British creatives, a breed apart

"Great Britain has the most courageous advertising industry," says Georges Bermann, head of the French agency Partisan. "British agencies are always willing to hire young people, because they are always in sync with the latest trends. British advertising execs take risks that others fear."

In British advertising, British humour makes all the difference. In fact, every industry has its own index: the French are famous for their inclination towards luxury products (wines and fashion), which means their advertising is sophisticated and the glamour component always present; the Germans are not renowned for their creativity, but rather for technology, as they are a manufacturing country.

By comparison, Great Britain, Holland and Spain are countries with a rich commercial history. That is why it is said that the British create great ads for cars, while the Germans are creating the cars. According to British creatives, their public is much more demanding and more sophisticated compared to other countries. The English, they say, expect to see at least five or six exceptional ads every night on the telly.

Agencies usually reward the audience with funny ads, in the traditional note of British humour. And it seems that the Brits really enjoy watching advertising, a reality confirmed by 77% of a survey's respondents.
London even hosts an advertising museum - Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, which collects aspects of the consumer's life, some more than 200 hundred years old (packaging, stories about various brands and also the respective commercials).

From black&white to interactive

British advertising appeared during World War II. At that point, several posters printed by the Government or published in glossy magazines presented the impact of war on society.

Ads debuted on the small screen on September 22, 1955, at the launch of ITV. In the beginning, this was confined to London. The first reactions were predictable: viewers did not like their TV shows interrupted by advertising. Moreover, many were still loyal to BBC Radio and did not think that the new TV station was likely to survive.

TV commercials from the '50s were greatly different from the current trends: black&white, much longer and the messages were uttered very slowly, accompanied by written texts in the background.

The first commercial ever aired on TV, an ad for the Gibbs toothpaste, had a rather unclear approach, with a message that was more suitable for the printed press. The commercial showed a tube of toothpaste together with an ice cube, while the accompanying comments alluded to the freshness of the toothpaste.

Similarly, the first commercial for Persil was inspired from newspaper ads and showed sailors decked in white, who assured the public that "Persil washes whiter. That means cleaner."One day after the first commercial was aired, British journalist Bernard Levin wrote in the Manchester Guardian: "I feel neither depraved, nor uplifted by what I have seen ... certainly the advertising has been entirely innocuous. I have already forgotten the name of the toothpaste." Immediately afterwards, television commercials started featuring stars singing the praises of various products. Another format included scientific demonstrations.

Until 1970, British advertising agencies tended to enumerate the reasons why the public should use the respective products. Afterwards, creativity gained ground, either because of the emergence of colour TV, or because the audience was actually beginning to like the commercials. Consequently, the approach changed, with the message being centred around the lifestyle and the values of the characters from the commercials.

In the '50s, most of the commercials were for cleaning products and food. In 1960, the first car commercials were aired, while the '70s brought brands such as Smash Martians, Heineken and the Hamlet cigarettes. Even newspapers started using advertising for promotion. Following the re-launch campaign of The Sun, rival Daily Mirror kicked off a powerful advertising strategy. In the early '70s, corporate advertising made its television debut, as well.

Ten years later, advertising was changing again. The first interactive commercial appeared in the late '80s for a Mazda model. Starting with the mid-'90s, charity and religious campaigns also found a place in TV advertising.

In the founders' footsteps

"Never write an advertisement that you would not want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine," says David MacKenzie Ogilvy (1911 - 1999), the British creative dubbed 'the father of advertising'.

He started his career by selling AGA cookers door-to-door. Outstanding results recommended him to his superiors, who asked him to write a book on sales techniques. The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA cooker was, according to Fortune magazine, the finest and most thoroughly documented sales instruction manual ever written.
His brother, Francis Ogilvy, showed the book to the agency where he was working - Mather & Crowther, which offered David a position as an account executive.

It wasn't long before he started the advertising revolution.
One of his clients, for instance, had a budget of only 500 dollars to promote the opening of a new hotel. Ogilvy used the money to buy postcards and sent them to all the people from the phone book. The event was a resounding success and marked the invention of direct marketing by Ogilvy.

In 1938, Ogilvy emigrated to the United States, where he went to work for George Gallup's Audience Research Institute in New Jersey. After the war, Ogilvy bought a farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and lived among the Amish. Eleven years later, he founded Ogilvy, Benson and Mather.

Ogilvy created several iconic campaigns for Schweppes (Schweppervesence), Rolls - Royce ("At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls - Royce comes from the electric clock") and Dove ("Only Dove is one-quarter moisturizing cream", which turned Dove into the best-selling soap in the United States).

Ogilvy retired in 1973, but kept in touch with the agency. Four years later, he was inducted in the US Advertising Hall of Fame. In 1989, the group was bought by WPP, which became the largest marketing communications firm in the world. David Ogilvy was named the company's non-executive chairman (a position he held for three years).
He died on July 21, 1999, at his home in France.

Charles Saatchi was born in 1943, in Baghdad (Iraq). His family moved to London four years later.
In 1970, he started Saatchi & Saatchi, together with his brother Maurice. The business expanded in the following years, and in 1986 it had had grown to be the largest agency in the world, with over 600 offices.

Successful campaigns in the UK included Silk Cut cigarettes and the promotion of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher through the slogan "Labour Isn't Working". The agency also had regh British Airways account.
Charles Saatchi is a great art collector. Moreover, he is a notorious recluse, even hiding from clients when they visited his agency's offices. Until recently, he had never granted interviews.