Sir John Hegarty: The Power of Creativity

Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme interviews Sir John Hegarty.

Sir John Hegarty, co-founder of global advertising and communications company BBH (Bartle Bogle Hegarty) and founder of The Garage Soho, Investment Company is one of the world’s most awarded and respected creatives in history. He has written 2 best-selling books with a possible third in the pipeline. Current books, Creativity: There Are No Rules and Advertising: Turning Intelligence into Magic have not just been benchmarks for both the creative and communications industries they have inspired disruptors and innovators across a multitude of sectors.

At the heart of Hegarty’s work, his creativity, business ethos and indeed his philosophy of life stands one word. That word is “truth”. Listen to this ideaXme interview or read the transcript of the interview below to learn of how truth and creativity combined has rocketed Sir John Hegarty to the top of the creative world.

“The foundation of any long-term relationship is probably two things, love and truth. You can’t have love without truth. So, truth comes first. What you’re trying to do is constantly build the truth.”

Sir John Hegarty, ideaXme interview

Sir John Hegarty’s Career

Hegarty has been at the forefront of the global creative advertising industry for over 50 years, from the early days of Saatchi and Saatchi to Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which was founded in 1982 and sold to Publicis in 2012.

In 2014, building on this legacy, Hegarty founded The Garage Soho, an investment company with creativity at its heart.

“Sometimes marketing is not enough. You need to change the product”.

Sir John Hegarty, ideaXme interview

The Garage Soho

The Garage Soho is an early stage investor and brand builder. They invest between £100K – £500K into companies’ pre-series A with a focus on technology enabled consumer brands.

The team work closely with portfolio companies on their brand strategy, creative and media partnerships from the outset and throughout their journey to exit. Companies are chosen on the basis of “their potential to change the world”.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Sir John Hegarty founded Bartle Bogle Hegarty with John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. The agency soon became one of the most famous and awarded advertising agencies in the world. Today, BBH’s 7 offices worldwide include London, New York, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Mumbai.

John, was responsible for campaigns for Levi’s such as the ground-breaking commercial starring an unknown model called Nick Kamen who stripped off down to his boxer shorts in a launderette. As a bi-product sales of boxer shorts went through the  roof. He created the tagline ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’ for Audi and picked Brad Pitt to star in a commercial for Levi’s. He pioneered the importance of music in commercials, earning BBH nine number 1 hits. John also oversaw the first viral phenomenon to hit the headlines, the furry yellow puppet Flat Eric for Levi’s, who kicked Eminem off the number 1 singles slot in 1999.

“You never really leave BBH”

Sir John Hegarty comments on his departure from BBH in 2012, ideaXme interview

Awards

 In 2007 he was Knighted in the Queen’s birthday honours.

John has also won numerous golds awards at D&AD, Cannes and British Television. He has been bestowed with the D&AD President’s Award for outstanding achievement and was admitted to the US One Show Advertising Hall of Fame. He has also been voted as one of the most influential people in fashion thanks to his work with Levi’s.

Hegarty sits on the Board of Trustees of the Design Museum.

In this interview: Scroll down to the transcript or click the audio link above

John answers questions from:

–Simon Anholt, author, researcher, policy advisor and global intellectual and Alan Firmin, founder and CEO of Tribal Heart, who spent 20 years as a creative director at FCB, Y&R and VML and more recently as a lecturer at University of London.

John talks of:

His career, philosophy and business ethos as well as the importance of creativity as a force for good.

Potential of “truth”not just to transform creativity but the world.

His application of “the truth”, from his creative work to managing his vineyard in France.

What he would like you to see.

Where companies should start with Corporate Social Responsibility.

Why he’d like you to watch The Romantics tv series

His trust in ideas.

The one global challenge that he would like to address with his creative power.

This interview is in British English.

Interview credits: Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme

ideaXme is a global podcast, creator series and mentor programme.

Mission: Move the human story forward™.

Find ideaXme on all major podcast platforms. Connect on Twitter @ideaxm on Instagram @ideaxme

If you enjoyed this interview, you might also like our interview A Sonnet to Science.

Transcript of Sir John Hegarty’s interview – 20 minute read

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:10:43] Hello, I’m Andrea Macdonald, the founder of ideaXme, a global podcast, available in 40 countries, a creative series and a mentor programme.

[00:10:54] We’ve just launched a podcast playlist focusing on communications and creativity.

[00:11:04] What better person to speak with than one of the most awarded creatives in history!

[00:11:11] Who are you?

Sir John Hegarty [00:11:13] Hi, my name’s John Hegarty. I describe myself as a sort of creative provocateur in the sense that I believe that creativity is there to explore and expand and challenge. And I’ve always found the best creativity did that. It wasn’t there as just decoration. It was there to make a point and lead us into new areas and explore our own thinking.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:11:46] One word arises in most of your in your creative work, presentations and books, and that word is “truth”. You work goes to the heart, the authenticity of products.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:11:59] Could you give us an example of one of your most famous commercials that affected culture and really got to the heart of the truth of the product?

Sir John Hegarty [00:12:11] Well, I think, first, I would say that truth is in advertising certainly and in life is important. Let’s talk first of the relationship between advertising and life. I mean, the brilliant thing about working in advertising, is it teaches you about life. Now, that may seem strange to people, but that it is there to try and sustain a relationship with an audience. So, therefore, you have to understand human emotions. You have to understand what motivates people. You have to understand how you engage with them. And overall, you’re trying to build a long-term relationship. Well, the foundation of any long-term relationship is probably two things, love and truth. You can’t have love without truth. So, truth comes first. What you’re trying to do is constantly build the truth. Build on the truth. Discover the truth. What is the truth? And it is profound. It is meaningful. And it is motivating. And I suppose one of the best campaigns that we did at BBH, that actually mines that thought was for Levi’s and the launch campaign for Levi’s Jeans, the 501 campaign, that has a guy going into a launderette to stone wash his jeans because that’s what you used to do, except we were now launching them in 1985, already stonewashed. So, you didn’t have to do that. So, what we dramatized was the sort of process that people went through back in the sort of 50s before they could do these things to get their jeans the way they wanted them. All we did was we retold a story that people went through and we had another guy getting into a bath to shrink his jeans, because was what they did, but now you could buy them three shrunk. So, you didn’t have to do that. And that whole 501 campaign was built out of telling some truth about the product. The more you wash them, the better they get. Double stitch for extra strength. And you dramatize the truth, obviously. I mean, that’s like mythology does that. It dramatizes love. It dramatizes pain and dramatizes drama, whatever it might be. And that’s what we were doing. And I think. That point about truth is more fundamental than just in advertising, it’s about life as well. And I was wrong. I’ll tell this story when I was at art school on that issue. And this is a slightly different story. We were all drawing, and the teacher stopped the class and he said, look, when a drawing is going well, he would go around and help people with their drawings. And he said, when a drawing is going wrong, what you don’t do is turn the page over and start again. You keep working on that, drawing it until it’s right, and then you turn the page over. And then there was this wonderful pause and he said. I suppose I’m talking about life as well really. That that was said to me when I was 18/19 years old. I won’t even go into how long ago that was put that wisdom and that sense that in art you must have to the truth. You have to have the truth. And there’s a wonderful guy if anybody wants to look him up. And I talk about him a lot. Because Boris Groys and he’s a lecturer at New York State University and Art. And he’s got the most wonderful piece about the truth of art. If art doesn’t have the truth, then it is just pure decoration and nothing else. It is nice but has no power. So, truth has power and that’s what we’re all looking for, power.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:15:58] You’ve commented a great deal recently about the big tech companies and Brexit. If there was one area or one issue that you could use your tremendous creative power. What is the big issue you would you address?

Sir John Hegarty [00:16:24] Well, I think climate change is the big issue. I mean, we’re obviously all the world’s going through a pandemic at the moment. We all understand that. We don’t need to go on about that. In a way. We know how to solve that.

Sir John Hegarty [00:16:39] I think the issue over and above that is the issue of climate change, and it is one that is seriously worrying because it creeps up on you slowly and the changes you begin to notice them, but you can live with them. Those changes are going to get worse and worse. And we are leaving a world to our children and our grandchildren that is in danger of collapse in many ways. And I think. You know, that is for me, the biggest issue, the biggest issue. If I was in a greater position of power, I would be talking about that much more. But again, that gets back to the truth where people are lying about it. People aren’t responding to what we know and what we can see. You know, I have a vineyard in France for all kinds of mad reasons.

Sir John Hegarty [00:17:41] Don’t even go there. Why have I done this? And we farm not only organically, but by a dynamically. So that means your farming in harmony with nature. Simple way of explaining it. And our harvest, finishes today on the 23 September. 20 years ago, it would have been the middle of October.

Sir John Hegarty [00:18:04] So, we are three weeks earlier, and that to me is alarming. It is alarming what’s going on. And I think that is obviously the biggest issue.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:18:16] Simon Anholt, who is an author, policy adviser and founder of the Good Country Index, also formerly founder of Translators in Advertising and worked with your organisation then Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), is thinking of launching the Good Company Index.  Something that springs mind, recently ideaXme interviewed Robert Bilott, the environmental attorney who launched litigation cases against Dupont for chemical pollution.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:18:59] Simon Anholt would like to know whether you would be interested in joining him on the Good Company Index or the formation of the Good Company Index and going back to the point earlier, potentially using your voice, your creative power in another area. What do you say to that?

Sir John Hegarty [00:19:21] Well it is lovely. It is a job offer!

Sir John Hegarty [00:19:24] Isn’t it wonderful, online for everybody to see how I respond! Well, I’d be more than delighted to talk to Simon about that and to see what we could do. It is something I do feel quite strongly about that. I do think there’s a huge cynicism in companies that isn’t sustainable where, you know, one hand, they’re polluting and treating people appallingly. And then they have a CSR policy for, supporting local communities or giving money to the National Theatre or whatever it might be. And, you know, my wish list would be to stop all CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies. And I would say before you can have a CSR policy, put your own house in order. That’s where you start. Are you looking after the environment? Are you treating people properly? Are you honoring your obligations to society? And I think we live in a world today that has lost a sense of morality. And I go back to the great companies that were set up in the eighteen hundred eighteen nineties or so, Lord Leverhulme who began with manufacturing Sunlight Soap. You look at the Cadbury’s, great Quaker families who set up these wonderful companies and they viewed their company as part of the community and felt they had a responsibility to the community, not just to their customers, but to the community as well. And I think in this globalized world, and I’m not anti-globalization as such, but and anti-responsibility where you can just switch production from one place to another and it doesn’t give a damn and you just kick people out of work. But hey, I’ve got the most wonderful CSR policy, and I, I support, you know, planting more trees as I’m cutting them down over there. And that’s what I think we have to look to. And that’s why I think having some measure of what companies are doing themselves should be there and put in place. I mean, I’m very fortunate I’m working at the moment helping wonderful British company called Anglepoise. They make the most wonderful lamps. They are just a wonderful company, and they are instituting a policy of lifetime guarantee for their products and that if they can’t repair it, they take it back and they recycle it so that it becomes a part of nature again. And I think they view that as an absolute responsibility. I think we live in a very strange world today than we were somehow you know, and I’m not picking on fast fashion for the sake of fast fashion, but, you know, I can buy a T-shirt for five pounds wearing five times and then throw it away. And that company charges me whatever to buy that T-shirt and takes no responsibility for the fact that society now has to throw it away. Society has to decide what to do with it. Society has to recycling it. So, I would make all manufacturers responsible for the recycling of their products. It is your responsibility. Why should society say: “Ok, you’ve made it. You’ve sold it. You’ve got the profit. You put it in your back pocket. Very nice. I’m not against profit. Profits good. I love profit! But responsibility has to be extended throughout the life of that product. So, those are the sort of things that I think we should be promoting. We should be getting companies to talk about that, think about that. But we don’t. Sadly, we are led by people with very, very narrow and very short-sighted horizons, which is one of the great tragedies of our society and our world today.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:23:17] As I explained at the beginning of this interview, our audience is global, with a mission, Move the human story forward. We cover subjects from quantum physics right the way through to communications.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:23:37] Could you explain a little more of bottle Bartle Bogle Hegarty, how it was set up? Also, talk to us of The Garage Soho, the company that you set up in 2014. What were your motivations for doing so and what is this organization is doing now? And importantly, the international context is interesting for our audiences so great if you could talk of that also.

Sir John Hegarty [00:24:12] Well, I set up BBH in 1982 with two wonderful partners, John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. We had been the management team of a very lovely agency called TBWA. We helped set up the London office of TBWA. Prior to that, I was deputy credit director at Saatchi&Saatchi. I helped found Saatch&Saatchi with Charles, Maurice and Tim Bell and some other wonderful people. And in 1982. Well, prior to that, we were the management team of TBWA here in London. People always say to me, John, do you have a five-year plan? And I say, no, I have I have a five-minute plan actually. And we were growing that company and it was being very successful. It became Campaign magazine’s first agency of the year back in 1980, I think it was. We were Grand Prix at Cannes. We created wonderful work for Lego. And it was going along wonderfully. And I think was Nigel who said: ‘I don’t think we’re being rewarded correctly here”.

Sir John Hegarty [00:25:22] I won’t go into the details. We started chatting about it. We hit a brick wall when we tried to renegotiate our contracts. They refused to budge. And so, in a way, it put us in the position of having to leave and start our own agency. And I suppose in a way we never intended that. But suddenly it happens to. It gave us a chance to refresh our thinking. Gave us a chance to put in place many of the practices we thought we should be following. One of them not doing speculative to creative pitches, that is not giving away our services for nothing. So, we set up the agency back in 1982.

Sir John Hegarty [00:26:18] I’m happy to say it did go off with a wonderful start. It did have moments when I thought: ” This is madness. Why am I doing this?”. I’d seen I’d been at the startup of Saatchi&Saatchi. I’d been at the start up, TBWA, which was very, very difficult. I thought: “And now I’m doing it again. Oh, for God’s sake, why am I doing this?” But anyway, it all took off and we had a fantastic time. And then we realized very rapidly in the sort of mid to late 80s that the industry was going to become a global industry and that therefore we needed to have offices in other countries. We thought we might be able to do it all from the UK. Now, logic was: ” Well, Hollywood runs a global entertainment business from Los Angeles. Why can’t we do a global communications business from London and we rapidly realized that was not feasible. You’ve got to be on the ground in certain places. But again, we didn’t want to start something conventional. We’ve never liked the word conventional. We didn’t want to start a conventional global agency. So, we just said we were going to be in the most important places in the world and we’ll just have seven or eight offices covering the globe. But again, everybody thought we were going to go west to New York. And instead of that, we went east and set up our first office up in Singapore. And so, we grew it from there. And it was great fun, brilliant doing it! We worked with some truly wonderful people. The agency is still there. I’m no longer part of that now. John retired at the end of 1999.  Nigel and I left in 2014. So, the agency is still doing well, doing some wonderful work and we’re very, very proud of it.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:28:09] You just launched “Hegarty On”, a 360 mentoring App with BBH. You still work with them to a certain degree?

Sir John Hegarty [00:28:22] I don’t work with them in an official capacity although I do advise them.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:28:35] There’s an element of collaboration?

Sir John Hegarty [00:28:40] Well, it’s just really, it’s an app where you can go, and you can ask all kinds of questions relating to the creative industry. And from my past and my writings and my thoughts, you can get an answer from John Hegarty on that issue. I’m very proud of it and wonderful that they’ve done that.

[00:28:56] But in 2014, on leaving BBH, saying that you never leave BBH.  It’s always in your soul, especially for me anyway. I set up The Garage Soho, an early stage investment company helping get young ideas, new ideas up off the ground with finance and guidance and help. And we say, you know, don’t just start a business, build a brand. We are getting these young companies to understand the value of brand building because so many don’t. They just think it’s about having a great idea and inventing a bit of tech. And that’s wonderful. That’s essential. But ultimately, that will be copied by somebody else. So, you have to start thinking about what kind of brand you are: “What do you believe in? What you stand for?”. And the view today, is that brands are more movements than just brands. So, think about a movement rather than a brand. And I think you get the sense of what the world wants from you. What are you changing? What are you bringing to the world? What is it that you’re doing that the world needs? So, we try and guide people in that way. And it’s great fun. And again, I go back to I’m using so many of my lessons in advertising in doing this. As a creative guy at BBH, I’d be in a client meeting and I’d be desperate to sell the work because it was great. And of course, you did your presentation. Then you’d have a conversation and so often the conversation would go to the client saying things like, well, we’re not doing very well in the Northeast and maybe we need a bit more on shelf promotion. Maybe our distribution isn’t right. Maybe the packaging could be adjusted to. And so often I sat there thinking: “Have you ever thought of making a better product and that would be my solution to that nine tenths of the problems that clients were having. You ever thought about making a better product? But they always thought marketing as opposed to the product was the issue. So, I am now in a situation when somebody comes in and pitches an idea for a business, I say, is it better than any of the products out there? How is it different? Why is it different? Is it better than what I can guess? And as soon as I hear them say “No, but we can…” I say no, thank you. I only want to market a better product. And I mean, you know, we will measure what we mean by a better product. There are lots of ways of measuring it. So, that was one of the great lessons that advertising teaches you. And, of course, it goes back to that thing goes it teaches you tell the truth because, again, you’re trying to build a long-term relationship.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:31:52] Can you talk to us a little bit about the type of organizations that you work with? I mean, this is an incredibly broad spectrum from the music industry right the way through to innovative cooling systems. Could you talk to us a little bit of that and the sort of global context of these organizations.

Sir John Hegarty [00:32:20] Well, first of all, we’re completely agnostic in terms of what product area we are. People often say to me also, John, you’re doing media and tech. And I go: “No!” If somebody comes up with a better bicycle pump, I’ll think about that. So, one of the great things, again, about advertising that I loved about is the morning you could be working in the automotive industry and by lunchtime you’d be doing something in fashion. And then in the afternoon, you were talking to somebody about hospitality. And then there’d be something about food or whatever it might be. This is wonderful, eclectic set of skills that you needed to develop. We have that approach here at The Garage Soho. We ask ourselves: ” Is it different?” We have a series of questions we ask. But to be honest with you, you ask those questions and you still come up with answers that it was a complete failure. We answered all the questions, but it didn’t work.

Sir John Hegarty [00:33:24] But we go from, a company making a mattress that is delivered. We go to Soho Radio trying to establish a very different type of radio network. We go to a wonderful cooling system, Sure Chill that uses water to help cool a refrigerator, which means it can be off grid so it can work in Africa, where the grid is a major problem. So, we look at it and think, you know, the world could do with this. This would be good for the world. So, if somebody turned up with an app, a fashion app, we might go, no, I think that was done enough fashion apps. Thank you very much. We wouldn’t touch gambling. We don’t want to be involved in that. But we are involved in a fashion company called HEWI (hardly ever warn it). It is about exchanging your wardrobe. Don’t throw it away. Exchange it. And that’s, I think, a future for fashion. So, we look at interesting ideas because it makes the promotion of that so much more interesting. The great skill of advertising and the use of creativity is, it could take very comparative products and could dramatize the difference between one and the other. And that was its skill. Whether you like it or not. Ultimately, the difference between an Audi and a BMW, you could argue is marginal. Yes, one is rear wheel drive, the other is four-wheel drive. There are differences. But the advertising dramatizes those different. One soft drink and another soft drink. What is the difference between Pepsi Cola and Coca-Cola? It’s the marketing but one’s found and realized that those products with fundamental differences are much easier to market, especially if those differences can be and are meaningful. So, you look for things. We look for things that are genuinely different, contribute we hope, to a better world. And companies that genuinely believe in building an interesting organization. Have had some success and some failures. Isn’t that brilliant?

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:35:43] You’ve written two books on Hegarty on advertising: Turning Intelligence Into Magic and Hegarty On Creativity: There Are No Rules. They’re really incredible books.

[00:35:54] I mean, I would say that anyone from any sector working in any country should read them because they can be applied to really pretty much any business sector, scientific sector. Alan Firmín, who is the founder of Tribal Hearts and has been in the creativity and creation business for the last 20 years and an enormous fan of yours.

Sir John Hegarty [00:36:32] Thank you, Alan. You’re watching Alan. Brilliant. I love it.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:36:38] He would like to know if another book’s in the pipeline?

Sir John Hegarty [00:36:42] Well, I have to say, Alan, right now, no. I always remind people that I am an Art Director. I’m not a writer. And, you know, I used to spend my life going around to all the writers in the agency as an Art Director and obviously as the Creative Director, reminding them that words were a barrier to communication. I would just annoy them. I liked annoying them. But to get them to understand that with words, you’ve really got to be careful how you use them. You’ve got to pare them down. You’ve got to kind of just make them succinct. So, they really carry the meaning that you intend rather than just waffling on. And so much writing is just waffling on. I remember saying to the editor when they convinced me at Thames and Hudson to do my first book on advertising, I said to the editor, Andrew: “Roughly how many words do you think this should be?” He replied: “I think about between 60000 and 70,000. John would be about right”.

Sir John Hegarty [00:37:52] I said “What! I’ve spent my life taking words out, not putting them in”. But interestingly, when I approached it there were a couple of pieces of advice that I remember. Years ago, I was doing something for the book publishing industry interesting – just about marketing books. A wonderful also called Frank Delaney, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, came to interview me. No relationship to any of the Delaneys in advertising, by the way. Would you say that? I’m fascinated. There are so many Delaneys in the advertising industry. He was no relation to them anyway. He was a lovely man. He interviewed me and at the end of the interview. He said” So, John, when are you going to write your book?” And I said: “No, Frank. You know, I’m an Art Director. I work with a writer. I do the pictures and the writer does the words and he looks at me in a very quizzical way. And said: “John, writing is just describing pictures”, which I thought was a wonderfully liberating way of talking about writing. And that stayed in my mind. I thought: “That’s rather lovely. Actually, writing is just describing pictures. So, if you’re an Art Director, you can do it. And then the other thing, I remember reading “A Year in Provence” by Peter Mayle. I thought it’s “a genius book” because it started in January and that was Chapter one. Chapter two is February and it ended in December. So, it was a wonderful arc. And that’s the other thing that you’re going to have with the book. You’ve got to have a narrative arc. And of course, that’s why so many detective novels are sold and murder mysteries, because someone is murdered. and somebody has to resolve the murder. It’s a narrative arc. And so, I bore that in mind. So, when I started to write the book, I just sat down and remembered the first day I walked into an advertising agency holding my portfolio. And that’s where I started. And that’s how I did. But once I got going, it was quite interesting. And then the editor said, well, no, I think we should move that around, put that there, change that around me. And he was brilliant. Andrew Sanigar, was the editor at Thames & Hudson.

Sir John Hegarty [00:40:18] I might do a book on just my creative work and the things that I’ve done and the thoughts that I’ve had and stuff like that. I might do that. The typography might be HEG. And then on the second line, ARTY. My nickname at school was “Hegzy” most of the time, but sometimes it was “Arty”. So, I might do it that anyway. It’s in the back of my mind. So, Alan (Firmin) stay loyal! I might come up with something. Keep up the great work!

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:41:02] You obviously get to meet all sorts of fascinating people right the way across sectors. But who have you connected with richly, to Move your human story forward? Someone who has affected your human journey, not even necessarily only career than who you are today?

[00:41:30] Oh, gosh, that’s a that’s a big question Andrea. I was one of those incredibly lucky people. I have three incredible teachers at periods in my life, who really spurred me forward. So, I have three most people talk about having one. I had three. Aren’t I lucky? Power three I like. I’ve always been fascinated by the power of three. Good enough for God, good enough for me. I have met truly wonderful people. But I feel more inspired by ideas than people. And I think ideas don’t let you down because they’re an idea. They are something that you give birth to or somebody has given birth to. And I’ve sort of respected those more than people. I’ve met truly wonderful people, fantastic people. With great sadness we’ve just heard of the death of Terrence Conran and I was on the board of trustees for almost 20 years for his museum, his design museum, and I got to know Terrence very well. He was a very, very inspirational man, in many ways, flawed in others. Then, you know, so are many great people. But I think you are rarely let down by a great idea. And I’ve always looked to great ideas. The spirit of those ideas. I’m just out of fascination. I’m just watching Simon Schama’s, The Romantics, which is a series on BBC. I recommend everybody try and watch it. I’ve just watched two of those episodes and it’s absolutely brilliant. And it is about ideas and it’s about the time of the Enlightenment, the seventeen hundreds. A whole group of artists, writers, people like that believed in romanticism rather than logic. Because of that time, logic, science had all the answers. And it was reducing people down to numbers and dots and digits and machinery and stuff like that. And the romantics, the poets of Wordsworth, Victor Hugo. People like that were talking about the spirit. And this was an idea not contained and owned by one person. Other people could become part of it. So, it’s ideas that drive you forward. So, I do honestly if you’re out there and you can get BBC iPlayer, Simon Schama, the Romantics. It’s just absolutely brilliant. It’s ideas like that I just get so enthusiastic about.

Andrea Macdonald founder ideaXme [00:44:22] Leonardo Da Vinci said: “Learn how to see. Everything is connected”. If you could make the world see one thing, what would it be?

Sir John Hegarty [00:44:35] The thing I would want people to see is honesty. And again, I go back to my “truth thing”, but honestly, I think is a huge quality in everything. I make wine. I’ve got a vineyard. I make wine in the South of France. And what I’m trying to do is to make that wine as true as possible to nature. Somebody said to me, So, someone said to me: “John, what kind of wine do you want to make?” And I said to them: “You know, you’re asking the wrong question. The question you should be asking is what kind of wine does my vineyard want to make? What would nature make if I was to work with nature?”.

Sir John Hegarty [00:45:29] It’s very, very difficult because of course you have to temper honesty. An example: “How do I look today, darling?” Answer: “You look like shit”? Of course not, you say: “You look pretty good, actually. Was it a difficult night sleep last night? Was it?”.

Sir John Hegarty [00:45:47] But I think we’re suffering today from a lack of integrity, a lack of honesty and a lack of morality. And I think business has lost a moral compass. It doesn’t seem to have that anymore, where it only worships at the altar called profit. Profit is fundamentally important. But don’t get me wrong, but we’ve got to remember, we’re there to reflect how we can be better in this world. I think that sense of honesty is something that I think we should pursue. And again, coming back out the truth.

[00:46:30] Sir John Hegarty, thank you so much for your time.

[00:46:36] And as we say on the ideaXme show, thank you for moving the human story forward!™ It’s been an absolute pleasure.

[00:46:44] Pleasure. Lovely talking to you. And please, everybody, watch The Romantics.