Speaker.

Profile:

Do Lecture.

Watch Tony Davidson's Do Lecture.

As a young child Tony learnt his trade by sitting upside down on the settee and competing with his four siblings to 'Guess the commercial'. He puts much of his creativity down to his late father who was an inventor in the 'Heath Robinson' mould.

Following a brief spell as a used watch battery buyer, Tony went on to graduate from Manchester Polytechnic with a 1st class BA Hons in Design and Communication Media.
In July of 1985 he joined BMP as a junior art director, where he was fortunate to work under the likes of the late great John Webster. The following year he teamed up with Kim Papworth who he has worked with for 19 of the past 22 years. Whilst at BMP, they worked on many brands including Courage, Cadbury beverages, Scottish Amicable and Heinz. On winning their first award for a press ad for Derbyshire County Council, their then boss said "Enjoy it, it's the last one you'll ever win". Spurred on by this encouragement, they went on to produce award-winning work for War on Want and Crookes Healthcare.

The DDB merger gave them an opportunity to work on VW, their first car account.  But after seven years sitting in the same office Tony was restless and tried to move to the States. However following the collapse of a deal to move to Goodby Berlin Silverstein in San Francisco, he found himself back at BMPDDB working with Nick Gill with whom he won a D&AD pencil for his work on VW Dealers.
In 1995 Tony teamed back up with Kim and went to Leagas Delaney, where they created the Adidas Euro '96 'Nicknames' campaign, launched Tanner Krolle handbags, had their Pepe commercial banned and worked on Hyundai, the Guardian and the BBC.

In 1997, they moved to BBH to work on Audi, and Lynx.  It was also here that they created one of their most admired campaigns: Levi's 'Flat Eric', the soundtrack of which topped the charts in ten countries.
Finally in Sept 2000 they decided it was time to run a place by themselves and set about building the then flagging ship of Wieden + Kennedy London. Seven years later that ship is one of the most admired agencies in the world, having created projects like Nike's Run London and 'Aiwaworld' online. But perhaps their most famous work to date has been the recent Honda 'Power of Dreams' campaign that has won plaudits across the globe, increasing sales and changing the perception of Honda, not to mention dominating every award show for the past three years - winning two coveted D&AD Black pencils, the Grand Prix at Cannes and Client of the Year 2007.  He is equally passionate about pushing Wieden + Kennedy into new areas and has helped develop several WK products and art shows.
Tony was President of D&AD in 2007 and was made Global Partner of Wieden + Kennedy 2009.

Embed social bookmarks: