Barry Dooley recounts the story behind the making of the much-loved Barry’s Tea Christmas radio ad created by the doyenne of Irish copywriters, the late Catherine Donnelly, at Irish International. The following script was first shared at his agency colleague’s remembrance event in the Project Arts Centre back in January 2015
I had a role to play in the making of this piece of magic as I was the account handler on Barry’s Tea back then. Yes back 21 years ago this year. Seán Whitaker, one of the best planners in the business, said that account handlers were paid to worry. And, boy, did I earn my pay cheque back in late 1994.
There was no brief, no planning, no insight, nothing. Catherine had written and recorded a series of radio commercials for Barry’s which were 50 and 60 seconds in length. Her view was that these were special stories that Irish people could relate to – and needed the necessary length to tell the story and “have room to breathe”.
For those of you unfamiliar with media costs, the average radio commercial is 30 seconds in length, so if your commercial is 60 seconds, it costs you double the money to pay for the broadcasting of it. John Fanning, who is simply the best adman in Irish advertising history, has said that “distinctiveness is more important than positioning” – all beautifully crafted stories stand out, are distinctive and get noticed.
Catherine Donnelly
Catherine came to me and said that she thought that Barry’s Tea should have a Christmas ad – I said “great, would you like a brief?” – to which she replied “no”. So, a 50-second ‘Trainset’ script was born. She said she wanted to bring an Irish actor called Peter Caffrey over from the UK to do the voiceover and could I find a few extra hundred quid to pay for his flights. I’d never heard of Peter Caffrey but told Catherine to keep it going and to proceed.
She called me during the recording session. She said that the recording couldn’t possibly work within 50 seconds and that it needed “room to breathe” – “it has to go to 60 seconds”, she said. I told her to proceed but to try to give me a 50-second recorded version as well – so that I could send this to the client as an option.
Catherine never came back to me that evening, which was a bit odd – and not like her.
The following morning there was a 90-second recording on my desk, and no sign of Catherine. I genuinely nearly died and was in complete shock as I was on course to get the biggest rollicking in account handling history when the tape arrived in Cork.
A living nightmare.
“Will we be fired?” is what Catherine asked me, when she finally popped into my office. “Barry baby, I can travel to Cork to explain to Greg (Greg Butler, Barry’s Tea marketing manager – an accountant by profession) how this happened – and why this absolutely has to go on air.” I told Catherine that a personal visit to Cork at that moment in time would not be wise. I was cross.
Client, whilst fuming with rage over our indiscipline, eventually whispered to me that he thought the spot was fabulous. In the first week of transmission, Gay Byrne said that it was a wonderful and magical piece of work. We were winning. Gaybo repeatedly referenced the commercial on his radio show over the years, remarking that “you know it’s Christmas when you hear the Barry’s Tea ad with the trainset.”
Tribute
On behalf of Catherine, I would like to pay tribute to the people responsible for this, the two voiceover artists, the late Peter Caffrey RIP and Christopher Breathnach, and sound engineer Paddy Gibbons in Windmill for his magic in producing.
And, of course, to Catherine, who not only created the commercial but also performed the VO as the mother at the end of the commercial – “Sure that’s not what he wanted at all, she said”. This line was written in the studio during the recording session – it never existed in the script. In fact, there’s a great deal of content in the commercial that was never seen in that original 50-second script. So, remember… no brief, no planning, no insight.
Just ingenuity.
Barry Dooley is chief executive of the Association of Advertisers in Ireland (AAI)
