Grandad adman: Dick Cripps

The other day, I was updating my dad on my life & it escalated into a discussion around advertising which, if you know me, is my absolute FAVE subject.

For those who don't know what I do, I'm part of the in-house agency at LRS; working with the brand teams to plan and develop creative & digital strategies for their marketing communications, which my team then produce.

I've always been very passionate about the industry I'm in and ALWAYS want to talk about what I'm working on; even cornering people when drunk, babbling ideas at them.

Anyway, this chat with my dad led us on to talk about his dad, Richard Cripps, who worked in advertising around the 50's. As you can imagine, I got hyped that he was a real life "Mad Men", so this is a little post around him and a couple of notable things he worked on.

He said he could only work with a cigarette and yellow paper

In 1947, a few years after serving in the RAF during the war, Grandad moved to South Africa to stay with his brother and started work as a Copywriter for JWT in Jo'burg.

Shortly after, he met and married my Grandma, Elsie.

In 1951, they moved to the UK with my uncle - Mike, and Grandad worked as Copywriter at JWT London.

It was here he worked on the Polo campaign and, (this is my most popular fact I always talk about), he came up with the tagline, "The Mint With The Hole".

An idea which still lives on 60 years later.

They moved back to South Africa in 1954 and my dad was born.

They struggled to think of a baby name, so my grandad enlisted the help of his creative team to come up with a name. Much to my dad's dismay, they came up with Kevin. To this day, he still can't believe that that's the best name they could come up with.

In 1960, they moved back to the UK, had my aunt - Jane, and Grandad became Creative Director at JWT London.

Here is an ad he created for the legendary Gaytime Biscuits, featuring Jane.

I think this just shows what a simpler time the advertising industry was back then, because I'm pretty sure that you can't just use your own children for your campaigns..(?!)

As the 60's went on, the advertising industry changed dramatically. Traditional styles were being discarded in favour of the "new advertising". This generation had more money than ever before, so pushing mass-produced goods was at an all time high. Materialism, consumerism... all the "isms".

Grandad didn't want to work on product campaigns anymore, so left to pursue his dream of publishing books and worked for Book Club Associates until his retirement in the early 90's.

Grandad, Grandma
Dad, Mike
Jane
1976

It's funny because I pursued my interest and career in advertising long before I knew what he did.

I did an internship at JWT London after uni, and it's gone full circle as I've recently been working collaboratively with JWT on a Ribena campaign.

With a similar strong passion for writing and advertising, it is almost reassuring in a way that my Grandad was so successful in what he did and he was able to turn what he loved into a flourishing career, with campaigns and ideas that live on way beyond his death.

And, despite it being a lot harder now to make an impact, that's definitely my constant inspiration.