Dave Buonaguidi: The Way I See It

Born in ’64 and (temporarily) dead by ’78, Dave Buonaguidi was resurrected in the nick of time. He became a creative and in 1995 co-founded St Luke’s – a revolutionary agency co-op, where every staff member had shares in the company and a say in how it was run.

He helped the shop win huge clients with great work, including IKEA’s Chuck Out Your Chintz campaign, before leaving in 1998 to work for Channel 4. In 2000 he co-founded Karmarama and in 2003 co-created the Make Tea Not War poster that became the unofficial icon of the London anti-war march.

In 2014, disillusioned with advertising, he left and spent a year working on both his screen-print art and Gratis, a free creative school he hopes to get funding for. Recently appointed CCO at CP+B London, he tells Joe Lancaster about the pros and cons of wearing sandals to a pitch and brandishing twin AK-47s at a charity auction

I was born on 13 August 1964 in Paddington, London.

My earliest memory is watching my sister get slapped by a horrible-looking monkey in a zoo in Italy.

My dad was an optician in Italy, but when he came to London he became a restaurateur. My mum was a model. Growing up in an Italian household is noisy, chaotic and fun; the perfect place for a child. Growing up in an Italian restaurant is even better because you also have unlimited access to cigarettes and olives. 

I was useless and totally disinterested in school. I had two qualifications: art and woodwork. I am technically as thick as shit.

I died when I was 14. I have no recollection of what happened. I was found hanging from the bannister at home by my sister and when the ambulance arrived they said I had been dead for five minutes. They got me breathing again, but everyone was told I would probably die that night and if I was lucky enough to survive, I would be in a coma. I was very lucky. I was in a coma for a few days, and when I came round I didn’t remember much. I’m not the type to commit suicide. I think I was pranking my sister and pretending to hang myself, and it all went wrong.

My dad had a restaurant called San Frediano in Chelsea, London. It was near lots of agencies and was always crammed with beautiful advertising people. I was a young scrote working behind the bar, and just watched them all day long having fun. Confident men, beautiful women and long lunches – why wouldn’t you want to get into advertising? I went to art school and managed to wrangle a placement at some agencies, where my dad knew people. I was very, very fortunate.

In my early advertising days I was cocky, cheeky and not very good, to be honest, but I was very eager to learn. I was also lucky that I worked in places that were changing and adapting, which made them much more interesting experiences. Every place where I have worked has taught me something that I have taken to my next job.

I used to play for an advertising cricket team and one of my teammates was Charles Vallance from VCCP. He was a very skilled and technical spin bowler whereas I was a volatile, ill-disciplined and over-aggressive fast bowler. His dad was a member of the MCC and had come into contact with an Italian dude called Simone Gambino, who was obsessed with cricket and was setting up the cricket league in Italy. I met Gambino in London and, after a short interview that involved him squeezing my arm and saying ‘Strong!’, I was invited to trial over in Verona and ended up playing against cricketing giants Germany.

I played professionally for a club called Cesena near Bologna and was really getting into it. Then the Chiat/Day sale happened and because we had to set up St Luke’s, I had to pull out of an important international tour of Argentina. Gambino was livid and told me that because I chose my career over my country I would never play for the national team again. He was right.

When we set up St Luke’s in 1995, we came out of the sale of Chiat/Day to TBWA, so our first mission was to survive. It was a great time for a start-up, the technology at the time was fantastic, the creative workforce was very fresh and energised, and that combination meant you could do anything, and our main mission was very simple: we wanted to fucking change everything.

I was very disappointed that the alternative structure of the agency led to arguments and problems. We sidestepped lots of the old paradigm business issues and discovered lots that we had never experienced before. What ultimately killed St Luke’s was the same thing that kills all interesting companies: rampant egos, greed and a lust for control and power. The values disappeared. The culture died. The work suffered and the nosedive was impossible to pull out of.

The main lesson I learned from St Luke’s was to have confidence in my own ability. People moan about how shit everything is all the time, and never do anything about it. A small bunch of ambitious young people who don’t give a flying fuck can create something really remarkable. The problem is, the minute you believe the hype and relax, it’s all over.

I want to fill my life with as many interesting things as possible and I am always attracted to missionary brands, so the chance to work as a client at an incredible place like Channel 4 was irresistible.

I loved it. When we set up the in-house agency 4Creative [in 1998], the people, the attitude and the experience was just awesome. However, I decided to leave and set up another agency, Karmarama [in 2000], because working at a dynamic, modern place like 4 showed me a faster, better way of working that could be a different kind of creative company. Also, I’m a sucker for a start-up.

When we set up Karmarama we just wanted to have fun and do interesting stuff. We had a vision to become a genuine creative resource, not just another ad agency. We based it on karma: that doing the right thing was of karmic benefit, and we had integrity and strong values. ‘No creative awards’ and ‘no wankers’ were just two of them.

It was very different for a while. I think it was the only agency that didn’t enter creative awards and probably the only agency that didn’t have any wankers in it. It was a great place for staff and I think it was pretty good for clients, too.

I believe in creative awards, I just hate it when they overshadow our main goal, which is to improve our clients’ business. For me it’s very simple: we work with clients, build good relationships, improve the work, build stronger relationships, learn, share, improve and keep fucking going, working to create a gulf between your client and its nearest competitor.

That is our most important job, and why they pay us. If you create work at the end of that that is worth an award, take the rest of the afternoon off, but if you are only interested in glory and want to miss out all the business stuff in the middle of the sandwich, go to hell.

In 2003 I was working with a guy called Scott Leonard and he suggested doing a placard for the anti-war march in London. I absolutely love propaganda posters and the chance to do one was great. We knew there would be lots of very worthy placards: DON’T ATTACK IRAQ, THEIR BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS etc. so we thought, ‘Let’s have a laugh.’

It was great learning for us, because I believe we should create work that lives in the real world, in culture, and having an opinion about a stupid war was perfectly valid. I couldn’t ever imagine any other agency being bold enough or stupid enough to get political. The mix of horror and amusement when I saw the Make Tea Not War poster on the front page of lots of Sunday papers was a great feeling and inspired me to try and do it more often.

My death didn’t really affect my outlook on life, but mentally I have always felt 14 years younger than I actually am. When I hit 50 and realised I had fewer years ahead of me than I had behind me, I decided to adjust my life a bit, to only have two agendas: to be around decent people and have fun. Which is very liberating.

I am a disaster waiting to happen. HR’s biggest nightmare. Of course bringing AK-47s to the office is naughty, but there was actually a valid reason at the beginning, I just got carried away.

There are two types of bosses: those who set up businesses and bring excitement, personal values and passion to the party. Then there are those who just get hired to run the business. Management types. I believe that as a boss, your job is to lead and also to inspire, motivate, challenge, excite and mentor your people. You must care for your staff, like you care for your kids.

I left Karmarama because I didn’t like what I was doing anymore or where it was going. I knew I had three options: Stay and slowly go insane. Stay and quickly go insane. Or leave and do something new. Which is what I did.

There is a big problem with diversity in the creative industries. It is still far too white, male and middle class. Further education is far too expensive and the only people who can afford to do it are pudgy white boys from London whose parents work in advertising, and we don’t need any more of them.

In my year of gardening leave after Karmarama I had a dream to set up Gratis – a free creative school that enables anyone, regardless of sex, religion and ability to pay, the chance to have a life in the creative industries.

I’m still working on it with the guys at Future Rising, and I will do anything I can to make it happen. We’ve had lots of support and goodwill, but we need money. I’ll do it one day.

Working for yourself is a thankless task and not much fun. You worry about everything, you take everything personally, and no one gives a fuck about you.

Having set up three businesses and ultimately left all of them, I was pretty much done with the ad business, but CP+B is different. It’s not an ad agency, it’s a creative company, and that’s a big difference. It’s the company I dreamt of creating and never got close to with any of the businesses I founded. For me it’s like coming home.

The guys at CP+B in the US use the phrase, ‘a return on creativity’. I really love that thought and as a creative entrepreneur that concept has been my driving force for years.

I had met Chuck Porter in the past and was very impressed with the way CP+B approached creativity and business – they really get it, whereas London is still light years away from understanding the relationship and the power of business and creativity, preferring to get excited by the fluffy, superficial side of the business. I came in and had a one-hour meeting with the team and signed on the spot.

The best piece of advertising I’ve ever seen? I love the work that Red Bull has done – Felix Baumgartner was very powerful – but the Domino’s work done by CP+B in the States is the most impressive and inspirational case study I have ever seen. Nothing else comes close.

Being creative is a fantastic gift, and the ability to make money and a career out of something you are gifted at and something you enjoy is a wonderful thing. Let’s be clear, advertising will NOT give you artistic fulfillment, because it’s not art, it’s business. This is my big issue with the majority of the people in the business: most of them think they are fucking artists who are being restricted by stupid clients.

We have a mantra at CP+B – creativity is the cure. Creative thinking is the single most powerful tool in any modern business, but it’s not creativity in the traditional sense.

Creativity is NOT a department that sits on the third floor, it’s about smart entrepreneurial problem solvers from many places, who are then gathered together and applied to solve the relevant problem.

Our clients want our creative problem solvers to transform their businesses. That’s what they pay us to do, and we need to understand the reality of the business we are really in. Whatever the problem – creativity is the cure.

If either of my two kids came to me and said they wanted to work in advertising I would kick their arses. Seriously, I would ask anyone why they wanted to work in advertising.

If the answer was: ‘To change things, improve relations, offer a better, more relevant product and service, change the business and then change the world,’ I would encourage them.

The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given is that hard work and a refusal to give up far outweighs talent (anonymous).

Googling yourself is like masturbation. We all deny we do it, but we all know the truth. I care very much what people think of me. I am a service to my clients, the people I work with and even the people who buy my screen prints, so it’s important that I am well thought of and respected. Better than being hated, right?

I have 263 faults. I would love to change them all, but if I had to change one thing it would be my over-trusting nature.

I have no idea what the best day of my career was. I’ve never really been one to celebrate achievements, though I have had plenty of shit days.

I once did a pitch in sandals. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but it was a fucking stupid idea. When I got on the train to go to the meeting, I knew it was going to be a bad day.

The pitch was a total disaster, and that day will be forever burned on my soul and known as Black Wednesday.

Coming back from the dead was pretty good, the births of my two kids were amazing, and selling my first screen print was nice too. I’m lucky, I’ve not had a really bad day in my life.

If I was made prime minister for the day I would: 1) Introduce creativity into the school curriculum, so that creative kids wouldn’t get labeled as stupid and have their lives ruined from such an early age. 2) Make creative further education free and get the government to fund Gratis, to give all young creative people a fair crack at a truly fulfilling life. 3) Introduce and legalise low-voltage office tasers, to zap people when they’re being wankers.

The greatest human inventions are – fire, the wheel, refrigeration, tea, alcohol, the internet, motorcycles and flip-flops.

My biggest fear is running out of petrol when I ride my bike. It’s a metaphor.

I have always been into motorcycles. I love everything about them – the smell, the noise and the feeling. It’s very hard to describe the visceral, sensory feeling you get when you ride a bike, but riding my bike has got me through some dark times.

I think this quote best sums it up for me. If you want to be happy for a day, drink. If you want to be happy for a year, marry. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, ride a motorcycle.

I have no reason to be angry at all, anger is very destructive, I find happiness is much more fun.

I have experienced many things in my life, and I was thinking about writing a book in the year I was on gardening leave after resigning from Karmarama.

I ended up screen-printing my arse off so I did no book writing at all. Recently, I found some of the Word docs and thought a blog might be easier.

It’s called Seventy Summers, to sum up the shortness and preciousness of life, because in life you get 70 summers if you’re lucky and in England summers are very, very short.

If I could be equally successful in another profession, I’d be a Hells Angel or an artist.

My ambitions are just to keep going. Nothing more, nothing less.

Between my two kids, my three cats, my dog and my noisy neighbours, I could always do with a bit more sleep. But honestly, I have very little stress in my life now. I try not to worry about things I have no control over. I do the best I can do right now.

I’d like people to remember me fondly.

At the end of the day, what really matters is living a positive life and recognising that smart minds are essential in curing so many of the world’s ills. Creativity is the cure. Boom!