How many strategic departments does it take to make a Beatles album cover?
Dave Trott argues that the world's best ideas aren’t data driven or created by strategic departments. Take the 'real' meaning behind Paul McCartney's bare feet on the cover of Abbey Road, for example.
I try to avoid driving home through St John’s Wood.
Traffic always has to wait at the same spot while different groups of people cross the road. They stop in the middle of the road and pose for a photograph.
It goes on seven days a week.
People come from all over the world to be photographed crossing the road at this spot.
Out of everywhere in the UK, what makes this particular spot unique?
It’s a zebra crossing.
But there more than ten thousand zebra crossing in the UK, why this one?
It’s because this zebra crossing was featured on the cover of the final Beatles album, and had them all walking across it.
For a photograph to be so iconic it must have taken them ages to think up the idea, right?
Nope, it took about thirty seconds.
By the time they made that album the Beatles were ready to break up, they were sick of each other and barely speaking. But they had to come up with a name and an image for the album.
The sound engineer smoked Everest cigarettes so someone said let’s call it ‘Everest’. Someone said “Yes and we can all go to Mount Everest for the photograph.”
No, that was obviously a problem. Nobody wanted to travel to Nepal together just for a photograph.
Eventually Paul said let’s just name it after the studio: Abbey Road. All we’ve got to do is walk outside and be photographed crossing the road. There’s even a zebra crossing there.
And that’s what they did.
A policeman stopped the traffic for five minutes while they crossed the road. A photographer on a stepladder took six pictures. Paul picked number five, and that was that.
The cover and the image was done and the Beatles never had to see each other again.
But then people began reading things into the photograph. The particular urban legend that grew out of it was that Paul was dead.
If you looked carefully at the photograph there were many different ‘proofs’. One of the most convincing was that Paul was the only Beatle who was walking barefoot.
Everyone else had shoes: it clearly meant something ominous. Except it didn’t.
After crossing the road once, Paul complained that his new sandals were hurting him. The photographer offered to send for another pair of shoes.
Paul was so sick of the whole thing he just said “No, let’s just get it over with.”
So he took off his sandals and walked barefoot. And the image became so iconic, people still travel from all over the world, nearly fifty years later, just to be photographed on that zebra crossing.
The crossing itself has been Grade II listed for “cultural and historical importance.”
And yet it didn’t take an entire strategic department to come up with it. It didn’t take a creative department to perfectly execute it, proving that we aren’t in control of ideas as much as we think we are.
Ideas aren’t data driven: arrived at logically and scientifically. Ideas don’t need trained sociologists. In fact, often ideas don’t even happen in our heads.
Often they happen in the audience’s heads.
Dave Trott is a consultant, author and former ad agency creative director. This article was first published on his blog.
Always enjoy reading Dave Trott’s insights. Well-written and interesting. Just like his copywriting.
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In fact, often ideas don’t even happen in our heads.
Often they happen in the audience’s heads.
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The studios were still named EMI Recording Studios at that time. The album was named after the road NOT the studio.
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the album was supposed to be called Everest, but the Beatles were to lazy to go there and to stupid to use photo magic
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Trott, you’re ratchet strapping music history and the “truth” in order to fit an otherwise spot-on thesis. McCartney sketched the shot days before, the final is bang on his original concept minus the title displayed. With 3/4 of the boys kitted in suits from one designer, it’s a bit more than pure happenstance. It was the label (EMI) pushing for an immediate release who scrapped the trip to Nepal because it would take too long (and potentially miss the critical pre-Christmas sales period). Sure there was no strategy or data but you had four of the most creative individuals on the face of the planet occupying the same air, seems just as likely had they left the cover blank it would have been as iconic. Wait a second…
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As a strategist, it pains me to agree with this.. Though as with strategy, often the best ideas are the simplest.
Pedantically, Abbey Rd was not the last album. Let It Be was.
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Yet, pedantically, Abbey Road was the last album recorded.
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Is this article meant to be sung?
To the tune of Something.
Why must Mr Trott write as though he is mowing down Richard Attenborough with a german machine gun at the end of the Great Escape?
Its jarring.
And affectatious.
“Good luck”, you say. This is copywriting for the internet, where one must be ever mindful that readers eyes begin to glaze and minds wander off toward distant memes toward the end of a long senten. Eschew commas wherever possible. Be ever vigilant. Your quest: to insert a full stop. Better yet…
A line break!
After all, after two consecutive sentences, or one long one, the poor readers retinas trained on a diet of incessant scrolling, start to launch about apoplectically in a desperate search for the white space that signifies both a temporary respite from a sustained thought and the neural notification that some new shiny thing is on the way.
Break everything into small bite size pieces.
Achtung!
Rat a tat tat tat!!
Here come old flat-top, he come grooving slowly
He got ju-ju eyeballs, he’s one holy roller
He got hair down to his knees
Got to be a joker, he just do what he please
He wear no shoeshine, he’s got toe-jam football
He got monkey finger, he shoot Coca-Cola
He say, “I know you, you know me”
One thing I can tell you is you got to be free
Come together, right now
Over me
Even those lyrics are broken into sensible paragraphs.
Or as they also say, shoot me.
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“Often they happen in the audiences head”
Yep. Spot on 10/10 comment. If I was an educator I’d probably call it an “alternative reading”.
It occurs to me when there is an advertising backfire that people don’t consider the possibility that the audience thinks differently to them.
A while back a chess author/coach called Dan Heisman coined the term “hope chess” to describe the way that most players make their moves with a plan for what they want to achieve, but without considering the potential consequences of their opponent making an even better move in response. He advocates playing “real chess” – which considers that your opponent maybe smart – instead.
Advertising gone wrong can often be considered “hope advertising”
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Hmm Very interesting, well thought and Well Said
Cheers ? Colin O’donnell
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Paul barefoot, out of step with the original Beatles, carrying a coffin nail in his wrong hand. *5* Beatles in the shot, the white one has the number plate 28IF, Paul would have been 28 IF he was still alive. If you line up the back wheel of the cars on Paul’s side, the line slices through his head, which was supposedly removed in the car accident that killed him. John is dressed as a holy man, Ringo is the undertaker, George is the grave digger. In the UK in the 60s it was the norm to be buried in an old suit, barefoot. It is a funeral presession outside the Abby, crossing over. It is being observed in the distance by three original Beatles standing in the light clearly seen and one on the other side hiding in the shadows. The police van is a thank you to the police for helping to cover up his death. On the rear cover, instead of the traditional word “The” before “Beatles” we see *5* dots in shape of a 3 and the S has an ominous crack though it. If we tilt the album diagonally we can make out the Grim Reaper and the girl running from the car accident is said to resemble Paul’s ghostly profile. Oh and the record label Apple Corps could be pronounced “A Paul Corpse”. And they were just the clues left on one album cover! Food for thought.
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from one pedant to another…………depends on what you call “last”………………”Let it be” was the last album released; Abbey Road was recorded after “Let It Be” and released before it………..but the real message from the Beatles was the last track on Abbey Road “The End”……
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As an ex-record company PR man, release dates count for me ….
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Agree re:Hope
we often say to clients “Just because you hope it will happen doesn’t mean it will’.
Too much advertising is based on ‘hoping’ it’ll be believed, hoping the ‘holes’ in the strategy/promise won’t be recognised, hoping it will do for the brand what hard work ‘on’ the brand would better deliver.
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I love this explanation more than the article – whether it’s true or not it’s a great story
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Yes, what a band and what and album and what a cover. But I guess the Beatles never got handed a brief from a client requiring they craft creative for a specific audience type; or with the need to demonstrate the brand or product’s unique selling points; or stay true to brand identity; and I don’t suppose they were actually worried about burning through millions of dollars of a client’s money if they got it wrong; and I guess that art for art’s sake isn’t really the same as ‘art’ designed for the express purpose of selling things to people who probably don’t need them. But boy, sure would be nice if it were.
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