Urban spaceman: Trevor Beattie reveals the secrets of his success

As sunshine streams through the windows of his Covent Garden office, Trevor Beattie picks up a DVD and presses play. Up on his television screen, pictures appear of the most recognisable man in British advertising, strapped into a chair and wired up like Gordo, the squirrel monkey who was launched into space in a Jupiter rocket at Cape Canaveral half a century ago.

In the film, Beattie, 49, is suddenly pinned back in his seat, his eyeballs roll in their sockets and an American voice of the "we have lift-off" variety can be heard informing him: "You are in flight, Trevor." This is no smart advertising stunt but the centrifuge training which precedes the inaugural space flight he expects to take with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic next year.

"You are plugged in and then they spin you around at an alarming rate. It's all very James Bond," Beattie says of his spaceman training in Philadelphia. "I was struggling to breathe really, but it was a real buzz. I'm going out in July because they are rolling out the rocket, the big mothership, for the first time."

To ask the obvious question, is he not scared? "No, I want to go tomorrow. It's what I've always wanted to do," he instantly replies.

It is an obsession reflected in Beattie's work, most obviously in the Carling "You Know Who Your Mates Are" lager commercial that shows a group of astronauts deciding not to alight on to a new planet because one of their number has been declined entry for wearing trainers by an otherworldly bouncer. The ad recently won a clutch of prizes at the British Television Awards, where it was rated second only to Cadbury's drumming gorilla as the commercial of the year. It is also nominated at the prestigious D&AD creative awards this week.

It is exactly three years since Beattie, with partners Andrew McGuinness and Bill Bungay, shook up advertising by leaving the TBWA/London agency and launching their own Beattie McGuinness Bungay (BMB) start-up. Beattie stands with a copy of Campaign magazine, showing BMB way out in front in the league table of Britain's creative agencies. Having recently added Thomson Holidays, ING Direct, Gossard, Virgin Money and Nando's chicken restaurants to its client roster, business is pouring through the door. "We are at £60m come the second week in May," he says, referring to the billings or budgets that clients have allocated to BMB since the start of the year. "That puts us £40m clear of our nearest rivals."

The new business is added to a client list that already includes such household names as Ikea, Selfridges, Wall's, McCain, Diageo and Pretty Polly. And the next adventure of the Carling mates – a Western – launched this month. It was filmed at the same location as The Good, The Bad And The Ugly and shows a gang of hard-riding cowboys rescuing their pal from a dull tea party.

BMB was founded as three guns for hire but has grown into a posse 82-strong. Beattie believes the flexibility and freshness of his company gives it an advantage over bigger rivals. "We have to build our business by building other people's. If Carling and McCain are a success, then we are a success as well," he says, stressing that he wants to be judged on new work and not what he did "in the past, which for me doesn't count".

What? So the creator of some of the most famous creative advertising of recent times, from "FCUK" for French Connection, to "Hello Boys" for Wonderbra, wants to disassociate himself from his greatest hits? "I have experienced too many old luvvies in advertising living on stuff they did 10 years ago." he says. " I don't want to live on something I did even three years ago. I really don't like advertising's unpleasant fascination with the past. The industry really does view its past through rose-tinted specs.

"Ads that are older than five years are awful – they don't survive the test of time. Oh God, the Benson and Hedges nonsense. When you see the production values and poor acting quality of old commercials that are so fondly remembered, they're just naff. I believe ads are mortal creatures and of their time and shouldn't be viewed in isolation."

Beattie adds that if anyone comes to him for a job, he ignores old material in their portfolio ("Anything from over five years ago is in the bin"). So how come that every time a television show asks the public to rate its favourite all-time commercials, the oldies come out on top? "For the same reason they think "Stairway To Heaven" and "Bohemian Rhapsody" are good songs when they are actually shite – sad, nostalgic familiarity," he counters. "If I gathered you the articles from the last 10 years that the trade and tabloid press have written about "Smash Martians Return" or "Flake Girl Is Back", you'd have a book full of them. It's lazy and never takes the brand forward."

Bringing the Smash Martians back tomorrow would not take that brand forward, he believes, because audiences are no longer impressed by the sight of Martians smashing up a "gnarly old potato". "People these days would rather have the old potato with all the soil on the outside, all earthy and rustic and organic and lovely. We don't want space food right now, we want earthy organic food. In 10 years time we'll want something else."

For his own potato-orientated client, McCain, Beattie has made a musical-style commercial, suggesting that frozen chips could form part of a healthy diet. "That ad is singing from the hills, 'We are 5 per cent fat'," he says. "That is unashamed advertising, which I believe in. I take a great pride in the fact I'm a salesman – I'm not a frustrated artist."

But an impresario Beattie may be. He combined the McCain commercial with a campaign that had dames in pantomimes from Scarborough to Wimbledon singing (for a fee) the brand's anthem "Chips, Glorious Chips". "If you watch pantomime they do adverts because they make cultural references. They will mention Amy Winehouse or Gordon Brown," says Beattie, who also used performance art to transform a Pretty Polly poster into a high-kicking dance troupe.

Though he thinks British advertising has come through recent creative doldrums, he is not enamoured with one sector in particular. "I do think football advertising is naff. It's full of flying scissor-kicks. If you are a fan of Scunthorpe, you don't see a lot of flying scissor-kicks. It looks more like basketball and has nothing to do with football. It's unrepresentative of the game, unless you're Ronaldo's talented brother," he says. "We now have a really clear mould for sports advertising, which is that you cannot have a member of the public or an actor, you've got to have a team of superstars all doing flying scissor-kicks. There is a mould to break and I love breaking the mould."

His comments bring to mind the muddy kick-about in the park that was Peter Kay's memorable " 'Ave It!" commercial for John Smith's beer, but seeing as Beattie made that himself, and it was five years ago, he has presumably consigned it – at least mentally – to the creative dustbin.

He says there is no secret to winning all these pitches, he just tries to be enthusiastic and genuine. "It's the opposite of psyching yourself up. Is it psyching yourself down? You can't bullshit people. The people the clients meet in the pitch process should be the people they work with the day afterwards if you win."

But he is under no illusions about the lengths other agencies will go to win new business. He bet Nando's £20 that at least one rival pitch would involve a chicken outfit, though he lost the bet. He is scathing about agencies that try to win new business by offering their services at rock-bottom prices. "We do the opposite, because I believe we deliver a premium product. So we are quite expensive compared to some shops who, to coin a phrase, drop their trousers. We wear belts and braces so we'll never be accused of dropping our trousers in a pitch, unlike some people. We'll win our business because people want to work with us. They don't want to work with us because we're cheap, because we ain't cheap."

He hates the rise of the something-for-nothing culture, which presents problems for him, as a salesman working on behalf of clients. "There's a strange vibe about where people demand certain things for free that weren't free ten years ago, and yet they will pay a massive premium on certain things. So they pay £3.50 for a coffee – why? It's a cup of shaving foam, there's no coffee in there. But they will pay for a cup of shaving foam and demand newspapers, magazines and music for free. Why don't they demand coffee for free as well? It's funny how the selection is made."

Beattie, who grew up as one of eight children in the tough Birmingham neighbourhood of Balsall Heath, is an avowed socialist and known for his election ads for Labour, though the party account is now held by Saatchi & Saatchi. He says he was surprised by the lack of activity for London's mayoral elections. "It was notable by its absence. I thought Saatchis were doing it. They certainly went on record as having won the account to do Ken Livingtone's campaign. There wasn't any advertising of note for that contest, unless you can call the front page of the [London] Evening Standard advertising, which I suppose you can." He still hopes to make a contribution at the next general election ("Saatchis will do it, but I'm here if I'm required and available for work").

But right now his focus is on BMB – and his trip into space. His Virgin Galactic DVD also includes animation of what his "day trip" beyond the earth's atmosphere will actually be like. "Your harness comes off, your seat flattens and you float around. Philippe Starck has designed the interiors so it's going to look cool as well, like the Sanderson Hotel in space," he explains.

Beattie picks up an iPod to demonstrate the drinking of a virtual "i-Pint" of Carling lager, which is remarkably realistic, though you don't actually get to taste the beer. Still, he sees the downloadable gimmick as another "trailer" to the "main feature" of the Carling television ads, a campaign which is more than a little autobiographical.

"I'm very personally involved in the Carling campaign," he says. "I never got into a nightclub in Birmingham because my hair was too long, never mind the trainers I wore. Combining a desire to get into space with an inability to get into nightclubs, it's talking about my life really."

Interesting? Click here to explore further