What makes a good advert linger in our minds?

For a festival celebrating 100 years of advertising, Sam Delaney picks the commercials that entered our culture

At school, it was the song from the Um Bongo ads that struck a chord with me. In the mid-Eighties, the sugary fruit drink was promoted by a throng of animated jungle creatures who sang: “Um Bongo, Um Bongo, they drink it in the Congo!” It was a far-fetched claim, but it somehow escaped the attentions of regulatory bodies to become one of the most popular ads of the time. It might not have won any industry awards but it achieved something far more valuable: it transcended the ad break to penetrate popular culture and enter the common lexicon.

For you, it might have been the Milk Tray Man, the Honey Monster or JR Hartley. These are the sort of adverts that did more than just sell us stuff; they became as much a part of the world we lived in as the movies we watched, the music we listened to or the very TV shows they punctuated.

As the son of an ad man, advertising has always been a subject close to my heart. As an adult, I’ve written two books about the industry. Now, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) has asked me to put together a festival and exhibition to help celebrate 100 years of the business, which takes place in east London next week.

Some ads can be irritants. Some are almost aggressively manipulative. But at their best, ads are a welcome intrusion into our living room: they can make us laugh, make us think, warm our hearts and even change the way we behave for the better. It took advertising to educate the public about road safety, sexual health, food hygiene and hundreds of the day-to-day risks encountered by our children.

The ad industry has also produced brilliant art: from the photography of Brian Duffy and David Bailey in the Sixties to the technical pioneers who created the Guinness surfer or Sony’s bouncing balls. For decades, it has been a breeding ground for the top creative talent: from Salman Rushdie to Ridley Scott, Alan Parker to Charles Saatchi, all of them cut their teeth in adland.

When I was asked to put together the festival, I didn’t want it to be another dry industry event where ad people celebrate other ad people. What we hope it will demonstrate is that the greatest ads are celebrated by all of British society. They are part of our cultural fabric; they reflect the way we live and help shape the way we see ourselves. Here are a few of my favourites from the show…