Pioneers of Persuasion

8 Adland become a metier in its own right, with large and profitable agencies dedicated to providing this service. The implications for the industry 1 have been far-reaching. Back at the creative agency, production oversees the realization of the creative team's vision. It is likely to liaise with an independent production company. Deadlines, invoices and numerous other admini- strative tasks that ensure the smooth running of the agency are handled by traffic. nr f prn Naturally, the giant ad agencies that will dominate this story embrace many other functions and disciplines — but those I've mentioned should provide some bearings on our journey through adland. Now, in order The duly authorized agent'. to stretch that metaphor just a little bit further, let's start at the most logical place. On a back street of London's Notting Hill, a man sits cheerfully among piles of ancient packaging like a magpie in a nest of glittering urban detritus. The man's name is Robert Opie, and his multicoloured nest is The Museum of Brands, Advertising and Packaging. Opie may be the ultimate brand archaeologist, with perhaps half a million articles in his collection. To wander through his small but dense museum is to experience the Proustian power of brands. I remember that board game! My mother used that washing powder! At the end of it all, you stand riveted before a screen showing a reel of old TV commercials. It's amazing how many of them you remember — the situations and jingles come bubbling out of some distant corner of your memory to pop with a shock of recognition in front of your eyes. For Opie, however, the museum is about far more than simple nos- talgia. 'Even as a teenager I was interested in the way brands were constantly adapting to reflect our times,' he says. 'Later, while working in market research in the 1970s, I wanted to investigate the origins of consumption, to sift through the evidence of this consumer society of ours. I started going down to Portobello Road antique market to buy up old posters and packaging, and I've been going back ever since.' His passion for branding is such that he refers to it as 'commercial art' , and he is irritated by those who decline to acknowledge its importance. `Until very recently, the children of the wealthy were encouraged 1 0 Adlnd nr f rn to go into the arts and sciences rather than trade and commerce,' he what he called a 'bureau des addresses et des rencontres' — a recruitment points out. 'There has always been a stigma attached to the tradesman's office and notice board for the jobless. This establishment soon became entrance. Even advertising people, when they are rich, turn their backs a veritable information clearinghouse for those seeking and offering on commercial art and start collecting artists they consider to be more work, buying and selling goods, and making public announcements respectable.' of all kinds. To disseminate this information more widely, Renaudot Advertising is a crucial piece in what Opie describes as 'the jigsaw created in 1631 the first French newspaper, which he called La Gazette of consumer behaviour'. 'You have to put it into a historical context to (inspired by the unit of currency he'd discovered in Italy, the ztt. see why it is important. Is one commercial an important artefact? No, it Thus he became the first French journalist — and the inventor of the isn't. Is the totality of advertising important? Of course it is.' personal ad. In the United Kingdom, the first advertising agent was probably one William Tayler, who opened an office in London's Warwick Square in E OIGIS O AEISIG 1786. The firm later became known as Tayler & Newton, and it acted as. an advertising sales representative for printers — several of whom had When exactly did advertising begin? It's doubtful that the ancient launched newspapers to promote their trade. Egyptians and Greeks were insensible to the benefits of product promotion. The Romans certainly knew how to make a convincing sales pitch, and early examples of advertising were found in the A IUSY AKES SAE ruins of Pompeii. A roguish adman told me that one of these was a sign promoting a brothel, which is an appealing idea: the two oldest However, most histories of advertising start later, in the mid-19th century. professions benefiting from one another. Others claim that prehistoric The first display case in Robert Opie's museum covers the Victorian era. cave paintings were a form of advertising, which seems altogether more The advertising group Publicis recently published, internally, a book of fanciful. But it's safe to say that advertising has been around for as long groundbreaking ads from throughout history — it was called Born in as there have been goods to sell and a medium to talk them up — from 1842. A hunt for the earliest ad in The Creative Director's Source Book the crier in the street to the handbill tacked to a tree. (compiled in 1988 by Nick Souter and Stuart Newman) unearths a Advertising took a leap forward, of course, with the appearance of newspaper advertisement from 1849. (Bizarrely, it is for a new method the printing press and movable type — an invention generally credited of measuring your head, thus accurately determining your hat size.) to German former goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg in 1447. Other Everyone agrees, then, that advertising got into its stride with the important names loom out of the murk of early advertising history: industrial revolution — aided and abetted by the rise of the newspaper as notably that of 17th-century French doctor, journalist and unlikely a mass medium. Advances in technology meant consumer goods could adman Théophraste Renaudot. be produced and packaged on a previously undreamed-of scale. This Born in Loudon in 1586 to a wealthy protestant family, Renaudot glut of food, clothing, soap, and so forth, encouraged manufacturers studied medicine in Paris and Montpellier. A doctor by the age of 20, he who had previously been confined to doing business in their backyards was considered too young to practise medicine, so he travelled instead to seek far-flung new markets. Some of them established chains of to Switzerland, England, Germany and Italy. On his return, through a retail outlets. Others distributed their wares through wholesalers and family connection, he met and befriended the future Cardinal Richelieu. intermediary retailers. In order to blaze the names and virtues of their This fortuitous encounter led to Renaudot's eventual appointment as products into the memories of consumers, they branded their goods official doctor to Louis XIII. — and began to advertise them. But Renaudot was a writer and a thinker as well as a physician. His In Britain, one of the most prominent clients of the day was A&F reflections on the Parisian poor led him to create, on the Ile de la Cité, Pears, makers of Pears' Soap. The company's success was assured 2 A Adlnd nr f rn 13 by prototype adman Thomas J. Barrett, who joined the firm in 1862. printing house Chaix and the artist Jules Chéret were taking advantage As well as securing one of the first celebrity endorsements — from of the development of lithography — which allowed for richer colours Lillie Langtry, actress, courtesan and mistress of the Prince of Wales and larger print-runs — to produce groundbreaking posters for the Barrett convinced the popular artist Sir John Everett Millais to sell Folies-Bergere cabaret. These bright, vivacious advertisements were him a painting of a young boy gazing at rising soap bubbles. Not only so popular that the high-kicking girls depicted on them became known that, but he persuaded Millais to add a bar of Pears' soap to the scene. as `Chérettes' . Queasily sentimental, 'Bubbles' became one of the earliest advertising Cherees images were complemented by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's icons, and set the tone for a highly successful campaign. equally vibrant work for the rival Moulin Rouge nightspot. Known as In his 1984 book A Cplt Gd t Advrtn, Torin Douglas `The Spirit of Montmartre', the nocturnal painter was the natural choice recounts: 'Firms such as Cadbury and Fry started packaging their for capturing the debauched appeal of a Parisian cabaret. Simple yet products, not simply to protect them and preserve their quality, but also evocative, the posters took their unlikely cue from Japanese art, which to tblh their quality by the use of the company's own name. Instead Lautrec admired. of leaving it to the retailer to determine which company's products a Another towering talent of the era was the inimitable Alphonse customer would buy, they began to build their own relationship with Mucha. Born in Moravia (in the modern-day Czech Republic), Mucha the customer.' was the archetypal struggling artist in Paris until he was commissioned As Douglas points out, the essential argument for advertising was to come up with a poster for Sarah Bernhardt's play, Gismonda, over established right here. By advertising their products to the public, the Christmas holidays. (Legend has it that he got the commission manufacturers were able to boost sales dramatically. 'Since that also because he was the only painter left in town.) The result was the first of increased the retailers' turnover, both sides of the business benefited. the gloriously intricate images — not only for the theatre, but for brands So too did the customers, since they had a wider choice of brands and such as Moët & Chandon champagne and Lefèvre Utile biscuits — that a stronger guarantee of the quality of the goods.' brought the Art Nouveau style to advertising and fame and fortune to Meanwhile, the same technology that had powered the industrial Mucha.

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