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Get Smashed: The Story of the Men Who Made the Adverts that Changed Our Lives
From the 1960s to the 1990s, advertising was transformed from a dry and business-like industry into something exciting, extravagant, and sexy. Learn how advertising came to the forefront of culture with this innovative history featuring insights into the lives and mad times of the advertising revolution’s key figures, including Alan Parker, David Puttnam, and Ridley Scott. These figures changed what we ate, how we dressed ,and who we voted for and celebrated it all with fast cars, private jets, and plenty of champagne. Investigating what was bought and?more importantly?how it was sold, this is a look at advertising as it had never been before, and has never been since.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
224 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 15, 2024
A real life 'Mad Men' account of the main male bigwigs who revolutionised advertising in media from the 60s-90s. The interviews with Maurice Saatchi and David Puttnam were especially golden. The book's tagline of 'big egos, bad habits and bright ideas' sums up Get Smashed perfectly. A fun short read for a train journey for all the advertising/PR nerds out there.
February 10, 2018
“Get Smashed” tells the tale of how, during the 1960s through to the 1990s, the British advertising industry was revolutionised, placing the concept of adverts in the centre of the popular culture and life of Britain. Sam Delaney talks to the ad men who turned adworld on it’s head and it depicts an era when “social, political and cultural forces aligned to transform an industry that had been dull and uninspiring into a hotbed of creativity”.
During the advent of advertising on radio and TV, adverts previously sought to bludgeon the consumer into submission through the use of repetitive slogans and jingles. The 1960s saw the flowering within adworld of a more artistic, cerebral approach to consumer advertising and to the growth of new agencies like PKL and Collett Dickenson Pearce where eccentricity was treasured and nurtured.
In the UK during the 1960s, the industry benefitted from the greater social mobility of the post-war age. Working-class entrants to the sector - disdainful of the stuffiness and the snobby, rigid hierarchies of British industry – over-turned many of the conventions of traditional advertising and brought a new vitality and irreverence. This coincided with the explosive growth in consumerism and, most pertinently, with young people having disposable income for perhaps the first time in history (as one of the ad creative tyros put it “we were the conduits for established organizations to put their hands in the pockets of teenagers”).
This injection of fresh talent into the advertising industry was coupled with an unshackling of ad creatives and an ‘anything goes’ philosophy to concepts and budgets. The result was many of the most iconic adverts of all time, including campaigns like Hamlet cigars, the Smash robots and the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster that resonate to this day. The film director Alan Parker, one of the upstarts who cut his teeth creating many of these adverts, synopsized the spirit of the time: “there was sense for the first time that we could make ads that might be as good as, or better than, the programmes themselves”. Such was the money sloshing around ad agencies in the 1970s and 1980s that ad directors like Parker and Ridley Scott (both of whom would go on to huge success in Hollywood) had artistic freedom plus access to budgets and production techniques that even the most renowned film producers could only dream about.
With success came excess, and “Get Smashed” (the pun is quite deliberate) spends much ink relating how the advertising industry was kept buoyant on a wave of booze, drugs, and eye-watering expense accounts. The author Sam Delaney evokes a ‘golden age’ of British advertising where “twenty-one-year-olds who were paid more than the Prime Minister in return for writing rudimentary rhyming couplets”. One young ad executive explains his career choice as a way of fulfilling his rock & roll fantasies: “I wasn’t a great musician, but I thought that advertising might be a way of living a similar lifestyle without actually playing the music And I was right”.
This golden age, of course, couldn’t last. The power and influence of the ad creatives was eventually broken during the late 80s and early 90s by globalisation. Major multinational brands became increasingly bound by the new gospel of market research, and began veering away from ad campaigns that were too quirky, subtle or localised; instead they concentrated on broad concepts that communicated a singular message that could be easily comprehended whether you were in Manchester, Madrid, or Mumbai.
“Get Smashed” would have been immeasurably enhanced as a book if it had reproduced some of the fantastic ad art and design it describes as emerging from the most dynamic, forward-thinking agencies. Perhaps there were copyright issues at play here, but it means we are often reduced to taking the author’s word as to the brilliance of the creative minds of adworld.
In many ways, “Get Smashed” falls between a few stools. It is too slight to be a definitive history of advertising, and it has too little on the principles and philosophies behind marketing to be of tremendous use to a student of the sector. On the other hand, “Get Smashed” is largely based around a series of anecdotes and interviews with industry insiders, and these may be of limited interest to the casual reader who is not already working in the field of advertising.
For this reader, the most compelling parts of “Get Smashed” are those dealing with the nexus between the advertising and political worlds, particularly during the 1980s when the ad industry’s glorification of consumerism overlapped with the cutthroat individualism of Thatcherism. But, these threads are dealt with all too briefly in “Get Smashed”, so readers with an interest in this area might be better off investigating Sam Delaney’s follow-up, “Mad Men and Bad Men: What Happened When British Politics Met Advertising”. Like even the most classic ads, while “Get Smashed” is brash and entertainingly diverting, it lacks a little weight and substance.
During the advent of advertising on radio and TV, adverts previously sought to bludgeon the consumer into submission through the use of repetitive slogans and jingles. The 1960s saw the flowering within adworld of a more artistic, cerebral approach to consumer advertising and to the growth of new agencies like PKL and Collett Dickenson Pearce where eccentricity was treasured and nurtured.
In the UK during the 1960s, the industry benefitted from the greater social mobility of the post-war age. Working-class entrants to the sector - disdainful of the stuffiness and the snobby, rigid hierarchies of British industry – over-turned many of the conventions of traditional advertising and brought a new vitality and irreverence. This coincided with the explosive growth in consumerism and, most pertinently, with young people having disposable income for perhaps the first time in history (as one of the ad creative tyros put it “we were the conduits for established organizations to put their hands in the pockets of teenagers”).
This injection of fresh talent into the advertising industry was coupled with an unshackling of ad creatives and an ‘anything goes’ philosophy to concepts and budgets. The result was many of the most iconic adverts of all time, including campaigns like Hamlet cigars, the Smash robots and the Sugar Puffs Honey Monster that resonate to this day. The film director Alan Parker, one of the upstarts who cut his teeth creating many of these adverts, synopsized the spirit of the time: “there was sense for the first time that we could make ads that might be as good as, or better than, the programmes themselves”. Such was the money sloshing around ad agencies in the 1970s and 1980s that ad directors like Parker and Ridley Scott (both of whom would go on to huge success in Hollywood) had artistic freedom plus access to budgets and production techniques that even the most renowned film producers could only dream about.
With success came excess, and “Get Smashed” (the pun is quite deliberate) spends much ink relating how the advertising industry was kept buoyant on a wave of booze, drugs, and eye-watering expense accounts. The author Sam Delaney evokes a ‘golden age’ of British advertising where “twenty-one-year-olds who were paid more than the Prime Minister in return for writing rudimentary rhyming couplets”. One young ad executive explains his career choice as a way of fulfilling his rock & roll fantasies: “I wasn’t a great musician, but I thought that advertising might be a way of living a similar lifestyle without actually playing the music And I was right”.
This golden age, of course, couldn’t last. The power and influence of the ad creatives was eventually broken during the late 80s and early 90s by globalisation. Major multinational brands became increasingly bound by the new gospel of market research, and began veering away from ad campaigns that were too quirky, subtle or localised; instead they concentrated on broad concepts that communicated a singular message that could be easily comprehended whether you were in Manchester, Madrid, or Mumbai.
“Get Smashed” would have been immeasurably enhanced as a book if it had reproduced some of the fantastic ad art and design it describes as emerging from the most dynamic, forward-thinking agencies. Perhaps there were copyright issues at play here, but it means we are often reduced to taking the author’s word as to the brilliance of the creative minds of adworld.
In many ways, “Get Smashed” falls between a few stools. It is too slight to be a definitive history of advertising, and it has too little on the principles and philosophies behind marketing to be of tremendous use to a student of the sector. On the other hand, “Get Smashed” is largely based around a series of anecdotes and interviews with industry insiders, and these may be of limited interest to the casual reader who is not already working in the field of advertising.
For this reader, the most compelling parts of “Get Smashed” are those dealing with the nexus between the advertising and political worlds, particularly during the 1980s when the ad industry’s glorification of consumerism overlapped with the cutthroat individualism of Thatcherism. But, these threads are dealt with all too briefly in “Get Smashed”, so readers with an interest in this area might be better off investigating Sam Delaney’s follow-up, “Mad Men and Bad Men: What Happened When British Politics Met Advertising”. Like even the most classic ads, while “Get Smashed” is brash and entertainingly diverting, it lacks a little weight and substance.
October 18, 2022
Saatchi good read,,,
September 14, 2025
This is a look at the UK advertising industry of the 60s to the 80s, with anecdotes from some of the biggest names in the ad world. How they got started and what they later went on to do.
The books chapters are named after some of the biggest adverts of the two decades like 'Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet' and 'For mash get smash' and focuses on the people who made them and how they came about. It also talks about how the industry was shaken up by US ad agencies, coming to the UK, along with stories of the excesses that became commonplace, like the 15 hour lunch breaks.
I found it an enlightening read about an industry that is primarily about getting products into the hands of consumers, and how it went from repetitive ads with silly jingles, to mini films. The last chapter reminices about the time an ad could be an idea on a napkin, and a week later have been filmed in a day, and edited and on the TV.
Overall an intresting look at the ad industry.
The books chapters are named after some of the biggest adverts of the two decades like 'Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet' and 'For mash get smash' and focuses on the people who made them and how they came about. It also talks about how the industry was shaken up by US ad agencies, coming to the UK, along with stories of the excesses that became commonplace, like the 15 hour lunch breaks.
I found it an enlightening read about an industry that is primarily about getting products into the hands of consumers, and how it went from repetitive ads with silly jingles, to mini films. The last chapter reminices about the time an ad could be an idea on a napkin, and a week later have been filmed in a day, and edited and on the TV.
Overall an intresting look at the ad industry.
June 22, 2011
Really interesting and yet hugely depressing for anyone currently in advertising to realise that they will never be part of Adland proper.
An eye opener.
An eye opener.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews