Come Back Bill Stickers – All is Forgiven!
18/03/2011

Bill Stickers (who is occasionally threatened with prosecution) has been around a long time – probably since the invention of paper – and his work, the humble poster or ‘publick notice’, is one of the oldest and most enduring forms of publicity.

I was reminded of this at www.outdoorhalloffame.co.uk which invites visitors to vote on the best outdoor ads of all time from a shortlist spanning the decades from the Sixties to the Noughties, including a number of vintage posters, such as the early Bovril ads (Alas, my poor brother!) and the classic British Rail series (Skegness – it’s so bracing!)

My favourite from the vintage section is the wartime ‘Dig for Victory’ poster, which together with ‘Keep calm and carry on’ has enjoyed a modern day revival in suburban kitchens and garden sheds. Like all good posters it’s witty, pithy and powerful, telling its story in just three words.

This is no mean feat, as Jeffrey Archer discovered when he announced, in a blaze of publicity, that he was about to publish a three-word novel. When he finally came out with ‘I love you’, the Daily Mirror poured scorn on his feeble effort and invited its readers to do better. The winning entry was ‘Cinderella got divorced’, which I think you’ll agree is brilliant, if a tad cynical.

But I digress. ‘Drinka Pinta Milka Day’ and ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ were equally memorable in the Sixties section, and for much the same reason – they come from the golden age of the ad jingle, and are irritatingly unforgettable.

The best of the Seventies selection are headline based (well, as a copywriter I would say that, wouldn’t I?) and include the famous ‘Labour isn’t working’ poster from Saatchi and Saatchi. By this stage the creative use of media was beginning to be exploited more thoroughly. Both the Fiat poster (Let’s hope the Italian footballers aren’t in such good shape) and the Clunk Click safety belt poster (“I wasn’t wearing a seat belt because I didn’t want to get my dress creased”) target their audience more effectively by appearing at the roadside.

That’s a strategy we at Simpson Creative have developed by using station poster sites for client promotions to commuters (see our poster for SEGRO).

If you think 3-D television is cutting edge, you must have missed the Eighties, when the first 3-D posters emerged (remember the car literally stuck onto a poster site with Araldite, and the poster for LCC: ‘Imagine what London will be like run by Whitehall’, which was literally wrapped up in red tape?)

In the Nineties it was the headlines that won the day again (sorry, Art Directors!) with that memorable series of ads for the Economist (e.g. It’s lonely at the top, but at least there’s something to read), and Nike (Ever heard the Nigerian national anthem? You will.)

And finally the Noughties’ crop of posters was notable for that most potent of advertising ingredients: wit. My own favourites (hammered for being politically incorrect and all the more amusing for that) were the posters for Spitfire Ale – the featured example being “Downed all over Kent, just like the Luftwaffe”. I’ll drink to that!