John Webster! – Art Direction/Advertising

John Webster was the creative director of agency Boase Massimi Pollitt (BMP) between 1970 and 2000, in this time he created some of televisions most memorable campaigns, loved by the public and smothered with awards. In a poll of the Uk’s top 100 TV commercials, 11 were created by Webster. Some of us may be too young to remember but some of his iconic characters still live on today, this is a testimony to his abilities. Among these were the Honey Monster, which as everyone knows is still running on sugar puffs ads, and boxes today. One I dont personally remember yet feel the design is timeless is the Cresta Bear, The simple line illustration could have been made today and selective colour pallets work extremely well.

A 2006 Guardian aricle wrote ‘Until BMP, British advertising agencies tended to be either creatively-focused or research-focused, and those that were creatively-focused generally sneered at market research, believing creativity to be embedded solely in flair and intuition. But as their clients increasingly employed research to improve the effectiveness of their marketing, for agencies to deride it was ostrich-like. BMP bridged the creativity-research chasm by inventing a system it called “account planning”, which is today used by agencies worldwide and provides advertising people with the public’s reactions to their ideas while the ideas are still being formulated’

The fact his techniques are still being used in industry today show his relevance now as much as when he was alive. His princilples were simple yet effective. He belived that an advert was an uninvited visitor into people’s living rooms and if your going to try to communicated with them, rather than shouting at them, amuse or even charm them.

Simplicity is definatly something I try to keep in mind when working on anything really, things have to be simple enough to work on different media, especially nowadays. The exicusion can be as complicated as possible as long as your concept is simple.