45 THE LONELY SMOKER

In the dark, in the rain, a lone man walks purposefully along the Embankment in London. He is dressed in a light coloured raincoat with its collar turned up and is wearing a dark trilby pulled down over his eyes.

Wecan’t make out his face as he walks in and out of the pools of white that are cast by the streetlights. He stops in the shadows and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. As he lights one, we catch a glimpse of his handsome face. He takes a puff and moves on.

As the camera pans back, a voiceover speaks: “You’re never alone with a Strand”. The line is superimposed onto the screen and the commercial ends. This commercial for Strand cigarettes didn’t run for long on British television, yet it is one of the most famous commercials of all time.

Indeed, in a Sunday Times article about the best commercials in the world, the author Fey Weldon, who worked for many years in advertising, cited it as her personal all-time favourite.

However, its fame isn’t down to its success but rather to its failure. The campaign was a complete disaster.

It had set out to build on the success of The Third Man and other, similar, Cold War thrillers. Its aim was to create an image of mystery, intrigue and quiet self-confidence for the brand that potential users would aspire to and want to be associated with.

Instead, people thought it looked like a brand for losers – loners with no friends who were forced to walk the street at night.

And the moral is that what people hear isn’t always what you say. What are people really hearing when you speak to them?