Watch the full ad here:

Toby's thoughts:

"Parker Pens ‘Finishing School’ is possibly one of the best examples of why TV advertising in the late 70s was so good. It was a product of the agency CDP at it’s zenith and I have to declare a vested interest as my father, David Horry, was one of the six creatives who wrote it. Legend has it that no one had cracked the brief and the client was getting increasingly impatient so they locked three teams in a room

together and didn’t let them out until they had something worthy of the CDP name. It was duly awarded a D&AD Silver in 1976.

The ad itself is a microcosm of what made CDP’s advertising so great:

1) Humour. CDP understood that advertising could easily become an unwelcome intrusion into people’s lives so made it their business to create ads that people enjoyed and wanted to watch. In the UK humour was often the best way of achieving this. The entire CDP back catalogue is a masterclass in short form comedy from Olympus, to Cinzano to Walls Sausages to Heineken and of course Hamlet cigars.

2) Fame. Another way of making advertising that people actually wanted to watch was to work with iconic talent and it didn’t come much more iconic than Penelope Keith. Much of CDPs work at the time used well known and loved stars such as Morecambe & Wise and Joan Collins. (I’d highly recommend a watch of the Omar Sharif Olympus ad).

3) Craft. The attention to detail is laudable. Every word in the script is additive and I particularly love the blackboard that lists out the vintage years of Champagne. I still have one of the prop cheque books from ‘Rothmans Bank’ on Jermyn Street.

4) Craft (again). ‘Finishing School’ was directed by Alan Parker, who, along with Ridley Scott and Hugh Hudson became renowned for their ability to craft compelling stories in under a minute and went on to have hugely successful careers in feature films.

5) Product. Much of CDPs great work from the era was essentially a dramatised product demonstration and ‘Finishing School’ is no exception. The agency wasn’t afraid to hero the product (and in this instance even the price) and let the brand take centre stage without the need to resort to analogy or trying to make the brand and message something cryptic that the viewer had to somehow fathom.

I could happily watch ‘Finishing School’ again and again and it would make me smile every time. It is a brilliant example of what makes TV advertising so powerful and despite being almost 50 years old, contains many ingredients that we should still apply to creating great work today."