PROFILE: Hard to be humbled - Derek Draper, Co-founder, Farm

You can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps. What you

can tell about Derek Draper is that he has changed.

The former lobbyist and New Labour spin doctor is seven days into his

new existence as a partner in Farm, the brand communications company he

has set up with two ex-Partners BDDH directors, Robert Smith and Paul

Jeffrey.

When I arrive, he is squabbling with his new associates about the merits

of ballet over football, and champagne over lager. The trappings of the

New Labour glitterati may be hard to shake off, but his playful goading

is very different from the Draper I remember; when I last encountered

him 11 years ago, from the opposite side of a Manchester University

Labour Club meeting, he was a cocksure, politically pugnacious youth in

the formative stages of a rollercoaster career.

That career now appears to be on the up again, having troughed last year

with his resignation from GPC Market Access, the lobbying firm at which

he was alleged to have made improper boasts about his access to the

government inner circle.

The day I meet him is Draper’s 32nd birthday, and as he pads about

Farm’s central London offices in shorts and a floppy shirt, he is

relaxed yet at enormous pains to point out that this is a start as fresh

as the paint on the walls. The guests that turn up in a few hours will

be friends and a few colleagues; two years ago they would have been the

hand-picked selection of a consummate networker.

The work that Draper hopes will come through the door soon after will be

equally far removed from the ’endless whirl of self-regarding and

pompous activity’ that dumped him into two bouts of depression.

’I took the decision to change my life,’ he says. ’I’m anxious not to

come across as someone who knows loads about the advertising business.

The Draper image is big-headed and boastful, and I’m trying to point out

that’s not the case.’

Instead, he puts himself firmly in the role of ’advertising trainee’ and

pushes the professionalism and experience of his fellow partners at

every turn. Jeffrey, formerly strategic planning director at Partners

BDDH, and Smith, its former new business director, have worked with

clients including Microsoft, British Gas, Harley-Davidson and IKEA.

Their notion is that Farm will be a project-only branding community,

working with clients’ positioning and then managing media-neutral

executions by drawing on freelance creative resources as and when they

are required.

Draper goes unusually quiet when his partners start using such

vernacular, but perks up like an A-grade schoolboy when Jeffrey applauds

his definition of strategic planning - the role he aspires to - as

’finding out everything there is to know about a brand and its markets,

and trying to come up with the essential message that the brand should

be putting across’.

What he is keen to reverse are reports that he will simply be the

organisation’s PR man. ’The media agenda is so far removed from reality.

I understand that and I know how to get a story, but I don’t find it

fulfilling,’ he says.

’I don’t feel the same about advertising. If you understand a brand and

come up with a way of putting that across, it has to be based on

substance for it to succeed long term.’

This is Draper the image-maker back in full flow. When he compares,

either incisively or unwittingly, the packaging of pre-election New

Labour to a premium lager, it becomes clear that he is all too aware of

the power of modern-day branding.

’The audience New Labour was trying to convince is the same audience

beer and soap brands are trying to convince - and probably as

disinterested in listening to a beer commercial as to a party political

broadcast. It’s got to grab your attention.

’In political communications you come up with the message and then in

some cases assign an ad agency; in others you might get a newspaper type

like Alastair Campbell to come up with a real soundbite. But the

creativity comes as much from the analysis, thinking and developing of

the message.’

Draper clearly believes that his history of spin and soundbites will

serve him well in his new career, but plays the part of advertising

virgin reasonably convincingly: ’Until last week I had no idea what FMCG

meant.’

But when you’re Draper it can be hard to be humble. The two Peters -

Mandelson and York - have apparently already told him they can ’see him

doing advertising’ and that ’he’ll be wonderful’.

His run-in with The Observer, the newspaper that exposed ’Lobbygate’,

also appears to be over. Though he maintains that he did nothing corrupt

as a lobbyist, he regrets the political damage it caused, and is

delighted that the paper has now invited ’a reformed’ Draper to write a

column.

’People thought that I was only interested in making money out of

politics, which is not true. If I do anything political it’s because I

believe in it; if I make money out of selling shampoo it’s because I’m

good at it. There’s not that blurring of things, which there was for a

while.’

Biography

1992-1996

Aide to Peter Mandelson

1995-1996

Adviser to the Rory Bremner show

1996-1998

Partner, Prima Europe; then director, GPC Market Access

Present

Partner, Farm

This article was first published on Marketing