Andy McKay doesn’t stay anywhere for long. He has just announced he
is relinquishing his job as Lowe Howard-Spink’s head of art to join Euro
RSCG Wnek Gosper after a stint of less than 18 months. Before that he
was at M&C Saatchi, which only detained him for eight months.
The problem is that he is passionate about art directing. At his past
two agencies he either had too much responsibility thrust upon him and
wasn’t doing enough work himself, or there simply weren’t enough jobs to
be done. And McKay just wants to be busy.
’Being head of art here (at Lowes) takes up all your time. It’s very
good, they’ve got a great traffic system - it’s a very well-oiled
machine - but there are more than 20 teams to look after. At Euro I will
have the opportunity to work again. They seem to have more work going
through and they have leaner staffing levels,’ he comments.
McKay admits with customary candour, however, that five years ago he
would ’rather have stuck spikes in my eyes’ than consider going to
Euro.
He changed his mind because of his conviction that Mark Wnek and Brett
Gosper are turning the agency around creatively and producing much
stronger work, particularly on Peugeot, which he claims is now ’not just
about getting M People to do the soundtrack’.
’They have regenerated the agency and improved the standards, plus the
client list there appeals to me. I hope to work on Peugeot because I had
never worked on cars before coming to Lowes, but Microsoft and Direct
Debit are also great creatively,’ he says, hinting that he will be given
a freer creative rein at Euro than there was within the glacial,
blue-chip confines of Bowater House.
A gentle giant of a 38-year-old, McKay began his career at BMP, where he
had an enviable training walking the same corridor as John Pallant, Bill
Gallagher, John Webster and Frank Budgen. From there he went to Laing
Henry Hill Holliday (which he claims taught him nothing although he did
meet his wife there), and then, in 1989, he was headhunted to join the
then start-up, Simons Palmer Denton Clemmow & Johnson.
McKay had produced some memorable campaigns at BMP, including one for
Clark’s Desert Boots shot by the fashion photographer, Helmut
Newton.
But it was at Simons Palmer that he produced the bulk of his
breakthrough work, primarily on Nike - including the Cantona ’66 print
ad and the memorable poster featuring the Amazonian pin-up basketball
player, Gaby Reece.
’It was a joke because I didn’t know any of the sports stars and had to
look up all their biographies - the most exercise or sport I’ve ever
done is getting a can of Foster’s out of the fridge. But Nike was a
gift.
We took it and made it our own. I crunched up the typeface, making it
very American and no-nonsense, and I picked out the Nazi colour scheme
of red, black and white,’ he recalls.
When speaking about Nike, it becomes apparent that McKay is a craftsman
of the old school - hey, this guy can even draw. He also loves the
challenge of translating a picture in his head on to paper.
’Half the buggers here can’t even draw round their hands, and I’ve seen
people do storyboards with little more than stickmen, which has kept a
lot of visualisers in business,’ he jokes.
But while McKay’s skills are evident and indeed recognised by the
industry - he won golds at the ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 Press and Poster Awards for
Cantona and a silver pencil at D&AD for the same work - his unassuming
nature (he’s so quiet he tends to mumble) make him a far from obvious
choice to run a department. Unlike most leaders of men, he is also
foolishly modest, dismissing his Cantona poster success as ’not a
particular triumph of art direction - it was just a gift of a fact, put
down bluntly’.
Mark Denton, now a director at Blink but one of the founding creative
directors of Simons Palmer, whom McKay credits with ’making me what I am
for driving me so hard’, comments: ’From a traditional craft point of
view, Andy is very good. It particularly shows with his print work,
where art direction is more evident than in TV. He’s good at shifting
type about and getting photos commissioned, but he’s a soldier, not a
general. He’s good man to have in the backroom.’
McKay himself admits that he made only a ’mediocre creative director’
(he held the position for three years at Simons Palmer after Denton and
Chris Palmer left) but maintains he is ’a good head of art’.
’When I was creative director I ended up being used as an emotional
punchbag by the teams. I was so full of bile and toxins that by the time
I sat down to do some work, it was not really constructive,’ he
admits.
Either way, Wnek is hugely chuffed with his new hiring, dubbing McKay
’the best male art director in the country’ (he has to say male, you
see, because of his art directing wife, Tiger Savage, who incidentally
was hired by McKay at Simons Palmer). ’His work is so beautiful. We went
after him - he was the final brick in the wall for us. Andy will
revolutionise the visual power of all our work and make sure that
everything we do is crisp and modern and relevant and striking,’ Wnek
enthuses.
McKay joins Euro in September and will be reunited there with his former
Lowes partner, Alastair Wood, who was recently made redundant when the
agency lost UDV. He will also rejoin the deputy creative director, Paul
Shearer, whom McKay hired back at Simons Palmer. The current head of
art, Nigel Rose, is being shifted up to the position of vice-chairman to
make room for McKay.
’As an art director I always wanted to work on Smirnoff but I’ve done
that now. All that remains is to work on Silk Cut, which I never did
while I was at M&C. Anyway, tobacco advertising is all going down the
swanee, so I’m happy doing what I’m doing,’ he concludes, reaching for
the fridge.
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