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6 October, 1989

The adman, Ron Brown, is the new president of the Design and Art

Directors Association after a shock vote at the Association’s AGM at the

ICA this Monday. Brown was initially given little chance of being

elected to the post because of a tradition that dictated the presidency

should alternate between the design and advertising sectors.

The key to Brown’s victory may lie in the fact that while he was the

solitary representative of the advertising side in the shortlist, there

were four designers to split the design vote. ’All the public debate was

about the designers,’ the D&AD chairman, Edward Booth-Clibborn, said,

’but the silent man came swinging through.’

The 53-year-old Brown, David Abbott’s partner of nearly 20 years at

Abbott Mead Vickers SMS, admitted he was ’surprised’ to have won.

Brown joined AMV shortly after its launch, when there were just nine

staff and he and Abbott were the only creative team. The two first met

up when Brown joined Doyle Dane Bernbach where Abbott was creative

director.

Brown has art directed many of AMV’s most famous ads, from the Economist

through Sainsbury’s, Yellow Pages and the RSPCA.

In a rare ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 interview in 1995, the self-effacing Brown said: ’I’m

as competitive as anyone but you could say David has helped make me

famous.’