Long time creative guru Brett Morris still going strong

Brett Morris is glad his father wasn’t your “typical accountant” – because he told his sons not to follow in his footsteps, as the profession is “boring”.

“Can you imagine a Jewish accountant saying that?” chuckles Morris, adding: “He told us to do something we loved.”

That something was, Morris thought for a while, architecture – and then, a little later, law.

“But I could never see myself being a lawyer.”

He was always fascinated by advertising, though, and quite often would think “there must have been a better way of doing that”.

Then, he discovered, “that you could act make a living doing this”.

And he was hooked. Three decades later, he’s still at it… it being creating memorable and effective advertising.

Today, though, he is able to concentrate more on his creative side, having handed over the reins of the Nahana Communications Group to Thabang Skwambane, formerly group managing director of the largest agency in the group, FCB, as well as Hellocomputer.

Other companies in the group are HelloFCB+, McCann1886, Fuelcontent, Meta Media, The MediaShop, Craft, Lucid Media and Weber Shandwick.

It has some blue chip clients in its portfolio, including Toyota, Coca-Cola, Koo, Tastic Rice and Mrs Ball’s Chutney.

Even though he was chief executive of the group for eight years, Morris has always been a creative at heart, and nothing, he says, beats the buzz of a campaign well done – one that gets people talking, gets them laughing, and gets the client’s bank balance soaring.

He has stepped aside into the position of executive cr eative chair of the group but it’s hardly being put out to pasture.

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He will be fully involved in monitoring and even working on creative campaigns, but, he adds: “We have an incredibly talented creative leadership team, so my role is really about supporting them and I will have the opportunity to do more of the mentoring which I really love.”

There’s probably quite a lot Morris can share with younger copywriters and creative directors.

Yet, asked which campaign he is most proud of, he executes a neat swerve: “The next one. I always feel if you say you love something from the past, it blocks you from looking to the future.”

And it is true, he agrees, that in a fast-paced, unforgiving industry like advertising, you’re only as good as your last ad.

He – and the creative teams around him – have built up an amazing rapport with one of their biggest clients, Toyota.

The relationship between Japanese carmaker and ad agency stretches back almost 60 years. He has been involved with Toyota for 25 years.

“Even in the tough times – like the 2008/2009 global economic crisis and the Covid times – they didn’t stop marketing like some people did.”

That approach, coupled with Toyota’s excellent products, has seen the brand maintain and improve its position as SA’s number one car maker.

It’s also quite humbling to think, Morris says, that between Toyota SA and the ad agency, the brand has attained the status of a uniquely South African icon. The ads for the Hilux, Fortuner, Corolla and other models are as South African as the old Chev used to claim to be – forever linked with our sunny skies and way of life.

And our humour. Buddy the boxer dog, who was used in ads across the Toyota range for years, followed by Dakar racer Giniel de Villiers being chatted up by an attractive woman, followed by the invention of a new word, “tougherer”, to describe the Hilux and the list goes on and on.

(I once gave the agency and Toyota an Onion for over-use of the dog. I got hate mail from fans and Morris presented me with a massive wooden spoon – for stirring.) Morris did the voice-over on the first Toyota Tazz radio ads.

One of them, featuring a nameless dog (sire of Buddy) causing such havoc in the Tazz that the laid-back driver (Morris) is compelled to say, in best laidback, Cape Town beach bum voice, “You can’t say that on the radio, bru…”

The Nahana Group has been going from strength to strength and is now majority black-owned, while its foreign shareholder has 39%.

“Five out of eight of our company managing directors are black and five are women and we have also made a lot of progress in the transformation of mid-management.”

When it comes to creativity, Morris still wonders where it comes from.

Best guess? It’s from the input of myriad ideas and information, garnered from paying attention to what is happening around you – but it requires a creative person to remember Rule Number One of Advertising: you are not the target market.

You have to step outside your own little comfort zone if you are to learn and be really creative.

Sometimes, though, ideas can be sudden, or shocking, as poet Ted Hughes put it in his poem Thought Fox.

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head.

The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

Morris, it is clear, still lives for those moments… when the next great idea is lurking out there somewhere.