Raleigh Bicycle Company, Nottingham. Circa 1986

I got my start in advertising as a 16-year-old studio messenger at an agency in London. Within a year I was also an apprentice paste-up-artist, a model for the agencies client, Raleigh Bikes, and an under-age bar-keep in a wine bar & restaurant next door to the London Palladium.

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One day, brimming with the confidence of ignorance, and driven by the need to make some real money, I started dialing my way through the Yellow Pages in an attempt to drum-up sales leads. A desperate publicity manager at Island Records asked me to pay a call ASAP, and I came back with a brief to produce the promotional campaign for U2's landmark album, The Joshua Tree. Nothing seemed impossible.

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"Enthusiasm, tenacity and luck will determine your future, so aim to get lucky!"

Sir David Tang ​

U2's The Joshua Tree. Photo: Anton Corbijn.

In all, I spent almost 15 years doing-and-learning as an account man, researcher, writer and producer at some good, bad and in-different agencies in London, San Francisco and Tokyo, on a wide variety of accounts that included the U.K. Department of Trade & Industry, GE, Harrods, Ray-Ban, Island Records, Roche, Boots, Mars, Boston Market, Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. 

I started my own Agency in 1999, just weeks after I was laid off by a cost-cutting McCann Erickson. Our first 18 months were a roller coaster ride. But then it was announced in the Wall Street Journal that we'd defeated McCann in a pitch for a $30MM account.

Payback-is-sweet, and I never looked back.