Graham Thomas
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Graham Thomas FRSA has been a leading UK and international advertising man, working for much of his carrer with Saatchi & Saatchi. He was Vice Chairman of the UK agency during the late 1980s and then worked as Regional Director in Asia/Pacific where he was awarded Ad Ages's International Agency of the Year. He is a trustee of several charities including the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, the Childrens International Arts Organisation (CIAO! Festival), and the John Hampden War Memorial Fund. When a Trustee of the Woodchester Mansion Trust, he created the concept of the Woodchester Model (to develop the training of building conservations skills) and this was launched at the Prince of Wale's Highgrove House in 2006 as the Cotswold Heritage Academy. He has written a book on Japanese culture (recommended by The Times as book to read on Japan) and has been cited as an authority on Japanese contemporary art. He also admits to being involved with the development of one of the UK's worst films: Tank Malling starring a youthful Ray Winstone.
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[edit] Early career
Thomas joined Saatchi & Saatchi in 1983. Prior to this, he'd worked at Ogilvy Benson and Mathers (now O&M) and then Allen Brady and Marsh. Here he worked on British Rail's advertising,(in)famous for its 'This is the age of the train' jingle and using Jimmy Saville as the presenter. Thomas was also involved with two interesting initiatives: the first was a series of ads that criticsed the government's lack of investment in rail - a particularly cheeky activity for what was then a nationalised industry (and the first overtly political advertising undertaken by any industry). Second, at a time when BR was being hit by a series of strikes, he developed full-page national press advertising laying out BR's position on why the industrial unrest was ill-conceived.
Thomas also worked on the generic Milk account; it too benefitted from a famous jingle: 'Milk's gotta lotta bottle.' But Thomas initiated two radical ideas to revitalise milk consumption: sponsoring first the Football League Cup and then the Rolling Stones. The former was the first example of the sponsorship of a major sports trophy; it became the Milk Cup. Getting the National Dairy Council to agree to sponsoring the Rolling Stones 1983 UK tour was a coup. Getting the Stones to agree to re-arrange and play the Milk jingle possibly an even bigger one.
[edit] Saatchi & Saatchi
Thomas joined Saatchi & Saatchi to run the Rowntree Mackintosh business. He persuaded the client to bring back the iconic 'Don't Forget the Fruit Gums' campaign from 20 years previous. This was another industry first: the idea of retro advertising. Another client was Tottenham Hotspurs. Building off his football experience, he persuaded them to use radio advertising to build match attendance.
However, when Saatchi ran into problems with their P&G business, he was drafted in to turn the UK business around. Hence began a long association with P&G. In the late 80s, he ran P&G business across Europe and the Middle East and was the architect behind a new type of account management where international account people took direct responsibility for the teams and the business in the local markets. (Prior to this, international account people had been nothing but - and were often called - co-ordinators.)
His two most significant achievements were to first prevent the withdrawal of Pampers from the European market and indeed to reverse its precipitous decline and take it to market leadership (and eventually Pampers would become P&G's biggest global brand); and to repeat the same with Oil of Olay (for which P&G awarded him the R V Goldstein award in 1992.)
Additionally in the 1980s, he developed and implemented the plan setting-up a network of Saatchi-owned agencies in the Middle East.
In 1992, Thomas moved to Asia as Regional Director Asia/Pacific and also led the P&G business across the region. P&G acted as the springboard for the rapid development of Saatchi's network capabilities: the most important being that this led to Saatchi becoming the largest agency in China. The P&G business also meant that new agencies were opened in the rapidly emerging Vietnamese, Indonesian and Korean markets.
In 1995, the split with Maurice Saatchi took place. This particularly affected the Singapore agency where most of the senior management team left. Thomas was asked to do two things: to ensure that Saatchi retained the P&G business in Asia, and to take-on the leadership of the Singapore office, a critical agency in the Saatchi network as it acted as the Asia hub for a significant chunk of regional business.
Whilst not widely known at the time, there were serious discussions about moving some of the P&G business to the new M&C Saatchi agency. Feelers were put out to Werner Goerke - who was running Saatchi's P&G business in Europe and the Middle East - and Thomas. They met in the US to discuss the proposal. Whilst they both agreed that it was feasible to run P&G business out of the fledgling M&C network - and they knew how - they both decided to reject the overtures and remain with the original Saatchi agency. No P&G business subsequently moved.
To demonstrate further that Saatchi hadn't been delivered a killer-blow by the split, Thomas resolved to use the Singapore agency as a show-case. He hired Dave Droga as Creative Director and within a two year period the agency had won more top creative awards than any other single agency (30 awards at Cannes and numerous awards at D&AD, One Show, and Clio), and were named Ad Age's International Agency of the Year.
In 1998, Thomas was handed the task of launching an advertising agency for Saatchi & Saatchi in Tokyo. Thomas's agency quickly built a portfolio of clients, working for the likes of Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Hewlett-Packard, adidas, and Pernod-Ricard. Some claim that during his time in Tokyo, he made a significant contribution to advertising in Japan at least by putting Western agencies on the map and building a strong creative-led profile. His work for adidas made international news.
The Gallery Saatchi & Saatchi in Minato-ku, Tokyo was an attempt to boost Japanese contemporary art. The gallery closed down upon his departure from Tokyo in April of 2002 but during this time Thomas was an activist for the Contemporary Art movement in Japan, making various speeches (including one at The Tate, London) in favour of artists such as Takashi Marukami and Araki.
[edit] After Saatchi
In 2004, Thomas published the book Extremes: Contradictions in Contemporary Japan. The book explored the different cultures of Japan, and what is seen to the foreign traveler and what is hidden. Thomas went on to explore the Japanese concepts of honne and tatemae and how they relate to society in Japan. Also in 2004, he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
For a couple of years, Thomas worked for Visionary Thinking, a consultancy he and an ex-client Mick Yates established for companies wanting to expand internationally. One of their clients was dunnhumby, a fast growing and highly-regarded marketing consultancy and services company. In 2005, he was invited to join them where he now leads their global media and communications team.
