Trenear-Harvey, 'from agency chief to MI5', passes away

Glenmore Trenear-Harvey, one of the founding fathers of the modern day direct marketing industry who went on to become a leading British intelligence analyst, has passed away, aged 84, following a long illness.

Glenmore started his career as an RAF pilot but in the 1960s switched to work in advertising as an account man, where he rubbed shoulders with Drayton Bird. And at a meeting in the Bunch of Grapes in Knightbridge, Bird and former colleague John Watson hatched a plan to set up their own agency, signing up Glenmore as the suit.

By 1976, the trio had launched one of the UK’s first DM agencies, Trenear-Harvey Bird & Watson, and set about building a top team around “posh” direct response advertising.

Watson takes up the story: “Glenmore did the front work and Drayton and I bashed out the creative. We started in offices in Carnaby Street (where we first met Chris Albert who went on to become the ‘A’ in WWAV) and then as we grew, moved to Langley Street in Covent Garden.

“Glenmore got us into places we would never have other reached. There was a calendar shoot for a cigarette company, and he convinced Terence Donovan to take picture of underdressed models. He took us to New York for a DM conference, and we had lunch with one of the Rothschilds, who – I never found out how – he knew well.

“He took us to Montreux, where in those days the Europeans held the Direct Marketing Symposium. We were to do a talk about some press ads we’d done for Book Club Associates.

“Drayton and I stood on the stage and took the credit for some excellent results without knowing that in the audience was BCA chief executive Stan Remington. Once we’d finished, a red-faced Stan, steaming from both ears, bowled up to us yelling that we’d given all his results away…and then Glenmore exercised his account man skills and deftly turned an apoplectic client into a moderately friendly one.”

In fact, the agency ended up winning the Kaleidoscope business, which was BCA’s mail order division run by Nigel Swabey.

Watson left in 1982, and along with Chris Albert, Rinalda Ward and production man Bernie Varndell, set up Watson Ward Albert Varndell (WWAV) with backing from his old boss Ivor Samuels, who was then chief executive of BBDO. The rest, as they say, is history.

Bird and Trenear-Harvey, meanwhile, sold the agency to Ogilvy, who renamed it Ogilvy Direct.

But ultimately it seems Glenmore’s interests lay elsewhere and he soon quit to embark on a career in intelligence and media. In fact, it is said that during the years 1969 to 1997 he was also a contract agent for the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, while pursuing an international career in business.

He was until recently the editor-in-chief of the World Intelligence Review, an associate editor of Eye Spy intelligence magazine, and publisher of Intelligence Digest and was an expert on the subjects of security, intelligence, espionage and terrorism.

A regular intelligence analyst for Sky News, Glenmore also appeared on NBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, France 24, Russia Today, and the BBC and even claimed to receive regular briefings from MI6 and MI5.

For Watson, however, Glenmore was always “brilliant company and a great teller-of-tales”.

He concluded: “I ran into Glenmore a few years later, at Nigel Swabey’s villa in the south of France. What glamourous times we had! I saw him last December when he was getting frail and we had a half-hour trip down memory lane and I reminded him of our trip to Montreux, him driving a Volvo Estate and me driving Drayton in a rather knackered sports car. He remembered it well.

“He had gigs on board cruise ships, did TV appearances with his intelligence hat on, and from the 1970s agency world to appearing on GMTV he lived his life to the full. He’ll be sadly missed.”

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