JOHN Hunt, global creative head of TBWA, tells Adele Shevel of the heady days in the 1990s when his agency developed the ANC’s first election campaign — and the hours spent with Nelson Mandela
The era of the long, boozy lunch in advertising, the sort you would expect in the Mad Men television series, seems to be under threat.
When I ask to meet advertising mogul John Hunt for lunch, his “people” suggest we meet at his office to save time. We compromise, meeting at Koi in Sandton, not far from his office. Any notion of a Don Draper-type character nursing a series of midday whiskies evaporates. Depressingly, he even eats healthily. “I’m not a health nut at all. I like my wine. But, by way of lifestyle, it’s one of the few things you can do while sitting on your butt,” he says.
The creative global head of TBWA, Hunt has just returned from Cannes, the Oscars of the advertising world, with a nasty dose of flu.
It turns out that Cannes is not what it used to be. Since the recession, it is packed with conferences, talks and a need to get “value for money”. But it is not some tedious corporate event, he says.
“It’s the south of France. There are palm trees; there’s lots of rosé ... Cannes was good. Cannes is always good. As an agency we got eight Lions, so then it’s great,” he says.
Mr Hunt, who lived in New York for three and a half years, is back in Johannesburg where he formed Hunt Lascaris with partner Reg Lascaris in 1983. The company was later bought, in part, by TBWA, which falls under the umbrella of the world’s largest advertising agency, Omnicom.
“South Africa is my home; it’s in my blood. It’s not all logical, but this is where the heart is.”
But it is testament to Omnicom’s desire to retain Mr Hunt’s skill that he is still its global creative head despite being based outside the New York mother ship.
It seems right, given the pivotal role Mr Hunt played in the ascension of Nelson Mandela to the presidency.
In 1993, the ANC approached his agency to develop its first election campaign. Hunt Lascaris was already well regarded for its bold and irreverent work, but it was not a simple decision.
The country was teetering amid heavy violence, especially in KwaZulu-Natal, and the ANC was more of a revolutionary movement than a political party at the time.
“Some people said we were mad. Other people said that’s great,” says Mr Hunt. Nevertheless, some clients walked away, partly because the ANC at the time supported nationalisation.
Within two weeks of taking the job, Mr Hunt’s agency had to build a fence around the office in Sandton after the ANC received a bomb scare.
It feels timeous to be talking to Mr Hunt now. In 1993, South Africa was grappling with how to plot a way forward with Mr Mandela in charge; now, it is grappling with a way forward without him.
The ANC campaign broke new ground. The agency ran the first 24-hour-a-day workplace from its sealed-off office to ensure that no one could pick up what was going on. They would write adverts in the morning (there were only print and radio adverts, no TV) and run them in the evening, based on research from a specialist political researcher hired from the US.
“Those were wild, wild times,” says Mr Hunt.
Wilder than anyone thought, it turns out. Four years ago, when Mr Hunt’s desk was taken apart while moving, a hidden listening device was found. It was rusted, but it was a stark reminder of how the government of the day spied on everyone.
Mr Hunt spent hours with Mr Mandela, who insisted that the first advertising campaign not dwell on how bad the past had been. Instead, it had to showcase how good the future could be.
It was a controversial decision. Some people did not agree, and a few negative adverts were piloted but eventually binned.
“Mr Mandela was 100% right. He had the Zeitgeist as a human to know people were so tired. He, of all people, could have turned it up a notch, been a little self-righteous. But we never ran a negative advert,” says Mr Hunt.
This choice was a measure of the man, he says. “It’s really important to remember what his real legacy was: don’t base the future on the past. The moment you do that you’re on a downward spiral. You can justify everything. You absolutely win on logic, but there’s no leap of faith, there’s no inspiration. It was Mr Mandela’s way of saying: ‘I don’t buy the status quo.’”
In those early days, anything seemed possible, he says. “Whether you were a businessman, previously disadvantaged in a shantytown, a spoilt brat from the northern suburbs — you felt anything was possible. We had more energy, more focus, more gees than any nation in the world.”
Now things are less assured. So where is South Africa now? “If that was a 10 back then, now we’re at a four. It’s all patchy. We have strikes about strikes. However, we have resilience and that sort of boer maak ‘n plan in our back pocket.”
Mr Hunt says South Africa needs to articulate a plan for its post-Mandela society. “Much of our positive energy seems to ricochet rather than focus right now ... It feels we’re flapping in the breeze.”
But he is an optimist. Advertising too is transforming, he says, but in a positive way. Once it was TV, radio and print, whereas now there is social media. “Clients need to be more nimble — agencies too. You better embrace the change or you’ll get run over by it.”
Mr Hunt is not what you would expect of an advertising executive. He wears no brands; he is not über-slick. He answers questions honestly and you feel the story is more important than the “sell”.
His entry into the advertising world was somewhat unusual. He was an administration clerk working for in an insurance company, writing articles and short stories on the side. Someone he knew who happened to be an advertising copywriter gave him an article to read, and it turned out to be a story he had written.
“Have you ever considering copywriting?” she asked. At the time, he had no idea what that was. But after that the script wrote itself.
Mr Hunt is involved in a parallel project as a playwright. “One keeps you sane and the other keeps you solvent.”
He was named SA Playwright of the Year for Vid Alex, a play that condemned censorship during apartheid. And his first book, The Art of the Idea, published in 2009, has been translated into several languages. Now he is writing another book and working on an anti-malaria project in Africa with Nando’s founder Robbie Brozin.
• This article was first published in Sunday Times: Business Times
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