EXPLOSION IN WIG FACTORY - POLICE COMBING THE AREA!

One of my favourite ever adverts that I worked on wasn’t written by me.

I wasn’t even in the room when the super-talented creative team came up with the idea!

But I was the lucky director that got sent the script by the brains behind the masterpiece - Andy Brittain and Yu Kung.

The script was for Brylcreem (the famous hair pomade) and the proposition was simple: create a fictional town called ‘Bad Barnet’ where everyone has BAD hair except for the Brylcreem-wearing hero who leaves, because he has GOOD hair.

I wouldn’t have written a treatment or produced a deck (because that wasn’t the way back then).

I probably only had one or two meetings with the team before they awarded me the job!

I can’t remember my pitch to them, but they could probably sense my enthusiasm as TBH I would have paid them to shoot it.

For anyone who’s not familiar with cockney rhyming slang, ‘barnet’ means ‘hair’ as in ‘Barnet Fair’.

It rhymes.

With hair.

I don’t think you need to know that to ‘get’ it, but I did anyway because I happen to speak fluent Cockney.

A big part of my job was to create 'Bad Barnet’, the town (as well as make the advert so entertaining that it sold tons of Brylcreem obvs.)

What a fabulous task.

The way I saw it, everyone in the town had to have terrible hair - even the ones that weren’t actively featured on screen.

So if you saw an election poster in the background, the prospective Mayor would have a reeeeally noticeably bad haircut.

If the hero walked past a TV shop, then the TVs in the window had to feature a rival product complete with gruesome name e.g. ’HAIR-LUBE’ - and obviously I had to write a ‘jingle’ for that fake advert.

When the hero walks into a barbers, and a waiting customer with an atrocious ‘do looks up from the newspaper, then that newspaper HAS to be a publication called something like… the ‘Bad Barnet Bugle’.

And, If I’m already designing the front page of the Bad Barnet Bugle, why wouldn’t I write all of the articles, produce the small ads and supply the photos which illustrate the articles and small ads?

Therefore if, on the shelves of the barbers, there sits other ‘rival’ products like tubs of ‘Styling Lard’ and tubes of ‘Quiffy’… then around the town you should probably see some posters advertising them.

By this point I’d given myself an enormous task; going into that much microscopic detail. So I enrolled the help of my Typographic pal, Andy Dymock and my brother, Adam, who was (and still is) a brilliant writer.

Between us, we created a newspaper complete with articles, adverts, the lot. Even though the newspaper was only on screen for… less than 2 seconds.

We shot the commercial just outside Toronto and what a fabulous shoot it was.

My Missus did the hair, my 12 year old stepdaughter, Saskia Laroque-Rothstein Longaretti assisted her - incidentally she’s now my writing partner (BTW she’s a bit older than 12 now).

Steve Smithwick, the production designer, did a great job in helping me create the town. Doochy my producer was fabulous too, and a big part of making it one of the Best Shoots Ever.

The creatives, Andy and Yu, were funny, supportive and enthusiastic throughout. What a laugh we had!

There were no real dramas, the edit with Joel Miller went very smoothly, and the client was delighted!

Then I started reflecting on the job I’d had, putting all of the details and art direction together - a lot of it only seen for a second or two, or just dressed into the background.

I decided to take the ‘Bad Barnet Bugle’, incorporate all the other design elements I’d used in the commercial, create a new bumper magazine called ‘Styling Lard’ and have it printed for real.

I thought it would make a terrific sales presenter (do they still have sales presenters?) for Brylcreem, so I approached the client.

He liked it, then I explained that it would cost a couple of thousand quid to print… then he didn’t like it.

So I asked if he was OK with me printing it for myself, just for the fun of it, and as a bit of sales promotion for my fledgling design company.

He gave me the thumbs-up and I, naturally, gave him a bunch of the finished article.

I also printed postcards and produced ‘Bad Barnet’ gift bags and badges. Even went to a lab and commissioned tubs of ‘Styling Lard’!

I don’t know why I get carried away like that… I just loved the Brylcreem spot so much it must have flipped my wig!

MDEsq x.

CREDITS

Concept - Andy Brittain, Yu Kung

Director/Designer - Mark Denton Esq.

Typography - Andy Dymock

Newspaper Copy - Adam & Mark Denton

Lettering Artist - Alison Carmichael

Producer - Doochy Moult

Hair - Anna Longaretti

Hair Assistant - Saskia Laroque Rothstein-Longaretti

Photography - Charlie Crane, Ian Pearse, Phil Rudge, Rob Hardy