Silk Cut (the purple silk)

Why it works

Advertising stripped to a pure visual pun. Constrained by UK tobacco rules, Charles Saatchi carried a Lucio Fontana slashed-canvas painting into Paul Arden's office and said: "Here is the next campaign for Silk Cut. Photograph it." The resulting posters — rippling purple silk with a single cut, no logo, no product, no words except the mandatory health warning — ran for nearly two decades, and the public decoded the brand instantly every time. It is studied as the extreme case of visual branding under regulatory constraint: when you cannot say anything, a colour and a gesture can own a market (Silk Cut became Britain's best-selling cigarette). The V&A holds the posters; the campaign ended in 2002 with a fat lady in split purple silk singing, as the final UK tobacco ad ban arrived.