Iconic Ads: Hamlet (Cigars) — Photobooth

Tim Warriner and Roy Carruthers were sitting in their shared office on the fourth floor of Collett Dickenson Pearce’s Howland Street building in 1964, staring at a brief that asked for a television campaign for a new small cigar that was being launched by Benson & Hedges.

The brand was called Hamlet.

Tim and Roy were surrounded by the advertising creative geniuses of that time — Mike Savino, Arthur Parsons, John Reynolds, and Alan Brooking with the creative director, Colin Millward, who was the brightest star of all.

Usually, being surrounded by so much brilliance would be beneficial to the creative process, but that’s not always the case. The fierce rivalry restricted them. Tim and Roy need to get over their anxiety about failing and demonstrate that they have full trust in themselves. They have to make it a priority to execute one of the most successful campaigns of their whole lives. But the harder they tried, nothing came out of it.

Tim and Roy had been working on Hamlet for a few days, but they had not yet produced anything that could be called good.

It was after another dismal day, and as they went down the stairs of 18 Howland Street and made their way to the bus stop, it was pitch black, very cold, and pouring rain the whole time. This added to their already dismal mood.

When the double-decker bus came, they ascended the steps to reach the upper deck. During those times, passengers who smoked were only allowed on the upper decks of London buses. People could be seen smoking away on pipes and cigarettes alike on every available seat.

Tim and Roy were happy to finally be able to sit down and relax. They were also glad to be able to light up a cigarette, which they hadn’t been able to do while standing in the rain.

As the bus went by, they saw the Shultz cartoon character Charlie Brown featured on a billboard. After reading the wording on the poster, which started “Happiness is…”, Tim leaned back, took a moment to process, and then said, “Happiness is a dry cigarette on the top deck of a 134 bus.”

Soon after, the two of them concluded that if they rephrased what Tim had said as “Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet” and placed an appropriately humorous but unfavourable occurrence or circumstance in front of that line, they might have the advertising campaign that they had been searching for.

However, there is still another narrative.

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