Episode 80 - Mary Wear

Behind The Billboard

Visuals: https://getbehindthebillboard.com/episode-80-mary-wear

Episode #80 features copywriter extraordinaire Mary Wear.

Mary wrote possibly the most important endline in the history of advertising: ‘Make Poverty History’ for Comic Relief in 2004 … a line and movement that involved Richard Curtis, World Leaders and saving lives. The line was everywhere - posters, bus sides, advans, on underpants, on Bono’s arm, on the side of St Paul’s Cathedral and the coup de grâce, on a lectern in front of Nelson Mandela, who was chanting the words ‘Make Poverty History’ to thousands gathered in Trafalgar Square.

That is more than most people’s entire careers and would easily have been enough to fill the episode. The way Mary tells the story of how the line came about is wonderfully humble, involving a planner and a rather talented chap called Peter Souter.

But Mary is no one-trick pony. Her locker is full of great work.

Starving a parking meter for TfL was a lesson in never giving up, even when the model maker had ruined the idea. What could have been a catastrophe turned into a seminal award-winning piece of work.

Then there was seemingly endless more award winning work for The Economist, the Famous Grouse (a double, a small one, a quick one, a large one - they all went down well) plus an Anti-Smoking like never before. Her partnership with Damon Collins at GGT, Saatchi’s and AMV was brilliant and prolific.

We even had time for some Russian Vodka and flapjacks ;-)

Thank you Mary for coming on and sharing some of the industry’s greatest OOH work. It was a real privilege.