PALMER, Brian Dudley Buller (1929 - 2025)

[S R Eglesfield]

Brian Palmer, who died on 7th December, aged 96, was the head of that family of Rahan, Edenderry, County Kildare, which, per Burke's Family Index, last appeared in Burke's Landed Gentry (LG) of Ireland in the 1912 edition (see online at https://archive.org/details/genealogicalhera00burkuoft/page/546/mode/2up?ref=ol&q=Palmer). His parents were Capt Charles Dudley PALMER (1897 - 27 VIII 1965) and his first wife (married 1927, as her second husband), Catherine Anne HUGHES-BULLER (20 XII 1898 - 20 VII 1981?).

 

His paternal grandparents were Maj Dudley Colley PALMER (28 X 1868 - 23 VIII 1924) and his wife (married 5 VIII 1896), Constance Mary Amelia YOUNG (8 VIII 1874 - 1955), the second daughter of Charles Florance YOUNG (1822 - 1 III 1890), brewer, of Wandsworth, Surrey.

 

His maternal grandfather, Ralph Buller HUGHES-BULLER, CIE, CBE (1871 - 13 XII 1949), was the third, but only surviving, son of Gen Sir William Templer HUGHES, KCB (2 IV 1822 - 4 IV 1897) and his first wife (married 25 X 1855), Katherine Mary BULLER (14 X 1828 - 30 XII 1872), the eldest daughter of Cdr Thomas Wentworth BULLER, RN (19 IV 1792 - 30 X 1852), of that LG family of Downes, Crediton, Devon.

 

His maternal grandmother, who married Ralph Hughes-Buller on 10 January 1898, was Elizabeth MACLEOD (c.1869/70 - 5 II 1960), a sister of Sir John Mackintosh MACLEOD, 1st Bt (5 V 1857 - 6 III 1934), MP (Conservative) for Glasgow Central, 1915-18, and for Glasgow Kelvingrove, 1918-22.

 

Mr Palmer's elder daughter, Sarah Mary Catherine Buller PALMER (c.1957 - 8 XII 2018), was the wife (married 1988) of (Henry Frank) Sebastian GILES (born 16 VII 1952), the son of Frank Thomas Robertson GILES (31 VII 1919 - 30 X 2019), editor of the Sunday Times newspaper, 1981-83, and his wife (married 19 VI 1946), Lady Katharine Pamela ("Kitty") SACKVILLE (4 III 1926 - 1 VIII 2010), daughter of the 9th Earl De La Warr.

Obituary from the Telegraph online 22 December 2025 1:23pm GMT:

"Brian Palmer, who has died aged 96, wrote and produced the first advertisement on British television and was one of the three founders of KMP, the most innovative advertising agency of the 1960s; he also founded New Solutions, a successful market research company, and was a director of Young’s Brewery.

 

In later life, he established himself as an artist whose work appealed to a wide audience. His pictures were selected three times for the Royal Academy summer exhibition, and his drawings, etchings and paintings always sold well.

 

Brian Dudley Buller Palmer was born in Dublin on August 28 1929 to Capt Charles Dudley Palmer, an Anglo-Irish landowner, and Catherine Anne, daughter of Ralph Hughes-Buller. The family moved to Kensington in 1932, just before the birth of their second son, the future General Sir Patrick Palmer. After their parents divorced in 1938 the two boys moved for some years between relatives in England and Scotland.

 

Boarding school provided an anchor of relative stability for Brian: he attended Wells House and Rugby, and won a scholarship to read English at King’s College, Cambridge. The award covered most, but not all, costs; his father refused to make up the difference, so Palmer did his National Service. He was commissioned and responsible for 20 men in the Royal Artillery before he turned 19.

 

At school Palmer had been an avid poet and painter, and had won a British Travel Association competition for poster design. When he left the Army he chose commercial art as his pre-release course. He knew he had to make a living but “had no idea what at”.

 

His father wanted him to become an accountant, and Palmer was nearly compelled to sign away five years to that end. But he was rescued by a chance meeting with a girl on a bus; through her he met the writer Nigel Balchin, who suggested a career in advertising.

 

Palmer was given a tour of an agency and “fell in love”. He took up a trainee job with CF Higham at £4 per week – “not enough to live on”, even according to his employer. But his work was successful, and he moved to Young & Rubicam as a copywriter in 1952.

 

Palmer immediately saw the potential of television for advertising. Most of his British contemporaries did not: his boss told him that he was mad to concentrate on TV because “it would never be a major medium”. Palmer persisted, however, and in 1955 he wrote and produced a commercial for Gibbs SR toothpaste, the first television advertisement broadcast in Britain – at 8.13pm on September 22 1955.

 

Broadcast during a break in a variety show hosted by Jack Jackson, the ad featured a tube of toothpaste embedded in a block of ice. Viewers also saw the “plug” girl Meg Smith brushing her teeth “up and down and round the gums”, while Alex Macintosh announced in faultless BBC diction: “The tingling fresh toothpaste that does your gums good, too. It’s tingling fresh. It’s fresh as ice. It’s Gibbs SR toothpaste.”

 

At 30, Palmer was Young & Rubicam’s youngest ever director, but he now wanted a different challenge. In 1964, with David Kingsley and Michael Manton, he founded KMP on radical new principles. It was an instant success, rapidly acquiring major accounts such as Regent (Texaco) and Cunard.

 

In 1965, KMP became the first British advertising agency to open an office in New York. In 1966, Palmer launched a campaign for White Horse whisky, with the line “You can take a White Horse anywhere”. It was revolutionary and ran for years. In 1969, KMP became the first British advertising agency to go public.

 

From 1973 Palmer stepped back from KMP and joined Young’s, as director of the new wines and spirits department. He was headhunted in 1979 to run Doyle Dane Bernbach, a leading American advertising agency. He rapidly returned the company to profitability, then in 1983 left to found the strategic marketing consultancy, New Solutions.

 

Throughout his advertising career, Palmer had continued to draw and paint. Then in 1991 the instructor at his evening class told him he should be a professional artist. From then on, he devoted himself to art.

 

In 1998, aged 69, he earned an honours degree in Fine Art. His paintings, drawings and etchings, many of which included poems, were regularly exhibited and purchased. He was working on new ones when he died.

 

Palmer had a seemingly inexhaustible fountain of optimism and good cheer, allied to a rare ability to identify the best in those he met, and to see ways out of difficult, even terrible, situations in which he or others found themselves.

 

Palmer married Brenda Attkins, whom he met at CF Higham, in 1953. She died in 2003, and he is survived by a daughter and son. Another daughter died in 2018.

 

Brian Palmer, born August 28 1929, died December 7 2025"