I just watched Peter York’s The Rise and Fall of the Ad Man, a study of how the British advertising industry evolved from the 50s to the present day.
I’ve mentioned before that advertising copywriter was my dream job as a kid, and this programme reminded me why. UK advertising in the 70s and 80s was an industry at the peak of its creative powers, glamour and influence on the nation’s culture.
Here’s the programme’s stand-out clip for me.
Swimming Pool – an ad for Benson & Hedges directed by Hugh Hudson – is either the most brilliant or the most ridiculous use of a six-figure budget in the history of cinema advertising. Possibly both.
It’s genrally argued that its abstraction was inspired by tobacco advertising restrictions: rules which meant a cigarette ad couldn’t show… well, pretty much anything promoting smoking. (Read the present-day regulations on advertising rolling papers and filters to get a sense of what I mean.)
While the rules stuff is true, I suspect the creatives involved secretly liked the licence this gave them to, frankly, dick around and make a jaw-dropping film for its own sake.
Who can blame them?
Of course, what really made British advertising great was more prosaic, humorous work like these two clips. Enjoy.
