David Abbott - obituary

David Abbott was a giant of British advertising who refused to work on campaigns for toy and tobacco companies

David Abbott
David Abbott Credit: Photo: JIM WINSLETT

David Abbott, who has died aged 75, was one of Britain’s most celebrated advertising executives, and widely regarded as the greatest copywriter of his generation.

In 1978 Abbott co-founded — with Peter Mead and Adrian Vickers — Abbott Mead Vickers (AMV), now part of the New York-based BBDO, the world’s third largest advertising agency with 288 offices across 80 countries. Abbott worked across the entire spectrum from radio and television to newspapers and magazines, and was responsible for some of the most memorable campaigns of his era, for clients including Volvo, Sainsbury’s, Ikea, Chivas Regal, The Economist, Yellow Pages and the RSPCA.

1980s Yellow Pages television advert

1980s Yellow Pages television advert (THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES)

His aim always was to bring wit and intelligence to his work. For The Economist, he created the famous ad: “I never read The Economist — management trainee, aged 42”. For Yellow Pages, he introduced the fictional JR Hartley (played in the television ad by the actor Norman Lumsden) who trawls second-hand bookshops to locate a copy of his out-of-print book on fly-fishing. He created Bob Hoskins’s “Good to Talk” campaign for BT, and the Volvo promotion of a car full of children with the slogan “Always keep your valuables in a safe place”.

The Economist billboard advert

The Economist billboard advert (THE ADVERTISING ARCHIVES)

Abbott did not perhaps conform to the public perception of a typical advertising man. Soft-spoken, charming and always elegantly dressed, he also had a reputation in the industry for high principle. AMV declined to advertise toys or tobacco — toys because the three partners in the agency all had young children, and, in Abbott’s words: “We objected to the media placement and the aiming at programmes that children saw so that they could badger their parents. We were not trying to become the most priggish, prim agency in the world. We owned our company and we thought, 'What’s the point of owning a company if you can’t do what you want?’”

As for tobacco, Abbott’s father had died of cancer aged 52 ; David was an undergraduate at Oxford at the time, and had felt obliged to abandon his degree to return home to his family. He later recalled: “My childhood memories are of [my father] sitting on the edge of the bed coughing for 10 minutes at the start of every morning. So there was no way that I was going to advertise cigarettes.”

Abbott claimed that running a successful advertising agency was not difficult: “You basically stuff the place full of talent and allow that talent to bloom. So you have to have something that makes the great people want to come and work for you. And it’s never money. You can always earn more money at a bad agency because they need you more.” His commitment to his staff was impressive: during the recession of the early 1990s AMV refused to countenance redundancies.

Although a brilliant strategist and a believer in the corporate ethos, Abbott’s heart was always in the creative side of the business: “I wrote an ad on my first day in the advertising business and on the last day,” he said in 2011. “So that was where my priorities lay. And fortunately, the best kind of management you can bring to an agency is to help the production of great advertising.”

The oldest of three sons, David John Abbott was born in Hammersmith, south-west London, on October 11 1938. His father ran the British Walk Round Stores on the Goldhawk Road, selling hardware. Aged about nine, David decided he would enjoy boarding school, and began badgering his reluctant parents to allow him to go. He later recalled: “I remember my father going to the library and looking at a book called Preparatory Schools of Great Britain, and picking a school. And so off I went. It was a great disappointment and it was a very bad school as it turned out... I stayed there for about a year, and I eventually came to my senses and told my parents I was wasting my time, and wasting their money.”

Sent instead to Southall Grammar School, David won a scholarship to Merton College, Oxford, to read History, but at this point his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “It was obvious that he wasn’t going to survive, and it was obvious to me that I was unlikely to spend three years at Oxford,” David Abbott remembered. “So I went up to Oxford for one term, just a wreck really. I couldn’t study.”

Abbott decided he wanted to try “something that involved writing”. One day he was wandering in Shepherd’s Bush market, and on a book stall picked up a book called Madison Avenue : “I discovered there was a job called Copywriting. I never thought about who wrote the words for ads before, and I tried to become a copywriter, and eventually I got a job in the Kodak advertising department.”

His career began to take off when he was offered the chance to work at Mather & Crowther in London (learning his trade under David Ogilvy). He then moved to DDB, gaining three years’ invaluable experience under Bill Bernbach at DDB’s headquarters in New York. In 1969 he was sent back to Britain as its managing director in London. Abbott branched out on his own in 1971 as co-founder of French Gold Abbott, before joining Mead and Vickers in the late Seventies. He eventually retired as chairman and creative director of AMV in 1998.

Abbott was a dedicated gardener, and a frequent visitor to the Oval and Lord’s to watch Test cricket. He was also a supporter of Millwall FC.

In 2010 he published a novel, The Upright Piano Player, about a retired business executive who is estranged from his family and whose life begins to disintegrate after a violent encounter with a stranger. He was working on a second novel at the time of his death.

David Abbott is survived by his wife, Eve (née Talbot), and by their daughter and three sons.

David Abbott, born October 11 1938, died May 17 2014

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