Jim Beam was heavily outspent by Jack Daniels. The brief, when we pitched for this, was to create a cult among early adopter drinkers.
We created the notion of it being weird to order a Jim Beam, as everyone was familiar with ordering a JD by name, and illustrated this with old film icons and film science fiction images. The campaign ran in the UK only on 48 and 16 sheet posters, cult film and in men’s and film and culture magazines.
Creative teams who worked on this and were Mick Pearce and Mary Godward, and Ian Henderson and Chris Walker.
One of my personal cult heroes is Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet, probably the best known of all robots. It had long been my ambition to get Robbie into an ad in some way and I finally managed it here with a magnificent airbrush illustration from the legendary Sid Brak. The original poster for the film is at the bottom.
FORBIDDEN PLANET FILM POSTER. The film starred the young Leslie Nielsen, playing it straight, before his roles in the Airplane and Naked Gun films.
