I was persuaded to write a 'Starting Out' article for the Nottingham Post this month.

For anyone who's interested, here's the article…

(from Nottingham Post 4th Oct 2011)

STARTING OUT
by Andy Sellers, Creative & Managing Director
 of S&® the brandvertising agency

I don't know why, but I have always had a fascination with the appeal of brands - how they position themselves and what customer satisfactions they promise. Why do we buy Brand X, not Brand Y? How do drumming gorillas sell chocolate bars? The psychology behind it all has always intrigued me, and continues to do so.

And with A level studies in English, Art and Economics I began looking for a career which combined art with commerce. Advertising was the obvious answer. And in those days, before the digital and internet explosion, advertising was one of the sexy industries, alongside film and television. My aim was to become an agency visualiser - the magic marker man who would scribble down advertising ideas at the drop of a hat before disappearing down the pub Friday lunchtimes. And be paid for it. If only …

A friend who worked in advertising advised me to jump in at the first opportunity to become employed in an agency - whether the vacancy be for a studio junior or an accounts clerk. Once in, I could work my way to what I really wanted to do. So I left school and joined a Sheffield ad agency as a production junior for the princely wage of £8 per week - at the time I was earning more as a schoolboy with my paper rounds and car washing services - but it was the break into advertising I was looking for. And just in case, I continued my A level studies during my lunch breaks, having been offered a place at Sheffield Art College.

But art college never happened, I was enjoying working too much for that - and within eighteen months I had talked myself into the role of Production Manager at a bigger agency in Nottingham. I was in at the deep end, and learnt as I went along. This was my introduction to some of the colourful characters to be found in the advertising business - I recall vividly my MD and the agency Creative Director literally coming to blows over the boardroom table as they debated the validity of a particular headline! The agency was soon to be bought by the Saatchi Group, and I moved on to a well respected and creative Nottingham agency, making the board by the age of twenty eight. But again, within a year or two the company was bought by another multinational agency group. But large, multinational corporations didn't appeal to me at all - too big, too impersonal and too much political infighting.

So by 1985 I’d had enough of not knowing who my next employer was likely to be - I packed my job in and started Sellers & Rogers (now known as S&®), accompanied by a colleague, Lin Rogers, with whom I had worked closely for many years. Lin was the magic marker man I had originally wanted to be. This time I was the copywriter in our two man creative team which was Sellers & Rogers - as well as being MD and CPW - chief pot washer.
With our first daughter just ten months old at the time, a mortgage to pay, no clients and little funds, some friends and family thought we were perhaps being a little reckless. But we did have self belief, and my wife and I pledged everything we owned to the bank to get the business started.

Now in our 27th year of business and the only ad agency in Nottingham to be IPA-recognised (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), in our time S&® has created and managed advertising for most major East Midlands-based brand-owner companies - - including the likes of Nottingham Building Society, Hardys & Hansons, Diamond Cable, Derbyshire Building Society and Nottingham Evening Post. Sadly, many of these East-Midlands brand names no longer exist - the companies having been bought out and absorbed by larger corporations based elsewhere in the UK.

The current economic climate means it's 'survival of the fittest' when it comes to brands, but I know that Nottingham and the East Midlands has a lot to offer - in the creative industries in particular - and I'm looking forward to seeing the next 'drumming gorilla' from our region.