Dave Trott: marketers are "hypnotised by complexity"

06 Aug 2015

When King Henry VIII wrote Greensleves 500 years ago. "Where was Facebook?" asks our copywriters' copywriter, Dave Trott (although he claims not to be a copywriter at all). Read on to find out what this means for marketers today

Is creativity, as Bill Bernbach said, the "last unfair advantage we have over our competitors"?

Dave Trott says we have lost sight of the point of advertising, and are so hypnotised by complexity that we have lost the ability to think. Or at least think clearly.

Essentially, we focus on the medium but not the message.

This is a bad thing, says Trott.

Watch while he takes us through Tudor England, Gestalt psychology, Freud's theory of the Id, escaping from a keyless car, and US presidents.