Helping my wife's mum and Dad to lift a carpet this weekend, (who says advertising isn't as exciting as it used to be?) I found the Scotsman newspaper they'd used to line the floor. The date on the paper was July 17th 1983. Twenty-five years ago almost to the day. As usual with time capsules like this the whole family had a lot of fun reading the articles. Britain was in the throws of a heat wave (lucky them). House prices were comically low (there was a whole section for houses under £15,000). And of course it was interesting to look back at the ads. The one for Kwik Fit had the obligatory shot of Tom Farmer, my how young he looked. And Scanning through the other ads it was clear that the UK advertising industry was smitten with illustrations and cartoons. Almost every ad had one, including two ads for British Rail with the famous strapline “this is the age of the train” (it wasn’t). But there was one ad that stood out a mile.

This one for BMW, it showed no attempt to follow fashion, it was above all that. Instead it persuaded the reader with great copy; high production values; classic art direction; and an idea that is eerily topical today, Fuel economy.

Which just goes to show, there’s no hiding a great ad, even under the Axminster.