Collett Dickenson Pearce

Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners (CDP) was a British advertising agency which operated from 1960 till 2000. It was founded by John Pearce and Ronnie Dickenson who bought an existing agency owned by John Collett. The agency played a pivotal role in London's cultural shift of the 1960s and was a nursery for a number British creative entrepreneurs who would later enjoy famed careers.

In April 1960, Pearce left the agency Colman Prentis Varley and with Dickenson bought Pictorial Publicity, an existing agency owned by John Collett. Their first account wins were Ford and Birds Eye

CDP emerged from the "Swinging London" cultural shifts of the 1960s as Britain's most glamorous and influential advertising agency, generally regarded as one of the finest advertising agencies in the world during the 1970s.

The agency's output had a distinctive sharp wit and confident font-led graphic style, well suited to the voguish "colour supplements" which the Sunday newspapers were launching at this time. By the 70s, colour television with improved picture definition was rapidly taking root, bringing the need and the opportunity for greater sophistication in the commercials it showed. CDP plunged in under its new managing director Frank Lowe (later Sir Frank), and set the tone for what is now viewed as a golden creative period in British advertising. Clients included Harvey’s Bristol Cream, Bird’s Eye, Parker pens, Fiat, Ford, Acrilan, Pretty Polly and Ronson. Campaign slogans which entered the national consciousness include "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet" and "Land Rover. The best 4 x 4 x far." "Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach" (1974). ( 1979 ) Heineken Galley Slave commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWXWND4hKzA These, and commercials for Hovis (by Ridley Scott, 1973) and Cinzano (Alan Parker, 1978), all appear in the upper reaches of 100 Greatest TV Ads

The agency's most notorious campaign was for Benson & Hedges cigarettes – carried principally on posters and in print, because cigarette advertising had been banned from British television since 1965. To circumvent restrictions on associating smoking with youth, glamour or life style, CDP devised a memorable series of images placing the product's gold pack in highly contrived, surreal surroundings. No people were shown, and not a word of copy, apart from the obligatory Government health warnings.

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