Guinnless isn't good for you

I lived and worked in the UK in the early 1980s. Although I never landed a plum copywriter job in a London ad agency - well, not until the late 1980s - I did get sent out for temporary jobs at a few of them.

One agency was called Allen, Brady and Marsh. One of its head honchos, Peter Marsh, was a genius at pitching for new accounts. The method he used for getting the British Rail ad account was an instant legend. Here is the account most-seen on Google - I would love to attribute it to someone but haven't IDed them yet:

It's a well-told tale, but I have never heard a story to top the one about London agency Allen Brady & Marsh's pitch to British Rail in the late 1970s or early 1980s. My version of events may not be the exact truth, but this is what I have heard.

The client team arrived at the agency at the appointed time, to be greeted by a disinterested receptionist in a rather dirty lobby area. The receptionist broke off from filing her nails for just long enough to direct them towards a small sitting area where the seats were stained, ashtrays were overflowing, and the stains of numerous coffee cups remained on the table. She didn't offer them any drinks. The clients waited, and waited, and waited. As the scheduled time for the agency's presentation disappeared into the past, they asked what was going on, and the receptionist replied tersely that someone would "be along in a minute." Their frustration grew, until at the moment they were about to pick up their bags and leave, Peter Marsh, the agency head, appeared before them. "Gentlemen," he said. "You have just experienced what hundreds of thousands of people experience every day on British Rail. And we'd like to talk to you about how to put that right.

Allen Brady & Marsh won the pitch. It's impossible to say whether they won it because of the stunt, but unlike most pitch stunts it was absolutely relevant to the message of the agency's presentation. It forced the unsuspecting clients from British Rail not only to understand and believe the idea, but also to experience it, to feel it for themselves. There's no more powerful way to get a point across.

During the early 1980s, the Guinness account was being bounced around from one agency to another. After decades of using the slogan Guinness is Good For You, the UK government decided that Guinness couldn't say this any more. Drinking's bad for you, you know. (Yes, I'm being sarcastic.)

Allen, Brady and Marsh won the Guinness account and eventually came up with what I thought was a clever spin on the original slogan. They insisted that Guinnless wasn't good for you, and even manufactured a fake self-help group called Friends of the Guinnless. Unfortunately, the advertising was witty but not terribly effective.

The upshot to all this is that I spotted one of the bar ashtrays produced during this campaign on eBay. Herewith a photo of my newest eBay purchase:

No, I don't smoke, but I am very happy to own a genuine article of UK advertising memorabilia.