SCDP creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) writing in AMC’s Mad Men. One of the books Draper turns to in his existential crisis is poet Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency
Sir Isaac Newton said that somewhere around the late 16th Century, quoting his teacher Isaac Barrow. Although uttered as a backhanded criticism – with mild disdain at the obfuscation in the craft – it’s that virtuosity, that lyrical alchemy and affecting wonder, that brands have coveted since the early heyday of advertising.
From the poem in a 19th-century Warren Blacking’s shoe polish ad, to the wordplay in classic slogan “Beanz Meanz Heinz” and Dead Poets Society teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) invoking Walt Whitman in an Apple ad as he asks, “What will your verse be?”, examples abound.
In his book The Science of Story, Will Storr explains how the weapons of poetry (metaphor, simile etc) deployed in prose writing activate our neural regions, giving the language deeper meaning and sensation. That’s the benefit of choosing “she shouldered the burden” over “she carried the burden”, for example.
“A successful poem plays on our associative networks as a harpist plays on strings,” he writes. “By the meticulous placing of a few simple words, they brush gently against deeply buried memories, emotions, joys, traumas, which are stored in the form of neural networks that light up as we read. In this way, poets wring out rich chords of meaning that resonate so profoundly we struggle to fully explain why they’re moving us so.”
But is verse in an advert really a poem if its goal is to sell? This age-told tension between art and commerce is under the microscope again in a new BBC Radio Four documentary hosted by copywriter and poet Rishi Dastidar. In it, he traces the history of “words pressed into service on behalf of sales”, drawing on the musings of WH Auden, George Orwell, Clive James and Don Draper among others.
He also consults poets who have worked on commercial copy … and those who have kept away. Among the latter is Clare Pollard (Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation), who makes a clear distinction between poetry and advertising even though they use exactly the same skill set in her eyes. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s definition of poetry as “the best words in the best order” would chime with many a copywriter.)
“Poetry was originally oral and that means all the techniques we associate with poetry – repetition, alliteration, rhythm, rhyme – they’re all basically mnemonic devices,” she said. “They are memory devices. Auden talks about poetry as ‘memorable speech’ and that’s precisely what advertisers want adverts to be – memorable speech – so they will stick in your head when you’re in the aisles of the supermarket.
“The question is: when is it a poem and when’s it an advert? I don’t think you can tell between them on the basis of craft. I think the way you tell is intent. Adverts are full of poetic speech but they are never poems because as soon as the intent is to sell you something, then it is an advertising jingle and not a poem.”
Dr Jo Bell, who contributed to the Voices Nationwide campaign, also acknowledged the similarities in how poets and copywriters use language. “But with a poet, I think the client wants the kind of emotional involvement that poetry can provide,” she explained. “What we do daily is to produce succinct writing that gives you a quick hit, a deep hit of emotional involvement in the world and advertisers are trying to harness exactly that.”
Dr Bell later went to argue that few writers can afford to exist purely as poets, and that writing ads helps to make poetry a bigger part of the “fabric of daily life” (by “hijacking public forums” as the artist Robert Montgomery put it to broadcaster Mary Anne Hobbs in his Three-Minute Epiphany).
Dastidar echoed the sentiment about earning power, saying advertising buys time for the poet to do the work they really want to do, and the space in which to live so the poems can keep coming. Portland-based poet and copywriter Matthew Dickman, who also features in the documentary, advocated that writers strive to do more than sell in their work. Entertain, be political… Sprinkle “poetic fairy dust” all around.
Poetry and advertising haven’t been the most natural bedfellows, as poet Will Harris noted in this article. “The poetry is there to drown out what [one-time copywriter] Allen Ginsberg called in Howl ‘the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising’. Poetry is the Auto-Tune which turns the shrieks into song.”
We are seeing more and more appearances of poets and poetry in TV ads and online: James Massiah for J20 and Selfridges, Caleb Femi for Heathrow Airport, Andrew Long for AXA, George the Poet for BT, Kojey Radical for Honda, Kate Tempest for Facebook and Idris Elba reading Edgar Guest’s ‘Don’t Quit’ to a quarantined nation for the BBC.
Writers get paid and viewers get to hear a wider range of voices. So what’s the problem? The onus to convey a direct message and quickly convert is devaluing the craft for some people. “The problem I have with advertising is that it’s by its nature a slick medium,” said Harris in the documentary. “The goal is to persuade, coerce the listener. Poetry is inwards looking.”
“Good poetry is about nuance,” said Pollard. “And great poetry is often deeply ambiguous; everyone can take something different from it. Well, that’s the opposite of an advert that wants everyone to take away exactly the same thing. I’m going to go out and buy those noodles.”
Referring to poet-fronted campaigns by the likes of Nationwide, she added: “Poets are associated with authentic and honest speech. What are clients buying when they are asking you to go on screen? There is a hoodwinking of the audience, as Auden put it, where the actual intention of the ad is disguised in some way by the honest brand of the poet.”
Copywriters should seek inspiration in myriad fields – from poetry to film and stand-up. This is a life-long pursuit (if you want it to be) and the magic often happens when you make unusual connections and cross-pollinate ideas. Taking a purist’s stance will only lead to a more precarious existence in a profession where many already struggle to make a living from words.
That said, I do support much of what Pollard and Harris are saying. Even though the Nationwide campaign has been very successful according to Jim Thornton of commissioning agency VCCP – floods of people switching their current accounts in response to a poet’s unedited words – there is something about it that grates. A cloying attempt to seduce the viewer with sweet rhyme. To nab Harris’ analogy, auto-tune cranked up to 11.
The Prudential ad from 2002 is like that. Critics of Just Passing By for McDonald’s, with its chirpy everyman tone, probably feel the same. That one’s very well executed, in my opinion. A perfect marriage of words and imagery reflecting my (sporadic) experience of the fast-food chain. I think people have a bigger problem with the company than the ad. The fact that the poem is inspired by a Rolf Harris song probably doesn’t help either.
Elsewhere, you have contrived efforts such as Levi’s Go Forth campaign, co-opting poems from Walt Whitman and Charles Bukowski to hawk jeans under the pretence of empowerment and individuality. After all, what’s more pioneering than wearing denim, eh?
Waitrose’s Autumn Flowers ad from several years ago, which features Keats’ To Autumn, adopted a similar archivist’s approach but fairs better because the agency managed to conjure a feeling in a more authentic, effortless and timeless manner.
For me, the benchmark will always be this incredible piece of work. The greatest ad ever.
Guinness’ Surfer conveys a brand truth – that good things come to those who wait – in a surprising, mesmerising, ineffable way. The prose was created by Tom Carty and Walter Campbell out of a mixture of Moby Dick, Coleridge’s epic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and some other elements. The last line was inspired by James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist, in which he explains that man must rid himself of all social trappings before he can become a true artist. They went deep.
Voiced by the gravelly rumble of Louis Mellis, the ad combined dramatic footage of intrepid surfers in Hawaii with the pallid waves of CG-ed stampeding horses (inspired by a Walter Crane painting) and the pulsating sound of Leftfield’s ‘Phat Planet’. The result was a new mythology in advertising.
It puzzled me when I first saw it. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t need to. I had just witnessed something unforgettable, a spectacle that made me thirsty for a celebratory, slow-poured pint of the Black Stuff. And each subsequent time would feel like the first time. Spinetingling. I just watched it again. Yep, spine is tingling.
What’s unique about Surfer is that it’s the ad that is poetic, not just the words that anchor it. So the lesson is clear: don’t just put a poem in an ad. Make the ad a poem.
Nowadays few clients would be brave enough to go all in with a maverick like Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth, Under the Skin) on such an enigmatic piece of work. This is poetry as “an echo, asking a shadow to dance”, in the words of Carl Sandburg. But the prize is great. And you know who fortune favours…
Poetry has to power to take us out of the ad. Great poetry takes us out of ourselves.
Go for great.
Poetry For Sale? is available to stream on BBC Sounds.