The real story behind the Demon Eyes ad

I’ve read many stories on how the Demon Eyes ‘poster’ was created, some taking credit of some kind, or ascribing it to others; M&C Saatchi bosses, account men, clients, or even John Major himself.

The most recent one I read, in Stuart Ball’s book ‘Dole Queues and Demon Eyes’ (Forward by Maurice Saatchi – his memory should be correct you would have thought) and this one did make me chuckle, was that the idea came from a press picture of Tony Blair with demon eyes taped across it which a member of staff at Conservative Central Office had stuck to a waste-paper basket as a joke.

So in this election week I thought I’d set the record straight and rewind to July 1996. A time strangely reminiscent of this summer. The Tories had been in power for as long as anyone could remember. Labour were miles ahead in the polls and England were on their way to a semi-finals exit at the Euros care of a certain Gareth Southgate penalty.

History looks to be repeating itself in at least one way this week.

Being fairly new at M&C, Nick Drummond, my copywriter and I were one of only two teams to volunteer to work on the Tory election campaign and politics aside, saw it as an opportunity to get our ads seen by the public, and crucially at the time, picked up by the press (going viral in pre-internet days).

The first poster in the Tory campaign was launched to great fanfare in early summer. It featured a pair of red curtains, slightly parted in the middle to reveal a pair of red eyes staring out from the blackness behind. The banner headline was bold; New Labour New Danger. It was created by copywriter Keith Bickel and Art Director Carlos Anuncibay, with the ever-present Jeremy Sinclair acting more as account man than Creative Director (for younger readers, Jeremy had been the ECD at Saatchis before Paul Arden back in the golden years and been brought to M&C with Maurice and Charles as a kind of floating creative presence. It was an odd set up but Jeremy was incredibly sharp when he wanted to be. And being at least partly responsible for helping Maggie Thatcher into power (imagine that as your legacy) for him this was deeply personal.

Also working on the campaign were two of the agency’s most ambitious account men. Giles Gibbons and Steve Hilton (who would go on to become David Cameron’s special advisor). Part of the attraction of working at M&C for Nick and myself were the calibre of account people, the like of which I have never experienced before or since. Motivation was off the scale. And so we knew our ads would get the best chance of being sold to the client.

At the end of July, parliament and half the agency went off on their holidays and it went quiet. And what do you know, we were given a brief. The Tory team had 3 full pages booked in the following Sunday’s papers and needed an ad, quick.

I had read an interesting quote from Labour’s Clare Short a few weeks previously about there being dark forces behind New Labour and saw Tony Blair as the embodiment of this. Naturally the red eyes that Keith and Carlos had used for their curtain ad would be perfect to make this point. If one of their own was casting doubt about his integrity, my job was simply to press the accelerator pedal.

I showed a mock-up to Nick, and he was horrified. He hated it. I knew then that I was onto something. Steve and Giles loved it. Jeremy, Keith and Carlos were on holiday.

In terms of typography, I wanted the ad to look like a classic propaganda poster so I got type legend Andy Dymock, at the time the best typo in London bar none, to help with setting the headline and copy. I found an image of a grinning Blair which when I added the eyes gave it a slightly maniacal quality which was perfect. For the tear I scanned some pieces of ripped white card which been printed with solid black, giving a nice white edge.

The ad was nervously approved by Conservative Central Office and a couple of days later was in the press. It was all very straightforward, but felt a bit like scoring a goal while the whole stadium was looking the other way. Did it really count? It might just disappear without trace like so many ads do.

Then everyone came back from holiday and it all kicked off. By then senior Tories were muttering their disapproval of the use of Tony Blair, the ASA had received over 150 complaints (a record for the year) and even the Bishop of Oxford had got involved. Also Keith and Carlos weren’t happy about me using the eyes from their ad so I was keeping my head down both in the agency and among my Labour supporting mates in the pub.

The New Labour ad was subsequently banned but that just added to it’s exposure and at the end of the year was awarded, along with the curtains poster and the taxes poster I subsequently did, Campaign magazine’s Campaign of the year.

By coincidence I had another poster out that summer for the Church of England, which I had created with a bunch of fellow ad creatives, Chas Bayfield, Trevor Webb and my partner Nick - sponsored by Maiden Outdoor’s Francis Goodwin. This also got complaints and drew flack from a couple of Bishops for being dis-respective. The headline: You’re a virgin, you’ve just given birth and you’re having a bad hair day, along with an illustration of the three kings. It was part of a 10 year long ?campaign we worked on to communicate the Church’s message in a less churchy and more fun way.

Then a Campaign journalist called me with a few questions. Church and demon eyes. What was going on? I spied a potential trap so I ducked it and said very politely that I had no comment. I wasn’t quite ready for that level of media scrutiny. Maybe I could have used that opportunity for a bit of career advancement. Others would but I wasn’t wired up that way.

Later that autumn I was working on another poster, New Labour New Taxes, and had a very surreal experience in the photography studio while we were shooting the purse for the ad. The session happened to be on a Sunday morning and when an assistant brought in the papers, there on the cover of the Sunday Times was a picture of the very ad we were shooting. Someone had leaked it to the press and they had done a pretty decent job of mocking it up. They even used the correct font, Univers Extra Black.

I’ve read that it was the Tony Blair ad that forced the ASA to relax the rules on allowing political parties to advertise. For me it wasn’t a personal attack on him as an individual, even though his legacy is a difficult one when you bring Iraq into the conversation.

So fast forward to this particular election, the Tories have enriched themselves at the countries expense for 14 years, the country is divided more than ever both politically and financially and public services are an absolute disaster, and once again we’re poised for a Labour landslide, would I do the same again? What do you think?