Claire Beale on Advertising

Myths and magic of the man who puts adland on the edge of its seat

Tony Kaye is an adland legend. You can tell by the number of famous stories about him. There are many. Before I tell you one of the best, you might need to know that Tony Kaye (below) directs ads. He also directs movies (American History X, most famously). But for the purposes of this column he's a director of ads. In the 1980s and 1990s he directed some of the most brilliant: "Relax" for Intercity, Dunlop's "Tested for the unexpected".

In 1999 he directed an ad for Bacardi with ad agency McCann Erickson. It was a disaster of epic proportions. Shootings, kidnappings, islands in the Caribbean, private detectives and a thrills-spills showdown between one of the world's top commercials directors and one of the world's biggest ad agencies. And, no, that wasn't the script, that's what happened on the shoot.

The story goes like this: Kaye shot the ad but when it went into pre-launch research, the focus groups were a bit confused about the plotline, which followed the training regimes of two boxers, one black, one white, through to their square-up in the ring.

While the ad agency went back to the drawing board, Kaye proceeded oblivious. Oblivious until he discovered that McCanns had hired another director to reshoot his ad, which had clearly been deemed a disaster. Now some directors might slink away at this point. Tony Kaye doesn't do slink.

When the new director arrived on location in the Dominican Republic to start work, he found that Kay had "kidnapped" the ad's two stars and hidden them in a secret location. In a panic Bacardi was forced to employ a detective to track down the crew. Chance No 2 to slink away. Wrong again. Unbowed, Kaye then unleashed a PR campaign and threatened "subversive action" against McCanns and Bacardi.

He paraded outside McCanns' offices, calling their actions a "compelling personal and professional battle of monumental proportions". By which point all of adland was on the edge of its seat. Rumour has it that when, in desperation, McCanns tried to compromise with a proposal to run Kaye's version of the Bacardi ad as a cinema campaign, he finally gave them his final cut. All 40 minutes.

Like all Tony Kaye stories, this one's a compelling mix of myth and mystery, flavoured with fact. But you get the idea. Kaye was a challenge. His ads were different. Often, despite the chaos, they were brilliant. Then he stopped directing commercials for quite a while. He made movies instead. In recent years his irregular output for adland hasn't been quite so exciting. Kaye directed "You've got a friend" for breakdown service the AA. It wasn't a high point.

Now he's back (again: he's quit and returned to adland a couple of times before). This time Kaye's "return" is an ad for the lager Kronenbourg 1664.

Sadly, for observers, as far as I can tell, the making of the Kronenbourg ad was a smooth-running affair. No tantrums, no histrionics, no tears. Perhaps that's because Kaye was working with Graham Fink, the creative chief of Kronenbourg's ad agency M&C Saatchi and an old sparring partner of Kaye's. Fink knows how to handle him. And perhaps Kaye has mellowed. Unlikely though.

Maybe he's more pragmatic than he used to be, though: we live in risk-averse times and ad budgets are apportioned with an ever increasing judiciousness. Tolerance for unpredictable, dangerous, creative genius is not high. The days of high adland jinks and unfettered colourful characters are (mostly) over. Professionalism is a given.

The new Kronenbourg spot is not a work of genius. It's a good ad, promoting the new in-can widget. The conceit is a bunch of French chefs (presumably they live inside the can) whose job it is to create the tiny bubbles that bring the beer to life. It does have a fresh, distinctive look. Imagine it in a typical male-targeted ad break, like half-time in the footie, where the other ads are full of pumping testosterone imagery and tired mates-together clichés. In contrast, the Kronenbourg ad is clean, white, frothy, a bit of light fun for grown-up beer drinkers.

It's not vintage Kaye. There are no flashes of directorial brilliance to inspire the industry. There are no outrageous new stories to restock the vaults. But it's good to have Kaye back.

Tango made a few of the best ads of the 1990s. Do you remember "You've been Tango'd"? Or the majestically jingoistic "St George" for Blackcurrant Tango? Monolithic ads that influenced a generation of creatives. They were made by the now defunct Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury. But by the early 2000s HHCL was in decline and Tango shifted its business to Clemmow Hornby Inge. CHI did a neat job of dragging the brand's advertising into the 21st century, but the account has been pretty dormant for a couple of years.

Now Tango's owner, Britvic, has reshuffled its creative roster and put all its fruit-based drinks, including Tango and J2O, into Bartle Bogle Hegarty. CHI will work on the water brands (I wrote about CHI's brilliant work for Drench here a few weeks ago).

It would be great to think that BBH could breathe some new life into the Tango brand and revive its reputation for cutting- edge advertising. And if any agency can do it, it's BBH.

But sugary fizzy orange drinks are much harder to peddle in these more health-conscious, junk-food-ad-ban times. Not that CHI has got it easy with bottled waters. The environmental cost of importing plastic bottles of O2 is under the spotlight and the movement for the rehabilitation of tap water is gaining traction.

It will be interesting to see how Britvic marshals its agencies to tackle these challenges.

There has been much debate over the last week about Gordon Brown's search for another ad agency, this time to help research his personal appeal and that of his policies.

Brown's advisors approached Ogilvy, one of London's biggest agencies and alma mater to Brown's director of political strategy, David Muir. But Ogilvy declined the offer, giving the really quite plausible excuse that taking on any political account could put the backs up of all those agency staff of a different political hue. Perhaps Ogilvy group's chief executive Gary Leih is also shrewd enough to consider Brown a risk not worth taking.

How different from the headlines last autumn, when the Labour party appointed Saatchi & Saatchi to great fanfare. Saatchi's brief was, and still is, to handle the party's advertising. But when the agency landed the account Brown was on a high and the business was a much needed boost to Saatchi's flagging fortunes. Now it seems Brown is one client agencies aren't fighting each other to win.

Claire Beale is editor of Campaign