By Tom Flynn

Dear Dave,

Hey Dave, hope you’re doing well mate.

Tom here, of the not famous in the slightest Tom&Patxi. We were the pair of sycophantic students that made you that album cover.

I know it’s been a while since you came to talk to us, but I just wanted to say thanks for the masterclass all the same. It was honestly brilliant. I’m a bit of a nerd myself when it comes to ads, so I loved sitting down and dissecting great work as a group, it was a welcome distraction.  

I’ll level with you Dave, my writing to you, as with all my writing, has an ulterior motive. I’d very much like it if you’d come into the SCA to mentor.

I know that Mike has been chatting to you about it, and I really want Mike to like me, so I’m trying everything I can to help him out. Otherwise, I’m being quite selfless here (how noble of me, I know). We’re finished the course in two weeks, so I fear someone as hopeless as me is far beyond saving at this stage. I am, for once in my life, not campaigning for my own benefit and am instead hoping you’ll come in to help the next cohort in the same way Mike helped all of us.

See I’ve listened to your podcast a couple hundred handfuls of times and along with giving me the ability to shamelessly squeeze in some more sycophancy here, I’ve gotten quite a lot from it. The most important of which, is what we can learn from those who are better than us. Everyone I admire learned from someone who was equally as great as they later came to be. It’s one of the reasons I came to Sca in the first place, I thought it would give me a better chance of working for someone whose work I loved. And in turn I hoped that would let me produce great work in the future.

Imagine how beneficial it would be for students to learn from someone like you, imagine the work they’d make down the line if they had guidance of that quality from the very beginning.

That obsessiveness and attention to detail that litters your blogs is exactly what needs to be instilled in us. Sometimes I feel advertising is really just the art of iteration and I see that you feel the same when I look through your posts. I wish I’d learned that a little earlier and I think maybe if you’d been mentoring, I would have.  

Even if you don’t think yourself as great as we all do, you can’t argue everyone knows who you are. Your name has weight, if you started mentoring, even if it was only occasionally, maybe even more amazing people might drop in and lend us their wisdom. I know you managed to get Gerry Graff (one of my heroes) on your podcast, maybe he’d do a skype masterclass if you asked him? Who knows?

Honestly though it would be amazing if you could give any of your time to helping the school, even if it’s not a proper roll, it’d just be great to know you were there. The Sca is a really special place. I’ve never been in an environment full of people so in love with what they do before, and I thank whatever gods there may be that I get do what we do every day. We’re not some group of rich kids sitting around playing at being bohemian, we’re a strange little group of creative misfits who were lucky enough to fall into this little family thing we have going. I don’t mean to assume but I think you’d love it here.

And I think everyone would love having you too, you just seemed like a nice guy, and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters I suppose.

Whatever you decide, thanks for coming in that time,

Cheers,

Tom.