My friend Brian Campbell, who has died aged 56, was an art director and creative director in the advertising industry who won awards for his campaigns, including for Smirnoff and Sony Playstation.
His work for BT, while creative director at Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, alongside his partner Phil Martin, was hugely successful. Their Adam and Jane TV campaign, which debuted in 2005, saw a bumbling Adam (played by Kris Marshall) begin an on-off relationship with Jane (Esther Hall). The campaign ran for six years and the 40 mini-dramas that were made were often better written and acted than the TV shows they interrupted. They developed their own following, and the characters joined the ranks of the Oxo family and Renault’s Papa and Nicole as TV advertising icons.
Later in the campaign, the public were encouraged to vote for their preferred storylines. In 2010, 1.6m votes were cast on their BT Facebook page, with 70% voting for Jane to be pregnant. The commercials ended the following year with the couple finally providing us with the wedding we all craved.
Brian was born in Hackney, London, to Eamonn, a transport and export manager at Jaeger, and Margaret (nee Donaghy), a nurse. In 1972 the family, along with Brian’s older brother, Tony, moved to King’s Lynn, Norfolk, where Brian went to King Edward VII grammar school.
A voracious TV viewer, by the age of 12 he was already a seasoned critic, but it was at Great Yarmouth School of Art, where he took a class in advertising, that he found his vocation. He was accepted at Central Saint Martins in London, but soon dropped out after securing an internship at the ad agency Still Price Lintas. Other placements followed – all unpaid, while he was on unemployment benefit. But he was determined to get into advertising and, in 1991, was hired by Saatchi & Saatchi as a junior creative.
The following year he moved to Lowe Howard-Spink, where, as art director, he began the successful “through the bottle” campaign for Smirnoff – two of his posters are now part of the V&A collection – and he won a Cannes Lion award in 1995 for Duck. From 1999 to 2005, he was creative director for the agency TBWA, winning a D&AD pencil award for the Chasing Rabbits campaign for Playstation in 2002, and then worked at Abbott Mead Vickers from 2005 until 2018.
In 1994 he married Lizzy Aghadiuno and they had two daughters, Hannah and Eve. The marriage ended in divorce in 2011.
Devilishly handsome, funny, generous and talented, Brian was the golden boy, but privately he had his own demons, and depression and addiction finally took their toll.
He is survived by his daughters, his father and his brother.
