Beanz Meanz Heinz slogan creator dies

Chris Pash
By Chris Pash | 1 November 2021
 

Maurice (Mo) Drake, who wrote the Beanz Meanz Heinz advertising slogan over a beer in the 1960s, has died aged 93, according to reports from London.

He was a copywriter at Young & Rubicam when he took his team to the pub to work on a campaign for Heinz.

The resulting words were first used 1967 and became one of the most recalled slogans in advertising. 

He said: "In the ‘60s as an advertising creative you prided yourself on coming up with what we called properties - something that would enter the public consciousness and stay there. A property is like a house, you maintain it and you do it up every year and it will last."

He started his career at public relations firm Armstrong-Warden where they liked his wordsmithing so much he was made a copywriter. 

He switched to Young & Rubicam in the late 1960s, working on the Cadbury account.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmxTxtHBdsY

“I was given a very difficult brief from Heinz,” he wrote later in life when living at a care home in Brighton. 

“The reason it was so difficult was because it was so simple. There were two types of products – own label and branded. Own label products were always a bit cheaper, so how do you get people to pay the extra to buy the branded goods? That was the brief.

“I think it took some weeks, if not months, to try and find the solution, and of course, it turned out, in the end, to be terribly simple. That is, if you’re talking beans, you really are talking Heinz. Beanz Meanz Heinz. 

“I looked down at my pad in the Victoria pub in Camden, run by two old ladies who kept a parrot, and there it was. 

“In 2012, it was voted the best slogan of all time by Creative Review and at the 50th anniversary in 2017, Selfridges in London had a big window display and a pop-up café. 

“Beanz Meanz Heinz was obviously my most famous campaign, but I personally always felt that ‘Award yourself the CDM’ (for Cadbury) was my favourite.” 

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