5 minutes with Graham Fink, M&C Saatchi
Every month Creativepool spends 5 minutes with some of the biggest names from the world of advertising, design and media. We’ll be featuring a mixture of agencies and clients to keep you entertained throughout the year.
Tell us what you do for a living and who you work for?
Creative director of M&C Saatchi.
What does that involve?
I think they refer to it as spinning plates these days. But pretty much everything involving helping write strategies to pushing the creative teams to get the best out of them and then in some cases selling the work to clients.
How did you get started in the industry?
Seems a long time ago now... Back in the good old 80’s I applied for a job at CDP, which was the most creative agency in the world at the time, famous for many great campaigns. Anyway I turned up with my writing partner Steve Limbrick. They told us we had a good book, but they also had a policy of not taking on younger/junior teams.
They also told us that they were currently looking, but for someone much more senior and wished us the best of luck. We returned the next day dressed up as old men! I had dyed my hair white overnight with a bottle of bleach and had make-up with wrinkles and bags under our eyes. We had gold watches and a walking stick each. We walked in and said we wanted that job for a senior team - they hired us.
What would you be doing if you weren’t doing that?
Probably painting and trying to make my living as an artist. Either that or designing games.
What’s your all-time favourite piece of creative work?
On a personal level the British Airways ’Face’ commercial I did at Saatchi which Hugh Hudson directed. The best piece of work ever? Well there’s far too many to chose from, but today what comes to mind instantly is the Volvo ’TWISTER’spot directed by Tony Kaye. It won a D&AD black pencil for direction and many yellow ones for idea, sound, music, editing etc - I wish I’d done it.
What do you love about your job?
Building a great creative department.
What do you hate about your job?
Meetings where people want to discuss the same old arguments again and again. Some clients who don’t appreciate the enormous amount of effort we go to, to try and make their brand famous.
Tell us your favourite website
Again, too many to mention, but www.naked-people.de is something that caught my eye recently. It’s fantastically well done.
If you could give one piece of advice, what would it be?
Be yourself.
Where can people follow you online?
I keep thinking I’m going to start a blog. It’s the amount of effort that puts me off. I really admire Simon Veksner for keeping up his Scamp blog. The guy has amazing energy and perhaps most importantly, a point of view. People can follow me on twitter at gfink68 and of course Facebook.
Graham Fink was interviewed by Ross Nichols, Marketing Manager, Creativepool
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