Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

 

I was enjoying a coffee in my local bijou second hand store recently, when I stumbled across something truly extraordinary: a full set of the Commentaries published by Fortnum & Mason from the 1920s.

These are something of a legend among the copywriting fraternity. (That's the 'writing' copywriting fraternity, rather than the 'second best art director in the team on the day we started at advertising school' fraternity, but more of that later.)

They were created by an intriguing figure called Hugh Stuart Menzies. Menzies initially worked for the Invalid Delicacies Food Department before being promoted to write copy for what were, in essence, a series of in-house direct mail brochures.

The one in the photograph is entitled Advertising without Tears, and promotes the Fortnum's Easter range. It does this in what can only be described as a quirky way. Headlines include: 'Rejoice! Arise! Take Notice!' and the illustrations are just as egg-centric. ('Mental torment of a strait-laced hen on finding she has laid a twenty-five shilling Fortnum & Mason egg decorated with sequins and satin bows' is possibly the least bizarre example.) Even the order form has a wry headline and appealing illustrations.

And the illustrations are as marvellous as the copy. Menzies was involved with some of the legendary Shell on the road campaign in the 1930s, and it seems as if he found the illustrators whose work that epitomises while producing the Commentaries, including Edward Bawden and W Hendy.

Even more amazingly, each example in the series seems to be better than the last. Proving that you can never have too much of a good thing.

So the next time you hear a creative muttering about the decline of creativity in advertising, you can point them in the direction of the Commentaries.

The moral of the tale is simple: every generation believes it invented creativity in advertising. But it didn't. And nor did Don Draper...

But a man who started off selling invalid delicacies might well have had something to do with it.