Director Mark Denton reminded me of this particularly fine piece of copywriting,
an ad written by Rick Cook, the last ad he wrote for an agency called Colmans.
Very pleased with an ad Citroen had just bought, he began to worry, would
e be credited on it once he’d left? In an effort to avoid being ‘forgotten’, he
devised a cunning plan to ensure people would know he’d written it.
You’re wondering how do you guarantee credit when you’ve left the agency?
Easy.
Write your name on the ad itself. Or to be more precise, in it.
Rick wrote about the joys of the Citroen Estate using the first letter
of each paragraph to spell out ‘Richard Cook Wrote This’.
That’s clever, but he needed events to happen that were beyond his control,
every element needed to fall neatly into place.
The client needed to accept the copy unchanged, JWT needed to enter it into D&AD.
Harvey Flinder needed to give himself a writing credit.
It then needed over 50% of the D&AD jury to vote for it into the 1984 annual.
Sheer genius! (And yes, I’m aware of the ‘e’, it’s tougher than it looks.)
wow.
March 9, 2011 @ 5:24 am