Of course it’s not decent says Muller

“Of course it’s not decent,” says Muller.Here is the beauty of the campaign: the ads do their traditional work as ads – through wit and sex – but the surrounding press attention (there has been a great deal) both promotes Saatchi & Saatchi’s clever young copywriters, and reinforces the image of Club 18-30 as youthfully disrespectful and irresponsible. In the recent controversial Benetton poster campaigns, a discrepancy emerged between what suited the advertising “creatives” and what suited the shops – this was never going to be a problem here.With this campaign, agency and client could be fairly confident that the ASA would not interfere before the posters had had some effect. Unless you can do something that’s going to make us famous, there’s not much of a role for us.”Did he think the campaign would be banned? “We hoped it would get talked about.” Asked the same question, Jeremy Muller says, “We were certainly aware that one or two of the treatments would raise an eyebrow or two.” Both men admit that they knew “Beaver Espana”, for instance, could be described as indecent, in apparent contravention of ASA guidelines. We produced a campaign that we felt was not just creative, but was very much the right thing for us. We wouldn’t have done safe 1990s advertising for them because it’s not an economically viable account. Big agencies sometimes take on small accounts on the basis of doing what we would call `breakthrough’ advertising – stuff that gets not only them noticed but that gets us noticed as well.

We’ve come out.”Chris Clark, who ran the campaign at Saatchis, says, “We only wanted the account if we could do the sort of advertising we wanted to do. And against some modest internal opposition, Muller went with Saatchis. “Some of my colleagues said, `Look, we’re just going back 10 years to the lager-lout image that Club 18-30 enjoyed all through the Eighties,’ and I said, `Well, that never was bad news. We all used to make a lot of money as a result.’ I’m determined that we should no longer shy away from all those activities that do take place on our holidays We’re coming out. Seven advertising agencies were invited to pitch for Club 18- 30’s fairly modest budget of £500,000.

Some did not get the point: “Nice pictures of people eating lobsters”, says Muller; and some seemed over- excited: when Muller visited one company, “the receptionists were all wearing Hawaiian shirts, there was a complete beach, two tons of sand, deck chairs…”Saatchi & Saatchi showed the posters we have now seen, and other ones that Muller decided were probably not acceptable (but whose copy lines he sadly will not reveal). The new posters strode up to the stereotype, and shook it by the hand: “You get two weeks for being drunk and disorderly”; and “Beaver Espana”; and – with a picture of a man in boxer shorts – “Girls. Can we interest you in a package holiday?”This was something of a re-emergence. Club 18-30’s original parent company collapsed four years ago, and Jeremy Muller (“44 going on 29″) organised a management relaunch. For three years, though, under rules laid down by the Association of British Travel Agents, the name Club 18-30 could not be used: and the company traded as The Club Holidays.Last summer, Muller got his name back, and was ready to “shout from the rooftops”.