M&C Saatchi honours ‘The best client we ever had’ with full page in the Sunday Times + outdoor
April 16 2013, 10:46 pm | | 9 Comments
In a tribute to Margaret Thatcher, M&C Saatchi placed a full page in the Sunday Times and booked outdoor ads with the line ‘The best client we ever had’.
Brothers Lord Maurice Saatchi and Charles Saatchi both acknowledge Thatcher and her team’s role in approving their 1979 Conservative Party election campaign – most notably the ‘Labour isn’t working’ posters – which played a pivotal role in ensuring Thatcher’s victory.
Many industry observers believe that victory also paved the way for the rise and rise of Saatchi & Saatchi throughout the 80s.
9 Comments
Students of advertising: Please note the art direction.
Students of life: Please note the betrayal.
Largely because she rewarded the Saatchi’s hardwork for her by ripping the British Airways account out of FCB and giving it to the Saatchi’s, starting as she meant to go on – putting a load of people out of work.
You think that campaign for Maggie was something, you should see the one they did for Pol Pot.
Now that was a killer.
Still so bitter after all these years dingdong? The groundbreaking work Saatchis did for BA after the inept dross FCB had been doing year in, year out turned advertising on its head. Like most things Saatchis did in those halcyon days.
‘Landing Manhattan’ remains a landmark in advertising. Unfortunately most CB bloggers probably weren’t even born then. It launched the era of massive big-idea big-budget commercials -global advertising – which ultimately grew so ridiculous they just had to have the piss taken out of them. Hence the Carlton Draught ‘Big Ad’.
Aye, it were a grand old time.
Saatchis shook a British ad industry that had grown fat, bloated and complacent, and anyone who lost their jobs at FCB as a result of the BA move probably deserved it.
But to your assertion that Thatcher had something – anything – to do with the account move; I love a good paranoid, delusional, conspiracy theory. Do you have you any information to back that up?
And after getting the account from FCB they went on to create ‘Face’
the most famous airline commercial of all time.
Seems Maggie chose well.
Er thoguht they had her as a client at Saatchi and Saatchi……so why’s the ad from M&C?
I think the art direction’s shithouse.
But most art direction back then was.
@C&M – that’s the point.
@IS there a serif in the house – if my eyes can see through that pixellation, that looks like ‘Goudy Old Style BT’, the S&S house font. Which is a little shot across the bow from M&C to say who can really claim to have her as the client.