The Good Old Days

I've heard the comment so many times; I bet you have too! "You should have been here when…."   “The way we used to do things was so much better.”….."Of course in my day it was …." "If you'd been here when"…. "You've missed the best of it…" That sort of comment. I first heard it when I joined the "London Evening News" to sell classified advertisement space. In those days the Classified Advertisement Department was located in grotty offices in Tudor Street, well away from the marble halls of Northcliffe House wherein dwelt the Display Advertisement Departments together with the even more august editorial offices of the "Daily Mail" and the other titles in the Associated Newspapers stable. The only time we were allowed in that building was to collect our wages and expenses on Fridays, or to visit the restaurant on the top floor.

 

Had I been there a few years before, I was told nostalgically, I would have found life much more fun and the space easier to sell. In those days the "Evening News" was a broadsheet, issue sizes were restricted, a hang over I suppose from the paper rationing of the war years, and advertisers were, I was assured queuing up to place advertisements. Now though, we must go out and work for the orders that were there for the taking… if you worked hard enough. It was all so unfair!!!

 

The phrases were repeated many, many more times over the years. When I was recruited to help with the launch of "Family Circle" by the Thompson Organisation I was told that I should have been there when they launched "The Sunday Times Colour Magazine"….I couldn't agree more I would have loved to have been involved with that operation but still, this project was exciting enough…..Ah yes! But you see the people involved with the Colour Mag….They’re all larger than life you see…. Still, the "Family Circle" launch was great experience. I still have the Parker Pencil given to each of us by the publisher Geoffrey Perry commemorating the event in September 1964. You should have been there….it was so much more fun in those days…..

 

I should have been with "Woman's Own" long before, according to those already there. The magazine's circulation was over four million, issue sizes were restricted, it was always full up with advertisements and for a media buyer to even hint at the suggestion of a cut or discount in the advertisement rate was considered either very bad form or faintly ridiculous. Not when I was there you understand, all this was just before.

 

The same thing happened when I arrived in the Mirror building in Holborn Circus to take up my duties as Advertisement Sales Controller of “Mirror Magazine”. Incidentally have you noticed that Wikipedia, though it gives a lot of information on the “Daily Mirror” makes no mention of "Mirror Magazine ever existing? It did, I assure you. Dennis Hackett was the Editorial Director and Mike Molloy was the Editor. I have always thought of that title with great affection. It certainly threw up some of the most extraordinary situations I ever encountered. Did you know that some of the operatives in the lower basement at the Mirror Building asked for and were awarded a “Non-involvement” payment, Yes! That’s right they were paid extra because they weren’t involved with the launch of the colour magazine!!!! Nevertheless I was again assured that the best days at the Mirror Group were those that had gone before. The biggest circulation, the lowest cost per thousand readers, restricted issue sizes, advertisers desperate to get their ads into the paper, it was apparently the place to be above all others….before I got there! Now of course all the fun had gone out the business, and life was getting difficult in the opinion of those who had been there for some time…though they still lunched in the best restaurants in London and were very highly paid.

 

All this was in the middle to late seventies, so to be fair there was some truth in the belief that things in the business world were getting difficult. In fact the whole country was finding things were getting difficult. There had been an oil crisis that resulted in a petrol shortage, industrial relations were at an all time low, so low in fact, in some parts of the UK rubbish was piling up in the streets, even the dead in some areas couldn't get buried because someone or other was on strike….well everyone was on strike. TV Technicians, Miners, The Times printers, supported from time to time by other print workers, car workers, dockers, they were all at it. There was a song that started "You can't touch me I'm part of a union" we all laughed but it was frighteningly true during that period. Made life very difficult.

 

So, with all this going on you can imagine the reception given to my opening statement to the Mirror Group Sales Conference in Madrid in 1977. "The Good Old Days ", I said confidently, "are happening right now." Looking back I still think I got it right. In the advertising and marketing business it was a golden era. I was forcibly reminded of that decade the other evening when I watched the TV programme that showed the hundred best TV ads. I was astonished to note that most of the best were created in the seventies. It was difficult to find more than one advertisement that was of the current period.

 

I cast my mind over that decade again. There were some really great creative people about in the agencies and elsewhere. Big people, names that commanded respect wherever their names were mentioned. In the advertising world everyone knew them, Ronnie Kirkwood, John Hegarty, John Salmon, Charles Saatchi, Peter Marsh, and dozens of others. They created advertisements that were amusing, compelling and effective. They extolled the virtues, values and unique points about all sorts of products and where to find them. It was rare to see or hear "knocking copy" and few products were sold on price alone. The ads told you how good the products were, how well they would perform, how they would improve or add value to your life, where you could buy them and how to use them. They created great TV ads and towards the middle and latter part of the decade began producing great press ads too. I’ve no doubt that in addition to those still operating from the seventies…Sir John Hegarty and all are still creating good advertising, but compare those classic ads with those currently on TV. Most talk about how cheap the product is, so many are simply knocking their opposition, some are just plain daft and others mildly offensive, very, very few are amusing and even fewer memorable.

 

Having said all that I have no doubt that many will think that much of what was happening in the seventies is set to happen again, the financial crisis, rather than an oil shortage setting the spark to the tinder, the Post Office, surely one of the best known brand names in the world, where management and unions seem set on doing to their organisation what the dockers, miners, car workers and printers did to their industries in the seventies, unemployment rising rapidly, companies going bust, it's all happened before. Still, perhaps there is someone opening a sales conference somewhere in Europe who will begin by making the opening statement "The Good Old Days are happening right now". I hope they are anyway for all our sakes.