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Let’s be honest; I should never have worked in advertising. I thought I was going to be an actress. After graduating with an English degree, I worked in Theatre in Education in the North East for a while, going around schools and community centres, writing our own plays – about Chinese legends, colour wheels or the periodic table – and performing everything all the way up to Shakespeare. Restoration comedy was a particular favourite of Consett Miners’ Club, I remember.

I then made the mistake of going to a London theatre school to learn how to do it “properly”. If you thought advertising was a cynical profession, try being taught what it takes to become a successful actress. After my postgrad course, I emphatically decided the commercial theatre was not for me and I found myself working as a temporary filing clerk at ATV. The rest is – if not quite worthy of the name history – the direct consequence of that rather mindless step. But the time I had spent doing community theatre was not wasted; it taught me how to live on 13 quid a week and never to underestimate the intelligence of the audience.

Tess Alps plays Imogen Parrot in a Theatre in Education production of Trelawney of the Wells

Forty-three years later, and I have decided that I should finally do something that suits me better than advertising – writing love stories and growing cabbages – even though that means leaving my beloved Thinkboxers. I am not leaving the ad industry completely, as I shall continue on the council of the ASA, doing my bit to maintain our precious self-regulatory system in the face of enormous challenges. However, I am now totally free to say what I think, although I’m not sure I have ever felt exactly constrained.

The first 15 years of my career were spent at various commercial TV companies selling airtime. For the first nine of those, this idealistic hippy and Labour Party member wasn’t at all sure she approved of advertising, despite there being some cracking telly ads on air: the Smash Martians, Cinzano with Collins and Rossiter, the PG Tips chimps, Apple’s “1984”. But I did approve of Rising Damp and World in Action, Brideshead Revisited and Channel Four News and I knew that TV ads were their sole funder. And I was being promoted regularly and found myself working among adorable, clever people, many of whom had ended up in advertising by accident, like me.

Then, in 1986, I saw an ad that – at a stroke – made me fall in love with advertising. John Webster’s “Points of view” ad for The Guardian remains my favourite of all time (see 'Five campaigns that made me' below) and still makes my spine tingle. It proved several things to me: a) that advertising is not just for global household brands b) that you can explain something as complex as The Guardian’s mission in just 30 seconds of film and c) that you can make me care about it at the same time.

My newly forged love for advertising led to me discovering a spot of ambition, and by 1989 I had become an ITV sales director. What swagger the industry had back then. I found myself the host of a yacht during Cannes week and the organiser of sales conferences to various five-star hotels in Europe. How many people in ad sales can say they’ve faced a bill for a broken bed (not mine) from the Villa d’Este, caused by too many people jumping up and down on it? And the photo that appears above, from the era of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, was taken during the TSW sales conference on the Venice Lido, where we surprised Blackie (the late Ian Blackaller) by turning up at breakfast wearing T-shirts printed with all his famous sayings from “Harry (Turner) will go spare” to “Have you had a dump yet today?”.

Maybe there was a bit too much swagger at times in the 1980s, particularly when it led to drunkenness and sexual harassment, something I witnessed plenty of and bitterly regret not speaking up about at the time. But the industry had a captivating energy and self-confidence; it appeared to believe wholeheartedly in what it was doing for advertisers – whether you were a creative director, a media planner or a media salesperson.

A growing respect for the ad industry

In 1992, I decided I should finally go and educate myself about all media and how to plan them together. So I joined the newly launched Pattison Horswell Durden. My friends, P, H & D [David Pattison, Nick Horswell and Jonathan Durden], had created an independent media agency offering strategy, creativity and innovation at its heart – in contrast to the Zenith model – at a time when media was fragmenting and becoming much more complex. This really appealed to me.

For 13 years I had a blast there, including running Drum for several years (content and sponsorship) and overseeing various specialist divisions, including the internet and econometrics ones. I learned so much, and all the abundant evidence of advertising’s contribution to businesses and the economy kept building my respect for the industry.

I count those 13 years working in talented teams, in partnership with creative agencies, getting close to brands such as Sainsbury’s, HSBC, The Guardian and Observer and the BBC, and, if I may say so, doing some knockout work for them, as a real privilege. We weren’t just placing advertising for our clients but for some – the media clients in particular – we became genuine strategic partners. Advising the Guardian Media Group, as it embraced the internet and launched the Berliner format, and the BBC, as it entered the era of multichannel broadcasting with channel launches and the creation of Freeview, was a truly fascinating time.

And Drum was living up to PHD’s pioneering strapline by creating content for several advertisers, such as First Direct, Sainsbury’s and Waterstone’s, and breaking new ground in the nascent discipline of TV sponsorship. It took some serious persuasion to get the regional ITV companies to pool their prime dramas to form a strand for the launch of HSBC.

Presenting to seven ITV CEOs to encourage them to collaborate was good practice for what I’d eventually have to do at Thinkbox. One trenchant CEO vowed: “I’m not letting our brilliant dramas like Morse get packaged up with that Cadfael shit from HTV.” But he did, and eventually “ITV Drama Premieres sponsored by HSBC” was born. We had the same problem when we tried to get a package of female-led films together for Lil-lets to sponsor, only this time it was Hollywood we had to grovel to. How different times are now when all the broadcasters are so ready to work creatively and collaboratively with brands.

"When it comes to fake news, TV has been suffering from it for more than two decades"

The late 1990s and early 2000s brought the rapid growth of the internet and other digital technologies. I counted myself an internet evangelist – still do – and could see some of the possibilities, not least for TV itself. PHD was the first mainstream media agency to launch a search specialism and we were making content for brands’ own websites. The Internet Advertising Bureau was launched in 1996; a destructive and wholly unfounded narrative was allowed to take root in the ad industry, driven by dodgy “numberwanging” from the emerging tech giants and the growing breed of “digital” specialists, and left unchallenged by most agencies; namely, that the internet was killing TV. When it comes to fake news, TV has been suffering from it for more than two decades. I wasn’t the only agency person to urge the broadcasters to do something to counter it but I was probably one of the stroppiest.

Then, in 2006, I got a phone call. By now, I was chair of the PHD Group, left in charge of the UK while David Pattison was out conquering the rest of the world. I was thinking it was maybe time to retire. I was in my mid-50s and with a reasonable “fuck-off fund” – and it was just what you were expected to do at that age. The phone call was from Claire Fuller, a headhunter, who was recruiting the first CEO for Thinkbox, a joint marketing initiative that the commercial TV broadcasters had begun, albeit tentatively, the previous year.

Having been one of the agency people urging the TV companies to establish something like Thinkbox, it was only fair that I listen to their proposal, though I did my very best to persuade Claire that there were better people she could call on. But it was a job that I thought I could do and certainly a job that I was anxious to see done well, so finally I promised to set up Thinkbox and stay for three years. All we need to do, I said at the interview, is to tell the truth well.

Thinkbox has now been doing that for 14 and a half years and will continue to do it magnificently without me around. We have worked with the best research agencies to explore how TV is changing with new tech and behaviours; we’ve produced a huge body of evidence on the effectiveness of TV advertising – and all advertising – and supported the essential work from [Les] Binet and [Peter] Field with the IPA; we’ve linked up with TV companies on other continents and led the formation of the Global TV Group, because the fight for truth is worldwide. Some of the phrases we coined have gone global. I see the phrase “TV’s not dying; it’s just having babies” pop up all over the place but we wrote it in 2007 for a spoof Green Wing sketch and I have the evidence on film.

Since Thinkbox’s launch, it has been gratifying to see people making TV ads as inspired and effective as any from the supposed “golden age”: Cadbury “Gorilla”; Skoda “Cake”; C4’s “Meet the superhumans”, and repeated excellence from Ikea, Nike, Marmite, Audi and, yes, Amazon. And let’s not forget that John Lewis started using TV seriously only in 2007, with my favourite Christmas ad, “The long wait”, appearing in 2011.

Inevitably, my time at Thinkbox has placed me in conflict with some of the tech giants. I think of myself as a wise Cassandra – I am writing this the day after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, fuelled by lies and conspiracies allowed to spread unchallenged online – but to some people I’m a snarky internet-hater with a massive axe to grind.

I actually love the internet and all its potential for good. I’d be lost without Twitter and my Waitrose online shop. Why can’t I criticise some parts of internet life without being called a Luddite?

“But what about Google Maps?” people throw back at me when I dare to question the market dominance and data abuse we see from some of the major online platforms. Cars and roads are jolly useful, too, but I think we all disapprove of drink-driving. I will continue to accuse some companies of being drunk in charge of the internet, and I say drunk – on money and market dominance – rather than evil.

The importance of speaking truth to power

There are many good people in those companies letting bad things happen. I’d prefer democratically elected governments took charge of regulating them. But, in the absence of that, there is so much that advertisers can and should do to support those companies (agencies or media) doing the right thing and to encourage better behaviour from the rest.

It’s not just social media guilty of undermining the truth; plenty of British newspapers played their part in enabling Brexit, by failing to keep the public properly informed, peddling lies and distortions. Neither is TV immune – look at Fox News in the US – but in the UK we have statutory regulation of broadcasting and video-sharing sites in the public’s interest, thank goodness. In turn, I’d like to think that advertisers that do the right thing, pay their agencies fairly and create responsible products and ads that enhance our society will outperform the rest.

I wish I could end this piece with huge optimism for the industry I have grown to love. I do see some positive signs but, given the abject state of trust in advertising that the Advertising Association’s research has uncovered, we need to get a lot better, a lot quicker. I think the lack of self-confidence I see around is, in part, the result of people no longer believing fully in what they are doing, whether they’re a creative, a media planner or a media salesperson – and a few must feel some shame. In Myers Briggs speak, I am an INFP; some wag at Thinkbox quipped that must stand for “I’m never fucking pleased”, so apologies if I am sounding negative. But it’s idealism that makes me want to fight for the good bits and to root out the bad.

One organisation that I’m proud to belong to has been doing exactly that since 1923. Across those nearly 100 years, Wacl has been helping women work towards equality by effecting reforms in the industry through leadership and inspiration. I have belonged to a few clubs and societies in my 43 years, but none can offer quite the magical combination of campaigning and comradeship that bursts out of Wacl. Its fight for equality is now naturally embracing all aspects of diversity and inclusion and I’m proud to have played a part in several of its initiatives to make our industry a safer, fairer and happier place to work. I’d love to see Wacl’s 100th anniversary in 2023 witness a reinvigorated and reformed industry that everyone is proud to work in.

On 31 December I finally hung up my Thinkbox hat. With Lindsey (Clay) leading a peerless team, they haven’t needed me for some time – not even to check on apostrophes. But it doesn’t mean I’ll stop championing TV. The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted TV’s invaluable contribution to society; delivering quality, trusted journalism, explaining scientific facts clearly and calmly, bringing the nation together with I’m a Celeb or Bake Off and offering much-needed escapism with dramas or sport. TV advertisers are supporting Britain’s most vibrant and precious media sector; TV is a noble cause.

But from now on I can also speak out if TV ever lets itself down, because, after all, I’m never fucking pleased and I’m now free to protest. But it won’t.

Five campaigns that made me

The Guardian 'Points of view'

The ad that made me fall in love with advertising in 1986 and still my favourite of all time.

HSBC 'ITV Drama Premieres'

In the early days of TV sponsorship, persuading the reluctant ITV chief executives to pool their dramas for HSBC proved good practice for later Thinkbox negotiations.

Sainsbury’s/Jamie and Comic Relief

Many years working with Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO on Sainsbury’s led to some memorable work in all media, and some fun partnerships.

'Make poverty history'

I hosted a fund-raising party at PHD with Richard Curtis and Bob Geldof, where all parts of the media industry responded generously, donating £2m worth of time and space to run this important AMV BBDO ad.

Thinkbox 'Harvey and Rabbit'

When it came to Thinkbox’s ads, the pressure not to produce a turkey was immense, so thank you, The Red Brick Road, Lindsey [Clay, chief executive of Thinkbox] and Andrew [MacGillivray, marketing director at Thinkbox]. This is my favourite, and I dedicate it to the wonderful friends I have made in adland.