Page 12 - IT'S A RUM LIFE BOOK TWO "BOSTON 1960 TO 1970"

PRINCIPAL JOB
My principal job was not really driving delivery vans but
selling advertising space, designing the adverts and writing the
copy.
I began straight from school, Boston Grammar School that
is, where I took eight subjects in GCE “O” level and managed to
fail all eight.
The job was supposed to be a stop gap, a position that I
thought I might like but had not really considered.
My immediate boss was Roy Webley, a lifelong newspaper
advertising man from Gloucestershire. Right from the start he
told me, “I’m going to see just how much pressure you can
cope with young Keith!”
We planned advert campaigns for clients who had limited
budgets and also fortunately a large number of more wealthy
clients who had their annual and weekly advertising
programme planned well ahead.
Classified adverts were an important money earner and
initially I was tasked with building up small scale clients who
could place small ads each week in specific categories.
I quickly moved on to bigger things when colleague Ray,
moved to our Skegness office.
The design work I particularly liked and talking to clients
came easily. Telephone canvassing was more stressful and
took some getting used to.
After passing my driving test the driving jobs became more
numerous and as I earned responsibility I began “reading” the
classified ad pages on Wednesday nights.
I know I have written about this somewhere else but here it
is again, if somewhat different!
The “Standard” paper in the 1960’s had classified ads on
the first eight or so pages from the front. Most readers went for
the adverts first, being a weekly paper, so the design was
developed that way. It changed shortly after I left in 1966.

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