Bob Brooks
| Bob Brooks | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Bob Brooks December 26, 1927 |
| Died | September 2014 (aged 86) |
| Occupation | Film director, photographer, |
Bob Brooks (26 December 1927 – September 2012) was an American film director, photographer and advertising creative. He directed several thousand TV commercials in the UK, US and Europe and created many notable advertising campaigns, as well as directing several feature films . Brooks was a founding partner of BFCS, the extremely influential late 20th century British commercial film production company and he was also one of the original founders of Design and Art Direction (D&AD). Brooks directed two feature films, The Knowledge (1979) and Tattoo (1981) and several episodes of Space 1999 (1976). He is the recipient of many international awards including the Cannes/Venice Advertising Festival Lion d'Or; NY One Show Gold Award; NY Art Directors Club; Directors Guild of America, BAFTA Best Single TV Play nomination and the D&AD President's Award. He was also famous for his "fiery outbursts".
After graduating Penn State University in 1950, Brooks arrived in New York in 1953 as an Efficiency Expert for the US Government. He soon realized that this was not his life’s work and he competed for and was awarded a scholarship at Cooper Union School of Art, one of the last bastions of the Bauhaus design tradition.
In 1955 Brooks started Cooper Union night classes and at the same time he was hired by Ogilvy and Mather, as the low man in the art department… the matte boy. At that time David Ogilvy was still actively writing. "It was a very exciting place, with Ogilvy's style representing (along with Doyle Dane Bernbach) the very essence of fifties advertising." In that job, he said he learned all the principles of advertising photography, typography and layout.
In 1957 Brooks joined Benton & Bowles (B&B), as an art director on a small proprietary drug account. B&B had just launched Crest fluoride toothpaste and after a short burst its market share began to drop rapidly and Procter & Gamble, one of B&B's major clients, put heavy pressure on the agency to save the product. The situation was so serious that the entire creative staff was asked to find a new campaign idea, and it was Brooks who found it.
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