As executive creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, Paul Arden, who has died aged 67, reigned over an era of successful and stylish marketing campaigns. He was also a bestselling author, the co-owner of a photographic art gallery near his home in Petworth, Sussex, and a unique man.
Arden was a pre-eminent figure in British advertising in the 1970s and 1980s. By the end of his 14-year tenure at the agency he had overseen campaigns for British Airways, InterCity, Fuji, Castlemaine XXXX, Anchor Butter and, with Charles Saatchi, the Silk Cut print ads featuring a slashed sheet of undulating purple silk. He also came up with the slogans "The Independent. It is - are you?" and "The car in front is a Toyota". He was crucial to the rebirth of design-led advertising.
Almost completely self-educated (he left school at 16), Arden distrusted claims made for education. He regarded academic qualifications as an indicator of what someone had done rather than what that person was capable of achieving. In his first book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be (2003) - a primer for advertising creatives - he extolled the virtues of being fired (Arden had been sacked from five jobs before Saatchi) and praised the originality of Victoria Beckham's claim of wanting to be "more famous than Persil Automatic". He encouraged people to work with the best in the business no matter how difficult or demanding.
Better than working with "Mr Average Nice Guy".
Arden was famously, and unapologetically, difficult. When working with him, the trick was to try not to take things too personally - to brace for the criticism and remind yourself that you would eventually get it right.
Last year, when we were putting the finishing touches on his final book, he would point out some minute detail that he did not approve. He would stare at it for a couple of minutes and then burst out, in a mounting tone of derision, with "No ... no ... no. NO. NO! I DON'T like it. I don't LIKE it". The illustrator would fiddle around for a few minutes and there would be another silence. "Yes! Yes! Yes! It's marvellous! OK, next page." And so it happily went along.
Once you had got used to the fact that Arden was not wired like other people, and did not respond to things in ways anyone had seen before (he once asked if he could buy a Camden council water-mains repair works, mistaking it for a piece of installation art), you could grow fond of him - of his generosity, enthusiasm, and his unpredictable sense of what might be fun to do.
Arden, who grew up in a council house in Sidcup, Kent, was the son of a commercial artist whose profession was a formidable influence on his son. Arden was a visual thinker, much more an artist than a writer. Given that his books have sold more than a million copies, this might seem a curious statement.
However, there is a recurring theme in all his work, which is that to be exceptional at anything you must first dispense with convention. In Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite (2005), he said that the greatest advice ever given was from the Harper's Bazaar art director, Alexey Brodovitch, to a young photographer, Richard Avedon: "Astonish me." "Bear these words in mind," Arden wrote, "and everything you do will be creative."
He attended Beckenham Art College briefly, then worked at Ogilvy & Mather, Doyle Dane Bernbach and other prominent agencies before joining Saatchi & Saatchi in 1979. David Hieatt, who worked as a copywriter under Arden, remembers that "he was the spirit of the place. Saatchis' was him. It wasn't Charles or Maurice. It was Paul's agency, with their name on the door".
He left in 1992 to found, with his daughter-in-law, Arden Sutherland-Dodd, a Soho film production company specialising in commercials, which won a Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1998.
He turned to writing in 2003. He showed up at the Frankfurt book fair - where he knew absolutely nobody - with nothing but a rough version of a book; and he landed himself a publishing deal. This is almost unheard of but it perfectly illustrates Arden's way of operating. He knew he wanted to publish a book, and he knew that he could find publishers in Frankfurt, so that is where he went.
That this was not how it is usually done, and that he was very likely on a fool's errand, did not bother him. His attitudes were not just fashion statements; he was driven by his sense that if you wanted something badly enough, you would find a way to get it.
He is survived by his wife, Toni and his son and daughter.
· Paul Howard Arden, advertising creative and writer, born April 7 1940; died April 2 2008
· This article was amended on Wednesday April 9 2008. The author of the obituary above was John Elek, not Ekel. This has been corrected.
· This article was amended on Monday April 14 2008. The author of the obituary above was Jon Elek, not John. This has been corrected.