IPA100: 10 Ads That Shaped British Advertising

1. Ministry of Munitions: On Her Their Lives Depend, 1916

This poster was created in 1916 to recruit women into the workforce. It’s an important moment when the government realises that it need to recruit women to do work that had hitherto been done by men. The plan was to get them working in the factories, in this case making munitions, which was dangerous but well paid for women. In terms of design, I like that it’s a photomontage, a very modern thing to do at the time. I just quite like that convergence between modern machinery montaged with photographs of fairly Edwardian-looking women.

2. Guinness: The Zoo, 1935-
Agency: SH Benson

I picked these as they’re beautifully drawn. I love the graphics, it’s a nice slogan, and although they’re very much of their time after all this time they’ve really endured – you can still buy them, people still collect them. They’re drawn by an artist called John Gilroy, a great illustrator, and on the copywriting team was the novelist Dorothy L Sayers which is kind of amazing, and really proves advertising isn’t just done by anonymous people, there's a lot of famous people in advertising.

3. HM Government: Your Britain, Fight For It Now, 1943

Another wartime one, this time by a man called Abram Games. Another very lovely graphic poster. I chose it because it shows a new health centre literally coming out of the ruins of a bombed out city in Britain, and it’s about what kind of country Britain should be after the war. It caused quite a lot of controversy because it depicts a little boy who looks thin and ill and people didn’t really like that, but there’s a truth to it of course. I just think it’s a good reflection of that unusual time in British history where we had a consensus about what the country should be like which I think we’re losing now so it seemed quite apt.

4. Smash: Smash Martians, 1973
Agency: BMP

Why not?! It’s funny. It’s unexpected. It’s by John Webster who was a genius and Bob Brooks who filmed it was also a very interesting guy. I also like the fact that when they tested it with housewives they loved it and hated the other two adverts saying ‘mash is great for you and your kids’. They were bored of that and they wanted something funny.

 

5. Heineken: Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach, 1973
Agency: CDP

There were so many of these. They were all funny but also clever in that they used that slogan of how it ‘refreshes other parts…’, and then just applied it to so many different things, things in the news, trends, fads....they just picked up on things very quickly and the ads came out very responsively. Before digital they were achieving something that digital tries to achieve every day now which is to be completely current.

6. Benson & Hedges: Surreal, 1978
Agency: CDP

You can't not have that in the exhibition, it's the real campaign of the ‘70s and ‘80s. They had cigarette packets near a mouse hole or in a birdcage - you know completely mad surreal stuff, as a way of getting round the restrictions about advertising smoking. I think it was really bold and had great longevity.

7. Department of Health: AIDS – Don’t Die of Ignorance, 1986
Agency: TBWA

It’s the biggest public information campaign the government ever ran and there was lots of controversy about the government wasting money on it, partly based on the amount it cost but also prejudice around that disease. But Norman Fowler really pressed for it to happen - he had to fight quite hard to get that campaign to go ahead. It actually had a huge effect on infection rates - in the UK compared to France, where they didn't run any kind of campaign on this scale, we had half the infection rates and I think that's a really compelling piece of evidence showing that those kind of campaigns really do work.

8. Conservative Party: New Labour New Danger, 1997
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi

Classic Saatchi & Saatchi. It only appeared in a couple of places but it caused such uproar that they got millions of pounds worth of free press. I picked it because of that - you only put a poster up in two places and it can garner that much publicity if its controversial enough…although that’s a little Trumpesque these days.

It also led to a lot of debate with the Advertising Standards Agency about the extent to which that body could regulate political advertising of any sort. In the end it was decided that it couldn't so in 1999 the ASA stopped regulating any sort of political advertising , so it’s key especially considering some of the claims made last summer at the EU referendum where there was controversy about what was true and what wasn't.

9. Sony Bravia: Balls, 2005
Agency: Fallon London

I thought it’s such a simple idea but quite bold as a film made in reality with no digital enhancement. They were just making a TV ad specifically aimed at Europe but when they were filming it they closed off some streets in San Francisco to actually shoot these balls on the street. People in the neighbourhood started to film this camera crew doing what they were doing and posting it on the internet. It became a worldwide phenomenon and a globally awaited ad. That seems to be to be a step towards day with the Christmas ads.

10. Channel 4: Humans, 2015
Agency: 4Creative

It was this amazing 360 degrees ad campaign where they had a complicated product - a TV series with its own plot lines and characters and they had to create a content campaign to engage a broader audience than geeks. They were given quite
a challenging brief from Channel 4 to do something new and so they created amazing buzz around one of the fictional companies in the show that made the robots in the series.

They wrote a whole backstory and how they were going to launch them for sale and so they talked eBay into allowing an advertising campaign to happen on their site for the first time ever. Then there were various other elements like a website for that company with a whole branding exercise and then they also take over shop front on Regent’s street as if the company was opening their first store. Then they set up interactive windows where people walking down the street could experience one of these synthetic humans and they were interacting with them, you could touch the screens and find out more, they'd wave and beckon over. They ran it as a teaser campaign, and people weren't sure if it was a product or a TV series because of how creative it was.