Gawen Rudder: What if and if only
Ad industry veteran Gawen Rudder reveals how many famous people nearly chose an advertising career
What if Keith Richards had got that art job at J. Walter Thompson back in the sixties? Just imagine if the interview – “Nice book … shows some promise … do you make a good cup of tea?” – had gone differently. Keef could have joined the Berkeley Square agency, partnered up with Sir Martin instead of Mick, and would now be chief creative officer at JWT. Imagine.
Whilst Jagger attended the London School of Economics, Richards started at Sidcup Art College in south-east London during 1959 with optimistic da Vinci-esque dreams. He was to discover it was a waiting room for agencies, a sort of post-war AWARD School. In his words, “I didn’t have the patience or facility to be a hack in an advertising agency” – and tea is not his favourite tipple. He didn’t entirely turn his back on advertising however, a few years ago he appeared in an unlikely luxe magazine campaign for Louis Vuitton luggage.
If only Hobart clever commoner and Graduate Trainee at DDB Melbourne, Mary Donaldson, had pursued her career in advertising with Mojo and Y&R. But it was not to be. During 2000 and whilst working in Sydney as an Account Director, she happened to meet one Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark down at the Slip Inn. The rest, as they say, is history.
What if the multi-talented Leonardo da Vinci decided to recruit due amici and launch a renaissance agency in Rome? Leo had already made a name for himself as a well-connected art director with multiple commissions from influential and moneyed merchants of the day. Appointing himself CCO, he selected the virulent Lucretia’s older brother, Cesare Borgia, as Business Development Director, and Niccolò Machiavelli as Head of Strategy. Thus, in the spring of 1502, Leonardo Borgia Machiavelli Associazione was born, destined to spearhead a resurgence of Italian advertising and long lunches at Machiavelli. Note: Da Vinci’s agency is no way connected with Leo Premutico’s NYC agency, Johannes Leonardo.
What if the three American contemporaries had formed Roosevelt, Hemingway & Fitzgerald? As Franklin D. Roosevelt famously stated, “If I were starting life over again, I am inclined to think I would go into the advertising business in preference to any other.” FDR was a frequent visitor to pre-war Paris (in fact he has a station de Metró named after him.) On one of his trips he found himself wandering Montmatre around midnight when he bumped into F. Scott Fitzgerald at a backstreet bar, who in turn introduced him to Ernest Hemingway.
The three Franco-philes got on famously; although advertising was a means to an end for the two writers. Fitzgerald is remembered for his quote, ‘Advertising is a racket’ and his best forgotten line for an Iowa steam laundry, ‘We keep you clean with Muscatine.’ His hospitality was legend and the agency’s Christmas parties on Long Island to die for.
Fitzgerald’s friend, cum rival, Hemingway wrote and appeared in a print campaign for Ballantine Ale and penned copy lines for the Three Ps: Pan Am, Parker pens and Pernod aperitif. Unsurprisingly, Roosevelt took the title of President, with Papa Hemingway and Fitzgerald joint executive creative directors.
I’m hard-pressed to think of a better personification of art-meets-advertising than at the Whiteley/ Done/Dali/Warhol agency. The tortured genius that was Brett Whiteley left boarding school in Bathurst half-way through his final year and secured a job at the age of 16 in the art department at Lintas. Three years of agency life was good, particularly as it allowed him a seemingly endless supply of (misappropriated) Aquarelle Arches paper, gouaches and fine sable brushes.
Ken’s art studies done, Done took off at 22 to Japan and then America, where he scored a series of senior creative roles, working for JWT in New York, London and Sydney, and won a Cannes Gold Lion award in 1967 for Campari.
Salvador Dali endorsed and appeared in American TVCs for Braniff Airways and Alka-Seltzer, created window displays for Bonwit Teller (as did Warhol) and created campaigns for lipsticks, perfume and hosiery. Dali famously doodled the Chupa Chups logo in classic Catalan colours. In fact, the Spanish wordmark (chupar – ‘to suck’) was created for his friend, the brand’s owner, in less than an hour over a coffee.
Freelancer Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s louche lifestyle wasn’t exactly suited to the confines of the agency art studio – he preferred to work over a glass of absinthe sketching dancehall performers and prostitutes in Montmatre bars. With a little help from la fee verte – ‘the green fairy’ – he elevated the popular medium of the advertising lithograph to the realm of high art.
It’s fair to say that without Henri, there would be no Andy. What more can be said in fifteen minutes about his extraordinary talent? When we think of pop, we think of Andy Warhol.
Anyone who visited the recent AGNSW exhibition will have noted the repeated allusions to advertising and product design as in his Campbell’s screen prints and ads for I. Miller and Absolut.
Outspoken Helen Gurley Brown, the fabled editor of Cosmopolitan and author of the then-controversial Sex and the Single Girl became personal secretary to Don Belding, chairman of Foote, Cone and Belding in 1948. He eventually launched her career by making her the first female copywriter at the agency and she went on to become one of the highest-paid women on the West Coast.
Rather more genteel and English, Dorothy L. Sayers worked as a copywriter at S. H. Benson, (later Ogilvy, Benson & Mather) from 1922-1931. She is remembered for her detective novels, like Murder Must Advertise, and her Guinness zoo jingle:
“If he can say as you can.
Guinness is good for you.
How grand to be a Toucan.
Just think what Toucan do.”
Sayers (amongst others) is credited with coining the slogan ‘It pays to advertise.’
The renowned British agency of the sixties was Parker Guinness Partners – two knights of the realm – Sir Alan and Sir Alec, his older colleague. Parker, of Midnight Express fame, started in the mail room of a tiny Fleet Street agency, progressed to print production and then junior copywriter at the London outpost of Papert Koenig (George) Lois. At PKL he met Peter Mayle – he of Provence escapist novels fame – and later moved to Collett Dickenson Pearce in Tottenham Court Road, working with a chap called Charlie Saatchi and an AE by the name of David (now Lord) Puttnam. The two persuaded him to get into the film business.
“You’ll never make an actor, Guinness,” his headmaster warned young Alec, and duly found him a job in a London advertising agency. He wrote copy extolling the merits of Rose’s Lime Juice, radio valves and razor blades, at £1 a week. But he spent every spare penny on visits to the theatre and finally, after 18 months, Obi-Wan Kenobi was admitted to drama school.
If the next generation is populated by the likes of Clemenger Melbourne’s Jack White and Saatchi’s Michael Demosthenous, the industry is in safe hands. Both were Tropfest finalists last year (Jack was the winner) and both are senior account directors.
Stop Press: Andrew Denton has emerged from his two-year sabbatical to bring together his two protagonists, Howcroft and Sampson, to form The Gruen Partnership. Not too difficult to guess who’ll be the suit.
Gawen Rudder [right] is principal of The Knowledge Consultancy, Sydney. This article first appeared in Campaign Brief magazine.