NEVER AD IT SO GOOD
Celebrating 65 years of weird
BY ’eck we love a good telly advert, and they can launch careers as well as make us laugh, cry and buy.
Melanie Sykes found fame in the 1990s after becoming the face of Boddingtons bitter, and went on to host her own show.
And now celebs are all over the ads, from Iggy Pop selling car insurance to George Clooney hoping to give us a caffeine fix.
But they were not so polished when they first appeared on British screens, 65 years ago this month.
On September 22, 1955, Gibbs SR toothpaste’s promo created history – but was far from polished.
It simply featured a block of ice, a tube of paste and a commentary about its “tingling fresh” qualities.
Gibbs SR won the rights to go first in a lottery, which pitched it against brands including Guinness and Surf.
And not many people saw it – only 100,000 homes in London and the South East could pick it up on special TV sets.
Now they can reach millions, with iconic campaigns, clever slogans, catchy jingles, hit songs and cheeky scenes.
They’ve been talked about in offices and homes, and we all have memories of our favourite moments, guaranteed to give us a nostalgia fix. And when brands are on to a winner, they run with it.
Radio 2 DJ Melanie was brought back 20 years after the Boddingtons ad to declare “by ’ eck it’s still gorgeous”.
And there was the Oxo campaign, which made the l ate Lynda Bellingham a household name.
It charted the trials and tribulations of her family as they sat around the dinner table with a steaming jug of gravy, much like a soap opera.
They were taken to the hearts of viewers, with some even thinking they were a real family. Lynda served up her last supper in 1999, having appeared in 42 adverts since 1983.
But not all ads are as heartwarming. Some have been baulked at – rewind to the Go Compare opera singer – or even pulled and banned, like the Tango adverts from the 1990s. One saw a bald man painted head to toe in orange, wearing a
ARTY: Guinness surfer campaign nappy, slapping a teenager around the face after drinking a can.
It ended with the slogan “You know you’ve been Tango’d” and sparked copycat slaps in playgrounds around the country.
The soft drink company also got into hot water for ads featuring an exploding pensioner and a boy rolled down a hill wrapped in a carpet filled with oranges.
Then there are the adverts that look more like arty music videos.
Guinness’s surfer campaign was the most seen and most recognised ad of the 1990s.
The black-and-white two-minute drama showed how a surfer’s long, steady wait for the perfect “white horse” wave pays off, just as waiting for a pint of the stout would.
And sex sells in those three minutes between your soaps.
Who can forget the 1992 Flake advert, showing a woman in red lipstick enjoying a flake in an overflowing bath tub? Or the purr of the Cadbury’s Caramel bunny, voiced by Miriam Margolyes? One advert that got hearts racing in 1985 was a simple one from Levi’s, which helped put its jeans on the map in the UK.
It featured a hunk who strips down to his underwear in a laundrette to wash his jeans while other customers gawp.
Adverts have huge power in promoting slogans for companies.
Going back to the 1970s, instant mashed potatoes company Smash introduced one of the most recognisable product mascots with its Smash martians.
They were a family of alien robots that watch humans making mashed potatoes the traditional way and realise they can do it far easier using Smash. It coined the slogan “For Mash Get Smash” and pushed
MOREISH: Smash
the powdery product into the public consciousness. But crowned most iconic ad of all time was Hovis bread’s offering.
Shot in 1973 by director Ridley
Scott, before he took Hollywood by storm, it showed a boy struggling up a steep hill to deliver bread.
After finally reaching the top, he is seen freewheeling back down to a voiceover: “T’was like taking bread to top of the world – t’was a grand ride back though.”
It was set to Antonin Dvorak’s stirring music – and music can make the ad too, with carmakers going for powerful rock numbers to sell their wheels.
And Wrigley’s chewing gum told us it was “good to chew, even better to share”, as a couple shared a stick of spearmint on a bus to Free’s Alright Now.
Christmas is when adverts really come into their own, with supermarkets letting loose their most ambitious, exciting and touching offerings, spending millions on flashy festive clips.
From the Coca-cola trucks that signal the start of Christmas to Quality Street’s magic moments, which saw a boy giving the gift of a chocolate to his school lollipop lady, they can put us in the spending spirit.
And what do you do if you can’t reach up to have a festive kiss under the mistletoe?
Grab your copy of the Yellow Pages, of course!
We watched in 1992 as a little girl held the mistletoe while waiting for someone to kiss her – and what can help a little boy who’s too short better than a big old Yellow Pages?
In the age of the internet, they have shrunk in thickness so you might need three copies to gain the same height advantage... or a book by JR Hartley. But it is the John Lewis offering that we wait for these days – from foxes and badgers bouncing on a trampoline with Buster the boxer, to Elton John unwrapping his very first piano.
Brits love weird and wonderful too – Cadbury’s scored another hit with its 2007 campaign featuring a drumming gorilla. It is thought Cadbury’s spent £6.2million on the campaign.
While the ad initially focuses on the gorilla’s face, it zooms out as the ape passionately starts playing the drums to the Phil Collins track In The Air Tonight.
The 90-second clip was viewed more than 500,000 times in its first week.
Another sweet victory for a telly ad.