Thursday, June 21, 2007

Celebrity advertising slogan-writing

Novelist Fay Weldon was on Today on Monday. She spotted the "Go to work on an egg" slogan when she was a copy writing head and put it on a poster. She was talking about the advert's 50th anniversary.

There was a "flashback" advert planned which would show the Tony Hancock original ad. However, it was banned for failing to promote a balanced diet!

It all got me thinking of other famous people who spawned advertising slogans before they became famous. Murray Walker came up with "A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play".

Dorothy Sayers is credited with coming up with "Guinness is good for you".

So that's another Trivial Pursuit triplet question completed. My other one is now bulging: Name three famous celebrities who went to jail:

David Dickinson (for fraud) , Johnny Vaughan (drugs), Leslie Grantham (for murder - he played Dirty Den in Eastenders)

...used to be my answer but now it's over-flowing with Paris Hilton, Christian Slater etc. Going back a bit, there was also Robert Mitchum, Hollywood star, (drugs again).

5 comments:

  1. Salman Rushdie of course came up with the 'naughty but nice' slogan for cream cakes.

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  2. Thank you Peter! I thought you were winding me up for a moment!

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  3. Peter is absolutely right - Rushdie did, as well as the “irresistibubble” slogan for Aero chocolate bars.

    I did a blog with 101 advertising slogans together with their ad agencies, clients and dates - so I did quite alot of research on it!

    Apparently Fay Weldon, Another former advertising copywriter turned novelist, coined the phrase “Go to work on an egg”.

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  4. Apologies - I got carried away and forgot you had already mentioned Fay!

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  5. Thank you John, and well done for compiling that excellent list.

    http://dueconsideration.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/famous-advertising-slogans/

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