The start of the Saatchi story

Forty years ago this Sunday, the Saatchi brothers announced their arrival on the advertising scene with a full page ad in The Sunday Times.

It aroused attention for three reasons:

1. Ad agencies didn't advertise themselves in those days
2. Layout: there was a headline and two solid columns of type. No pics.
3. The ad criticised the failure of a cigarette ad in colour

The headline ran: Why it's time for a new kind of advertising, and spoke of the need to follow the sequence of persuasion (AIDA). The cigarette ad in question had appeared in the Daily Express in colour (a new medium in those days) but had not done well.

Although the paper had not been named, the Directors of Beaverbrook newspapers (owner of the Daily Express) got their knickers in a twist, and were wondering how to respond. I was on The Evening Standard, and wrote a reply -- a full page ad in the same two-column layout, headed: Yes it is time for a new kind of advertising.

It appeared in The Evening Standard the following Friday under my own name.

The switchboard rang me during the day to say that someone called Saatchi had rung to ask if there really was a Phillip Khan-Panni, or was it a made-up name? I thought that was a bit rich, coming from someone called Saatchi! But I returned their call and spent an interesting half hour with the brothers at Golden Square, drinking Schloer.

In a sense, I suppose I had helped their cause by extending interest in their launch ad. I wonder if they remember.

Phillip