Adland (13 page)

One wonders what the UK advertising industry would have become without the influence of Bernbach. In Hegarty's view, ‘What [Bernbach's work] did was create an entire generation who actually wanted to work in advertising. Before us, advertising people still secretly yearned to be artists and novelists. But we wanted to be part of that whole sixties revolution in music, fashion and design – and we felt we could do that through advertising.'

Initially, however, the advertising revolution lagged behind the others. ‘At that time advertising was still controlled by the big corporations. You couldn't just open a boutique in Carnaby Street, the way the fashion people had. You'd have to go along to an agency and say, “I've got these earth-shattering ideas for ads,” and they'd say, “What are you talking about? – you're only a kid!”'

Fortunately, he found a job as a junior art director at Benton & Bowles, under creative director Jack Stanley. But he managed to get himself fired after 18 months. ‘Obviously I was a pain in the arse, because I kept telling them where they were going wrong. Turned out I was right, but they didn't want to hear it from a 22-year-old art director. I would argue with the client, which in those days simply wasn't done. I wanted to convince them that their work could be creatively distinctive. The problem was that Doyle Dane Bernbach had created modern advertising in New York in the early sixties, but the concept hadn't quite arrived in England. The idea that you should entice, engage and entertain audiences was a million miles from the prevailing thinking. They just wanted to hit people over the heads with the same message hundreds of times.'

Hegarty then spent a short period at a small Soho agency working on the El Al airlines account – a client for which Doyle Dane Bernbach had done some groundbreaking work in the United States. Hegarty was pleased with the work he did there, but he upped sticks again when he was invited to join Charles Saatchi and Ross Cramer at their new agency, in 1967. ‘We moved into this fantastic building in Goodge Street that was also home to David Puttnam's photographic agency, a new agency called BMP and the designers Lou Klein [who designed the D&AD's yellow pencil trophy] and Michael Peters. It was like the Chelsea Hotel in New York – a creative hub. Everyone was involved in everything, from ads to design to coming up with concepts for films. It was way
ahead of its time, because in those days advertising people were supposed to stay in their box.'

And so Hegarty became one of the founding members of Saatchi & Saatchi. He stayed there until 1973, when he was recruited to set up the London branch of an organization that billed itself as the first European multinational agency, TBWA (see
Chapter 8
, The French connection). It was here that he met his future partners John Bartle, a planner, and Nigel Bogle, an account man. ‘To be honest, although we were part of a European network, we were really operating as an English agency – we did wonderful work for brands like Ovaltine, Lego and Johnson & Johnson. In 1980, we became
Campaign
's first ever agency of the year.'

But the trio became increasingly frustrated with TBWA's structure, which involved placing a certain percentage of each agency's profits into a central pot. ‘The situation changed later, but at the time we felt that the best-performing agencies in the network, like our own, were propping up those who weren't up to scratch. So we decided to go our own way.'

Bartle Bogle Hegarty opened its first offices in Wardour Street in 1983. It pitched for its most famous client, however, before it had even moved in. The agency was barely a month old and working out of rented space when it received a letter from Levi's. ‘It said they were compiling a list of agencies they might like to pitch for their European account and they wanted to meet us. At first we thought it was a joke. We rang Levi's and said, “We've got this letter, but we've only just started up so there must have been a mistake.”' Not at all, said Levi's. ‘Apparently we'd been recommended by a researcher who'd worked with us on Ovaltine at TBWA and had since moved to Levi's.'

The news threw the trio into a panic. The initial meeting was to be held in ‘the worst conference room imaginable, decorated with hunting prints and ghastly wallpaper'. It was hardly the image of a hip young agency. So Bartle, Bogle and Hegarty plastered the walls with the work they'd done at TBWA, almost entirely obscuring the offending flock. The meeting went well. When the Levi's representatives had left, the BBH team took down the posters – and the wallpaper came off with them. ‘We actually had to pay to have that bloody wallpaper put up again,' laughs Hegarty.

Still barely entertaining any thoughts of winning the business, BBH was surprised to hear that it had made it to the shortlist. The agency's policy was not to indulge in any speculative creative work. It was committed to the principle of devising the right strategy before it started
making ads – so at pitch stage the trick was to convince the client that it had a thorough understanding of the brand and its future direction, rather than arriving with a stack of artwork. ‘But we got nervous because we heard rumours that BMP had shot a commercial, and that McCann, the incumbent agency, also had a load of stuff prepared. We very nearly backed out – but that seemed ridiculously defeatist, so we decided to push on to the bitter end.'

Levi's desperately needed a new approach at that stage. Thanks to the post-punk phenomenon, jeans had become unfashionable: one only has to look at an early Spandau Ballet video to see just how irrelevant denim had become. Now installed in its new offices, BBH prepared to pitch. ‘This time we had our own conference room, but the place was half-finished. The only things that made it look good were these incredibly cool designer chairs from Italy.' The pitch was simple: no poster designs, no pilot commercials – pure strategy. ‘We told them that they should stop denying their roots. They were all about America and they needed a new way of expressing that.'

Hegarty suspected that the pitch had gone well, but he was a little disconcerted by the presence of Lee Smith, then president of Levi Strauss Europe. ‘He was one of these good-looking American guys with a firm handshake. I thought he'd consider us a bunch of amateurs. At the end of the meeting, I nervously asked him if he had any comments. He suddenly broke into a giant grin and said, “Gentlemen, this is the finest chair I've ever sat in.” The seat won the pitch.'

The story is characteristic of the self-deprecating Hegarty, who is justly known as one of the more human people in advertising. He even admits that, at a very early stage, the agency was forced to re-pitch for the Levi's business. ‘We'd done some print work using rivets and stitching to establish an aura of authenticity around the brand. We'd also made a TV ad where a guy smuggles some jeans into Russia. Then suddenly there was an internal reorganization and we were back at pitch stage.'

Levi's sales were still in the doldrums, but the company agreed to give BBH more time, while also focusing attention on its classic 501 product. ‘Launderette' was part of the agency's second wave of work for the brand. More than 20 years later, BBH was still working for Levi's, after a string of award-winning ads – accompanied by numerous hit pop songs.

But BBH, of course, is about far more than jeans. This is the agency that came up with the line ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik' for Audi. Consider the audacity of selling cars to British consumers with a German phrase
that most of them barely understood – but which
felt
right. Another key client is Johnnie Walker, for whom BBH devised the slogan ‘Keep Walking'. More recently, the agency has defied political correctness with a series of deadpan ads for Unilever's Axe fragrance (the brand is known as Lynx in the UK). The ads insist with knowing implausibility that no woman can resist what is, in reality, a rather banal product. ‘The Axe Effect' turns everyday guys into babe magnets.

During the rush to the stock market in the eighties, BBH stood on the sidelines and watched, considering that independence equalled creative freedom. Its logo, after all, is a black sheep. In 1997, however, it sold a minority stake to Leo Burnett. This enabled it to fund its ‘micro network' model. Although it would open international offices, they would be regional hubs, inextricably linked with one another and able to collaborate on projects as well as operating independently. For the time being these are London, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, São Paulo, Shanghai and Mumbai.

A great sea change in BBH's history came in July 2012, when Leo Burnett's parent, Publicis, took full control by acquiring the 51 per cent stake that still belonged to its founders. But BBH chief executive Nigel Bogle assured
The Guardian
newspaper that the agency would not lose control of its destiny. ‘We were looking for an opportunity that would ensure that our agency maintained a high degree of autonomy and could continue to abide by the values characterized by the black sheep' (‘Publicis takes full control of BBH', 5 July 2012).

Perhaps because of its relatively compact size, BBH still feels fresher and more relevant than many of its contemporaries. Like the original yuppies, BBH simply refuses to grow old.

The gentleman copywriter

I was disappointed that I didn't get to meet David Abbott, co-founder of one of the most respected British agencies of the eighties – and indeed of all time. But Abbott has shied away from giving interviews for a while now. When the magazine
Marketing Week
requested an audience on his retirement, in 1998, he sent a polite fax saying, ‘Sorry, but I don't want to be profiled. Even I'm bored with me. Thanks for asking.' It had all the hallmarks of this revered copywriter's style: concise, elegant and witty.

Abbott Mead Vickers, the agency that Abbott formed with his friends Peter Mead and Adrian Vickers, is now the most powerful in Britain, having evolved into AMV BBDO. At the time of writing, it was the most successful agency brand in the UK for the 10th consecutive year. When Abbott retired,
Marketing Week
worried that the ‘cultural guts of the agency' would be ‘ripped out'. But his legacy clearly lives on.

British readers of a certain age will be familiar with Abbott's work: his mouth-watering descriptions of food for Sainsbury's, his British Telecom advertising (‘It's good to talk'), and of course the campaign he devised for
The Economist
, which we'll turn to in a moment. A much-loved TV spot from the 1980s promoted the
Yellow Pages
telephone directory. An elderly man was shown visiting second-hand bookshops in search of a rare volume. ‘Do you have
Fly Fishing
, by JR Hartley?' he enquired. Each time the answer was no – until he became fatigued and despondent. In the next shot we saw him with a telephone directory on his knee, much revived as he hunted for the book from the comfort of an armchair. Finally, he got through to a shop that had the book in stock. He asked them to set it aside for him. ‘My name?' he repeated. ‘Yes, it's J… R… Hartley.'

The ad was polished, understated and humane – classic AMV stuff.

Abbott was born in Hammersmith in 1938 but brought up in the London suburbs, away from the Blitz. His father was a retailer who owned three stores. (It's no coincidence that many of adland's leading figures, from Bill Bernbach to Martin Sorrell, had entrepreneurial fathers.) Abbott shone at school and won a scholarship to read history at Oxford. It was here that he met Adrian Vickers, who was studying law. Some reports describe them chatting animatedly in Oxford coffeehouses, which is a nice image, so let's stick with it. But Abbott never completed his degree: he was summoned home to run the family business for his ailing father, who eventually died of lung cancer. Later, when he ran an advertising agency, Abbott refused to take on any tobacco accounts.

Unable to save the family firm, Abbott found himself out of work. In the meantime, he'd been inspired by a book about advertising. It was
Madison Avenue, USA
, by Martin Mayer – the same book I toted up and down that street last spring, unaware of the connection at the time. Abbott liked the sound of the colourful world contained within its covers. ‘At the time [1961] I was a backward 22-year-old,' he once told
The Financial Times
. ‘It never occurred to me that someone spent their time writing words in ads' (‘A deceptively spare style', 25 October 1984).

He managed to get a job in Kodak's advertising department, where he edited an internal publication and wrote ads for industrial x-ray film. But his goal was a big advertising agency, so he applied to Mather & Crowther. They gave him a copy test – which he failed. He begged them to let him sit it again. They acquiesced – and this time he passed. In those days the agency was still run in time-honoured fashion, with the copywriters working in a separate pool, away from the creative department. The most junior copywriter sat by the door; the most senior got a desk near the window. Once you'd written your copy, you placed it in the out tray, from which it was collected by a young Alan Parker type. That was the last you saw of it until the finished ad appeared in the press (‘Man of letters',
Design Week
, 18 April 2002).

After two years of this, Abbott spotted an ad for Remington electric razors made by the newly opened London branch of Doyle Dane Bernbach. He became another Bernbach disciple and – after spending a few months honing a DDB style – successfully applied for a job there. Working with art directors for the first time, he began producing bolder and more confident work – and getting noticed. In 1966 he was sent for a spell at the New York office – the ultimate consecration. On his return, he was made copy chief. Not long after that, he became creative director. According to
Design Week
, Abbott had no fewer than 26 pieces in the 1969 D&AD annual.