Arse about face.

Before I was, let’'s say 18 years old, I didn'’t know there was such a thing as advertising.
I knew about adverts of course.
I’'d seen them on TV, and in newspapers and magazines.
Occasionally they were even on radio.
These were the days of Horace Batchelor on Radio Luxembourg.
That’'s Horace Batchelor of the famous Infra-Draw Method for winning the football pools.
You know, “Horace Batchelor, Department One, Keynsham, spelled K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M, Keynsham, Bristol.”
No?
Not to worry, I remember.
Mind you, if his system was that good, why didn'’t he just use it himself and swap K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M for B-A-R-B-A-D-O-S for God’'s sake?
That’'s what I used to think.
Suffice to say there weren’'t many commercial radio stations broadcasting then, so not many radio commercials around.
On TV, there were the PG Tips chimps and the Esso Sign.
Which of course meant “Happy Motoring.”
There was a little cartoon bloke tapping a round wooden fort made of an insurance policy and pronouncing it, “Strong Stuff.”
Oh, and we also learned that “Beer at home means Davenports.”
Apart from these, there were the usual food, fags and fragrances spots.
All washing over and into the viewing public while they were waiting for Michael Miles and his Yes-No interlude to come on, or for DCS Lockhart, wearing his investigative expression, to come trundling out of old Scotland Yard again in his Humber Super Snipe.
Print, like television, was mostly black and white until the Sunday Times Colour Supplement was launched and everyone started dropping acid.
Advertising, as an industry, was unknown to most of us then.
It was only a few years later – when I was about 18 and I met some folk who were in the business – that I realised that there were people who actually did it and that it was something I’'d like to do too.
That I know now I was born to do.
And that epiphany just about coincided with the advent of the new wave of British creative advertising in the form of BMP, CDP and Saatchi’s.
And a little while later, AMV.
(I wasn’t responsible for it, I hasten to add, it was merely happenstance.)
Suddenly, advertisements weren'’t adverts any more, they were ads.
They were sparkling gems of scintillating, thought-provoking imagination and involvement.
The people who did them became well known to the man in the street.
The ad business was thrown into the limelight.
The challenges became greater.
As did the rewards.
But the work, and the need to create ever more memorable campaigns, was everything.
We were only ever as good as our last ad.
And when someone in adland (for by now the industry existed in its own intellectual ecoregion) produced something amazing, we all spat in the fire, rolled up our sleeves and tried to beat it.
Whilst others, who couldn'’t do it after any fashion, stood to one side and muttered that what we were doing was the devil’'s work.
Self-consciously watching light-footed youngsters bopping on a dance floor with abandon, but unable to join in, thanks to two left feet and complete lack of the expression required to liberate the limbs.
Then the music changed.
And instead of the free-form, heart-lifting wildness, there came the rigid, pounding beat of a military march.
You can’'t dance to that.
It has no soul, no source, no essence.
It has no etymology in terms of a deep-seated origin that can be traced back to the primitive roots that inform its existence.
No DNA.
No jungle rhythm.
No Arkwright.
No Wolf In Sheep’'s Clothing.
No Pregnant Man.
It began when it began and advances inexorably.
The machine sets the pace.
And it has no time for looking back.
The only thing that’'s important is the next widget, not the last ad.