Dave Trott

Dave Trott speaker, advertising and marketing legend.

Over a 40-year career in advertising, Dave Trott developed a reputation as both a brilliant copywriter and as an industry leader. He has worked for and founded iconic agencies and has created some of the industry’s most memorable campaigns for clients such as Toshiba, Holsten Pils and Ariston.

Trott has recently published books sharing his ideas and now speaks to audiences keen to learn his views on everything from how to run agency departments to how to create successful campaigns, while illustrating that creative thinking can be applied to almost every part of our lives.

Dave Trott won a Rockefeller Scholarship to go to art school in New York and trained as a copywriter in 1971 on Madison Avenue, at Carl Ally Inc, at the end of the Mad Men era. He discovered that advertising was changing the way companies talked to consumers.

After four years he moved back to London to avoid being drafted to Vietnam. He worked at BMP in London for ten years, creating many still-famous campaigns such as Unigate’s ‘Ernie The Milkman’ with Benny Hill, Cadbury’s Flake, Pepsi’s ‘Lipsmackinthirstquenchin….’, and Courage ‘Gercha’.

In 1990 he left and founded one of the most influential and anti-establishment agencies of the period, GGT (Gold, Greenless, Trott) where more memorable campaigns followed: Hello Tosh Gotta Toshiba, Aristonandonandon (quoted in a speech by Margaret Thatcher), The Lurpak Butter man, an LWT poster campaign that received death threats from followers of Ayotalloah Khomeni and many more, including a multi-media campaign he created for free to help get the Third World Debt discussed by the World’s governments.

Over his career Trott has worked with figures as diverse as Benny Hill and Ken Livingstone, Spike Milligan and Steven Hawking. He has trained generations of creative directors who are working and winning awards today.

In 2011, Trott’s agency CST Advertising merged with The Gate, London, where he was chairman until leaving in 2014.

In 2010, Dave Trott wrote and published Creative Mischief and in 2013 his second book, Predatory Thinking: A Masterclass in Out-Thinking the Competition. His latest book, One Plus One Equals Three is a masterclass in creative thinking. His next book Creative Blindness (and how to cure it) was published in 2019. His blogs and articles are regularly published in industry bible, ‘Campaign’ and critics and commentators hail Trott as a ‘legend’ and ‘genius’ with his ideas considered inspirational not only to advertising, marketing and PR professionals, but in life generally.

Contact Dave Trott via a Specialist Speakers agent on +44 [0]1455 633289 for speaking and presentation in both in-person and virtual settings.