Rialto Advertising Reunion

I once worked for an advertising agency called Rialto - between 1986 and 1989. My friend Brian Harrison hired me as a copywriter. With him as creative director the agency had a terrific run of winning awards and accounts. It was an interesting time. I learned a great deal both good and bad.

The stock market crashed in October 1987 (or, euphemistically, 'corrected'). I was in New York on holiday when it happened, or rather leaving on a flight for London. When I opened the NY Times to the headline screamed the news. When I arrived London there was hurricane that tore trees out of the ground in Kew Gardens. Omens, perhaps? When I arrived home from the trip I sensed that nothing in advertising would ever be the same again. It wasn't.

Much of the life was leeched out of it by the extraordinary correction of clients. As the paper tigers of the boom years went up in flames the prudent survived and the clung to their budgets in a combination of canniness and desperation the residue of which remains dusted over the best and the worst.

I met my first wife, Megan when I worked at Rialto. In hindsight the excesses of the 80s had to go and, maybe, Rialto was a manifestation of them. Before it metastasised into HKM Rialto spent a small fortune refitting the offices - which became the signature of John Roberts - the managing director who was playing the fiddle as the agency burned. His legacy to the advertising industry was nice furniture - and the award for services to interior decoration (commercial) goes to...

Last night I received a message from that distant past. Elliot Smith had been the runner at Rialto. He's an airline pilot now. I only vaguely remember him. But he is trying to organise a reunion of people who worked at the agency.

If you did work there or know of someone who did then contact Elliot at: ebsmith@wave.co.nz

It could be fun.

Comments

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Ze Frank thinks so you don't have to

Ze Frank appeared on my radar when I saw his presentation among the excellent TED Talks videos . This morning I was reading Russell Davies planning blog in which he referred to a clip by Ze Frank - Where do ideas come from. Here's the transcript: "...Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima [sic] writes, "Are you ever gonna break into song again? Are you running out of ideas?" Hungry Hippo licks Aunt JEmima, that's a good question. I run out of ideas every day! Each day I live in mortal fear that I've used up the last idea that'll ever come to me. If you don't wanna run out of ideas the best thing to do is not to execute them. You can tell yourself that you don't have the time or resources to do 'em right. Then they stay around in your head like brain crack. No matter how bad things get, at least you have those good ideas that you'll get to later. Some people get addicted to that brain crack. And the longer they wait, the more they convince themse

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer

ThoughtSpurs

Search This Blog