When you hear "advertising" you evoke images of screaming pitchmen, anxious mums, cars on the Ocean Road in eternal helicopter shots, models with manic grins and waving cardboard hands, and always price.
How could someone who refused to do all these things build the world's third-largest advertising agency, and Britain's biggest?
To do that you have to be very good, and David Abbott was - the greatest copywriter of his generation, say several UK obituaries. He died last week at 75.
A number of his ads reached us here in Australia, and certainly his influence did.
In the 60s he travelled to New York where he worked under Bill Bernbach and then David Ogilvy - the two top copywriters of their own generation, if not the century. A couple of years later back in London he formed the agency that became Abbott Mead Vickers.
Determined that advertising could be ethical, they refused to take cigarette - or toy ads, believing that children's "pester power" was wrong. Then, when the country hit a slump, he would not make any staff redundant.
As it was, the great products found them. You may remember seeing his Vovo ad: "If the welding isn't strong enough the car will fall on the writer". It depicted a red vovo suspended by a wire around the door post, with Abbott himself lying beneath. No Photoshop, this was the real thing - Abbott insisted on that.
With Sainsbury's supermarkets he demonstrated that you don't need a screaming barra' boy tossing bargains. The One Show Hall of Fame, New York, described his approach to supermarkets: "Know your product, respect your audience, trust your intuition. Watch how people buy things, even listen if you can. By all means think about their deep-seated motivations but don't get entwined in them. Treat your audience as you would like to be treated."
Or as David Ogilvy said a generation before: "The consumer isn't a moron, she's your wife".
An example from 1982: "Just when you thought you understood Brie, Sainsbury's create delicious confusion." It gives a brief history of French and German brie with beautiful shots of four wedges. Not your usual cheese ad.
Over the years you must have noticed the witty one-line quotes in a red square, for The Economist. This campaign was created by Abbott, and the style has continued ever since. His most famous quote: "I never read The Economist." Management trainee. Aged 42.
Even his shocking ads were dignified. One newspaper spread depicts a tied black plastic bag, the headline: "This doggy bag contains a dead doggy". It's an ad for the RSPCA of course, urging people to think more carefully about how they let their dogs become strays.
Even in retirement he kept busy as ever, writing a novel and bringing his second to completion - literally - at death-knock.
He mounted his own little campaign, in support for independent bookshops that he could see were being crushed by the chain store giants.
In a YouTube talk he says he lives close to three independent bookshops and spends some of his favourite hours browsing and conversing.
"I'm rather hoping that heaven will be a cul-de-sac of independent bookshops, interspersed with French, Italian and Thai restaurants." If so, they have just acquired a favourite new customer.
4 comments:
Great article... I’m gunna send it out as one of my blogs with full credit to you of course!
Have a f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c day... Winno
Good one Ray. One of my three writer heroes and yet I had no idea David had worked with the other two. Must tell you my favourite David Abbott story one day, maybe over our long over due lunch. Cheers, Gordon.
Hi Ray,
Thanks for such an apt piece on David. You certainly haven't lost your appreciation of what it takes to make a great copywriter. Then you weren't too bad yourself. I wasn't sure if you were aware of my relatively brief but rewarding relationship with David when Abbott Mead Vickers became part of the Scali McCabe Sloves group.
I think you know me well enough to know that I used to struggle with the role of manager and creative head of Scali's in Australia, particularly under the watchful and often tough eye of my idol, Ed McCabe. Ed was after all famous for the great Perdue line: 'It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.' I was, however, fortunate enough to be able to meet with David now and again at various SMS International ( a handful of countries) get-togethers and got the opportunity to pour my heart out to him. Notwithstanding David would have had considerably more outstanding issues than my plight, he would always offer a sympathetic ear and thoughtful advice on the ongoing struggle of trying to get the creative/ business balance right. I think he was grateful he had Peter Mead as a partner to handle the 'business stuff' along the way although I was always of the impression David was quietly but powerfully in control. He had an understated elegance about him; a virtue so obvious in his writing. It struck me that the honesty and decency of David was never far from his work, and in particular his words. Thanks for a great piece.
Ta, Bill Shannon.
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