Ron Collins, the advertising creative responsible for the Cinzano television campaign, has died at the age of 72.

Regarded as the epitome of a 1980s adman, Collins created the Cinzano ads whilst at Collett Dickenson Pearce, leaving in 1979 to co-found Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.

Here Collins helped devise the “Ultimate Driving Machine” campaign for BMW alongside a series of campaigns for Qualcast lawnmowers under the slogan “It’s a lot less bovver than a hover.”

This latter stroke of genius went on to kickstart what The Sun describes as ‘The Great Lawnmower War’ in the eighties as Flymo, manufacturers of hover mowers, protested.

Spoken of as a genius and heartless in equal measure Collins never lost his eye for selling a product and

Collins's co-founder Robin Wight recalled: "Our wives used to bring us picnic lunches because we couldn't afford the hotel's room service and Ron used to give the switchboard girls weekly bottles of champagne for putting would-be clients through to what was an almost-unpronounceable name – Wight Collins Rutherford Scott."