do a reasonable job on them. And we always made a point to try and get on with the rest of the agency and whatever department, because we knew that they all talked and if we were helpful to the suits, then they'd say, Hey, you should go and talk to these guys and they'll help you out as opposed to the kind of prevalent arrogance that creative sometimes get and towards other members of staff.

Yes, absolutely.

It's not always good. Yeah.

And during this time, so you start to make TV ads, you start like you did something for the Honey Monster, I believe. Yeah.

Well, I mean, Honey Monster was a big, originally done by John Webster, I think that at BMP was a kind of creation for a kids cereal. And I think the team that used to do it at Y&R and I either got fed up with doing it or had left and somebody suggested that we do it. And so Mike and I worked on the Honey Monster for, I don't know, three or four years and we'd produce a number of ads and we kind of set the tone for modernising the Honey Monster. I think it's still going today.

Yeah, I actually did some research, Paul. You'd be very impressed. But it's not called the, they've called, oh no, they changed the name of the serial from Sugar Puffs or something to Honey Monster Puffs or something because no one likes sugar anymore.

No. Yeah. [...]

So you're doing well, you're getting work out. You're not winning a war. This isn't award-winning work though. This is just good, solid work.

We had one of few things. We've got a few things in D&A. The Magnet Bitter, which was a billboard for a beer called Magnet. And we stuck a photo of a big pint of beer and then we went around and stuck bits of metal to it. The 3D and that got a few awards. And we did other bits of pieces that, [...] yeah, we've got a few things in D&A. D&A and other shows around the world but not massive now.

No, no, but I mean, that sounds like you're doing really well. How did you and Mike work? Are you a writer who sits there by himself and then says to Mike, Just be quiet. I need to think. And then you present him with work or are you collaborating? Are you chatting all the time? What's going on?

Well, we would sit in a room and he would be smoking probably.

I was going to say, you both smoke cigarettes, right?

Yeah, those are glorious days where you could smoke all day. And one of us would come up with an idea and go, What about this? And the other one would go, Know that shit. And then it would reverse and the other one would say, I've got an idea. And the other one would say that shit. And that would go on for about two weeks. And then we'd go, Well, we've got to go and see the creative director tomorrow. So we'd just get the pieces of work that we thought were least shit and go and then show them. Yeah. And then whatever the creative director go, we didn't go, I told you so or anything. We'd just go, Right, okay, that's it. Off we go. Yeah, brilliant.

Now, at some point, mid-90s, I'm thinking, you and Mike make a decision jointly to come down to Y&R, New Zealand. So how did that come about?

[...] Y&R used to have an internet global conference every year. Yeah. And they would pick all the work from around the network. They had the best TV ad, best press ad, best billboard, best radio ad. Of course, there was no digital in those days. [...] So, you know, we're in London one night and I got rang up at three o'clock in the morning or something by somebody, oh, I didn't know, in somewhere I didn't know, going, Oh, you've won the best radio ad in the Y&R world.

Sorry, on your landline at home.

Yeah, [...] yeah. And they go, Oh, yeah. And they go, Yes, congratulations. I'm like, I've got no idea what this means. And they said, Right, you need to come to Mexico by Thursday afternoon to pick up your award. Brilliant. And I'm like, Well, how do we get there? Yeah, absolutely. We didn't really have enough money to fly to Mexico. So they said, Oh, don't worry about that. Just go and talk to someone in the agency and they'll organise it for you. So, and this actually happened two years in a row, [...] which for a junior team from London, we won Best Billboard one year. And the next year we won Best Radio Campaign. It was a pretty good achievement anyway. So within the Y&R network. And so we went out to Mexico to Cancun, which word of travel advice, don't go there. And we met a guy called Rick Woodruff, who is the only old New Zealand advertising people here they might know. And he said to Mike and I over a pint or two of tequila in the hotel bar that they were looking for a young team, which we're just about qualified as. And we thought, well, we're not, you know, London, we just couldn't get on. We were doing okay, but we couldn't get into the next level. So we thought, even though we knew absolutely nothing about New Zealand, we went, Oh yeah, we'll give that a go. And so Mike came out.

Wait a minute.

[...] Mike came out, my girlfriend at the time when I don't want to go to New Zealand, [...] Much to my surprise, because I thought she wanted to go traveling. So Mike came out on his own and I didn't go.

So when did you pull out like a week before?

So what happened?

Because that's what Mike tells us.

Maybe two weeks. [...] It was, I just, well, I just, you know, very attached to my girlfriend. And I was going to go anyway. But the, I said to myself, If the flight was in an hour, the flight was going an hour. I could not physically get on the plane. And I go, Well, you know, the flight's in a month. If I feel like that, then it's going to be disaster. So I can't go. So I went into Mike and said, Look, I'm sorry about this. But so he wasn't too impressed.

Mike tells a story when he came down to Y&R, Auckland and it was somewhere on the North Shore and they put him up in a tiny little motel and it was pissing down rain, rain for a week. And he was both cursing you and himself going, What the hell have I done with my life? I've left the centre of advertising and I've come down to Little Old New Zealand. And I don't think Y&R, Auckland was a terribly impressive place or exciting, but all's well that ends well. All's well that ends well.

Well, we were very lucky because when we came, I didn't come down for five years after that, but we came down and suddenly New Zealand started to take off. I'm not saying that we made it take off, but New Zealand as a whole, to a large extent, I think due to the internet, [...] it was an English-speaking country that people could understand culturally and you could share all the work you were doing. So we knew what everyone else was doing around the world. Everyone else could see us and they could understand the work and other people like Toby Tolbit, Andy Blood, Nick Worthington [...] and yourself, Rich, New Zealand started to really hum. Absolutely.

So just before we get off Y&R, London, you then teamed up with Anita?

Anita Davis, yeah.

And you did some really good work with her. You spent the next four or five years working with her. One of the campaigns you did was for Schweppes. Can you just tell us about how that came about? Because that ad preceded you as you came down. I remember my girlfriend at the time saying, Why can't you do ads like that?

Yeah, we're still waiting.

Yeah, we're still waiting.

But that was a pitch and we were called in about two weeks before the pitch, a global pitch for Schweppes. So it was a big deal. And we were kind of a solid, we were seeing that she was much more senior than me, but we were seen as a solid, but not brilliant team, I think. [...] We were called in two weeks before the pitch and said, Can you have a go at this? Yeah. We came up with the obvious idea of a, it was a talking cheetah originally, because it had to be global. So everyone had to understand it around the world. So you end up with cultural sensitivities around people. And we went, Well, if we have animals, good old advertising comedy animals, you're away. So we wrote a campaign with the cheetah. We then found out when we were asked to do it that cheetahs can't act, but leopards can. So we had to change it to a leopard. [...] And bizarrely, it doesn't happen often, but the work that won the pitch was made. And the next thing we know, Anita and I were going off to Florida for two weeks, working with a whole bunch of animals, [...] filming, Clyde the Leopard.

And someone from the Tiger, is it the Tiger King? Was that his name?

Yeah.

The Netflix series.

Yeah. [...] He's been the Tiger King. He's got, he's got, he's a large guy with a beard and a ponytail. [...] And yeah, he was the animal wrangler. He was in charge of most of the, I mean, we were sitting there, we had giraffes, leopards, the boons, lion cubs.

There's an elephant in the ad.

Zebra, crocodiles. It was, it was amazing. Brilliant.

Okay. So then you've come to New Zealand with our tiny little budgets. Yeah. Our very small acting pool after you've worked with people like Peter Cook, Harry Enfield, et cetera. But you, why do you leave? Why, why you come down here?

[...] Because my, I mean, I felt, I was in a rut. Like I said before, when you're, when you're not really enjoying something, you have to change. I've been there for so long and I'd seen the, the kind of agency decline around me. And it went from being the second biggest agency in London to the 18th, I think. And as I mentioned before, I've refused to take all the blame for that position. Everyone, everyone around me had been fired and I went, right, I've got to go do something different. I'll have another go at getting down to New Zealand.

Okay. Now let's stop some quick fire questions, Paul. Yes, Rich. Are you ready?

I'm being boring. Yeah.

You're not actually. What do you value most? Talent or hard work?

[...] Both.

No, well, you've got to choose one.

I've got to choose one. Oh, hard work. Take hard work. Okay.

Plastics or live bait?

It's a fishing question. It's plastics every day.

Have you ever written a jingle? Yes. Oh, tell me.

Mike and I wrote a jingle for...

Two of the most musically talented people I've ever come across, by the way. Yeah.

It was for Colgate Mouthwash in London. And God knows, I'm not going to sing it, but it was, it wasn't just a jingle. It was a campaign around a Swedish...

It was more than a jingle.

It was like a campaign around a Swedish, like, abba clone. Yeah. Yeah. I really, I think at the time it was really interesting, but maybe looking back on it, it was complete rubbish.

I can't feel like you need to find that and share it on your LinkedIn.

Yeah. Mike, if you've got a copy of that anyway.

I think he does. Okay. What's the most embarrassing piece of work you've ever done?

[...] A desk. A jingle. [...] No, no, it wasn't that... There are many, but one that... And Meitra and I, we did some IDENTs for Frasier for, I think it was from Ericsson, mobile phone or something.

Frasier, the TV show.

Yeah. IDENTs, which would like, you'd have like 10 second intro and outro. And we shot them and when we were shooting them, we were in tears. We couldn't speak. They were so funny. It was, and we're going, Oh, I can't wait 'til these come out on air. It'll be absolutely brilliant. And they came out on air and it got turkey of the week in campaign, as in the worst. And people complained that we were ruining, that they loved Frasier, but the show, but it was ruined by those crappy, unfunny IDENTs that came in before and did it. It's tough to tell. So yeah, that was not a career high point. Yeah. But the good lesson from that is that you don't know how good your ads are until they are out and being picked up and seen by people. I don't. Other people go, I knew from the start this was going to be brilliant. And they usually, you know...

Funny in the office and funny on the shoot. Yeah. Just their big warning signs, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah.

You've got to worry about the shoot. Laugh at the shoot, cry at the edit.

Yeah. Oh, that's awful. I hate edits. Okay. And the question that everyone asks me when I drop your name, because I'm always dropping your name, of course, is how is your health?

[...] Well, just quickly, I have prostate cancer. I've had an operation to remove the prostate. About three years ago, I've had two rounds of radiation treatment. [...] My PSA is still rising, which means that I still have prostate cancer. [...] Hopefully, I'm likely to keel over immediately, but they want me to take more drugs to stop it.

Yeah. But you are feeling well.

I'm fit. I have no symptoms. Yep. I have no symptoms at all. And that's why I'm kind of resisting doing these drugs, because they will give me symptoms. They're not good. [...] They're supposed... They'll wont make you live any longer, but it'll... Oh, it's complicated, but... Yeah. They're 60 seconds on health.

Yeah. But you're doing well.

A lot of kicking so far. Absolutely.

Okay. Good. Keep it that way. All right. Let's get to DDB. You've come down. I do remember a short time when you were working with Toby Talbot in an office in Colenso. I think everyone was growing ridiculous mustaches. There was a chart on your wall. You may have grown something called a Franz Joseph. It was quite appalling. Thank you. You then went over and DDB... You got a job at DDB. Yep. As a writer. Yep. Did you work by yourself or in a team?

No. [...] Janelle Roeback kindly got me in. her and Marty O'Halloran, and I work with Pete Thompson.

Ah, Pete.

Right. Pete Thompson, married Judy, who still is head of TV at DDB. Yeah.

Pete did some iconic stuff in the 90s for DDB and yeah, famous advertising character.

[...]

You did that for a couple of years and then the opportunity came up. Marty came to you and said, I have a job for you.

Well, I was talking to Marty and Doug because I resigned. I actually resigned to go to Colenso because Mike offered me a job at Colenso. Did you? Yeah. A plot twist. Yeah. Okay. [...] You're unaware or forgotten about this, right? So yeah, I've been at DDB for a bit. Yeah. [...] Lucky enough to get some hard-deeds and work out. Mike said, Do you want to come and work over here? Yep. And I thought that would be a good thing too because Colenso had at the time a far better reputation than DDB. So I said, Yeah, okay. I'll do it. Yep. [...] And then Marty and Doug said, Look, we really believe in your talent. We think you're good. Please stay. And well, it wasn't about the money. It was somebody believing in you as a, [...] recognizing potential in you to be a creative leader.

A creative leader. Did you always want to be a CD?

No, I never wanted to be a CD. Okay. I wanted to be, I wanted to do the best work that I could and to write great ads.

Yes. When that offer was made to you, were you like, Okay, fantastic. I get to spend more time in meetings with clients. I have to start worrying about the money. I have to start managing a department. You're up for that, though, at this point in your life.

Here's the thing. Nobody teaches you how to be a creative director. A lot of it is monkey see monkey do in that people see that the way that creative directors behave and certainly in the past that was not always very well because no one had trained them and they would behave quite badly towards other people and get particularly arrogant and short and demanding. [...] But I didn't know what to do. And for a fortnight, I think I was a joint creative director with Janil. And I actually, I stepped down from that because I was, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what a creative director was supposed to do. But it was taking up a lot of my time, meaning not knowing what I was doing. Yes. So I said, Look, I'll just get back to be the deputy. A couple of years later that changed. And I actually went on Omnicom course, [...] which I thought was brilliant, which Marty was a great believer in investing in people's learning. Yep. And a whole bunch of us went out to Sydney and we did an Omnicom University course about how to run an agency. And it was like the scales falling from my eyes. Yeah. I went, Ah, okay. That's what you're supposed to do. And yeah, so I became creative director from that with at least some idea of how it was supposed to go.

How did you work with teams?

[...] Were you...

So, because part of the Monkey See Monkey Do is also you, I think a lot of people respond to the things that they didn't enjoy when they were a junior or just a writer. And they go, Well, if I ever become a CD or if I lead an agency, I won't do that and I won't do that and I won't do that. Yeah. What were the things that you focused on with your teams?

[...] I agree with you there. And that looking at creative directors that have worked within the past, I thought that was a ridiculous behaviour. For example, being told to go for a creative review at three o'clock, sitting outside the creative director's office till six o'clock when they came back from lunch and said, What are you doing here? And we go, Well, we've got a meeting at three. And they went, Well, we're going to go home now, so come back in the morning. You know, that... So I tried not to do that more than a couple of times a week. Yep. And I didn't want them to leave. I kind of have the mental rule I tried to do that. I didn't want to leave them with less than they came in with. [...] IE teams will come in and they go, We've done this ad. And it was, for me, it wasn't enough to go, Well, that's crap. Go away and do another one. Mm-hmm. You had to... I felt it was right that you gave them some direction, not just do it again.

Yeah, or keep going.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which is, I mean, you've got to be on all the time. You try. Yeah, you've got a revolving door of people coming in with ideas. Yeah. And you're trying to not only... You're trying to find what's good in them, but also, as you say, give them something to work on that is clear direction.

[...]

But you enjoyed that.

[...] I got to a point at DDB where I thought that maybe I was better at giving creative direction than doing the ads myself. Right.

Did you stop writing?

[...] Pretty much. I do a bit, but I wouldn't generally take on briefs myself.

Were the Sky Guys yours?

The Sky Guys were, yeah, were me and Pete, which was a... [...] In case anyone doesn't know, I've got to remember, we did a long-run campaign for Sky TV that ran for five or six years, which I loved. And yeah, most of them had two guys in it, big guy and little guy. Yeah. And they had some... Yeah, we had a lot of fun making those with Mike Watson, the Sky. I know people who still quote those ads.

Great club.

On the floor. Well, I do. Other than you.

Yeah.

Other than me. And that was an interesting way of work because Pete would come up to me and he'd go, Oh, I've got... Oh, I won't do his accent. He goes, I've got this idea. And they're in the jungle and a gorilla comes on [...] and wants to have sex with the big guy. And I go, Pete, that's the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard in my life. [...] We're not going to do that. And then he'd go, Oh, humour me. Give it a go. Give it a go. So I'd go and write a script and he'd go, Brilliant, well do that. Yeah. [...] And that's how it worked.

But you didn't write... If I'm correct, you didn't write the Sky Guys as an ongoing campaign. There were two ads that came out. One was Fish and Chips. Yeah. And one was... I can't even remember the first Sky Guys ad, but it featured those two characters. What was happening in the motel?

Motel. They'd gone into... They haven't got Sky. Yes. There was a line that was used of what would you be doing if you don't have Sky that we inherited. Yeah. And the two... And so we were looking at scenarios of how... What people do when they don't have Sky. And these two wanted to watch the rugby. And so they hired a motel room because motels often have Sky. And they went in there to watch the rugby. And somebody scores a try and they hug themselves in delight at the try being scored. And the chamber Mmaid comes... Chamber mate?

Chamber maid.

[...]

We're really going for it.

The lady comes in and put towels in or something and finds these two men in brace in the bedroom. And I think it's a sort of... Yeah. So that was the base of... Yeah, originally... Of the time. They were just going to be one ad. And we were asked to do a third one in the series. And Pete blessed him said, Well, why don't we just write about these two? Can't get one. Like, you know, I probably went, Well, that's a stupid idea. Yeah. And then I went, Oh, maybe not. And yeah, we went with that.

So I want to talk about two people. So Mike Witson your client? Yeah. What was so... Was he your best client? What makes a great client? Why was he so good?

Mike was... There's a number of points in my career, Stoke Life, where I've been incredibly lucky. One of them was that Mike Watson had taken over as marketing director of Sky, I think like a couple of months before I got there. So I didn't know anything. I didn't know Sky without Mike Watson. But I wrote a couple of scripts with Pete that we were going to present to him. And I remember, I had a Cath Watson, actually, media director reading it, he goes, Oh, that's so funny. She said, But of course, Sky will never buy them. I'm like, Well, I don't know. I have no experience with Sky. And Mike Watson goes, Oh, yeah, they're funny. We'll make them. And great. And he was like that. And they did a great job for Sky [...] Because Sky were not very well regarded by New Zealanders. And in fact, as Mike said to me and has allowed me to quote, They fucking hated us. Which was, I think, the sky had come in and suddenly people had to pay to watch Rugby.

Oh, of course. Of course.

Yeah. So we were allowed to do a fun, nice ad that weren't hard sell because it would help.

Make it popular. Yeah. Yeah, great. And you did a lot of work with Middle Ditch.

Paul Middle Ditch. Paul Middle Ditch. Australian director. Yeah.

And he, if I recall, shot everything at 25 frames, just slightly ramped up and faster. Yeah. Paul, I think Toby Talbot said he had about, he had 423 shooting days in the year. He was full speed, full volume, full noise all the time. Yeah. Did you enjoy working? He was funny as hell, too.

I love working with Paul and Peter Masterson, who was his producer. Yeah. They were like a comedy duo themselves because Pete was kind of a bane and Paul was like a little scrappy terrier. Yeah. And I had a great relationship with Paul. I'd sit by the monitor and he'd shoot something and he'd turn to me and I'd go, No, that's shit. And he'd go, [...] Oh, come on. Yeah. And it was just complete honesty. Yeah. And, yeah, very much enjoyed the process. We were both just trying to do something funny. That was it. There was no, and you might disagree on what was funny, but you had the same angle.

Yeah. It's amazing when you get a connection with a director to be able to work like that because you didn't just use him for Sky. You used him for a bunch of things, didn't you? Yeah.

A number of things over the years.

Morro and I think other things you were doing back then. Yeah. Tell me about NZ Girl, how that came about.

[...] A New Zealand girl, which...

And who is Scott Kelly?

Oh, God. [...] So, for the audience... Yes. ...we... NZGirl was a New Zealand website set up by Jannet Crossen. And in those days, this was the early 2000s, just to have a website set up for New Zealand girls was enough. And I can't remember what particularly had going for it. [...] But they wanted to do some work and Bridget Short-Taylor and Regan Grafton came up with this idea that the big day out, they would fly an aircraft across the... [...] assembled tens of thousands of people, the big day out, which said, Scott Kelly has got a small dick. Mm-hmm. And then 50 minutes later, the same plane would fly across with...

Don't mess.

Don't mess with NZ Girls on it. And this was... It took a hell of a lot of organisation, but Bridget and Regan did most of the work. I just went, Yeah, okay. Yep. That was my role. And it was kind of the start of digital and the spreading is done online. And it became very famous and it won lots of awards and was fun. So we had to take a camera. We had to smuggle a camera. We're not supposed to take cameras to the big day out, but to smuggle a camera and then... Right. Yeah, set in a box and film the plane coming over.

Oh look, it was a standout piece of work for DDB and for New Zealand, I know.

[...]

And as you say, it just... 'Cause things started changing a lot then. And at the time, you had DDB, TBWA,

[...]

Colenso, Saatchi's, all doing world-class work. There were others as well. So it was a great time for New Zealand advertising. Yeah. So you're travelling around the world. You're judging award shows. Yeah. You're having a great old time. You've got a great partner in Martio Hellerin. Yeah. Which you had a great relationship with.

[...]

You get appointed to a role as creative lead of Asia Pacific.

Yeah. [...]

Why did you leave?

[...] Ah well, Marty left to go... Yeah, we actually talked about this. He came in to me one day and said, Right, so when do you see yourself in five years' time? Yeah. And I said, I think I'd like to be running my own agency. And then I said, Well, what do you want to be doing in five years' time? And he said, I want to run Australia and New Zealand out of Australia. And at the time, that seemed very far-fetched, because Australians kind of... Although he is Australian, but Australians view New Zealand advertising as a little brother kind of thing. Every now and again, we do something interesting, but really we're not serious people to be messed with. But Marty was sent over to run Australia, which was a big gig for him. There was talk of me going over there with him, which didn't happen for various reasons. [...] And Sharon Henderson came in as CEO of DDB New Zealand. Now, people have gone, Oh, well, you hated working with Sharon. That's why you left. And that wasn't the case. It was just that... I missed working with Marty. We had such a good relationship. And I enjoyed it, and I just had lost that relationship. [...] I was also faced with the fact that I'd been with DDB for, I don't know, five or six years, and you kept getting the same briefs. Yeah. You get the annual Sky Rugby Billboard brief.

Another morrow ad. Yeah. Another whatever it was. It was just, yeah. Yeah.

And you just needed something fresh. And I was arrogant enough to think that, Well, you know, I'd resign and do something else. So, yeah, so I left. I went off to do a bit of writing as well. [...]

Yeah. Just real quick. You went to Y&R Auckland for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. Then suddenly you were in Melbourne.

Yeah. It was a weird time. [...] So I had to add a month or two off over Christmas, which are great. I always liked to time my resignations for November. So, you know, I get a good run of summer off. [...] So John Remarge was at Y&R and he was kind of a mate. And he said, Oh, why don't you come down to Y&R and do that instead? And I don't know why. I had a very mixed time at Y&R before, but for some reason I went, Oh, yeah, okay. Maybe because, you know, I saw him, you know, as more of a mate in that Marty Roll. And so I went over to do that. And then one of our George Pat's Y&R Melbourne, who was part of the group, had just had kind of five of the most senior people at the agency resigned.

James McGraw, Ant Keeo, Grant Rutherford, all those.

Yep. Yep. [...] And Anthony Herity, who was the L&D. Ah, yep. Yep. And they were desperate to calm things down. Russell Halkcroft was MD, managing director, and I met with Russell and he said, Can you come over here and help us out? Yep. And so I went over there, you know, supposedly for a bit, [...] but it ended up being, you know, for good. I used to commute to Melbourne every week, [...] which was quite tricky.

How long did you last? Ten months? 18?

Well, I commuted to Melbourne. I did that for a month. Yeah. Oh, maybe, no, not like three months.

But how long did you live in Melbourne for?

I left in, I got to Melbourne around about Easter. Yeah. And I resigned in November. [...]

Excellent. So you had a great time over there?

Yeah, I mean, it was, no. [...] Oh, I mean, there were some great people and some, not great people. Yeah. And the, yeah, there were court cases. We were suing, this is right.

Tell me.

[...] Y&R George Pat's Y&R, We were suing Fosters. And Fosters was our biggest client. The marketing director of Fosters, who was called Ante-Harrity, [...] so he was like my main client. Yeah. Refused to see me because he was being sued. He was being sued because why?

He was a former Y&R employee. Yeah. He's gone over to work for Fosters. They're suing him why?

No, he was, he was sued because it's, it's complicated. It's, yeah. The thing is so, Y&R bought George Pat's. Yeah. And there were some payments that Y&R thought were not legitimate. And I think they actually won the case. I don't know how much it ended up costing them, but it was, [...] the idea that a client is going to stay with the agency when the agency is suing them for $5 million is, is just, you know, beyond credibility, but that's the situation that I was in. Yeah.

Okay. So you've got no ties over there. There's no fishing. It's full of Australians. You did enjoy the Aussie rules. That's a good sign.

I did enjoy the Aussie rules. And there were some, there were some good people in the agency. Yeah.

So you come back, but before you come back, more quickfire questions, Paul. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What piece of work are you most proud of?

Probably the sky, guys.

Yeah. Correct. Is it hard to write a good print ad or a good TV ad?

Jesus. I'd say it's not that anyone... For me, a print ad.

Yeah. Yeah. The discipline.

I think, yeah. [...]

Led Zeppelin or British prog rock icons of Genesis?

Yeah. I've seen both of them live. Yes, yes. I've seen both of them live. I would go for Genesis.

Where's client presentation or pitch you can remember?

Well, client presentation was in London, we're pitching for a computer games. It might have been Atari. I might have got that wrong. Yeah. And on the morning of the pitch, the agency, CEO and MD resigned. So like pitch was at nine o'clock on Monday morning, whatever, we get in there. I'm presenting the pitch. Yeah. Only to be told that the two leads of the agency, Tim Linsen, Jerry Judge had resigned. But we're going to go on with the pitch anyway. [...] Mike O and I went in and presented. [...] I think it was billboards. We presented billboards. And then Media came in, last of all, Simon Mathies, I think it was, presented how we should use TV for the pitch. [...]

That's integration.

And that was, yeah, [...] without, [...] yeah, the worst. Just farcical. Yeah.

You didn't win that one, I take it.

No, we didn't win that one.

Do you own any cryptocurrency?

I don't no. Okay.

And if you were a 25 year old copywriter today, would you be using AI?

Absolutely.

Okay.

[...] Right.

It's 2008.

[...]

You want to come back to New Zealand. At this point, you want to start your own agency. Is this what happens? Do you want to be running your own thing?

I'd always had in the back of my mind, that I'd been in agencies that were run badly. And I thought I could maybe do, bring it to practice, do things better. Yeah.

Okay. So how did it come about to, that you joined up with Daniel? What was the situation there?

Well, I came back from Melbourne. Very happy to be back in New Zealand. And I was looking around and talking to people, and I actually talked to M&C Saatchi. Oh, yeah. And they were looking for, [...] creative director. And I thought it was a reasonable name. Good name. There's a chance of good work. Nice people there. That was all good. They wanted to pay me well. And I thought, yeah, okay, I'll give this a go. [...] And they said, right, we'll have the contract with you tomorrow. It's a great, never happened. Contract, [...] contract, well, it didn't turn up. [...] And it's funny how in that time, having gone, you know, right, I'm going to do this, everything good, that just by coincidence, I think it was actually John Romarch, who said, oh, you should talk to Daniel Barnes, because he's got a little agency and he wants to expand. And yeah, he might want to do something. Yeah. So I had a coffee with Daniel. [...] And, you know, I laid out what I was thinking. And he said what he was thinking. And, you know, over the course of a couple of weeks, we kind of went, okay, let's give it a go.

Okay. So what was your vision for the agency?

[...] Glory. It was, well, so what I wanted, what I wanted was someone who could understand the business of the business, who could make, [...] do all the background stuff. So could liaise with clients and, you know, understood photocopier leases and rent and everything and being agency leader. [...] And I would work my butt off to make the ads as good as possible. [...] And to go from there. Daniel wanted a, I think he said to me, he wanted a clone of himself. Right. He wanted, you know, he felt that he was stretched so thin that when he wasn't in the office, he wanted...

He did everything. Was he not creative through it to see a planner, everything? Yeah.

Yeah. And we're very different people, but we're kind of quite similar but very different, you know, like very similar and very different at the same time. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it managed to click and off we went.

But just what did you, like, are you, you're starting up an independent agency, oh, sorry, you're building on an independent agency. You're able to do anything you want. What are you setting out to do? Why are you different to a DDB or a Colenso? Or like, what is your point of difference here?

Well, having spent a lot of time trying to answer that question. Yeah. The, and looking around at other things that are going on, the fact is, it's just the people and the attitude and the culture. [...] All the agencies that go, oh, we have proprietary tools and it's just, they're kind of all much of a muchness. Well, if you look at the way that DDB and FCB are supposedly completely different agencies with different ethos, but they're now working together and they're called McCain Ericsson, which is a different way of working. It really just comes down to the people.

Yeah. So you, I mean, I will give you an alternative answer.

Yeah. Because you said in 1922. [...]

Barnes, Catmur and Friends prided itself. This is when you sold to Dentsu. Prided itself on the effectiveness of its work as well as being the leading independent FI winner in Asia Pacific. It is consistently ranked in the top five worldwide. Paul, this is you, remains slightly mystified as to why agencies put so much effort into winning creative awards while effectiveness is generally seen as a coincidental byproduct. I feel like this was very much, you were driven by

[...]

not just following creative awards. You're still doing, you know, top creative work, but you were very much about effectiveness and you were a grown-up agency. You and Daniel were grown-ups. And I think that was a point of difference that I certainly saw for Barnes, Catmur.

In terms of the effectiveness, I remember going to, I went to Judge Clio in Las Vegas because this is what you do with...

You had a much better time than me.

I ended up in Santa Fe. Yeah, Vegas was fun. [...] And I think it was late. I met this... I was talking to this Canadian guy who was there. And so he did it in a world, you know, where he filmed mine from Canada, blah, blah, blah. And I said, Have you got any work that's entered? And he went, he said, No. He said, I run my own agency. He said, We don't really worry about creative awards. Great. And this was an eye-opener for me. I thought, Wow, wouldn't that be fantastic if you didn't have to worry about creative awards? Yeah. Because it was kind of part of your job that you were supposed to worry about creative awards. And I thought, Wouldn't it be great to have your own agency and not have to worry about getting on this circus? [...] And so when we started Barnes Catmur, [...] we didn't want to focus on awards. Some people were, Well, the first thing you need to do is win some awards. [...] Really don't want to do that. And the effies came along. And I said to Daniel, Have you got anything to enter into the effies? And he went, [...] he said, Oh, I don't think so. I said, Well, we did do this campaign for Yamaha quad bikes that did quite well. And I said, Well, what do you mean quite well? What happened? And he said, Well, here are the figures and everything. And I went, Okay, that's pretty good. [...] So we either wrote together or I wrote. I can't remember which. And Daniel would have said, We put a paper together [...] and put it into the EFFIES. And it won Best in Show, I think. Now, for a small up-and-coming agency who were not well-known, and were up against DDB and Colenso or whatever to win Best in Show at the EFFIES, we suddenly went, Bang, okay, it's a bee like water. Okay, here's a path, let's do that. And from then on, the agency just concentrated on EFFIES. And it was an incredibly liberating thing. And it seems absolutely crazy that you should be saying that for an agency to try and do the most effective work for its clients is going against the stream. That's kind of certainly the way it was.

Yeah, I mean, it is very strange the way, you know, commercial creativity and the way so many people look at, I think the industry and what is valuable

[...]

when what you're really sitting out to do is, you know...

Well, I remember, New Zealand Marketing Magazine a few years ago did, they asked marketing directors what they most valued in an agency. [...] And number one was creativity. Number two was effectiveness. Like, how can that be?

Yeah, the wrong way around. But you were always interested in and curious about what worked, how consumers operated, what made people tick? I know you read, you were on about Think Fast as Slow for a while, how people are actually irrational. They make irrational decisions and the way that advertising works.

[...] Well, I think... [...] Daniel and I both read extensively, [...] I did a bit of psychology at university and the way people think. And reading Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Karnamann kind of put some science into the thinking. What we're trying to do as advertisers, for better or worse, is to manipulate people. manipulate... Yeah. Into doing what you want them to do. Now, it might be, you know, buy more pizza or buy this beer instead of that beer or it might be slow down and don't drive too fast. Now, if you look at it as a problem to be solved rather than an attempt to win an advertising award, then it becomes a really, to me, really interesting process. I like doing crosswords. Yeah. I like doing cryptic crosswords because I like to try and use my brain to think, to look for the solution in the clues and advertising. [...] In a sense, it's like that. What can you do to make people follow the course of action that you want? And, yeah, that leads on to a far more interesting way of thinking than can I just win some awards for that?

Yeah. I think it's also having an opinion and direction,

[...]

like a proper aim of what to do when you get a project. Like you have a point of view on advertising, on what works, on what might be effective, as opposed to just waiting to see what might be an interesting ad or that looks like fun or we can kind of get that through it. So it's a much different thing. I remember Graham Will saying to me who ran Mojo,

[...]

you know, you're doing some good ads, but you don't have an opinion on advertising yet. It took me a while to get that opinion and then a final round has stood, oh yeah, to have a point of view. Yeah. Yeah, and you had a strong point of view. In fact, you're very well known for your strong point of view.

Yes. Yeah, I'm not quite sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. But yes, I think I have a point of view. One example of the way that that kind of thinking works is the, let's talk more about me, is the campaign that we did for Boundary Road Brewery, [...] which was we had not very much money in certain brewing terms and we needed to launch a beer, a craft beer. I mean, craft beer marketplace now is absolutely [...] horrendously complicated. It wasn't so bad then, but it was still, there were a lot of beers about. [...] And I'd been in supermarkets and looked at wine. Yeah, I need to buy a bottle of wine to go to dinner or something and there's walls and walls and walls of different wine brains and I would generally gravitate towards something with which I might have had a personal connection. [...] I know Mike Babich and I, there's a Babich wine up there or I spend time up in Matakana as a wine from Matakana. So there was an indirect personal connection or there was a picture of a dog on it or a fish and I like dogs and I like fish. Just something. So when we launched it, we deliberately set out to make that connection to involve people in the beer so that hopefully they would go out and choose it. So we advertised for beer testers, for people to come in and test the beer before it even started. You couldn’t even go and buy it. [...] And it worked. [...] Tens of thousands of people from actually from all over the world applied to be beer testers and we couldn’t get them all in but we still had, I think, Jesus, can’t remember, like, was it 2000? Jesus. Can’t remember. Anyway, we got people in and we built that personal connection and the brand is still, that was probably 2009 brand.

Yeah, you did great work for Boundary Road Brewery and which was run by, well, came from independent liquor but it certainly acted and behaved as an independent brand, a startup.

Yeah, we lied quite well.

Yeah, very well. Okay, now, at this point, as you’re on this angle with your advertising, the way the business is going and there is a rise of independent agencies, there’s Shine, there’s Special, True. Yes, absolutely.

Pitch Black. Yeah.

Clients kind of looking for something different. Are you looking at big agencies and their award chasing and becoming more...

[...]

Well, not cynical, but are you more disenchanted with what's going on over here and the industry and the way it was is behaving? Was it getting worse or have you just changed your point of view?

I think it was it was getting it was just becoming irrelevant. If you if you're focusing on effectiveness, you kind of it's nice to win creative awards because it's nice for people to go. We really like what you've done there, but you don't you don't need it and just set out to with any brief to try and win awards is really just a nonsensical way of working. I don't I don't know that it's it's we may have got over peak. [...] Peak award chasing, but there's still I still have a lot of it that goes on. And it's just irrelevant to running a business. Yes, that's all I think.

Yeah, you sold to Densu in 2016. Were you worried about losing your independence?

[...] So so one of the things if anybody out there wants to start their own agency, do it younger. So I think Daniel and I started. I think I was probably 50 maybe when we started. [...] And by the time we got to 2008, I would have been I would have been…

You started when 2008? Yeah.

[...] But I'm going to 2016. So I would win 58 or something.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bit younger actually. Thanks, but I was tired. I was tired. [...] I work. [...] I think really hard and just couldn't keep working that hard all the time. And as we're working through the earn out process, I've ended up in the hospital a couple of times. [...] Adjusted with pneumonia and something else. So not not not not life threatening, but not. It was just unhealthy stuff. Yeah.

Just concerning and yeah.

Yeah. And so when so we finally the earn out period finished in. [...] 2020 I think and yeah, I was just tired. Yeah. I just had in terms of losing independence. That's what happens if you sell. Yeah. [...] And there were and for us at the time, there's two ways of passing an agency on if you want to step aside and you've spent all this time building a business, you can either hope that someone comes on to buy it or you can promote from within and hopefully get some of us take it over. And so we're actually kind of having those two in parallel. We had a lot of well a lot of a bunch of people below us who who were coming up and and very proud of their success. Like there's like three in particular who came on. It was their first ever job in advertising and you know, they ended up as shareholders of the agency and [...] still work with them. So right fantastic.

Yeah.

Big Big Rob, Bradders and Nick Gallagher.

Great. And then so I mean, Densu it was behemoth in Japan. Yep. They are 7000 people.

7000. Yeah.

Yeah. Employees. They're a household name. Yeah. Yeah. And what was it like dealing with Dentsu so going out you would you travel quite a bit and yeah, I really enjoyed it.

I the Dentsu to a massive force in Japanese business. They have a in Shiodome in Tokyo. They have a 32 story skyscraper and they have all of it. They kind of own Japanese advertising and I really enjoyed the meeting with the people and the learning about the culture and the way they operate and work on the creative council with Merley, Ted Lim, [...] Rob Belgevani and others who had worked with before and [...] you and it was yeah, it was a good experience.

Yeah, great. So right 2020 you've finished, you're done, you're over it. You don't want any more client feedback. You're free. You head up to the batch and this is where we get to the fun bit because you've always been writing this whole time on the side. You've been you've written travel pieces.

[...]

You've you've written opinion pieces and another thing was a great column you had in Stop Press, I believe.

[...]

Then you start you've got things writing for the Herald. You had a screenplay that nearly got up with written about a good friend of yours, John Romages, time up at Matai Bay as a yeah. What was it? Camp. Not camp instructor.

Camp John, yeah. Yeah, working as a doc campsite attendant at the age of 19 or something. It just seemed to me to be the I've done some terrible student Saturday jobs and the idea of that would just seem to me brilliant.

So it was getting paid in bags of weed if I recall correctly.

Not quite that bad, but yeah. So I wrote the film script and I was working with a producer and a director and it was at you know, we were or they were I wasn't that had some money to develop the script. But they went off and worked on different projects and I was trying to run an agency. So it kind of fell over.

But it was a shame. It was a great script. I remember going to the reading, the live reading. It was yeah, it was it was great. So that was a that was a shame. But you've always loved writing and you came back to an idea you had, which has turned into the gutter bar, which you've just published. Yeah. And they say right about what you know. That's the advice. And you seem to know a lot about people lying and cheating and advertising. So yeah, tell us tell us about the gutter bar and tell us about the writing process.

[...] I just the award circus. seems to me. I can’t say I didn't enjoy being, you know, flying around the world and sitting in a luxury hotel for a week looking at ads. There's worse ways to go about your time. It just seemed just seemed a bit silly to me and completely overblown. Last year, I think the entries to Canne the entries from agencies. [...] According to my brother, total $40 million. The idea that come and 90 %of them are just thrown away because they never get anywhere. [...] It's just making money. So I just thought I'd write about some of those experiences. I always like to I try to to write funnily. I don't know any other way. And so, you know, I'm never going to be great romance writer. [...] I'm going to be great son to the right. So I just try and write. I just wrote about some of the silliness that goes on and yeah.

Yeah, but he's laugh out loud funny.

[...]

And it takes no prisoners based on a main character called Ben Putney, who is the president of the can jury. But things go terribly wrong for him as he lies and steals and cheats his way to remain or get to the top.

Yeah, trying to get to the top.

Yeah, trying to get to the top. So how much did you was it based on real life experience and how much was fiction?

[...]

Keeping in mind the lawyers are listening.

Yeah, a lot of the family stuff is fiction. And the characters are amalgams, extremely amalgams of people. And as all characters are ever all this stuff about any resemblance to people living or dead isn't. It's just a lie. I don't know why they bother with that. [...] It's a kind of a condensation of things. I all the things that happened to me in whatever, 20 years of being on juries. So not all of these things happened. Yeah, every jury, but they all happened at various times. And I just condense them into one scenario.

Yeah, well, I mean, which is insane because it is I mean, it's a satire. It is, you know, reasonably over the top, but these things have happened. We've seen them. We've heard about them. Yeah, yeah. People could go to crazy lengths to win a little piece of metal. Don't know.

Yeah, I actually because some people have gone, oh, you know, I don't I don't believe in awards. So I don't want to read the book. But that's the whole point of it. It's a satire of awards as a satire of people chasing the wrong thing. They should be chasing effectiveness.

What are the great Dave Trott have to say about it?

What they've they've read the the bump, which is kind of the publishing bump on on Amazon and said that he never met anyone in his life who gave a toss about winning a Canne award. [...] A Canne gold, which I mean, maybe didn't, but I've met.

I haven't met anyone who doesn't. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was a bit you got a lot of good feedback based around that. The book started selling very well as well. So thanks.

Well, I mean, thanks very much, Dave. That that was the best publicity I could have. And he's been good sport about it. Yeah.

It is a 4.72 on Goodreads, by the way.

Only only.

Yeah. Well, it's out of five. So it's good news. It's good news.

[...]

And actually it's called the best selling novel by Paul Catmur.

I borrowed that from Paul Arden. [...] Paul Arden. Paul Arden who sadly died. He wrote a couple of good books and one of them on the cover. He called I can't remember the title of books or as he said, the best selling book by Paul Arden. Brilliant. And it became a best selling book because people are like, oh, this is. So I just borrowed it and I can say that without doubt that the gutter buy is the best selling book by me. Absolutely. There's not a lot of competition. But when I published it, like, you know, we talked about disasters before. [...] And in fact, I made a short film of a scene from it with Dan Max that we put out a couple of years ago. And it just crashed and burned. No one was, you know, we thought it was funny, but no one else thought it was funny and it was just a big mere. So when I wrote the book and, you know, you expose it to the. Yes. Now people beyond friends and family, you never know. But the response has, you know, I get emails from people that I don't know going out. [...] How much they enjoyed it. So I'm satisfied that it's not complete rubbish. Absolutely.

I mean, congratulations. I think it's fantastic. And I was going to ask how exposed did you feel once it was out there and you went, God, I've put all this effort in. I have no excuses. Sometimes I can blame a client. Sometimes I can blame the production money. This time it's all on me. So it must be extremely rewarding that you're getting such a great response.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, it is. I mean, if it had been a bad response, yeah, you go, you kind of shut down. I've talked because you're a good, I mean, if you're a good writer in some areas, you're not a good writer in every area. So I've said, you know, like Charles Dickens was, you know, fantastic writing, emotional Victorian novels, but he never wrote a decent 30 seconds ad for pizza. So come on, Charles.

Get your act together. Okay. Where can people buy this book? By the way, just a quick reminder.

Okay. Well, thanks so much, Rich. Amazon is best, but go to your local Amazon. I don't know if you're from New Zealand, get it from Amazon Australia. But if you're in Auckland, it is available at Unity Bookstores.

Fantastic. And just pop around at Paul's place and he'll sign it for you as well. Absolutely.

Yeah.

He may not write something funny in it, but the rest of it will be. Yeah, it will be.

There's the promise. I'd say.

Two last questions, my friend. Yeah. Any regrets?

[...] Not really. I mean, obviously I've done stupid things and made mistakes and I've ended up wife and childless living on the beach with a dog. But I'm happy within that. [...] And I've, yeah, very, very happy within that. And the twists and turns of life and career have generally been kind to me. Yeah. Fantastic. I've been lucky.

Yep. And you've worked hard for them as well. So, and finally, what's next?

[...]

I'm going to the World Cup. Well, not only just going to the World Cup, but you might have a.

Well, I'm working on getting a press pass for Radio New Zealand to maybe do some writing from up there, hopefully. [...] And if the, you know, if the gutter bog gets picked up and someone says that's great, can you write another one? I will write another one. And if they don't, I don't know. I'll continue writing somewhere.

Fantastic. Brilliant.

[...]

Okay. Well, I feel like we've had a good hour and a half. I hope someone's still listening.

Yeah. Hello to both of both of my listeners. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks very much for doing this, Rich. I know you're a bit nervous about it, but as I said to you before, when I do it, I only get nervous that the person I'm talking to doesn't have anything to say. And you are a great conversationalist and you're good at pulling things out of me that I probably didn't need to say, but there you go.

Yeah, I've really, I've loved it. It's been fantastic. So thank you.

Thank you, Rich. Cheers, everyone. Bye for now. Bye-bye.