The year was 1989 and I was creative director of DDB. The job
involved arriving late, planning where to have lunch, finding someone to
have lunch with, eating lunch, arriving back after lunch and then
realising it was time to go home. In those days, we knew the meaning of
hard work and put all our energies into avoiding it.
Then I got a call from John Webster. He said BMP was looking for a
creative director. It sounded terribly hard work, so of course I said
no. Then DDB merged with BMP and I ended up working for BMP anyway.
At the time BMP’s standards were impossibly high and unlikely to be
bettered, so the job of creative director was regarded as something of a
poisoned chalice. And as one of my friends said at the time, ’I don’t
see much sign of a chalice.’ Wasn’t this the agency, after all, which
had won more awards than any other agency in the entire history of
advertising?
I’ve discovered over the years, however, that BMP has a habit of
listening very carefully to what the creative director says and then
doing the exact opposite. So, no matter how hard I’ve tried to make
things worse by letting mediocre work out of the agency, I’ve been
thwarted at every turn and the creative standards have, despite my best
efforts, remained pretty much intact.
I’ve learned, however, that making great ads is easy. You simply discard
everything that’s good enough. I just wish it wasn’t such hard work.
Bachelors Mushy Peas ’Ode to a pea’ Nick Gill/Jo Wenley 1989
VW Passat ’God Bless the Child’ Tony Cox/Gary Betts/Malcolm Green
At the end of my first year as creative director of BMP, the agency won
both the 1989 D&AD silver television awards. ’Ode to a pea’ won the best
30-second TV award. And ’God Bless the Child’ won the best 60-second TV
award. The next day the Evening Standard ran a piece headlined, ’Boase
fulfils his promise’. It was followed by an article about how, despite
the many mergers and upsets of the previous year, BMP had retained its
creative standards. This was something of a relief since ’Ode to a pea’
was certainly not a better commercial than its nearest contender,
Maxell’s ’Into the Valley’, and ’God Bless the Child’had been dismissed
by both agency and client as an art school film rather than a proper
commercial.
Barclaycard ’Moscow’ Jon Mathews/Fraser Adamson 1991
Here’s the thing about humour: It doesn’t work when it’s almost
funny.
It doesn’t work when it’s meant to be funny and isn’t. And it doesn’t
work if it isn’t actually - this is the key - funny. ’Moscow’, from the
first of the Barclaycard series starring Rowan Atkinson is, to my mind,
a gem of comic writing, comic acting and comic timing. Funny, funny,
funny.
COI ’Mrs Dawson’ Paul Gay/Steve Reeves 1991
Before BMP won the Aids business, the advertising had put the fear of
death into people and had consequently failed dismally. We adopted a
more caring tone of voice in this commercial. It featured a a lady who
worked on the production line at a condom factory - Mrs Dawson - and
mused about how busy she’d been of late because of the renewed demand
for her wares.
Insightful and sensitive, the commercial introduced a gentle realism to
public service advertising.
Walkers Doritos ’Idents’ Richard Flintham/Andy McLeod 1996
This Doritos brief was at first glance the least promising in the agency
and I vividly recall how many creative teams were trampled in the rush
to avoid it. As luck would have it, however, our resident geniuses were
stealing every brief that came along at the time and this one ended up
on their pile along with all the others. The resulting campaign marked a
watershed not only in their careers but in BMP’s too. Richard and Andy
won their first D&AD television gold award in 1997. And BMP won its
second.
VW Passat ’Doors’ Richard Flintham/Andy McLeod/Nick Gill 1997
Richard and Andy again, this time aided and abetted by Nick Gill. This
is a prime example not only of brilliant creative work but of the
account team and planners working in concert to persuade a reluctant
client that the route was a winner. Seldom has an agency got behind a
creative vehicle to such good effect. BMP at its absolute best.
VW ’Affordability’ Andrew Fraser 1997
Even though Paul Gay and Steve Reeves have gone their separate ways, we
still work with them on a number of projects because they bring a BMP
sensibility to everything they do. Paul directed all the ads in the
’affordability’ campaign and brought to them an effortless realism that
helped Andrew Fraser win a couple of gold awards at Cannes this year,
the Best of Show at the American One Show and the ITV Award at 1998’s
British Television Awards.
Sony ’Armchair’ Mike Boles/Jerry Hollens 1995
Everyone used to say that we’d never hack it as an international agency,
that the demands of satisfying such a disparate audience would undermine
BMP’s home-grown single-mindedness. This commercial for Sony Widescreen
proves otherwise. It’s epic all right, but - at bottom - it’s a simple
demo that extols the benefit of using the product.
