Tony Brignull, who has died aged 87 of lymphoma, was an advertising copywriter and creative director whose motto was that a good ad, in print or on screen, must “speak to people”. He was widely regarded as one of the best in the business during a quarter of a century (1967-92) at the influential agency Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP).
Literate and blessed with an imagination that brought “personality” to products, Brignull regarded himself at his best writing for the press and for posters, but he showed just as much talent in some of his screen work.
When the trade magazine Campaign celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018 by asking readers to vote for the best TV ads, one of Brignull’s 1979 Cinzano commercials, titled Airliner, came first. It was directed by Hugh Hudson shortly before he switched to feature films and won an Oscar with Chariots of Fire.
Brignull took over as copywriter for the Cinzano vermouth “mini-dramas” after the departure of Ron Collins, the man who had overseen their screen debut the previous year, with Alan Parker directing.
The commercials were intended to parody the rival Martini brand’s campaign based around trendy, sophisticated jetsetters. For Cinzano, Joan Collins, portraying elegance and glamour, was teamed with Leonard Rossiter, the actor best known for playing the seedy landlord Rigsby in the TV sitcom Rising Damp. Rossiter had suggested to Parker a running gag based on an old music-hall routine where the comedian looks at his watch and spills his drink – over Collins in the initial ads.
Brignull and Neil Godfrey, the art director with whom he forged a long, successful partnership – although mainly in print – decided the theme should continue, with variations. For their poll-topping Airliner ad, the oafish Rossiter and refined Collins are seen on a plane where he accidentally pushes the seat recline button as she is about to sip her drink. “Getting your head down, sweetie?” Rossiter asks, oblivious to her predicament. “Jolly good idea.” Brignull, Godfrey and Hudson also made that year’s other Cinzano ad, titled Ski Lodge, set in the Alps.
Among Brignull and Godfrey’s impressive print advertisements were several for Parker pens that satisfied the copywriter’s desire for longer-form, factual prose. One pictured a rival pen with the words: “I am a cheap fibre-tip pen. My owner left my top off over lunch.” Below it was a Parker pen: “I am a Parker fibre-tip pen. My owner left my top off overnight.” Then followed almost 100 words of text boasting of its qualities.
Words were also at the heart of Brignull’s 1987 Wishing Well campaign to renovate and rebuild Great Ormond Street hospital. Double-page spreads in newspapers and magazines bore the headline: “We have every doctor a child needs under one roof … the trouble is the roof’s falling in.” Underneath, 500 words spelled out the urgent need for £50m – a sum raised in the largest appeal of its kind at the time. It was Brignull’s proudest achievement.
Earlier in his career, during a stint at the Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) agency in 1969, another of his inspired ads featured the single-word headline “When” alongside a picture of a glass of Chivas Regal Scotch whisky filled to the brim and seven paragraphs of finely honed text.
While at CDP in 1980, he made three Shredded Wheat TV commercials, including one featuring Richard Kiel (who played Jaws in two James Bond films). “I read in research that the average serving was something like 2.4 servings,” recalled Brignull. “This sparked a thought in my mind that three Shredded Wheat would be too much to eat.” But he abandoned thoughts of adding the slogan “Bet you can’t eat three” at the end, believing it to be too close to a peanuts campaign in the US.
A year later, however, his colleague Lynda McDonnell coincidentally came up with the same line for Shredded Wheat posters and TV commercials featuring the cricketer Ian Botham – and, as creative director, Brignull approved it, with the phrase becoming associated with the cereal ever after.
Earlier, in 1973, another slogan attributed to Brignull, “Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach”, was similarly approved by him, but actually written by Terry Lovelock, who worked on the later Cinzano commercials.
Brignull himself used it on a triptych cartoon-like poster of Star Trek’s Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy), whose drooping pointy ears are revived by the Dutch lager. The art director Paul Smith added the thought bubble “Illogical!” and the striking billboard poster won the Design and Art Direction silver award in 1975, one of 20 awards Brignull received from D&AD in his career.
The younger of two brothers, Brignull was born in London to Violet (nee Moss), and Harry, a lorry driver, who later ran a pub together. On leaving Tollington grammar school in Muswell Hill, he worked for an insurance company before doing national service with an RAF air traffic control unit in Germany (1956-58), then taking a job as a teacher in Dalston, east London.
Switching to the advertising industry, he became a trainee with J Walter Thompson in 1959, moved on after three years to Mather & Crowther, then spent a year at CDP, to which he returned in 1970 after working for DDB and as creative director of Vernons.
One of his TV commercials, for Clarks shoes in 1976, won gold in the British Arrows (formerly British Television Advertising Awards). But he was most successful writing for print. In 2012, D&AD presented him with a special award as Britain’s most-honoured copywriter, noting that he and Godfrey (who also received one) were “considered the most successful creative team in history”, while CDP was once “the ad agency that ruled the planet”.
Brignull had spells away from CDP to form Brignull Le Bas in 1981 and become creative director at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in 1988. On finally leaving CDP in 1992, he spent two years at Abbott Mead Vickers.
He retired from the advertising industry in 1994 and later contributed articles to Campaign magazine. He also wrote two books of poetry, Where the Rail Ends (2002) and The Watercolourist (2023), and in 2002 graduated in English as a mature student from St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where he won the college’s Graham Midgley memorial prize for poetry.
In 1969, Brignull married Voula Tavoulari. She survives him, along with their daughters, Irena and Rosie, their son, Harry, and six grandchildren.
• Anthony John Brignull, advertising copywriter and creative director, born 10 August 1937; died 8 December 2024
