Sir John Hegarty

John Hegarty: “What inspired me to get into the creative industries? I sort of in a way stumbled across it, which isn’t really a great answer, because you want people to feel there was this driving passion that moved me towards it. I suppose in a way I always liked the idea of creativity. I enjoyed it. I enjoy things visually and I think my story is one of great teachers. I just had fabulous teachers. Three fantastic teachers.

“I believe in any creative profession mentoring is fundamentally important. I really, really do. If you’re going to study accountancy there's a book. Read it, this is how you do it. You add up, you subtract, you do all that, you balance the sheets and you can learn it from a book. I think with creativity you are inspired to learn but when you find that you meet somebody who brings it alive for you, I think it really shows you the way forward.

“First of all I think it’s a fascinating industry because it’s all about today, it’s all about the moment. And it’s an industry that gives you tremendous opportunity to express your thoughts and ideas. Just an interesting aside, I've always defined creativity as an expression of self. Somebody said music is the greatest of all art forms and it’s not right. Life is the greatest of all art forms. And, of course, ultimately a human being is the greatest art form and when you express yourself that’s a creative process. And in advertising you can do that all the time.

“Our industry is obsessed with ideas. It’s just absolutely obsessed with ‘so, what's the idea?’ And I think ideas are just brilliant things. They’re fantastic things. We don’t really think about the fact that ideas are transformational. They change the way the world behaves, they change the way people behave. They affect culture, they affect your life. They are just incredible. And we have them everyday. But big ideas can change the world and that’s what we’re about. We’re about having ideas. And the other thing about having ideas is it’s the most democratic thing you can do. Anybody can do it.

“I think Paul Smith, as a designer, as a fashion designer, is brilliant. Now he had ideas all the time. You go look at his clothing, they have ideas in them. He’s brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He did a book called ‘Inspiration is Everywhere’ about how he goes about getting his ideas and if I was a student, I’d get hold of it because I think it’s a fascinating book.

“My advice is first of all this is a career. It’s not something I'm going to do in the next six months, seven months. If there aren’t any jobs at the moment, don’t worry. There will be. The important thing to do is to keep doing work. Do it for yourself. When I came out of college I set my own briefs and I did work for it, I sketched out ideas on a piece of paper. And they can be thumbnails, we’re not looking for a Leonardo here or a Michelangelo finish. It’s an idea. When I went to art school I was told if you're not drawing every day you’re not learning every day.

“We’re in a very severe recession. People don’t really know where it’s going. We don’t know where we’re going to come out of it. But ultimately in the end we’ll come out because we have interesting ideas. Ideas will be the things that save us and that’s something this country is very good at. It’s something we’ve got to go on investing in, and of course you can look at it and say if you’re a company now we’re a global industry. If you’re working in the UK the currency has dropped by 30% – it’s that much cheaper to have ideas in the UK than it is somewhere else. So we should see an advantage out of our falling currency rather than constantly see it as a problem.

“That’s the great thing about TV. Nobody knows. So you have an idea. You write it down. I've got this great idea about a guy who goes into a launderette, takes all his clothes off, puts all his clothes and his jeans into a washing machine and sits down next to a great big fat man who isn’t the slightest bit interested. And you have this idea and you think the music should be ‘I Heard it Through the Grapevine’. And people around you say ‘is this going to be great John?’ And I say ‘I think it’s going to be great.’ And in a sense people around you look at you and they say ‘OK, this is going to be great’. But you don’t know. You actually don’t know. So you convince the client, you convince the agents. You do it, you shoot it and then it goes down to the editor and the editor calls you up and says ‘OK, I've done the cut, come and have a look at it’ and you think ‘Oh my God. This is the moment of truth’ and you walk into that editing room and look at the editor and say ‘Is it good?’ – you always do that – and he goes ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ – but they always say that – and he plays these 60 seconds to you and you either go ‘Oh my God, it’s a disaster. What am I going to do?’ or you go ‘Oh my God, it’s fantastic!’ And the moment I walked in and saw the first cut of ‘Launderette’ it took my breath away. And that was a great moment. Because I didn’t know!

“We can’t for a moment sit back on our laurels and think hey, we’re creatively a global leader. We’re constantly being pressured, we’re constantly being challenged by other centres. I think the best thing the Government can do to aid this is to invest as much as they can in education. Education is where it all happens, exposing our kids to an exciting and interesting world. The more they can invest in education the better.”