Louise Willder, Copywriting Manager:
I think that getting out of the office and into the real world every now and
again is undoubtedly a Very Good Thing. Every three months or so the Penguin
copywriters try and do this, usually by visiting a bookshop to have a look at
what the competition are up to with their packaging and blurbs. This time,
however, we thought we’d try something different and decided to head off to the
marvellous Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising in Notting Hill, to explore the work
of copywriters and designers in Britain through the decades, from the Great
Exhibition to wartime propaganda and on to the heyday of consumerism and lots of
1970s goodies that made me feel extremely nostalgic (and ancient). I have to
confess that, rather naively, I’d expected all advertising pre-1960s to be of
the “:LARD IS GOOD FOR YOU!” and “CIGARETTES: NEVER DID ME ANY HARM” school.
While there were many of these gems represented in full (‘Bile Beans’, anyone?),
I was pleasantly surprised by the sophisticated language and ideas on display.
My particular favourite was this one for Fry’s Chocolate –
‘Desperation ...
Pacification ... Expectation ... Acclamation ... Realisation It’s Fry’s!’ (slightly
marred by the fact that in the last picture the little boy seems to be
regurgitating his chocolate rather than enjoying it). Any other high points from
the afternoon, fellow copywriters?
Sarah Kettle, Puffin Creative Executive:
Fiendish Feet! No really, that was a highlight – those little yoghurt pots with funny faces and actual feet, which I hadn’t thought about for approximately fifteen years until I spotted them perched in the 80’s/90’s section at the Museum of Brands etc. I may have actually squealed in delight, which is weird, they’re yoghurt pots. But our journey back through time had this effect, you see. Take, for instance, this enormous gramophone
and compare it to the teeny tiny ipod shuffle of today. A tad cumbersome for the tube, perhaps? Then there was the verification that chocolate is indeed good for you – it’s nourishing AND delicious – but of course.
It really was fascinating to see how things have changed, or not changed much at all, in some cases, and to remember those things that you’d entirely forgotten about but make you smile to remember. Whatever did happen to the man who used to scale great heights, all because his lady loved a certain type of confectionary? A delightful afternoon all round, topped off for me by discovering this at the end of the exhibition:
Obvious, yes, but I like it nevertheless.
Colin Brush, Senior Copywriter:
Having a child on the way – and having with us on this trip Sam’s delightfully quiet Margot (I think she was asleep) – I have to say that my interest was grabbed by some of the old toys and games on display. I was amazed at the inventiveness and simplicity some displayed – and much of this inventiveness lay in their makers’ extravagant claims.
Balloon Ascent in particular was a highlight. (Actual title: The New Game of Balloon Ascent, followed by the charming shout-line: ‘Quite Original’). This was basically a folded piece of card with a landscape printed on it on the top and a scoring table along the bottom; some cut-out balloons attached to pieces of thread could be raised or lowered over the landscape. I wasn’t entirely clear how the game worked, but the box assured us that the game had ‘Many Novel Features’.
I think I counted one – which was pulling balloon cut outs over a piece of card with a bit of string. But I liked the fact that the modest-sounding ‘Quite Original’ was placed right next to the pushy, almost shouty ‘Many Novel Features’ with a total disregard for the obvious incongruence.
I may try this on our future publishing ventures. How about a flash saying ‘Absolutely Brilliant’, followed by the qualifier: ‘… if you like this kind of thing’?
Alan, Copywriter:
This is roughly how I remember the day of our outing to the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising:
9.00am
Outing outing outing! Outing outing outing! Outing outing!
9.30am
Hello, work – I'm going on an outing today! Hello, desk – I'm going on an outing today! Hello, Jessie – I'm going on an outing today!
Ah, Jessie, you can't frown at me for long. I'm going on an outing!
10.30am
Outing! Outing!
11.00am
Outing?
12.30pm
Yay! Outing time!
12.45pm
Ah, how amusing. A whole group of intelligent, capable adults and not one of us has thought to adequately consult a map before leaving.
2.45pm
Where the hell is this place?
3.10pm
Yay! Museum!
3.30pm
I wish I lived in a time when performing troupes of dogs and monkeys was such a lavishly advertised and heavily subscribed art form.
3.50pm
Haha! Racism used to be so jolly.
4.00pm
I think most people would agree that there’s something inherently strange about a museum devoted to packaging and advertising. And it is peculiar to arrange this kind of mercenary ephemera behind glass.
Even at its best we have an ambivalent relationship towards advertising. We feel nostalgia to the jingles and slogans of our childhood, but we feel rightly suspicious of advertising targeted at children. We enjoy a clever slogan but we know that the interests of those behind it are not our own.
At Penguin, we’re lucky to work selling books, where there’s less cause for suspicion, because what’s the worst that could happen? And because we get to work on a product that it’s not unusual to see treated with a little reverence, precisely because everything about a book, from its design and production to the typesetting and even the blurb affect how we read it. Which can, after all, be quite an extraordinary experience.
5.00pm
This is the best cupcake ever.
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