Clearly, the Collett Dickenson Pearce creative team, Andy McAdie and
Michael Victor, spent a good proportion of their schooldays fashioning
paper aeroplanes. Their impressive portfolio of direct mail is home to
several masterpieces of paper engineering.
‘There’s nothing more depressing than receiving a grey sheet of A4,’
Victor maintains, while demonstrating an example of immaculate cut-out
and embossing work on behalf of P&O Ferries. Other happy clients have
included Littlewoods, Japan Airlines, the Financial Times, InterCity,
Courts and Honda, for whom the duo have created everything from the
smallest leaflet insert to fully fledged 40-second commercials. They
relish the variety and claim to approach each project on the same terms.
‘We treat absolutely everything as if it’s an ad,’ McAdie explains. ‘The
idea is always at the core.’
Through-the-line projects constitute an expanding part of CDP’s
business, where the integrated department operates under the creative
director, Neil Bannister. Much blood, sweat and tears are spent
servicing Honda, one of CDP’s major clients, which has demanded a fully
integrated approach from day one. Last year, for instance, McAdie and
Victor produced a whole batch of work for the launch of the Honda Civic
five-door specifically designed to complement the agency’s commercial,
which showed reversed footage of a crushed car expanding back into its
original shape. The dealer box they came up with is a clever concertina
folder overprinted with crushed metal, while the direct mail, which
features the same texture and is targeted at consumers, opens out like a
demented map.
Unusually, McAdie and Victor both have a background in design;
conceptualisation, art direction and headlines are shared duties, but a
specialist copywriter is called in for long copy. ‘There’s no precious
ownership of a job here,’ McAdie says. ‘You just help out whenever and
wherever you can.’
