The criteria hinged around the interpretation of the word
’best’.
It had to mean more than just commercial success. To us it meant four
things: originality, creative distinction, effectiveness and
memorability.
Time has a great way of sifting out the good from the merely faddish,
and maybe for that reason the jury found it easier to pick from 20 or 30
years ago than from more recent times, though I think British
advertising reached a creative peak in the 70s and 80s and that alone
justifies the preponderance of those two decades in the list.
Reflected also is the dominance of TV over other media, particularly
press. Of course there have been great press ads but their influence on
the century has been less than that of the all-powerful box.
Pre-1950 the best work seemed to be reserved for hoardings and includes
Bovril, Guinness and the infamous First World War recruitment poster
where Lord Kitchener was chosen rather than the king to appeal to the
nation and was (unfortunately) massively successful.
In the 50s the best work was happening across the pond where the
Americans, to whom salesmanship came naturally, became a large
influence. By the time TV advertising arrived, the UK at last began to
catch up. Led by Collett Dickenson Pearce with its work for B&H, Fiat
and Hovis, and BMP with Smash, Courage and Cresta, Britain’s creative
product forged its own identity. With the addition of the likes of
Saatchi & Saatchi, GGT and TBWA, the business began to bristle with
great work, overtaking its US counterpart from the 70s on.
The 70s and 80s were the two great decades. Buzzing with the talents of
Alan Parker, David Bailey, Ridley Scott, Frank Lowe, Hugh Hudson,
Charles Saatchi and John Hegarty, we sat back and enjoyed the show. The
pregnant man, ’Gertcha’, Hamlet’s photo booth, Paul Hogan at the ballet,
Arkwright’s performing dog, ’Dambusters’, ’Labour isn’t working’ and
many more.
The 90s, heavily influenced by new technologies, produced fewer
classics.
The decade had its moments nevertheless with Abbott Mead Vickers’
mouthwatering series for Sainsbury’s, Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s seminal
work for Levi’s, Tony Kaye’s stunning imagery for British Rail (’relax’)
and Volvo (’twister’), the Tango slap in the face and Wonderbra’s
traffic-stopping ’hello boys’.
The eventual overall winner, BMP’s Smash Martians campaign from the 70s,
was felt to have changed food advertising, conveying its convenience
message with a wit and memorability that entered the nation’s
psyche.
The hardest part of the judging was the jettisoning of 50 pieces of work
we’d all admired for years to get down to the hundred. However, I think
you’ll agree we’ve ended up with a list the next century might find
mildly diverting. Will they beat it? If only we could be around to
see.
Back row left to right
Stefano Hatfield, Editor, Campaign
John Nicolson, Corporate development director, Scottish & Newcastle
Rupert Howell, Chairman, HHCL & Partners
Tim Delaney, Creative director, Leagas Delaney
Tony Cox, Creative director, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO
Charles Gallichan, Chief executive, Health Education Authority
Tim Broadbent, Account planning director, Rainey Kelly Campbell
Roalfe/Y&R
Steve Henry, Creative director, HHCL & Partners
Middle row left to right
George Michaelides, Partner, Michaelides & Bednash
David Pattison, Chief executive, New PHD
Nicholas Coleridge, Managing director, Conde Nast
Alfredo Marcantonio, Executive creative director, D’Arcy
Trevor Beattie, Executive creative director, TBWA GGT Simons Palmer
Front row left to right
John Webster, Executive creative director, BMP DDB
Anthony Simonds-Gooding, Chairman, D&AD
Inset top to bottom
Sue Farr, Director of public service marketing, BBC
MT Rainey, Joint chief executive, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R.
THE TOP TEN UK COMMERCIAL TV PROGRAMMES
Sunday Night at the London Palladium
Opportunity Knocks
Network 7
Tiswas
TV-am
Sky Sports Super Sunday
News at Ten
Upstairs Downstairs
Brideshead Revisited
Coronation Street
When Sunday Night at the London Palladium was broadcast live in
1955, it reached an audience of 300,000. Five years later, the figure
had climbed to 21 million. Its combination of high-kicking girls, ’Beat
the clock’ quiz show, Bruce Forsyth, the revolving stage and impressive
celebrity line-up launched a format that would be copied for decades to
come.
As talent shows go, they don’t get much bigger than Opportunity Knocks -
at its peak, it captured 24 million viewers. Some of Britain’s
best-loved acts, including Les Dawson and Little & Large, were discovered
on the show which ran for more than 20 years.
Network 7, the brainchild of Janet Street Porter, was produced and
presented by a young crew who set the stage for a wave of youth
programmes including The Word, Def II and The Tube.
While you might think that Tiswas was the preserve of five- to
12-year-olds, half of its two million viewers were adults. It exploded on
to our screens in 1975 with a host of features that are recognisable on
Saturday mornings today.
Weekday mornings in the 80s were championed by TV-am - Britain’s first
commercial breakfast channel. By 1991, TV-am had a viewing share of
nearly 70 per cent.
Sky has captured Sunday afternoons. It launched Super Sunday in August
1992 and not only changed the face of football programming but also
drove satellite subscriptions in a way that no other offering has.
News at Ten set the agenda in what some describe as the golden era of TV
news. Hosted by Trevor McDonald, it won acclaim for its coverage of the
Vietnam war, the storming of the Iranian embassy in London and Nelson
Mandela’s release.
One of the UK’s most famous exports, LWT’s Upstairs Downstairs, has been
sold to more than 70 countries and is watched by 300 million
viewers.
Brideshead Revisited had similar success when it aired in 1981. The
serialisation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel launched the career of Jeremy
Irons, pulled in more than 12 million viewers across the UK and spawned
a spate of period dramas.
The list wouldn’t be complete without Coronation Street, Britain’s
longest running soap after nearly 40 years on air. What started as a
colourful portrayal of working-class life in Weatherfield today tackles
storylines on date rape, teenage sex and extra-marital affairs. Jade
Garrett
THE TOP TEN UK NATIONAL NEWSPAPERS.
Daily Express (20s to 60s)
Daily Mail (70s to 90s)
The Guardian (90s)
The Independent (launch period)
The Mirror (50s to 60s)
News of the World (40s to 80s)
The Sun (80s)
The Sunday Times (60s to 70s)
The Times (30s and 90s)
Today (1986)
Over the past 100 years, the UK newspaper industry has become one
of the most innovative press markets in the world.
Lord Beaverbrook was one of the great newspaper influences of the
century and the Daily Express was his flagship through to his death in
1964. It was one of the biggest selling and most influential papers,
with a reputation for quality editorial.
Another press titan of the 20th century was Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount
Rothermere, whose Daily Mail became the success story of the 1900s,
selling more than a million copies a day with a cover price half that of
its competitors.
Under the editorship of Sir David English in the 70s and 80s, the paper
became the assured voice of middle England.
The Sunday Times enjoyed its heyday in the 60s and 70s, establishing a
reputation for style and innovation and earning accolades for
hard-hitting investigative journalism under its editor, Harold Evans. The
Times has never ceased to spark interest and controversy - it defended
appeasement in the 30s - and its cover-price promotions have kept rivals
on their guard.
For The Mirror, the era of Hugh Cudlipp saw the paper on a high, with
mass appeal founded on its innovative use of large photographs,
arresting headlines and compelling prose driving sales to an average of
more than 4.6 million in the 50s and 60s.
Although The Sun enjoyed great success under Larry Lamb in the 70s, the
paper came into its own in the 80s when Kelvin MacKenzie established the
title as the most ballsy, outspoken and frequently outrageous
tabloid.
The News of the World owes much of its success to Sir Emsley Carr, who
edited the paper for 50 years to 1941 and whose editorial flair and
clever use of reader competitions increased sales from 40,000 to 4.4
million.
His legacy helped sales reach 8.4 million a week by 1950.
For Today and The Independent, success was brief. When Today launched in
1986, its bold use of colour forced rival newspapers to scramble to
catch up, while The Independent’s launch caught the imagination of the
late 80s broadsheet reader and set new standards in photography, style
and design.
The Guardian’s tradition of high-quality liberal journalism founded on
integrity, which was established by CP Scott at the beginning of the
century, found expression again in the 90s with campaigning journalism
culminating in the imprisonment of Jonathan Aitken MP in 1999. Claire
Beale
THE TOP TEN, ER, ELEVEN UK BUSINESS MAGAZINES.
Building
Computer Weekly
The Engineer
Estates Gazette
Farmer’s Weekly
The Grocer
Lloyd’s List
Management Today
New Scientist
Post
Campaign
According to BRAD, there are now more than 5,150 business and trade
magazines published in the UK. Looking for the ten most influential is a
tall order. But looking back and trying to pick those magazines over a
century of publishing is even harder. This is the ultimate
apples-and-pears exercise.
Where do you start? Well, we applied a number of criteria. Journalistic
excellence and consistency over a long period we took for granted. To
make the so-called long list, titles had to pass one or more of the
following tests. Did they break the mould or change the game for those
who followed?
Are they bigger and more influential than one might reasonably expect
them to be? Do they generate respect, love or even, on occasion,
fear?
Do they define to the wider world the industry or business about which
they write? Do they genuinely transcend their market, not so much in the
geographical sense (two that did were moved into the international
category) but in some metaphysical way? Size or circulation, by the way,
were not criteria. Nor was longevity per se, although we found the best
business magazines tended to have staying power.
We asked some people who we thought had an impartial view and a sense of
perspective. We thought long and hard ourselves. We poured over
reference books. The prospective list got longer. At the fringes there
was, inevitably, some disagreement. About the core, however, there was
consensus.
One trend soon became clear. Whereas the international section was the
province of general business magazines, the UK section was dominated by
industry-specific or, to give them a more common descriptor, trade
titles.
Why? Well, with the exception of The Economist and Management Today,
general business magazines have never really worked in the UK
market.
By contrast, trade-specific titles are strong and vibrant in this market
- just look at Estates Gazette or The Grocer as exemplars of the
publishing and journalistic talent which operates in this field. Working
out the cause and effect of that particular dynamic would certainly be
interesting.
Overseas, by the way, the reverse seems to apply: general business
magazines are strong, trade titles less so.
And there you have it: a list that is at once eclectic and wide-ranging,
surprising and self-evident. And Campaign’s presence? Well, we would,
wouldn’t we? Dominic Mills
THE TOP TEN UK COMMERCIAL RADIO PROGRAMMES.
Chris Tarrant breakfast show, Capital
Nescafe Network Chart Show, networked
Henry Kelly show, Classic FM
Michael Aspel morning show, Capital
Anna and the Doc, Capital
Chris Evans breakfast show, Virgin
Brian Hayes phone-in, LBC
Gordon MacNamee, Kiss FM
Radio Luxembourg
Radio Caroline
Commercial radio was 25 years old last year but, despite its youth,
picking ten significant programmes was not difficult. Radio is perhaps
the most intimate of all media and a straw poll will inevitably reveal a
variety of programmes.
Chris Tarrant’s breakfast show on Capital is not just a London
institution; it has transcended its broadcast limitations to become a
national one.
Tarrant is as British as a cup of tea, and as refreshing.
A more refined breakfast came along in 1992. Henry Kelly, best known for
populist TV broadcasting, bridged the gap between common culture and
classical music: a perfect figurehead for the first national commercial
station.
Before Classic FM arrived, there were scant opportunities to advertise
on the radio nationally. In 1986, Capital saw this gap and joined forces
with Nescafe for the Network Chart Show. Presented by Kid Jensen, it ran
for seven years - becoming the longest-running sponsorship on commercial
radio or TV.
Two other Capital shows were seminal. Tarrant’s predecessor, Michael
Aspel, made the breakfast show format a gold standard in 70s London. And
Wednesday nights were compulsive listening as Anna and the Doc (Anna
Raeburn and Dr Philip Hodson) unravelled Londoners’ problems.
Another phone-in deserves note: Brian Hayes’ explosive LBC show. The
original shock-jock, he derided callers and cut them off. Many have
trodden in his footsteps, but none with his disconcertingly decorous
air.
Gordon MacNamee launched Kiss FM in 1985, taking it from an edgy pirate
station to a legal, financially stable concern. His own show, fitted in
between management meetings, was a focal point.
As is Chris Evans’ breakfast show on Virgin. Evans’ zoo radio is a
fundamental part of the 90s, even though this current incarnation is
arguably the worst of his radio endeavours.
Radio Luxembourg was not only the first commercial radio station to
broadcast, but also the first alternative to the Home Service or the
Light Programme.
And the pirate ship that was Radio Caroline deserves a mention, not only
for its tenacity in continuing to broadcast through several near-fatal
disasters but also for the dubious distinction of launching the careers
of Dave Lee Travis and Tony Blackburn. Not forgetting the fact that it
claimed 22 million listeners at its height. Eleanor Trickett
THE TOP TEN UK NEW-MEDIA SITES.
www.freeserve.net
www.soccernet.com
www.beeb.com
www.lastminute.com
www.qxl.com
www.capitalinteractive.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.yalplay.com
www.cricinfo.com
www.imdb.com
In the past couple of years, the internet has come into its own and
its importance is now being fully realised by industry and the public
alike. In terms of audience reach, the internet will soon have more of
an impact than cinema and radio advertising as it becomes accessible
through everything from computers and TVs to mobile phones. Other media
simply cannot compete.
Freeserve.net - created by the retailer, Dixons - shook up the UK
internet market in September 1998 and went on to become, and remain, the
biggest online service in Britain. Now floated, it is the UK’s biggest
internet company.
Soccernet.com is a great story and a great site. Created by the
12-year-old son of a Daily Mail journalist, it has become the world’s most
popular football website enticing Disney to buy a 60 per cent stake
worth pounds 20 million.
With websites for programmes such as Top Gear, Gardeners’ World and Top
of the Pops, the BBC’s commercial arm was an early innovator and
continues to score highly with Beeb.com, which remains distinct from its
public service operation.
There are few home-grown e-commerce success stories, but Lastminute.com
stands out. It has taken a quirky idea - offering travel and
entertainment bargains - and become an e-commerce pioneer with ambitious
expansion plans.
qxl.com is Europe’s first and now largest online auction site. It is
Europe’s answer to eBay, but it is already showing the US company the
way forward in Europe.
The Electronic Telegraph (telegraph.co.uk) and Capital Interactive
(including capitalfm.com and capitalgold.com) can be mentioned in the
same breath.
As offerings from media owners, both pioneered in the early days and
continue to do so with an expanded remit.
Older than almost everyone else on this list, the Internet Movie
Database (www.imdb.com) is still the best stop for trivia on nearly
every movie or entertainment programme ever made.
IMVS began offering CDs online in 1996. It has since been renamed with
the catchy palindrome, Yalplay, and, having merged with the Swedish
online music company, Boxman, remains a reliable site.
cricinfo.com is legendary among fans and for many it is the best cricket
site on the web. Like imdb.com, it offers a wealth of statistics and
figures, with run-by-run coverage that the internet can so easily
deliver. Gordon MacMillan
THE TOP TEN UK CONSUMER MAGAZINES.
The Face
High Life
Jackie
Loaded
NME
Radio Times
Tatler
Town
Viz
Woman’s Weekly
The UK is a world leader in this field, so it was hard to choose
only ten titles. Many magazines that have been successful here - such as
Cosmopolitan and Hello! - have been sacrificed to the international
category, but that still left plenty to choose from.
Viz was conceived 20 years ago by a pair of 19-year-old boys who didn’t
give the slightest thought to commercial success. From a front room in
Newcastle, they created the comic that went on to become one of the
great 80s success stories, reaching a peak circulation of 1.25 million
in 1990.
As well as introducing icons such as Sid the Sexist and the Fat Slags,
Viz opened the doors to a young male readership which has been been
successfully exploited ever since.
Without Viz, Loaded might never have existed. The archetypal glossy
lads’ magazine owes a lot to the vulgar geordie rag, but deserves a
mention in its own right because it spawned a new publishing era.
IPC, Loaded’s publisher, also claims a top ten spot for New Musical
Express, a weekly journal that has shaped the lives of music lovers for
almost 50 years.
Some of NME’s top journalists - most notably Julie Burchill - were
involved in the early years of another of Campaign’s top ten titles, The
Face. It expanded the concept of glossy magazines by drawing in
style-conscious readers and becoming a bible for the hip and the
wannabe-hip.
The men’s sector must also include Town, the original glossy monthly
that tackled men’s fashion before it was an acceptable subject. Equally
stylish and deserving of a place on the list is Tatler, the society
magazine from Conde Nast that has kept British women entertained since
the 60s.
At the other end of the women’s market, Woman’s Weekly has been chosen
as a trailblazer in its sector. And in the teenage sector, Jackie is
celebrated for its 30 years as a must-read for pubescent girls. For
years, the Cathy & Claire problem page introduced innocents to the
traumas of the adult world, until 1993 when the target age group was
deemed too streetwise for Jackie’s romance-led formula.
Contract publishing is represented by High Life, which wasn’t the first
magazine in its sector but, after 26 years, is still the most
influential.
And we had to include Radio Times, the original listings title which is
still a household name after 77 years. Emma Hall
THE TOP TEN OUTDOOR MEDIA.
96-sheet
48-sheet
4-sheet
6-sheet
Illuminated sites
Transport advertising
Moving posters
Street furniture
Ambient Spectacles
As David Bernstein notes in his book, Advertising Outdoors, the
first commercial messages probably took the form of offers etched on
Egyptian monuments. Now, as we approach the 21st century and newer
electronic media fragment, outdoor advertising may become the medium of
the next millennium.
This century has had its own outdoor landmarks. It has seen developments
of standard billboards, but also new and imaginative formats.
Billboards are the stuff of outdoor and have been with us for
centuries.
The most widely used standard size is now the 6-sheet. In the UK, the
familiar billboard sizes, which have carried some of the most memorable
posters of the century such as the B&H ’pyramids’ and ’Labour isn’t
working’ executions, include 48-sheet and 96-sheet sites.
Four-sheets have become more popular in the latter half of the century,
with the emergence of street furniture as an accepted format - this
includes everything from newsstands to free-standing loos.
Adshel’s use of bus shelters and sites in shopping precincts in the UK
has resulted in the ubiquity of backlit sites and is part of the reason
why illuminated sites can lay claim to evolving a format of their
own.
Twentieth-century technologies have also been behind the introduction of
moving outdoor formats. Multivision, according to Bernstein, was first
displayed in Sacramento in 1962. We’re now used to tri-vision sites, and
the natural progression has been towards truly moving images with famous
sites such as the Piccadilly Circus ’lights’ or big screen hoardings at
sporting events.
Catching people on the move is the holy grail of transport advertising -
another outdoor development which has come into its own. Buses and cabs
are ’owned’ by advertisers and tube trains have been redecorated by the
likes of Yellow Pages.
As the pressure increases for advertisers to cut through volumes of
advertising, unusual forms of outdoor are finding their place. The
category dubbed ’ambient’ has sprung up to cover everything from shop
floors and bus tickets to petrol pump nozzles.
The 20th-century chapter on outdoor cannot be closed without mentioning
those landmark ’spectacles’. In 1925, one side of the Eiffel Tower was
lit by Citroen, while recent projections have thrown huge images on to
institutions such as St Paul’s Cathedral and the House of Commons. Pippa
Considine
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL TV SHOWS.
CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite
Star Trek
General Hospital
The Guiding Light
Dallas
Roots
I Love Lucy
The Tonight Show
The Price Is Right
Sesame Street
Walter Cronkite struggling to retain his composure as he tells
Americans that John Kennedy is dead is one of TV’s most moving moments.
The gravel-voiced frontman for the CBS evening news from 1962 to 1981
not only invented the role of anchorman but remains a testament to TV’s
power to inform, entertain and persuade.
US TV is without peer in the way it has imposed its culture on the
world.
Just as Cronkite inspired a million newscasts, many other programmes are
rooted in Americana. For example, how many viewers watching the exploits
of Captain James T. Kirk and his Star Trek team realise he was based on
John Kennedy?
In many ways, Star Trek is a legacy of a TV drama tradition that
originated with soap operas. Indeed, Leonard Nimoy, the Starship
Enterprise’s emotionless Spock, was a regular in General Hospital,
America’s most-watched soap during the 60s and the series that set the
style for medical dramas.
The first soap to transfer to TV from radio was The Guiding Light in
1952. It was sponsored by Procter & Gamble which hoped the addictive,
female-orientated stories would make housewives buy its soap
powders.
Out of a largely forgettable froth rose Dallas, the Texan tale of
dynastic civil war and the most influential soap of modern times. At the
peak of its success, CBS was drawing more than dollars 2.3 million an
hour in ad revenue.
But even Dallas pales before juggernauts like Roots, Alex Haley’s
history of his family’s emigration from Africa to America, which
attracted an audience of 130 million - the largest in US TV history -
when it was screened in 1976.
Another was I Love Lucy, the first sitcom with truly international
appeal, which appeared in 1951. Starring Lucille Ball, it pioneered the
female-led comedy and was once watched by more than 60 per cent of all
US TV viewers.
Johnny Carson is the grandfather the chat show. The host of The Tonight
Show for more than 30 years was at one time responsible for 17 per cent
of NBC’s total revenues.
However, Carson’s longevity is closely matched by two other seminal
programmes: The Price Is Right, probably the first truly modern
gameshow, which made its debut on CBS in 1972, and Sesame Street, the
mould-breaking educational programme for pre-schoolers, which began in
1969 and now airs in more than 80 countries. John Tylee
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL CONSUMER MAGAZINES.
Vogue
Cosmopolitan
Good Housekeeping
Esquire
Hola!
Playboy
Paris Match
National Geographic
Life
Reader’s Digest
The internet may be hailed for its ability to transcend cultural
and language barriers, but the process began long ago, when popular
national magazines hit on a formula that worked, whatever the
nationality.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a brand that exudes the same glamour and
sophistication the world over as the iconic Vogue. From San Francisco to
Milan, Vogue is, and has always been, the fashion bible for millions of
women.
For tackling sexual issues, there’s only one title - Cosmopolitan.
Established in the US in 1886, the struggling title was turned around in
the late 60s by Sex and the Single Girl author, Helen Gurley Brown.
Cosmo spoke to a new generation of sexually-liberated women with a
frankness and intimacy unknown before. Its formula has been widely
copied.
A far cry from Cosmo is Good Housekeeping, one of the first
international mass-market women’s mags. Famed for its knitting patterns
and recipes, it has been a manual of survival for homemakers throughout
the century.
The two leading men’s titles are international brands in their own
right.
Esquire has spawned brand extensions from watches to CDs, while Playboy,
the world’s leading men’s magazine, with three million US ’readers’, is
a multimedia adult entertainment company with books, TV programming,
websites ...
Our perverse desire to gaze at the unattainable wealth of others was
recognised by one Spanish family who launched Hola!. A runaway success
throughout Europe, Hello’s hugely popular format has presented a serious
challenge to showbiz coverage by national newspapers.
Also famous for its star revelations, Paris Match is described by its
owner as the ’biggest-selling glossy news magazine in the world’. It
sells more than a million copies a week in France and has also been
launched in Spain, Portugal and Russia.
More upmarket is National Geographic. Its spectacular pictures have
fuelled a rapid international expansion. Available in ten languages, it
has a circulation of 7.6 million, 20 per cent of which comes from
outside the US.
Life is also famed for its photography stories. One of the first truly
pictorial mags, its heyday was in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
No list would be complete without Reader’s Digest, the world’s most
popular magazine. Its hallmark ’feel good’ stories command a readership
of 100 million. Lisa Campbell
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL NEWSPAPERS.
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Wall Street Journal
USA Today
Isvestia
South China Morning Post
Le Figaro
Asahi Shimbun
Financial Times
International Herald
Tribune
The strong presence of US titles in this list represents that
country’s ability to innovate and influence the rest of the world.
The New York Times, founded in 1851, has earned its place in the top ten
for sticking to its hard news and business principles, summarised in its
famous slogan: ’All the news that’s fit to print.’ Flagging revenues
were offset by a renewed commitment to news, which led to its coverage
of the Vietnam war changing public opinion and a Pulitzer Prize in
1972.
The Washington Post is no stranger to Pulitzers with two of its young
reporters bringing down President Nixon through the Watergate
scandal.
Its influence on US politics makes it one of the most influential papers
in the world.
As the US’s top newspaper in terms of circulation, The Wall Street
Journal is very influential. It rakes in ad revenue, grossing an
incredible dollars 7 million from one issue in November 1997.
USA Today was the first mainstream paper to use four-colour
printing.
Launched in 1982, it was dubbed ’McPaper’ because of its ’fast food’
style of journalism. But punchy stories and use of colour have made it
the US’s second biggest selling paper.
US success stories have had it easy compared with Isvestia. The
newspaper of the Bolsheviks, founded in 1917, its editors have undergone
execution and exile. Although a forum for Soviet power, it accommodated
the interests of ordinary people, laying the foundations for its now
democratic positioning.
The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s leading English-language
newspaper, is the organ of China’s reform movement and its democratic
principles earn it respect.
France’s right-wing Le Figaro has an enviable readership: about a third
of its 1.5 million readers are AB or above, and two-thirds of the heads
of households where it is read hold a management-level post, with 50 per
cent in top management.
With one of the highest circulations in the world (8.4 million for the
morning edition, and 4.3 million in the evening), Japan’s Asahi Shimbun
has a 120-year history of brave journalism. It defied the Japanese
government with its coverage of the rice riots in 1918, and in 1988
broke a bribery scandal that led to the resignation of the country’s
prime minister.
The pink pages of the Financial Times are recognised around the world
for running essential business news. Together with the International
Herald Tribune, it deserves its place because of its informed global
perspective. Francesca Newland
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL ADS.
Alka-Seltzer: Spicy Meatballs (US)
Apple Computer: 1984 (US)
Braathens SAFE: Naked Lunch (Norway)
Chanel: Egoiste No 1 (France)
Coca-Cola: I’d like to buy the world a Coke (US)
Sony: Mating call (Netherlands)
Nike: Revolution (US)
Nissin Cup Noodle: Human ants (Japan)
Union Carbide Insulation: Watch the birdie (US)
VW Beetle: Snowplough (US)
This list is not about uniform global campaigns, because it has
long been recognised that different markets are at different stages of
maturity and customs and behaviour vary around the world. Instead it
comprises great advertising ideas - work of outstanding efficacy,
originality and visibility that has had an impact at an international
rather than just a national level.
You could say that the tradition of great VW advertising began with Bill
Bernbach’s US commercial for the Beetle: ’Ever wondered how the man who
drives the snowplough drives to the snowplough?’. The art of the
demonstration commercial is also in evidence in another of our top ten -
Union Carbide’s ’boiling the chick’ ad.
Alka-Seltzer’s humourous ’spicy meatballs’ spot features one of the
great character performances in US advertising - so much as that you can
never see an Alka-Seltzer ad without comparing it to this classic.
Famously, the US agency, Chiat-Day, originally had trouble selling the
Ridley Scott-directed ’1984’ to Apple Computer. It eventually relented
for one memorable slot on SuperBowl Sunday and the Macintosh revolution
was born.
’Egoiste’, stylishly conceived and directed by Jean-Paul Goude, showed
beautiful, angry women emulating masculine egotism with the help of
Cannes’ most famous hotel, the Carlton.
Coca-Cola was one of the first companies to embark on global advertising
and the most memorable of its commercials - based on I’d Like to Teach
the World to Sing - was an early testament to the marriage of
convenience between pop music and advertising. Made first in 1979 and
reshot in 1989 it was fathered by Bill Backer at McCann-Erickson.
The quirky advertising of Japan’s Nissin Food Products Co wins awards
with a regularity akin to that of multinational favourites such as Nike,
Sony and Coke. Its agency, Hakuhodo, came up with a themed series of ads
where prehistoric cavemen indulge in a futile search for fresh food. The
endline - ’Hungry?’ - immediately conjures up visions of Cup
Noodles.
Wieden & Kennedy’s ’revolution’ spot for Nike, backed by the Beatles
song of the same name, is a pristine example of the kind of work that
resulted in Nike’s sales doubling to dollars 1.7 billion between 1987
and 1989.
Only twice, at the opening and closing, was the sponsor identified, and
then in a simple billboard of the famous Nike logo. Caroline
Marshall
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL NEW-MEDIA SITES.
www.amazon.com
www.hotwired.com
www.salon.com
www.drudgereport.com
www.onion.com
www.fool.com
www.eschwab.com
www.ebay.com
www.aint-it-cool-news.com
www.yahoo.com
One admission about Campaign’s international new media top ten is
that it is not global. It is American. A British scientist might have
invented the worldwide web, but it is an American story and that is
reflected in this list.
Of all the websites suggested for inclusion, amazon.com was near the top
of most people’s lists, and rightly so. Having pioneered book-selling on
the internet, Amazon has taken the strength of its brand into new areas,
such as CDs, games and electrical goods.
It’s five years since hotwired.com, a name synonymous with the early
days of the internet, became the first site to model its business around
advertising and sponsorship, and it still continues to innovate.
Salon.com was the original web oasis of high-brow meets low-brow
entertainment and debate. Having won fame for its role in the Monica
Lewinsky scandal fighting Bill Clinton’s corner, it now encompasses ten
sites.
The Drudge Report is here because it shows what the internet can do in
its rawest form. It’s a six-year-old one-man show that brought the US
presidency to its knees (excuse the pun) during the Lewinsky affair -
and goes from strength to strength.
For brilliantly executed fun with headlines like ’Pudding-Factory
Disaster Brings Slow, Creamy Death To Town Below’, onion.com stands out
with its daily blasts of humour.
The Motley Fool (fool.com) is a publishing phenomenon with books,
newspaper columns and radio shows. But it is online that it has become
one of the stickiest sites around for individual investors who have
taken to its to amuse-and-enrich policy.
There were several dotcoms to choose from in the investment sector, but
for online trading on both sides of the Atlantic, the discount
brokerage, Charles Schwab, and its eSchwab unit dominates the
market.
’I got it on eBay’ is fast on becoming common usage in the US as this
online auction site now boasts 1,600 categories of merchandise.
Harry Knowles’ Aint-it-cool-news is simply the best when it comes to
film and TV news and reviews on the web.
This list is in no particular order, but there seems little doubt that
Yahoo.com should be represented, as the number one portal is for many
where the internet begins and ends. All that, and it manages to turn a
profit. Gordon MacMillan
THE TOP TEN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS PRESS.
Advertising Age
Business Week
Personal Computer World
The Economist
Euromoney
Far Eastern Economic Review
Harvard Business Review
Scientific American
Variety
W
Two things may be immediately apparent even to the casual reader of
this page. One is that all the magazines listed as the top ten most
influential international business magazines are in the English
language.
While several non-English language magazines were put forward
(L’Economiste and Kapital to name but two), in the end, they were not
deemed to have that genuine global impact that others in this list do.
In the final analysis, it is difficult to escape the fact that the
language of international business is English.
The other significant point is that US titles account for eight out of
the ten on the list. Indeed, the two UK titles to make the list - The
Economist and Euromoney - did so largely on the back of their success in
the US market. In The Economist’s case, its US sales now outstrip those
in the rest of the world by far. Euromoney dominates its sector - the
international capital markets - to such an extent that it was able in
1997 to buy its only serious rival, the US-based Institutional
Investor.
There is no avoiding the fact: US dominance of this list reflects US
dominance of the world economy.
What can we say about the actual titles in this list? Variety and W,
dailies covering the entertainment and fashion businesses respectively,
are simply legends inside their industries. More than that, they define
their industries to outsiders. Indeed, if you had to pick one trade
magazine that the man in the street has heard of, it would be
Variety.
Harvard Business Review is no longer a dull, academic tome but a
must-read for captains of industry, agilely combining authority and
credibility without descending into worthiness. If you want to find out
what the business leaders are thinking, its pages will tell you.
Personal Computer World’s genius was to spot the rise of the computer as
a business tool and to capitalise on it, fathering a whole genre of
door-stopping computer magazines in probably the richest (and most
competitive) publishing sector in the world. Business Week prospers from
its generalist stance in a business-mad and business-literate country,
week after week producing insightful and challenging analysis of
corporate America and, increasingly, business around the world.
As for Advertising Age, we must acknowledge our debt to the grandfather
of advertising trade magazines and the barometer by which we measure our
own fortunes. Dominic Mills.
