They Don’t Make TV Ads Like They Used To

Watching the box, as we referred to it years ago, was a pastime enlivened by the screening of humorous, entertaining and memorable commercials – productions, that judging by today’s sterile offerings, represent something of a lost art.

Frank Muir singing the praises of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut chocolate to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Nutcracker Suite’ was a prime example of a genre of witty and effortlessly charming creations.

These, alongside other notable offerings, came to embody a truly golden era when UK ad men could well and truly hold their heads high, confident that they too were equals, if not the betters of their legendary Madison Avenue contemporaries.

Today’s advertising terrain, be it broadcast or print, is regrettably a somewhat barren landscape where irony, bravura and panache have largely been excised – with no doubt timid clients worried that the hair-trigger army of social media warriors will find offence in the most innocuous of scenes.

The long running Oxo campaign featuring the fictional Katy and Philip was a staple of TV advertising, most famous for Lynda Bellingham and Michael Redfern playing the eponymous twosome. Today, its depiction of a family sitting down together to eat, with not a mobile phone in sight, would seem about as topical as spats and antimacassars.

Similarly, would the late Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan’s captivating Gold Blend coffee duo’s ‘will they, won’t they’ relationship, told in 45 second slots over 15 years, pass the current diversity muster?

Many advertisements took inspiration from films, books and music, paying tribute, sometimes with tongues firmly in cheeks.

Heineken’s 1985 reverse pastiche of My Fair Lady was unquestionably 60 seconds of pure advertising bliss. Bryan Pringle playing tutor at The School of Street Credibility struggling to teach a posh young pupil (Sylvestra Le Touzel) to say “The water in Majorca don’t taste like what it ought to” in a cockney accent. All attempts fail until refreshment is served by way of a can of Heineken, which she sips and successfully delivers the line in a strong cockney drawl, prompting Pringle to exclaim “She’s cracked it, she’s only cracked it!”

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid was a comical 1982 movie parodying the film noire category. Featuring comedian Steve Martin as a down at heel gumshoe, it cleverly spliced vintage movie footage so he appears to share the screen with icons from the Golden Age of Hollywood, including Cary Grant, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart.

 The commercial potential of this artifice was not lost on the ad agency Gold Greenlees Trott, who used it to promote Holsten Pils. Griff Rhys Jones features as a gormless plumber exchanging innuendos with Marilyn Monroe from Some Like it Hot, whilst in another iteration he is seen sharing the bridge of Compass Rose with Jack Hawkins in the Cruel Sea

It was this irreverent approach that delivered not only brand awareness and increased sales, but also that most elusive of endorsements, it had people talking about them.

Clients seeking a sprinkling of stardust on their brand would opt for star names; one much loved crowd pleaser was Cinzano’s inspired pairing of Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. In a variety of scenarios – on board an aircraft, on holiday, at a fancy-dress party, or at a ski lodge entertaining Japanese businessmen – we see the conceited Rossiter inadvertently dousing his prudish wife Melissa. What remains striking is that despite the viewer knowing what the ‘pay off’ line would be, it was so expertly rendered that the gag never felt laboured or tired.

It would not be stretching the truth to argue it that these productions were often better than the TV programmes they bookended.

Many UK film directors found initial fame via advertising. Alan Parker, director of Midnight Express, Evita and Mississippi Burning was the man behind the Cinzano ads, while Sir Ridley Scott of Alien fameis venerated in media circles for curating a slice of advertising history via the Hovis bike ad, filmed at Gold Hill in Dorset.

AI, CGI and animation can cater for vast swathes of product promotion, yet ironically, given current levels of technical sophistication, I have not seen a commercial that betters the Cadbury’s Smash ‘Martian’ campaign which ran from the mid-70s for about two decades.

The observation delivered to fellow chortling Martians, “Earth people peeled their own potatoes with their metal knives, boiled them for 20 of their minutes, then smashed them all to bits” remains an enduring example of creative genius.

Whilst the aphorism “advertising is the rattling of a stick in a swill can” is generally attributed to George Orwell, Levi Strauss and Co. would beg to differ, having seen its 501 Launderette TV advert featuring the late Nick Kamen and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Heard it on The Grapevine’ soundtrack, boost sales by a staggering 800%.

Advertising is unquestionably a mirror to society, reflecting attitudes, aspirations and acquisitions. Looking back at 70s and 80s offerings, they appear to paint a picture of a happier time and place, where humour and that quintessentially British trait of an ability to laugh at oneself were very much to the fore.

How, I wonder, will todays largely arid output be judged in years to come?

Alexander McKibbin is a retired media executive who worked across domestic and international media.