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News of the untimely death of Tony Cullingham, head of Bartle Bogle Hegarty London’s incubator course The Barn and former leader of the Watford Advertising Course, has sent shockwaves across the creative industry.
Having led the Watford Advertising Course for 30 years, Cullingham's lasting legacy is the number of former students to have forged notable careers in the industry.
Cullingham closed the doors of the Watford Advertising Course in September 2021 and BBH was quick to snap him up to lead the revamp of its creative placement programme The Barn.
As the heartbreaking news sinks in, alumni from the school of Cullingham share their tributes, along with others who knew him.
Helen Rhodes, executive creative director, BBH
Like so many of Tony’s students, I owe my career to him. I feel extremely lucky that I got to work so closely with him over the past couple of years.
To witness Tony in action as he transformed people's lives. I wasn’t sure how it was going to pan out at first, seeing my old tutor every day, reverting to that 22-year-old desperately seeking his approval. Turns out it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I just wish it had lasted a lot longer.
Tony was just getting started, that cheeky twinkle in his eye burning just as bright as ever. Thank you for everything, Tony. You were a true individual in every sense of the word and I will miss you dearly.
David Kolbusz, chief creative officer, Orchard
My relationship with Tony Cullingham is a strange one. Having been "trained" in the wilds of Canada before settling on English soil, he played no direct role in my creative development and yet his presence loomed large at every UK agency with which I was employed.
I grew to know him over the years through seeing him across the room, usually by the lifts, standing next to one of "my" teams, surveying the department. The first time I saw him I did a double take. I remember thinking to myself: "Why are Dan [Morris] and Charlene [Chandrasekaran] standing with Mark Rylance, celebrated actor of stage and screen?" – at which point, an introduction was made. In fact, I was introduced to Tony many, many times by many different teams, who were eager to tour him around the agency he helped them get into.
All the creatives I spoke to were effusive with praise for him, and yet Cullingham was capital-H humble. Every time we met, he'd compliment me on the work the agency was doing and I'd compliment him on the quality of students he'd habitually turn out. He'd shrug it off, obviously, but his reach and influence were undeniable. He will be missed by so many within the industry but, outside of his family and friends, the people I feel the most sorry for are all the budding young creative folks who will never have the opportunity to learn from him.
Graham Fink, creative director, AKA, and multimedia artist
Though I never attended the hallowed halls of Watford and only had the pleasure of meeting Tony Cullingham three years ago, our connection was immediate. We chatted over drinks at the Groucho and our similar stature (he was the same height and build as me) and shared ardour for ideas made our bond undeniable. Tony radiated warmth, boundless enthusiasm for life and a generosity that was nothing short of inspiring.
Our encounters grew more and more frequent and, with each meeting, our friendship deepened. He invited me to The Barn at BBH for a couple of sessions with his students, and it was there that the breadth of Tony's impact became truly evident. The reverence with which his students regarded him was palpable.
Tony was not just a great teacher, he was a guiding light.
So while his eyes may have closed for the last time, his vision lives on in the countless students whose eyes he helped to truly open.
Alex Grieve, chief creative officer, BBH
This is the legacy. Think of your favourite teacher. And, instantly, in unison, hundreds will say one name: “Tony”.
Danielle Outhwaite-Noel and Thom Whitaker, directors (The Humans), RiffRaff
Tony single-handedly shaped this industry in a way that no executive creative director or chief creative officer could ever compete with.
As soon as you stepped into that creaky old sixth-form college, you couldn’t help but be struck by his energy and passion for all things creative. And that was totally unwavering. He was a man who loved ideas and never stopped having them.
Walking into his office for a Friday crit was always a nerve-racking experience. There was no sugar-coating when it came to Tony’s feedback. But even after he’d delivered the harshest of blows to that dreadful Head and Shoulders campaign you were feeling so smug about, you could always guarantee he’d end it with his favourite two questions: “You happy? You winning?”
And the truth is, most of his ex-students still are today, and it’s all down to one man. He was truly one of a kind.
Dave Dye, creative director and partner, Thingy Creative Consultancy
A handful of sentences? How the hell do I capture Tony in that?
For a start, anyone who passes is lauded as incredibly talented and decent – how do you get over that this time it’s actually true?
I considered simply listing the astonishing roll call of creatives that Tony shaped, but it wouldn’t begin to capture the depth of the role he played in their lives. So I’m going to stick to something small and personal, a lesson he gave me in 1988.
I’d just been fired as a junior art director and had blagged a three-week stint as a medium-weight writer at Lintas. One night, I nosed around the offices to check out the agency’s work – dull, worthy, dull worthy, except one – it was stuffed with funny, weird, subversive ideas.
I went back the next day to find the creator, he was sitting on the floor with a kind of half smile, half smirk – like he knew something that I didn’t or had just set up some prank that was about to kick off.
I told him I loved his Wall’s campaign; kind of spoof, kitschy 50s-looking ads. Huge, oversized ice-creams filled the space being held by a tiny cliched character in the bottom right (housewives, bank managers etc) saying something like: "Boy, I simply cannot wait to wrap my gums around this strawberry mutha!"
They were very cool, not like ads, but more like B-52s album covers.
"Thanks... yeah, difficult brief that, whatever we did it was a client mandatory that the pack had to be as big as the poster."
I’d have been happy to have done them on an open brief, Tony did them on the most restrictive brief possible. Noted. Thanks Tony.
I forgot to mention Leicester, so… Leicester.
Danny Brooke-Taylor, founding partner, Lucky Generals
It’s his smile. I first saw it when he welcomed us into his Watford classroom. We were his inaugural year. He seemed warm, kind, and… mischievous. We knew instantly it was going to be fun.
I would see it again whenever he was on the winning five-a-side team. And again, on a Monday morning if Leicester City had been victorious over the weekend.
It would appear in those moments he saw the glimmer of something interesting in our ideas. And always when clutching a pint at The Yorkshire Grey.
Never more so than the night he was surrounded by 30 years of his students, all of us there to say thank you.
Thank you for teaching us not "how to do advertising" but how to think. Our loss is immeasurable and our sadness hurts like hell. But when I close my eyes and think of Tony, he is smiling. And I smile too.
Rob Doubal, co-chief creative officer, McCann UK, and co-president, McCann London
When I was a naive ad student, I never understood why Tony was teaching advertising. He seemed to know all the answers... why wasn't he making it? I’m now old enough to know why.
His legacy is a beautiful one. He implanted in every student an anarchic spirit. One which protected and proved the importance of challenging what has come before. His students are all bound by his knowing looks and ease at which his mind lent itself to joyous mischief and anti-establishment. "That’s funny," he would say with just a hint of a smile.
A great, great teacher with a beautiful legacy. And, boy, how he cared about his pupils. He will be missed.
Caroline Pay, chief creative officer, Dentsu Creative UK
When I received my application form for the Watford course, I took one look and threw it straight in the bin. Then I cried. It was awful.
That was the first sign he was trouble. My Watford interview was the hardest day of my life. Or at least up there with childbirth.
He loved to introduce me with that anecdote when I met the new students each year. After graduating, I stayed on to help him out with some teaching. I just kept going back for more. Yes to teach, but also to hang out with him because, to be honest, Tony was just magic. He made our lives hell during that course but then made us feel like a million dollars for ever more.
He would trot into every agency I worked at, with that year’s kids, and watch them like a proud dad from the back of the room as I crushed their dreams, just as he had crushed mine all those years before.
It was this kind of tough love that built my new brain. I knew it worked. I’d been there. Felt that.
We’d often slip off for a quick cup of tea to catch up on the family, and what I was up to next, and he’d try to shoehorn some football chat in somehow.
Along with Robert Saville and Kim Gehrig, Tony made me who I am at work. He is utterly responsible for any success I may have had. Any idea I have ever had. The friends I have made. Who I am today.
I was heartbroken when I heard the news. I've never had to adult without him. I’m scared, I’m sad but, most of all, I’m grateful that he chose me to go on his course. And I’m glad he allowed me to stay involved way longer than I should have.
A tough teacher, a wonderful mentor and a brilliant man. Thank you TC, we love you.
Matt Lever, chief creative officer, BMB
I’ve always said that going to Watford changed my life. But what I’ve realised in the last week or so, since we lost Tony, is that Tony changed my life.
Reflecting on the enormous impact that one brilliant man had on me (and on a thousand or so other people who were lucky enough to benefit from his genius) it would be a struggle to articulate the profound influence he had on both my career and life in general within any kind of acceptable word count. So I’ll just say: “Thank you.”
Thank you for turning my lazy, underworked brain into my most valuable asset in just nine short months.
Thank you for making me realise that coming up with ideas really is “the most fun you can have with your clothes on”.
Thank you for introducing me to Helen [Rhodes].
Thank you for ripping my ads off the wall and depositing them in a dustbin marked “dull and irrelevant”.
Thank you for teaching me that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Thank you for letting me join an industry-wide gang of the most interesting, funny and intelligent people I’ve ever met.
Thank you for texting me out of the blue that time, to tell me you thought I was doing a good job at BMB.
Thank you for everything, Tony. I’ll miss you.
Dan Morris and Charlene Chandrasekaran, executive creative directors, The Or
You’ve probably read a thousand things about Tony and what he did for the industry. So we thought we would tell the story of what Tony did for us specifically.
Tony wasn’t just a teacher. He was a matchmaker who looked at his students like differently shaped Lego bricks that he could slot together into the most surprising and interesting creation. We were just two of those bricks in his giant bucket. Not knowing what the hell we were doing, we had both partnered people who were essentially mirror images of ourselves and it wasn’t working.
Different opinions/styles/influences/personalities and the chaotic alchemy that creates is a key component of surprising thinking. Tony knew that but he let us spin for a few weeks first, so we could figure it out for ourselves.
Then, one day at our monthly review, he told us what we had gruellingly come to learn and that we needed to do a switcheroo. He put us together and, 15 years later, we’re still here.
Tony used to deploy the phrase "You winning?" at the perfect time to make you question your work, life and existence as a whole. It’s easy to say now, looking back, that we wouldn’t be winning without him.
It’s hard to say goodbye to someone you always saw as some ageless, eternal mad wizard. So we won’t. We’ll end instead with something Tony would enjoy and that rings true for us, a quote from one of his favourite people, Spike Milligan.
"My father had a profound effect on me. He was a lunatic."
Oli Beale, freelance copywriter (former executive creative director, Anomaly)
This feels like one of Tony’s briefs: write some words to be read after my death. To make things worse, I’m pretty sure he’d want it to be funny and irreverent. Do something original with the format. Write an exchange between him and David Bowie in the afterlife. Something like that.
The thing is, even though he’s gone, all I want to do is make him smile. That smile of his. That mischievous smile. They say there’s nothing more magical than your firstborn child smiling up at you for the first time. But whoever said that hasn’t been to Watford Advertising School. They haven’t had Tony wincing at everything you’ve said for two months and then finally cracking.
By the end of Watford, he’s all soppy and doting. He’ll shake your hand for, like, four minutes, just grinning at you. I can see it now in my head. Hello Tony. I don’t need to say any of this to anybody who’s been to Watford. We all feel the same. We all love him. We all see the world a little bit differently because of him. And we’re all still trying to make him proud every day.
Micky Tudor, chief creative officer and partner, The & Partnership
Tony taught so many of today’s creative leaders that, for a generation or two, British advertising has been Tony Cullingham-shaped.
With every idea sporting an invisible mop of whispy, curly hair.
For years he had a virtual monopoly on young creatives being hired. What was his secret?
His course at Watford was called the School of Art Direction and Copywriting but, surprisingly, Tony didn’t really teach either.
He obsessed with something much more important. Ideas.
He would often rip our precious scamps off the wall, our first experience of killing your babies. It was a brutal, invaluable lesson in how only the clearest, simplest ideas make the cut.
He believed in us when we often didn’t believe in ourselves. The young people that left Watford, left with a fire, energy, and a pragmatic realism that the most exciting industry in the world was also one of the toughest. But, most of all, we left with a portfolio laden with fresh ideas.
Tony leaves behind a personal portfolio that is much more impressive and weighty than any of ours could ever have been. Actually no, not a portfolio, a monumental legacy. A legacy that the ideas his students have produced can partly be attributed to his unique style of teaching, and have formed some of the most ground-breaking campaigns this industry has ever seen.
So it’s ironic that Tony’s very last idea is so hard to fathom. The idea that he’s no longer with us.
Aidan McClure, chief creative officer, Wonderhood Studios
I can imagine Tony looking down on us, his many, many students, with that grin on his face as we think about what to say. His last quick turnaround brief was delivered with a short laugh and deadpan exclamation of “funny”. I find it mind-boggling how many creative careers Tony has shaped. I can’t think of anyone else who’s had a bigger impact on UK creative departments over the past 30 years.
What Tony did so brilliantly was prepare students for the reality of this industry. He provided a boot camp that never gave you any answers but equipped you with all the tools you needed to cope on your own. How to judge ideas. How to kill your babies. How to write your way out of problems. These were delivered with memorable soundbites like: “It’s apropos of nothing”, “it’s worthy”, “where’s the truth?”, “it’s been done before”. The Tonyism I’ve held onto most tightly throughout my career though is: “It’s only advertising.” These words have provided a buoyancy aid whenever things get a bit choppy.
Watford was a ridiculously intense year. Tony cleverly cultivated an environment that was designed to replicate a working creative department. An environment of knockbacks, go agains and confusing feedback. This was peppered with the odd win dangled in front of you to keep you going. It was all designed to make you resilient, the most important tool a creative or anyone in the ad industry needs. However, whenever it got a bit too intense, he would remind you that “it’s only advertising”. He would then take us off to play five-aside football where, for an hour a week, we would forget about that tricky dog food brief and how you hadn’t won "ad of the week" since the beginning of term and have a ridiculously intense kick around instead. It was a much-needed release that kept our heads straight.
Since then, “It’s only advertising” has put everything into perspective. It allows you to laugh at that rubbish idea you came up with because you’ll come up with another one. It makes you put your work down for the evening because spending time with your mates and family is far more important. It’s a gentle reminder that you’re not saving lives and when you feel like writing something purposeful about porridge, it’s a nudge that people just don’t care. And when this publication gives you Turkey of the Week, or you read a comment that says what you spent the past six months working on is the worst thing they’ve ever seen you shrug and say: “On to the next one... it’s only advertising”.
But this is just me. I graduated from Watford 17 years ago. There are so many of us out there equipped with Tony’s teaching, his words still ringing in our ears, guiding what we do, day in and day out. His contribution to our industry is immeasurable and it’s just so, so sad that he won’t be popping up again excitedly saying: “HERE HE IS!!!” as he brings in yet another crop of bright-eyed students for a crit. It’s a devastating loss for the advertising industry but an unimaginable tragedy for his family. My heart goes out to them.
Andy Jex, chief creative officer, TBWA\London
There are legends of our industry responsible for an unfair share of the greatest work. And then there’s Tony Cullingham.
A breadth of work so great, so deep and so plentiful, it boggles the mind. Sure, his name isn’t directly credited on any of it. But the names that are know that Tony was why and how they did it. They’ll all admit it – they could never have done it without him. They owe him their success, their careers, their everything. His handprint is on all that work.
As a result, his body of work is way bigger and larger than any other person and any other single agency.
You can drive this industry forward through your behaviour and inspire it through the work you make. Or you can teach and empower hundreds and hundreds to go do it themselves.
No one’s left their mark on the work like he has. It’s outstanding, of the scale we will never see again.
Those creatives always wanted to pay him back. Some struggled with the thought that they could never pay him back. They must seek comfort in the knowledge that Tony took all the repayment he ever needed in the pride he got from seeing all of the work they produced.
Tony, all those creatives are your work. And all their work is yours.
Dan Watts, executive creative director, Pablo
Tony changed the lives of many people over many decades but never once changed who he was. There was no one on planet Earth like him. Weird in a good way. Scary in a soft way. Brutal in a kind way. And, of course, those eyebrows. It was rare that he liked your ideas but when he did, it was like you’d hit the advertising jackpot. One of the old "Watford strategies" was "Bupa. Because heaven's boring". With Tony up there, I’m sure it will be anything but.
Rajeev Basu, former vice-president creative director, Maximum Effort
I owe so much to this wise, silly and brilliant man. A teacher and friend I will miss very much. I remember how he’d award whoever came up with “campaign of the week” the chance to pick something out of a biscuit tin that was full of rubbish he’d collected from a charity shop. Alternatively, you could opt for however much change he had in his pocket at that time. The choice was yours.
The prizes got increasingly bizarre as the weeks went on – one week the winner received a very smelly giant puffer jacket we suspect he’d found in a bin somewhere.
I don’t think any of us will ever be able to explain his methods, but there is no doubt none of us could be more grateful for what he’s enabled us to go on and do. This year’s winner of the course lettuce is you, TC. It always has been. Hugs from NY. Jeeves x
Aymara Blanco, creative resource manager, BBH and The Barn
I had heard on many occasions of the famous Tony from the Watford course and when Helen [Rhodes] told me of her plans for the BBH Barn, I couldn’t believe I was finally meeting the legend. I was somewhat terrified at first but after the first couple of minutes, I knew we would be mates.
It’s not often you have the privilege to cross paths with such an amazing soul and I now regret not having spent even more time randomly chatting about Spanish cinema or how Leicester City’s magical years were slowly coming to an end.
It’s been a wonderful two years helping you with The Barn Tony, I hope wherever you are now you can sit back, put your feet up and feel proud of the lives you’ve changed for the better.
Sim Sidhu, BBH creative and Barn class of 21/22
Our TC, our Top Cat, our Tony Cullingham was truly one of a kind. I had the absolute joy of being taught by him during the first year of Barn at BBH and he taught me so many things, as a teacher, as a confidant and as a dear, dear friend. Forever our creative cheerleader, he taught us when you’ve got an idea to write it. And if you can’t write it then draw it. And if you can’t draw it, make it. And if you can’t make it, just dance and scream from the rafters.
His zest for life and dedication to us all was nothing but inspiring and we miss him and his pints of lemon water, opera singing, love of Tesco meal deals and two-hour anecdotes about psychics so so much. I know his legacy will live on in all of us, especially when we all push for Friday.
Nick Gill, creative director and partner, BBH
Tony was the best advertising tutor of his generation. For him it wasn't enough to just pass on his knowledge, he needed to share with others his boundless enthusiasm for all things creative. Having him in BBH was just wonderful. Like having inspiration and generosity on tap.
If he told me about some Iranian film he'd just seen it would be like listening to a child who'd just discovered chocolate. He was unique and precious and a simply lovely man. I will miss him dearly.
Dan Scott, creative, Pablo
Tony would always question: “What’s the benefit?” But what was Tony’s benefit? That’s simple. Our careers. Most of the great commercial work you see was directly affected by this great man’s teachings.
His influence was invaluable. And that’s why his legacy will live on, through all his students. Passing on what Tony taught them to the next generation and the next. Instilling the attitude of this legend in creative advertising. That would be my promise.
Algy Sharman, CCO, Joint
Be dramatic.
Interesting.
Funny.
Different.
Witty.
Provocative.
Entertaining.
Challenging.
But whatever you do, don't be boring.
This is what Tony taught us about writing ads.
But really, he was just describing himself.
Thanks for everything TC.
