GET OUT OF THE WAY

 

 

In 1970, Charles Saatchi was a young man who’d just opened his own ad-agency, it was very small he only had one client, the Health Education Council (HEC).

One of the first briefs he was given was for a poster to get people to cover their food to stop flies spreading germs.

What average creatives do is ignore the facts, they’re boring, they start to make up something more interesting.

So without doing any research, they’d start writing puns like: “The Great Cover-Up” or “The Germ of a Good Idea” or “Don’t Let Disease Fly In”.

That’s what average creatives do, but Saatchi wasn’t an average creative so he didn’t do the average thing.

First he went and found all the leaflets the HEC had been running, looking for information, for clues.

One of the leaflets had this written in it:

“This is what happens when a fly lands on your food.

Flies can’t eat solid food, so to soften it up they vomit on it.

Then they stamp the vomit in until it’s a liquid (usually stamping in a few germs for good measure).

Then when it’s good and runny they suck it all back up again, probably dropping some excrement at the same time.

And then, when they’ve finished eating, it’s your turn.”

Saatchi said “That’s it, don’t change a word, that’s the poster.”

He just added a line at the bottom:

“Cover food. Cover eating and drinking utensils, Cover dustbins” and he got John Hegarty to art direct it as a poster.

It was crazy to have that many words on a poster, nobody did that.

But I remember, before I was working in advertising, standing on Barking station reading every word of that poster, and ever since I’ve always covered any food in case flies land on it, the poster was that powerful.

If it had been one of the normal little puns, looking like every other ad, I’d have forgotten it immediately, instead of remembering it for 50 years.

What Saatchi had that very few other creatives have is the sense to get out of the way.

To push his ego aside in order to recognise a great ad.

Most creatives can’t see what’s in front of them, even if it’s great, if they didn’t write it.

There’s an old saying, “A great idea doesn’t care who has it”.

John Hegarty is another of the few creatives who understands what this means.

When he opened BBH one of their first clients was Audi, John was visiting their factory in Germany.

The main problem for Audi, in the UK, was that nobody knew where they were made, if they were Scandinavian, Dutch, Belgian, or whatever.

Research told John that people would pay more if they knew the cars were German.

Walking round the factory, John saw a tatty old poster, “Vorsprung Durch Technic”.

He said, “That’s it, don’t change a word, that says German in a memorable way”.

It was crazy to have a poster written in German, no one would know what it said.

But John put that line on all the Audi ads and now they are one of the biggest selling car-brands in the UK.

I’ve recently seen two posters by creatives who should have got out of the way but didn’t.

One was for Nivea Sun-Tan Lotion, it ran at the entrance to Jewsons.

It had a large headline saying “It’s Like a Hard Hat for Your Skin” which I ignored as just another forgettable ‘clever’ line.

But underneath, much smaller, it said “Working outdoors is 4 times more likely to cause skin cancer”

That’s a really powerful fact that should have been the headline.

Later, on the back of a bus, I saw the headline “Waste In – Heat Out” which I ignored, as just another forgettable line.

But very small, underneath it said “Heat-pumps are up to 4 times more efficient than gas-boilers’.

That’s a really powerful fact.

Saatchi or Hegarty would have made the facts the headline, not the ‘clever’ forgettable lines.

Saatchi and Hegarty both built great ad agencies because they knew how to get out of the way of a big idea.

That’s something John Webster always taught me about great ideas: “It ain’t who says it, it’s who spots it.”