GVW of the room drops by

GVW has been a part of our lives for the best parts of it.

As an aspirant London barrister fresh out of Cambridge  GVW, Graham Victor Warsop , was in South Africa to visit his brother John . John was in marketing and facilitated Graham obtaining a position with an agency as a junior copywriter. A few months later when Graham's creative director moved to the country's largest agency, Lindsay Smithers FCB, he took Graham with him and put him to work as a senior writer on the South African Airways (SAA) account. Eighteen months later Graham left to start  his own agency, The Jupiter Drawing Room, named after a private salon of doubtful repute in a Guy de Maupassant short story.

It all began with a work link

Just as Graham was starting with the Jupiter Drawing Room I was busy opening the event and internal comms company The Blue Moon Company. Coincidentally also propelled by work for  South African Airways; we shared the same client, Mari Helene McGuire, marketing director of SAA. And both of us had been engaged on the same brief; South Africa's re emergence as a destination post the release of Nelson Mandela.

As with The Jupiter Drawing Room The Blue Moon Company also had a backstory to its name

My vision for Blue Moon was for a freelance driven production house that would only employ the most celebrated names in film and other mediums. These teams would be pulled together to work on the highest of high end briefs with propper budgets. Because those sort of projects only come around once in a Blue Moon we named it The Blue Moon Company. Freelance it was but I wanted a more than proper home for it so took the chance of renting an imposing  colonial house with a colonnaded verandah and sweeping lawns at 49 Oxford Road, Saxonwold Johannesburg. Up front was full time office administrator and head of 'herding cats' Lady Margot Stockill and it was there that Graham and I first met as he popped in to  introduce himself and no doubt check us out on account of the  joint SAA project.

A shared passion for the Proper Way

Everything he saw, from the elegant colonial mansion with the rolling lawns , to a titled assistant  to a dog named Zach on an antique leather club chair must have struck a chord with GVW that day. He'd go on to present Jupiter's in a similar way but even more flamboyantly  - right down to having the wonderful Lady Margot Stockill as his PA too

The Blue Moon Company did ok but the Jupiter Drawing Room shot the lights out.

Although we competed in different sectors, Jupiter's in so called above the line and us in below the line we shared a common commitment to award winning creative work. Jupiter's under GVW were extraordinary in this area. They grew through a series of creative leaps and spectacular account wins to become South Africa's most awarded agency and then very quickly to global recognition with Graham himself  being inducted into the  international advertising hall of fame recognition and becoming the most awarded creative director in the 20 years of the London International Awards. 

There's a trophy cupboard (more like a wall) in GVW's library at his home in Franschhoek that stands as a record of those days.

The GVW room has some memorable Jupiter Drawing Room history to it 

including the gifted  typewriter  and  memorable departure letter written by the copywriter Ahmed Tilly. Then the GVW room has references on other loves of GVW's life. An oil of Polly the bull-terrier who arrived unannounced at Jupiters and who would be chauffeured to and from work in GVW'S Silver Cloud 111 Rolls Royce and who would spend her days at the agency as head of security on a Chesterfield that once belonged to a hero of GVW's, Winston Churchill. Graham once wrote a beautiful ad about that Chesterfield

the copy is well worth a read for anyone interested in the power of branding 

There are references to Pynnsberg in the GVW room.

Prynnsberg was the lost Eastern Free State estate that Sue and I had restored, owned and loved, and which Graham also had a huge affinity for, right down to choosing it as the venue for his farewell conference at the Jupiter Drawing Room having sold a stake in the agency to the  WPP group in a global deal. We have a shade of a parallel there too having sold The Blue Moon Company to a listed group.

In the corner of the GVW room along with a red fire bucket is a rare bottle of Bollinger along with an 'incase of emergency break glass' notice. There's some neat thinking there. One is instructed to then take the fire bucket down to the bar in order to retrieve a full bucket of ice. A bottle of champagne at room temperature  inserted into a bucket of ice right up to its neck for 30 minutes will achieve the ideal consumption temperature of 8 degrees. But with the cost of a vintage Bollinger champagne these days guests are cautioned that it would need to be either a very proper or valid emergency.

GVW's link to Melvill & Moon and our logo

Not reflected in the room is a very significant role that GVW played in the working lives of Rick and Sue Melvill. When we were busy working on the conception of our brand Melvill & Moon Safari Equippers & Suppliers in the late 1990's we approached GVW to look at our CI. We had with us a tearout of a page of headgear for the tropics  from a vintage Army & Navy catelogue. At the centre of it was something labeled 'The Shikar' , a helmet which the Woke and the politically correct of the day refer to as a 'pith helmet'. "Ah, a polo helmet, Melvill" exclaimed GVW. He was absolutely correct, the Shikar was the original polo helmet used during the discovery by the calvary of the ancient sport of polo (it's the world's oldest team game) in colonial India. Above is his original concept proposal and the reveal of his 'laudator temporis acti' motto suggestion. The romance of an age gone by. The latin came easily to a Cambridge law graduate. Our Melvill & Moon polo helmet currently carries a players no 3 on it in recognition of our 3rd decade in production. It's a good number as typically the best and most valuable player in a polo side is the 3 as that is the pivot player. But we look forward to being a 4 as well.