Unlocking Your Creativity and Persuasion: A Master Ad Man on Tricks of the Trade

Chris Beresford-Hill traces his path from unpaid intern at Boston agency Modernista to top-tier creative director, anchored by stories about persuasion and audacity. He breaks down craft techniques (dumping every idea then 'sifting the vomit,' writing a sentence and forcing himself to finish it) and the management philosophy of making fast, decisive calls because time kills momentum and deals. Recurring lessons include reducing a client's message to one compelling truth, making your idea easy to say yes to, and trusting the 'getting away with it' feeling that signals an idea is special. He shares behind-the-scenes tales of his first Super Bowl ad, a killed Daniel Day-Lewis Mountain Dew concept, the Adidas stunt where he lied to a client, and the Napster 'Crashster' campaign that got killed at 22. He closes with book and documentary recommendations plus how hard fitness at Tone House replaced meditation for managing anxiety.

• As a young intern Chris cold-emailed Mark Cuban for rights to use his name in a Dallas Mavericks Hummer ad; Cuban replied an hour later with 'Go for it. -M.' — and showing that email to his boss got him his first paid job offer ($22,500/year).
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• He landed his first Super Bowl ad (Emerald Nuts, 2005) at Goodby, Silverstein by asking the creative director for the assignment 'It doesn't even have to be formally assigned,' then quietly asked the strategist what would make the client like it more — learning peanuts could be positioned as 'energy.'
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• The killed Mountain Dew idea: announce that Daniel Day-Lewis would star in a Super Bowl ad without telling him, then when he sued/refused, air Will Ferrell doing a 'There Will Be Blood' milkshake parody — legal feared Day-Lewis could be owed a royalty on every Pepsi product sold forever. It evolved into the Bryan Cranston / Tracee Ellis Ross 'Shining' Mountain Dew Zero Sugar spot.
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• On the Adidas Billie Jean King US Open campaign, the client said they could only spray-paint Adidas shoes; Chris said 'Absolutely' but lied, betting Nike wouldn't attack a girls-in-sport initiative — and stacked the launch line with Converse, Air Force 1s and Sauconys, getting screamed at by global legal but winning industry acclaim.
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• At 22, his Napster 'Crashster.com' campaign — paying regular people bounties up to $1M to crash live broadcasts wearing Napster shirts (even $2.5M for a live spacewalk) — was killed by the board chairman one week before launch; he later saw it as a blessing that kept him on a slower learning path.
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• On managing anxiety, Chris reveals he can't meditate, so instead of 'turning the dial to zero' he turns it to 10 with brutal morning workouts at NYC's Tone House gym — the first class made him vomit in the locker room.
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• His killer cold-email subject line to clients at TBWA (Apple's agency) was 'Hi, from Apple's ad agency,' which got a high response rate.
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• His first boss Lance Jensen wrote the famous VW line 'On the road of life there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted.'
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• Idea-generation technique: get every thought out, then trick yourself with prompts like 'What's the worst ad? What would David Fincher make? What if gravity didn't exist?' — described as making yourself vomit then sifting it.
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• The Emerald Nuts Super Bowl idea came from the KAWS 'reverse-painting into a corner' method — he wrote 'Robert Goulet appears and messes with your things' before he had the idea, forcing himself to finish the sentence.
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• Editor Ian McKenzie tip: whatever an editor shows you first is usually closest to where you'll end up; early disappointment is your psychology not matching the work, not the work being bad.
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• Best boss David Lubars (worldwide chairman/CCO of BBDO) taught him to 'make as many decisions as possible' — fast gut calls keep everyone in motion and amplify a leader.
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• As a test run for the Napster campaign, two interns crashed a live Boston morning-show interview with a then-little-known comic, Bill Burr.
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• He recommends three creative-process documentaries: 'South Park: 6 Days to Air,' Metallica's 'Some Kind of Monster,' and 'Conan O'Brien Can't Stop.'
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• He credits Allen Carr's 'The Easy Way to Stop Smoking' with making him quit cigarettes instantly — he's given it to 4-5 friends who all also quit.
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• He rereads Daniel Coyle's 'The Culture Code' every year; he loves how it studies high-performing cultures from IDEO to the San Antonio Spurs to the Navy SEALs.
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