9
FROM BENTON & BOWLES TO 16 GOODGE STREET
In the introduction I talked about what led me to decide that I wanted a career in advertising. It was in June 1965 that my career in advertising really began. I had managed to get an appointment to see Dan Cromer, the head of Art at Benton & Bowles, an American agency whose London office was at 197 Knightsbridge. A place that was all sharp suits, button-down Oxford shirts and girls with Sloane Square accents and Alice bands. Or that’s what I thought.
Dan was a hot art director who’d been transferred from New York to the London office to try to inject some creativity into this flagging backwater of Benton & Bowles’ global network. Dan had the necessary style requirements at that time for a career in advertising: he spoke with a native Manhattan accent and he wore thin black knitted ties and penny loafers.
Dan also possessed a Gold award from the New York Art Directors Club for a print campaign he had created for Western Union, which at the time was a telegram company. These weren’t bad credentials. Dan liked what he saw in my portfolio and he offered me a job as an assistant art director, probably because I had an opinion on everything including where to buy the best authentic button-down Oxford shirts. I could now say that I worked in advertising.
As a result of his efforts in trying to change things at Benton & Bowles, Dan hired some great creative minds – all of whom, in time, went on to make their mark in the advertising industry and beyond. || Charles Saatchi was one of them – you’ve probably heard of him – as well as Ross Cramer, Bob Brooks and Roy Carruthers. || Ross, who was a brilliant art director, and Bob went on to direct commercials and later to work together at BFCS, one of London’s top film production companies. Roy was one of the best art directors I’ve ever worked with and, when he left Benton & Bowles, he went to Collett Dickenson Pearce, where he created the iconic ‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’ campaign with Tim Warriner. Dan had assembled a great team, but I’m not sure the rest of the agency understood the value these creatives represented. The fact that they were continually leaving should have been a concern. Sadly, it wasn’t.
Why was that? I soon found out that, while some parts of London may have been swinging – The Beatles were busily finishing their fifth album, Help!, at the time – Swinging London certainly hadn’t penetrated the offices at 197 Knightsbridge. || At Benton & Bowles, apart from a few Arrow-shirted American expats, it seemed that the staff consisted of public school-educated account men who were trained only to say ‘yes’, no matter what the question. It felt at times that the close proximity of the agency’s offices to Harrods department store made life more tolerable for the ‘yes’ men, perhaps even civilized.
It was comfortable for them apart from when they were shown an idea.
For these so-called ‘top drawer’ account men creativity was a fearful occupation executed by weird, argumentative and volatile people, many of whom came from the lower classes. They saw creativity as subversive, dangerous and a necessary evil.
It filled them with horror.
The account men – God forbid they should have an opinion – were always trying to second guess the client. I remember being at a client meeting where a piece of work had been presented and the client, who as I recall was Courage brewery, wanted the headline to be bigger. Before I could respond, the account man, this paragon of leadership and wisdom, had agreed with the client. I was stunned. Ten minutes earlier the layout was perfect, now it was wrong. The only point of view this witless account man had was to agree with the client. Of course, I disagreed and said that I had designed the ad with a bold picture to draw the reader into it. If the headline were made bigger, the picture would have to be made smaller and, consequently, weaken the impact of the ad. This piece of brain science stopped the client in his tracks and was giving the account man a major problem. He now had two opposing opinions to deal with. I could see the slow flush of fear creeping over his collar.
The only thing the account men could really second guess was which piece of cutlery should be used for which course at dinner. It didn’t matter how good the creative department was because the management, most of whom were the upper-class, public-school types, found a way of blunting their output. After about three years of this, Dan eventually realized the task he faced and he quit in defeat.
When I started at Benton & Bowles I was an assistant art director. That’s how it worked back then. You couldn’t come out of college and get a job as an art director straight away – you started by being an assistant. The belief was that you had to understand the craft of the job before you could properly execute it. In principle, I didn’t have a problem with that, except that the ‘craft’ they were talking about was fading fast. I thought that learning the craft of cross-hatching 65-line screen Letterpress reproduction and the value of wood-block display type was not the future, but somehow you had to pay lip service to the craftsmen of the past. And lip service seemed to be a case of biting your lip and waiting for opportunities to appear.
The world of advertising – and this was my world now – still seemed to be stuck in the 50s and have its head stuck up the rear end of corporations. || It was afraid to challenge, question or innovate. || Looking back, apart from some bright spots such as Doyle Dane Bernbach opening their first London office on Baker Street in 1964 or Collett Dickenson Pearce showing a growing creative awareness in British advertising through their brilliant work, it was an industry without principle apart from the base principle of pleasing the client and making as much money as possible. || That principle produced advertising that was merely clichéd, dismal and trite.
And it wasn’t just the majority of agencies who were stuck in the past: the clients, many of whom were industrial behemoths, had no idea a revolution, led by the young, was fermenting from below. Their wood-panelled boardrooms were far too remote from the streets where change was fermenting.
It wasn’t just the account men who were ‘yes’ men. Many of the existing generation of advertising writers and art directors seemed to be just passing through. They thought they were in the service industry and their skill was focused on producing work with which the client was comfortable. || Those of us in the new generation were trying to produce work that would jolt people out of their complacency. We were speaking different languages founded on a different philosophy. The old guard were more interested in publishing their new novel or, if they were art directors, in daubing paint on canvas. Advertising wasn’t their real occupation.
Agencies were run and owned by people who believed in the status quo, who didn’t understand the needs of a mobile society. And the account handlers had the ear of the client whereas we young upstarts didn’t, especially if one was creative. || These fading men knew how to pour the perfect gin and tonic and laugh at the client’s jokes (and God, did they know how to fawn), but beyond that they were congenitally useless. It made me wonder how they had ended up with the job they had – it almost seemed to me they had drifted into an advertising career because they had good connections, spoke with an upper- class accent and had a degree in subservience. || For them, the 50s were a bit dangerous and pinko, never mind what was happening in the 60s – this was the world those of us in the new generation were trying to change. Of course, time was on our side, but we were impatient.
I quickly came to three conclusions:
First of all it was clear to me that really to make a change you had to be in charge. You had to lead an agency – Bernbach had shown that. Working in big, boring agencies was like pushing a piece of string.
Secondly, if you don’t believe in what you’re doing, you won’t be great at it.
Finally, and most importantly of all, creativity isn’t a job, it’s a belief. Without that belief you’ll never be great.
Even though I was just starting out in my career, I wasn’t slow in offering my opinion about the work Benton & Bowles was producing or the state of the business, but it felt like an uphill struggle. No matter how hard those of us in the creative department who cared about the work tried, argued and persuaded, it eventually dissipated into apathy and disbelief, voiced by our seniors. || It was a dysfunctional business – the creative department was constantly opposed to management and management was incapable of engaging clients with the truth.
Despite this absurd environment we did have fun, and practical jokes were a way of maintaining our sanity (or perhaps employing our under-used creativity). It was us against them: the creatives versus the management.
I remember one time we decided to get our own back on one of the chinless ones. We had a very big presentation to make to Courage, which at the time was one of the UK’s largest breweries. The client team to whom we were going to present were a group of hard-nosed male brewers – the sort of men who drank beer only in pints and never drank fewer than three at a time. The chinless account man who was tasked with presenting the work was always running late. He rushed into the creative department, all flailing arms and floppy hair, and grabbed one of the ubiquitous black art bags used to carry presentations. Now the fact that we had placed this particular art bag conveniently at the front of all the others wasn’t exactly a coincidence.
All art bags were black and the same size, so, unless you carefully checked the contents, differentiating one from another was impossible. Once the chinless one and his boss had arrived at the Courage brewery for the presentation the chinless account man’s boss, who was another ‘yes’ man, opened the meeting by laying out the strategy and eulogizing the work the client team were about to see. When the big moment arrived the ‘never on time’ chinless one whips the work out of the art bag.
The hard-nosed group of clients had been primed to see ads with pictures of beefy blokes bonding with each other while sinking pints of Courage’s liquid wonder. They were waiting with baited breath. They’d waited weeks for this moment and it was the culmination of much briefing and discussion. Anticipation was running high. And so the chinless one flips open the ubiquitous black art bag and extracts the first of many beer ideas carefully crafted by the creatives. Except this wasn’t the Courage presentation.
The one he’d picked up was a ready-mounted presentation for the Gossard ‘Cross your heart’ bra, at the time a well-known British underwear brand for the woman with a fuller figure. Pandemonium and grovelling breaks out on a nuclear scale from the chinless one and his ‘yes’ man boss as the Courage brewers stare agog at pictures of larger ladies wearing elasticated girdles and suspenders and the new design of ‘Cross your heart’ bra. || What would you have given to have been in that room?!
While this may have proved that sex and alcohol are a heady and dangerous mix, it did mean, sadly, that the chinless one’s future in the ad business was a short one.
I didn’t last long at Benton & Bowles either – after about 18 months I was told that ‘our futures were not inextricably intertwined’, which is a polite way of being fired. Mind you, I probably brought it on myself by continually telling them the work they were producing was patronizing and rubbish.
That’s the arrogance of youth.
I’m sure I was a pain in the arse, but the truth was that Benton & Bowles wasn’t responding to a changing world. For a company trying to be a leader in the field of communication this is something of a problem. It may seem odd to say this, but where you have your offices reflects what you are. This is why, when accountants run creative businesses, they more often or not make the mistake of locating the company where it’s cheap rather than where it’s inspiring. With Benton & Bowles it was clear that smart offices in Knightsbridge were not where the revolution was going to take place.
There was a slightly delicious revenge for me when, about 10 years after they had decided our ‘futures were not inextricably intertwined’, I was asked to return to be the creative leader at Benton & Bowles. A very nice man called Bruce Rhodes was trying to dig them out of their terminal malaise. Bruce painted an honest but optimistic picture, but, as you might imagine, I politely declined to be part of it. The lesson here: never go back.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, everything about Benton & Bowles wasn’t completely useless. In fact, you could argue that it had a profound impact on my future career.
After I’d been at the agency for about a month the creative director came up to me and told me that he’d found a writer for me to work with. || The writer was also new to the business and his name was Charles Saatchi. I thought: ‘Oh no! He’s Italian, probably lives at home with mum and can’t spell. Just my luck.’
Well, I was wrong on only one of them: Charles did live at home with his mum, he was useless at spelling, but he wasn’t Italian. He was also a brilliant writer and thinker. And the rest is history.
After my ignominious ejection from Benton & Bowles, Charles, who’d left a year earlier, asked if I would like to join a creative consultancy he had set up with Ross Cramer and to be part of their efforts to take greater control of their creative output. || This was the start of one of the most exhilarating and exhausting periods of my career: working at the Cramer Saatchi consultancy.
I joined Cramer Saatchi in 1967, a time when advertising in the UK was beginning to find its voice and creative confidence. The Cramer Saatchi consultancy had taken up residence in a refurbished office at 16 Goodge Street, on the corner of Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road. Before being converted into offices, the building had been a department store called Catesby’s. Now it housed one of the most remarkable groups of companies that, in their own ways, were going to revolutionize the advertising and entertainment industries. Over the next three years the people who worked in the building made it one of the most influential addresses in the advancement of British creativity.
A quick glance at the company names in the lobby would reveal the following: on the first floor was David Puttnam who had taken up residence as a photographer’s agent. He represented the hottest photographers in London: David Bailey, Terence Donovan, David Montgomery, Lord Snowdon, Clive Arrowsmith and many more. David is now better known as the Oscar-winning film producer of Chariots of Fire and for producing Memphis Belle, The Mission and The Killing Fields. He now sits in the House of Lords.
On the second floor was a new advertising agency called Boase Massimi Pollitt (BMP), which had recently enticed a young art director called John Webster to join them. John was about to convince UK housewives of the superiority of a brand of instant mashed potatoes called ‘Smash’ over peeling, boiling and mashing the real thing. His ‘Martians’ commercial for Smash was later voted Britain’s best-ever TV ad. And BMP went on to become one of the UK’s hottest agencies.
The Cramer Saatchi consultancy was on the third floor and, as well as creating advertising campaigns, was also developing film scripts with David Puttnam and a brilliant writer called Alan Parker, whom, if you recall, I had first met at my interview with Tony Palladino at Papert, Koenig, Lois. Alan was a copywriter at Collett Dickenson Pearce at the time and he went on to become one of Britain’s finest filmmakers, with Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express, Fame and Mississippi Burning being just some of the films he wrote and directed.
On the floor above the Cramer Saatchi consultancy was the über hot design partnership of Lou Klein and Michael Peters, though they eventually had a somewhat acrimonious split that resulted in everything in the office being divided in half, including a rubber plant in reception. Michael always claimed his half survived and thrived. After the split he went on to become one of the UK’s top designers, eventually merging his business into a global design company, Michael Peters Design, which, sadly, came somewhat unstuck in the recession of the late 80s. Michael now recalls that period with great humour and amusement, though at the time it was painful. His great design work has stood the test of time somewhat better than his financial backers have. || And, of course, Cramer Saatchi became Saatchi & Saatchi and helped change the communications industry.
And all of that was happening on the corner of Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road.
 |
 |
Client: EL AL, 1969 Title: Noah/Bible Art director: John Hegarty Copywriter: Linsday Dale Illustrator: Roy Carruthers Photographer: Julian Cottrell
As I said, Cramer Saatchi was one of the hardest environments in which I have ever worked. Despite the pressure, we had some success. || One successful campaign was for EL AL, the Israeli national airline. Their advertising at the time had been based on trying to lure people to holiday in Israel because of the guaranteed 365 days of sunshine. In rain-sodden Britain that was not an unreasonable strategy – except that Spain, which also has rather a lot of sunshine, was not only nearer but also cheaper.
Our work was based around convincing EL AL that Israel’s biblical origins were slightly more compelling and would make it stand apart from other sunny holiday destinations. This, we argued, would be much more persuasive. And it was a strategy that had been successfully employed in the US. As much as the client bought the biblical strategy, they still wanted ads about sunshine. || Clients are sometimes stunningly predictable.
So we created one. Who could do that for us? Noah. We had a picture of the man himself holding out his hand with a drop of rain hitting it. || The headline read: ‘Yes, it has been known to rain in Israel’, proving we could do sunshine like no one else. The campaign we produced won a number of awards, including a D&AD Silver award, and got me a trip to the Holy Land as well. Blessed are the creative ones!
Another successful set of campaigns was for the Health Education Council (HEC). This was a UK Government agency tasked with the responsibility of kick-starting the campaign against smoking along with other health- related briefs, including food hygiene and contraception. The work we did for the anti- smoking campaign was pioneering and powerful. Until that time campaigns to stop people smoking had pictures of coffins and headlines that said something not very creative such as: ‘Smoking kills.’
Client: Health Education Council, 1970–71 Titles: Cigarette and Child Art director: John Hegarty Copywriter: Chris Martin Photographers: Ray Rathborne/Alan Brooking
No, surely not?!!!
There was one existing ad I remember from another agency in which someone had put those two thoughts together. It was a picture of an ashtray in the shape of a coffin full of cigarette butts with, yes, you’ve guessed it, a line saying: ‘Smoking kills’. All clever, smart and creative but, ultimately, so what? Just because you tell someone something it doesn’t mean they’ll react the way you want them to. Smokers would respond to such a message simply by saying: ‘Yes, but it won’t kill me’, or ‘I know someone of 85 who’s still smoking.’ To which my answer would be: ‘Yes, and I know someone who’s survived a plane crash, but I wouldn’t recommend being in one.’
The problem with briefs trying to get people to stop smoking is how do you create a piece of communication that affects everyone and doesn’t allow someone to say ‘that won’t happen to me’? || The simple breakthrough idea we had was to talk about how cigarettes work and what they do to your body. It was a matter of explaining what happens every time you light up. The disgusting reality of smoking was and is alarming. It meant that the audience for the ad could not opt out. The ads nagged at their conscience.
Client: Health Education Council, 1969 Art director: John Hegarty Copywriter: Mike Coughlan
For example, one of them said, ‘What makes a cigarette so enjoyable?’, underneath which was a list of all the shocking compounds that are in a cigarette. Another one, authored by Charles and Ross, showed a tray with disgusting tar being poured into it with the headline, ‘No wonder smokers cough’. It produced powerful advertising that implicated every cigarette that a smoker inhaled. || And it also gave the campaign a different, compelling look.
We used the same approach for a number of other briefs from the HEC. One ad for food hygiene, which was aimed at getting people to cover food and protect it from flies, was particularly powerful. It used the device of dramatized reality, which, in this case, described in graphic detail what happens when a fly lands on your food, and was aimed at motivating people to take more care with public hygiene.
But the one single piece of work that ultimately stood out above all the others was the ‘Pregnant man’ poster. The brief from the HEC was simple: raise the issue of contraception and encourage young men to take greater responsibility.
I had been working on the project and had come up with a brilliant idea. Well, at the time I thought it was brilliant. My idea showed a picture of a 14-year-old girl, eight months’ pregnant, standing in her school uniform. The headline read: ‘Who taught your daughter the facts of life?’ I felt really pleased with myself. || I was about to present my idea when Jeremy Sinclair, who was a writer at the consultancy, showed me his idea: a picture of a pregnant man. Underneath was the line: ‘Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’
I took one look at it and knew Jeremy had created something that blew my idea out of the water. I sat down depressed, tore my idea out of my layout pad and chucked it in the bin. Jeremy’s idea not only answered the brief brilliantly, but also became a symbol of changing sexual attitudes throughout the 70s. || The iconic ‘Pregnant man’ poster has stood the test of time: it is as powerful today as it was back in 1969. || It not only helped change attitudes to sex education, but was also the impetus for the launch of Saatchi & Saatchi as an advertising agency. Not bad for a bloke with a cushion stuffed up his jumper.
Client: Health Education Council, 1969 Art director: Bill Atherton Copywriter: Jeremy Sinclair Photographer: Alan Brooking
Alongside the HEC, the other direct client we worked with was Island Records. Back in 1968 Island was becoming one of – if not the most – interesting, independent and critically admired record companies. Under the charismatic guidance of its founder, Chris Blackwell, it had moved on from just being a company that represented and championed reggae and expanded its roster of musicians to include such artists as Jethro Tull, Fairport Convention, King Crimson and the enigmatic Nick Drake. Island Records was a label that promoted the artist first and worried about the money second – it was a creatively driven company that was bonded emotionally to its artists and the integrity of their music.
This was made apparent to us at our first meeting with them. David Betteridge and some of Island’s top producers had come in to talk to us about Cramer Saatchi helping with their advertising. They explained that they didn’t want to go to a conventional agency as that would look as though they’d joined the mainstream and gone corporate, which just didn’t sit with their culture and ethos. In fact, they were so concerned with this aspect of their business that during the meeting they kept saying that they didn’t believe in hype. Hype was against everything they practised. || I remember Ross looking at Charles and then at me before saying that we certainly don’t believe in hype at Cramer Saatchi. Charles looked back and said absolutely not – we don’t believe in hype. I naturally concurred with both of them. || Hype, no way, not here. We’re Cramer Saatchi. The meeting concluded and everyone seemed happy – we were going to work together and we had established that none of us believed in hype. David Betteridge and his team duly departed.
Ross, Charles and I gathered in an office and congratulated each other on a successful meeting before Charles said to Ross: || ‘What do they mean they don’t believe in hype? What the bloody hell is hype?’ Ross said, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I thought you knew.’ ‘Me?’, said Charles, ‘I haven’t a fucking clue.’ They both then looked at me. I said, ‘I was just agreeing with you two, I thought you knew what you were bloody talking about.’ We all burst out laughing. || We’d just agreed to work with a company on the basis we didn’t believe in something we knew absolutely nothing about. We naturally established very quickly what they meant and thought to ourselves: why didn’t they just say bullshit? It would have been a lot easier and possibly a lot more accurate.
Working with Island Records we had now drifted into the wacky world of the music industry. If you think advertising’s bad, wait till you get into the world of music. After our appointment one of my first meetings was with Guy Stevens, one of Island’s gifted producers. The phrase ‘We don’t believe in hype’ was still ringing in my ears. At the meeting Guy told me that he’d found a new band whom he thought were really interesting, but lacked a strong vocalist, which to me seemed fairly fundamental. However, Guy was unperturbed by this little shortcoming in the band’s line-up. I enquired after the band’s name and he told me that they were called Mott the Hoople and asked me what I thought of the name. I sat there and said that I hadn’t the faintest idea, but if the band liked it and they’d been performing with the name, why not stick to it? Guy concurred.
What was more troubling to me, however, was the lack of a vocalist. || I asked Guy how he was going to resolve this little problem, to which his answer was that he’d placed a classified ad in the weekly British music newspaper, the New Musical Express (.NME.), saying: ‘Singer wanted’. I thought, what the bloody hell happened to the integrity of the band and all that stuff about, ‘No hype here’? Here I was at my very first meeting after we’d been hired and I’m being told that one of Island Records’ top producers is putting a band together through the classified columns of the NME. This isn’t quite what I expected.
While I’m still reeling from the little disclosure about the NME ad, Guy continues: he’s found two vocalists who have responded to the ad and who are both really good, but he’s not sure which one to go with. || They’re both great singers, but one of them is always wearing sunglasses – he won’t take them off. I said to Guy: that sounds interesting, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of mystery, so why don’t you go with him? || I think Guy had already reached that conclusion. This is how, according to Guy, Ian Hunter came to join Mott the Hoople: it all happened because of a classified ad in the NME, a great voice and a pair of sunglasses and, of course, no hype. The wacky world of music.
The last time I spoke to Guy he was working out how he could gatecrash the 1970 Dylan concert at the Isle of Wight Festival by parachuting in. He did make Mott the Hoople with Hunter and his sunglasses a great band and a huge success in the early 70s. But sadly, and despite Guy’s great passion and talent for music, he died of an overdose of prescription drugs aged only 38. What a waste.
Despite how Mott the Hoople came to have their lead singer, Cramer Saatchi did actually get Island to live up to their ‘no hype’ mantra by getting them to run reviews of their music in the press, the placement of which had been paid for by Island, but with the reviews written by people not employed or paid by Island. The first independent reviewer was legendary British DJ and broadcaster John Peel. We ran an ad that appeared throughout the UK music press with the headline: || ‘Why Island Records are going to stop telling you what they think of Island Records.’ It was the sort of thing only a creative company such as Island could or would do – the idea of running a review of your own music even if you didn’t like it was brave and courageous – but the ads soon petered out. || Island Records couldn’t find enough people they respected who could do it.
If you look back into the 1968 D&AD Annual you can see some of the work Cramer Saatchi created for Island Records. I still think the best of it stands out for capturing the independent spirit of the company. It’s worth reflecting on how great work can last over the decades. If it has a simplicity and integrity at its core and reflects the client’s beliefs then it has a chance – especially if those beliefs resonate with their audience and aren’t clothed in corporate speak. I think we managed that with Island. I also think they were a company that believed in what they were doing, took risks and were prepared to back their judgment. They believed in us as we believed in them, despite the occasional lapse such as looking for a lead singer.
A great lesson for anyone in the communications industry.