OH, MR HART, THEY’RE THE ADS WE JUST CAN’T FORGET
Darrell Lea’s cheeky reprise of a classic advertisment reminds us there have been some absolute beauties
NOT happy, Darrell Lea. This week the chocolate company tried to reprise the classic Yellow Pages advertisement featuring an unhappy boss who discovers her company’s ad has been left out of the phone directory.
Darrell Lea’s version was brilliantly similar and even featured the same actor, Deborah Kennedy, who made up the line while shooting the original in 2000.
This time around, Kennedy says “No worries, Jan” after a few bites of fruit and nut chocolate calms her down.
But Sensis, owner of the Yellow Pages, wasn’t having a bar of it and sent a “cease and desist” letter.
Happily – almost too happily – Darrell Lea obliged, pulling the ad.
Is that what they had in mind all along? If so, this own goal turned out to be a clever move. “To Aussie consumers who enjoy a new take on life, we say – stay tuned,” Darrell Lea’s CEO Tim York said.
It makes me wonder what’s next.
Rip-offs of Meadow Lea margarine: “You ought to be congratulated, Darrell Lea”?
Or maybe Tip Top bread: “Good on you, Mum, Darrell Lea’s the one”?
The rebooted confectionary company was clever to play on our fondness for old ads like the Yellow Pages one.
The phrase “Not happy, Jan” has lasted longer than phone directories.
Old commercials take us back to a simpler time when kids marched in Cottee’s orchards celebrating their fathers who “picked the fruit that made the cordial that I like best”.
Or when a woman would leave a bar of soap under her hubby’s pillow to remind him: “Don’t wait to be told, you need Palmolive Gold”.
And when Paul Hogan threw a shrimp on the barbie even though we don’t call them shrimps. From the Happy Little Vegemites of the 1950s, to Norm’s Life. Be in It to Sid the lisping seagull for Slip Slop Slap, they’re still great fun.
Remember Norm the Life. Be in It guy being told he was obese, only to explain: “I’ve just got big stomach bones”?
At the end of the ad a cartoon man grows so fat he can’t stand up and then explodes. Now it’d be called fat-shaming and banned.
Same goes for Sid. Now Sid is computer generated and it’s Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek and Slide – seek shade and slide on sunnies. Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?
If they brought back AAMI’s Rhonda and Ketut now, they’d probably be parents in the suburbs worrying about work-life balance and gender-neutral toys rather than lazing around on the beach.
Even Louie the Fly doesn’t die in the ads these days and Mortein now has plant-based ingredients.
Of course, some ads have had their day. Back in the 1980s if a man suddenly gave a woman flowers, it was Impulse, the “cologne body spray with the reassurance of a deodorant”. Now it would be called stalking.
Same goes for the Sexy Legs pantyhose ad where the woman’s skirt blows off completely to expose her Sexy Nix undies. Say nix to that these days.
Louie the Fly, Norm and the Bigpond Wall of China guy are among the classic ad characters that endure.
Remember Rita the ETA Eater, Mrs Marsh from Colgate and Madge “You’re soaking in it?” for Palmolive?
And Professor Julius Sumner Miller, who taught us there was a glass and a half of full-cream dairy milk in every Cadbury’s block?
At university, if someone got drunk too early they were called a Cadbury – you know, a glass and a half was all it took it took. Even worse were the messy Omo drinkers – half a cup in the mouth, the rest on the clothes.
The best ads live on. Every time I buy milk I think of that ad for Paul’s Smart Milk that features the worn-out milk bar lady asking: “Low fat, no fat, full cream, high calcium, high protein, soy, light, skim, omega 3, high calcium with vitamin D and folate, or extra dollop”. And dropping the f-bomb around the kids brings back the Ingham Chicken “Bloody Oath” family or the wonderful Hilux “Bugger” ad.
Decades on, I’ll bet you can still finish these famous ad lines for biscuits, cars and soft drinks.
“You can’t beat a Sao …” “Football, meat pies, kangaroos and …”
And: “It’s light on fizz so you can …”
Let’s hope we see more great ads from Darrell Lea.
The company has just bought the Lifesavers brand, so no doubt they’ll help us get a “hole lot more out of life”.