Plugging UK AD

Charlie Saatchi started without any idea of how life was going to surprise him. He founded the largest advertising agency in the world, created some of the most famous and successful ad campaigns in the UK, became a powerful and influential figure in the art world, especially in Britain, opened his own art gallery in London and married Nigella Lawson. Quite impressive, huh? Well, even though this guy is a living legend in the Ad and Art Industry, he manages to maintain a very low profile and protects his privacy from media curiosity.

First Steps in Ad Land

He started as a voucher clerk in a “tiny advertising agency in Covent Garden. (…) one of the advantages of it being a tiny agency is that one day they got desperate when their Creative Department (one young man) was off sick, and they asked me if I could try and make up an ad for one of their clients, Thornber Chicks. This ad was to appear in Farmer & Stockbreeder magazine, and hoped to persuade farmers to choose Thornbers, as their chicks would grow to provide many cheap, superior quality eggs and a fine return. I didn’t know how you write an ad, or indeed how to write anything much more than ‘I will not be late for Assembly’, for which I had been provided much practice. So I looked through copies of Farmer & Stockbreeder and Poultry World, chose some inspiring sounding words and phrases, cobbled them together, stuck on a headline – I think I stole it from and old American advertisement – and produced ‘Ask the man who owns them’ as a testimonial campaign featuring beaming Thornber farmers. The client bought it.” (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.) His advertising career started from one day to another and he saw himself immersed in this fascinating world so, when he was 22, Charles got an interview with the creative director of Benton & Bowles, Jack Stanley, after failing in every other interview in ad agencies. Fortunately, Stanley hired him and put him to work with John Hegarty. “We hit it off, and even better he was very talented and I would look good bathed in his afterglow.” (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.) After working for a short time with him, Saatchi and Ross Cramer became a creative duo. Charles was the copywriter and Cramer the art director but after a while, they moved to CDP where they worked for 18 months before creating their own business: Cramer Saatchi. There was no way back (thanks god!).

When remembering this time, Saatchi explains in his book: “I was very lucky to get into CDP in 1966, on the coat-tails of working with Ross Cramer as an art director/copywriter team. (…) The creative director was the dour and reticent Colin Millward, as close to an advertising genius that Britain would produce, and with a magnificent North Country accent. He dismissed my copy-writing efforts as piss-poor, but patiently helped me get better, in what became a delightful relationship. Fortunately for me I also found an ally in David Puttman, a young account manager who at the time was a super-cool Paul McCartney lookalikee, who sold my campaigns to some high profile clients, which did me no harm at all. ”(Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.) Some of these ads are the racy ads for Ford and the ones for Selfridges and Lewi’s.

Going back to Saatchi’s first creative consultancy, Cramer Saatchi won the Health Education Council account thanks to Ross’ child. He was waiting at the school door while talking with another parent who worked at the Council. Luckily, she commented him that they were looking for an ad agency. Soon after that, Cramer Saatchi agency was producing the antismoking campaign for the Health Education Council, which captured a lot of attention and media coverage, and the ad that pushed them up to the sky and is considered to be one of the top 10 British ads of the century: “it’s a strinkingly simple image of a young bloke in a V-necked sweater. His palm rests tenderly on his enormously pregnancy bump as he gazes at the camera with a doleful, resigned expression. The text reads: ‘Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?’ Capturing at once the downside of permissiveness and the nascent women’s liberation movement, the ad presaged the more thoughtful 1970s after the extended party of the sixties.” (Mark Tungate. Adland, a Global History of Advertising. 2007)

Copywriting: “if you wanted something basic and crude you would come to me and hope for the best”. (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.)

1970 was a crucial moment in his career, Ross Cramer left the agency and Charles’ brother came to replace him: Maurice Saatchi, a very successful young man who left his business, he was part of the relaunching of Campaign (the powerful ad magazine), to start Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother. Wise decision!

“What I adored most about my advertising agency was the fanatical devotion to keeping our clients happy, our desperate longing to have our campaigns succeed for them, and to win as many big accounts as possible”. (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.)

The new agency became appealing to very talented figures in the industry such us Hegarty (Charles’ ex creative duo), Sinclair, Muirhead, Martin Sorrell and Tim Bell. Moreover, the agency had big dreams and was doing everything to achieve them. In 1975, they signed an agreement with Compton agency in New York which gave Saatchi & Saatchi the chance to reach clients like Mackintosh and Procter & Gamble. The agency grew rapidly and started winning big accounts like the British Airways one.

“I started collecting art before I went into advertising. And anyway, advertising is for the young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.” (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.)

However, Charles Saatchi, whose living heroes are “Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird, Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, Cary Grant in North by Northwest, Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success and Gary Cooper in High Noon” (Charles Saatchi. My Name is Charles Saatchi and I am an Artoholic, Everything You Need to Know about Art, Ads, Life, God and Other Mysteries – and Weren’t Afraid to Ask… 2009. Phaidon Press Limited. London.), is now focused on the Art Industry but we cannot deny that his actions in the Ad Industry were impressive, different and outstanding. Actually, Charlie Saatchi made an excellent use of strategy and talent to make his way through the Industry and become someone important and famous. He made his ambitions true and even though he fell during the journey, he became stronger and reinvented himself. As it is stated in his book: “Charles Saatchi has been one of the moving forces of the modern age. Founder of the global advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and the most influential art collector of our time, he has vigorously shaped the contemporary art scene while contradictorily remaining a reclusive, even elusive figure.”

In my opinion, Charles’s life and influence in advertising is a refreshing hope for those of us who are barely starting and dream of being able to keep the vision and the determination to fulfill our ambitions and succeed, at least in a small percentage of what he’s done, in such an interesting, passionate but competitive world.