Lecture 10: Outside Collett Dickenson Pearce

CDP was an ad agency founded in London, 1960-2000. Their exhibition of creative advertising included work from people who weren’t in the agency, such as our lecturer Janine Sykes.

Janine began her initial research with Ron Collins, an alumni of LCA, who was a successful art director and co-founder of WCRS, alongside Robin Wight. She then moved on to study another LCA alumni, Colin Millward, who according to David Puttnam was the ‘most influential creative figure in post-war British adverts

At the back of some print ads, found at the ‘History of Advertising Trust’ archives, are forms they filled out, showing how the ad agency worked in its purely analogue form.

Something that I found really interesting in the lecture was the cigarette adverts, as we don’t tend to see cigarette adverts anymore, due to their controversial nature.  Just as now there are advertising restrictions (e.g. can’t advertising smoking at all), more legislation was being made then as well. So, advertisers marketed cigarettes in quite a surreal way. As Frank Lowe put it; ‘We had to do something nobody would understand, because if they don’t understand it they wont be able to object to it.’ I think it’s really interesting and innovative how they managed to find this creative solution to the problem. For example, the ‘Raining Cigarettes’ ad (1980), which was clearly influenced by surrealist artist Magritte. It is interesting to see how cigarette advertisement had changed due to the new legislations. Whilst they used to be quite aspirational, with subtle art direction such as golden hues spread throughout the whole image, and decorative pieces on the table, it moved to being more bold and surreal. For example, in the ‘Flying Ducks’ (1977) advert, they were more creative/surreal by having the three ducks mirror the three cigarette packs, and having the bold saturated colour making the golden cigarette packs stand out more. Interestingly, there was no copy as it was a visual solution to the legislation.

CDP released many famous ads, including one depicting comedians Pete and Dud, to advertise a camera. I like the ad as it draws you in because its use of celebrities was not in an overly powerful way. It focuses on the camera, not on a celebrity story. I also like their other ad that featured two Labour Party rivals taking photos of each other, in a bid to get some good publicity, with the copy ‘they obviously felt like shooting each other’. I think the copy is witty and memorable due to the use of the homograph word of ‘shooting’.

The Vogue advertising is also quite clever, as it relates to fashion and the state of the economy simultaneously. The copy is witty as it suggests that people will have to be more ‘tight’ with the money due to the 1972 unemployment rate rising above one million. It’s interesting to see a fashion magazine take a political/economic stance, and it made me wonder if the cover even needed the imagery, or whether the copy would have been enough. I think the copy on its own does still work, but as it is a fashion magazine, the imagery of the belts on the woman fits better.

Janine also showed us her piece, called ‘A living room with an outsiders view’. I really liked her piece as it highlights that in the 1970s most adverts were shown on the TV, with no means of skipping the adverts. So in some retrospect, adverts were more forced onto people than in today’s society. In Janines piece, she had an ashtray and cigarette adverts on the walls, which shows that smoking in front of children/at home was more normalised, as were cigarettes ads. Just as society has shifted from realising the dangers of smoking, so has advertising. Now, most people try not to smoke in front of their children, and smoking adverts are banned.

The advert ‘Hand built by Robots’ for Fiat, although a successful campaign, did confuse me as in Italy there were protests about robots taking their jobs in the car industry, and the TV advert clearly shows that robots are making the cars. At first, I thought they were celebrating this fact which seemed very negative to me, however upon further discussion with Janine, I realised that they weren’t celebrating that issue, but were just showing how their cars are made in a very matter of fact way. Perhaps they were indicating that just as they don’t lie about who/what makes their products, they don’t lie about their quality either.