The campaign I’m most proud of from my adman era

With the help of two truly raving geniuses, I was able to give Australians ‘Life. Be In It’, with its antihero Norm, and, soon after, ‘Slip! Slop! Slap!’. But one campaign was closest to my heart.

A still from the “Life. Be In It” campaign, with its antihero Norm.

Decades ago, in my adman era, I tried to expiate guilt by using the dark art of the business for good. With the help of two truly raving geniuses – animator/designer Alex Stitt and composer Peter Best – I was able to give Australians (drum roll) “Life. Be In It”, with its antihero Norm, and, soon after, “Slip! Slop! Slap!” starring Sid the sibilant seagull.

In its glory days, “Life. Be In It” was the most famous ad campaign in local history, with Norm as well known as the Marlboro Man –while Seagull Sid continues to star in our longest-running campaign, taking over that honour from Mortein’s Louie the Fly.

But the “social engineering” effort I’m most proud of was for the UN’s International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. A series of self-portraits of disabled people directed by the disabled filmmaker Ben Lewin. Taking the advice of scores of people facing prejudice and problems in the able-bodied world, we came up with the slogan “Break Down the Barriers”. Our collaboration won a Gold Lion at Cannes.

Four decades on, the rights of disabled people are recognised in everything from building codes mandating physical access to the legislation that introduced the NDIS. But back then, the bigotry towards disabled people was as bad as racism. One of our campaign themes was that everyone, if they lived long enough, would experience the pain and problems of disability. That certainly came true for me. I was in my forties when I worked on that campaign, and in reasonable working order. Since then I’ve become bionic – with artificial hips, a pacemaker to keep my heart behaving, hearing aids to alleviate deafness, and monthly needles in the eyeballs to control macular degeneration. For all of us, dear reader, disabilities are our destiny. It’s the dark side of our increased longevity – and there are still barriers to be broken down.

Medical and technical developments, including brilliant prosthetics, are helping. So is enlightened legislation, changing attitudes and policies of inclusion. Yet bigotries endure.

My first instinct was always to celebrate the good and the great who’ve lived with disabilities. People like Beethoven, Franklin D Roosevelt and Stephen Hawking. But disabled friends rejected this idea of “supercrips”. They wanted the focus democratised. My education began when a group of “wheelies” invaded my office to demand I join them. Literally. By spending a day in, yes, a wheelchair.

Disabilities are the dark side of our increased longevity – and there are still barriers to be broken down. Picture: istock

It was a revelation – trying to manoeuvre in and out of the building, and the lift (its doors kept closing and crushing me, with the buttons out of reach). Then it was time to tackle a footpath with kerbs that might as well have been cliff edges, the entrance of a milk bar, then the doors of its fridge trying to get a drink. You needed the strength and determination of a Paralympian. (The wheelchair has become the universal symbol of disability, identifying accessible toilets and car spaces. But then I met people with invisible disabilities who regarded “wheelies” as an indulged aristocracy.)

The greatest of all disabilities? Bigotry. Be its target a human of different colour, race, religion or sexuality. For the bigot is afflicted with utter blindness, the deepest deafness. It breaks hearts, not barriers.