Lovely stuff, thanks never seen that before!
Not seen that one. Excellent.
Great ad, Kev (although my favourite is probably Water In Majorca).
Made by Lowe Howard-Spink, not CDP.
Frank Lowe & Geoff Howard-Spink both left CDP in the early 80s to set up their own agency and took a number of clients with them, including Heineken and Stella Artois (Reassuringly Expensive for Stella being another classic, especially the Jean de Florette/Manon des Sources pastiches).
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I’ve always wondered of the British audience made the connection with the idea of the ‘Ingenue’ and the older man in those ads.
The funny thing with many of these videos is that I can recall the audio far better than the actual video. I think that’s why we have such a connection with music from a memory viewpoint as we know exactly what’s coming next, generally with a note by note clarity. The same cannot be said for TV/Movies.
Another classic example of British beer advertising from the 80s.
Great campaign. Terrible lager.
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In te early noughties I worked at Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), where among other things I wrote papers for the agency and for clients. David Ogilvy created the post-War print ad with his campaigns for Rolls-Royce, Schweppes, Hathaway, Shell and American Express. Bill Bernbach refined Ogilvy’s ideas in the 1960s, with those fantastic print campaigns for VW, Avis and Polaroid.
I’m not sure either Ogilvy or Bernbach really “got” TV, and personally I don’t think either O&M or DDB’s TV work was a patch on their print stuff. Was Bill B still there when you joined @jegreenwood?
Collett Dickenson Pearce’s TV work in the 1960s, 70s and 80s (here in the UK mostly)… that was a different matter.
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Yes you are right @londonstripe – I should know better! My old memory’s not what it was. LHS did some great ads – the Independent, Whitbread, Smirnoff, Hornby and, most famously, “Every Little Helps” for Tesco.
This Birds Eye ad is from 1998, so slightly late for this thread but it’s a goodie. It’s a bit saucy but was so popular that it became a little series – there were four or five “Sean” ads in the end. Sean, by the way, is a young Ben Wishaw!
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Heck, I can relate to that - my schoolmate’s mum was a stunner! Never told him!
We had a guy at work who was a dead ringer for the HM.
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Always loved this Citroen commercial.
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He was. The Alka Seltzer campaign, in particular, remains a touchstone among TV viewers on this side of the Atlantic.
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My favorite was the Beemans gum commercial. No explanation necessary! 
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Not for me. The ads seem to be the perfect marriage of words and pictures. Mini-masterpieces of story telling.
This one didn’t even need filming!
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Kind of groundbreaking in that it was a) an original and great ad and b) launched any number of adverts and subsequent chart re-releases with Soul/Motown originals.
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And VW made some witty ads
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A wonderful scene, and a superb piece of product placement.
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I spent most of the 90s at O&M London (91-99).
The disastrous move to Canary Wharf in '92 and a string of poor leadership hires precipitated a spectacular decline from being the second largest agency in the UK, doing great work for the likes of Guinness (Pure Genius, featuring Rutger Hauer), Lucozade (NRG), BUPA, Rowntree’s, Golden Wonder, Tabasco, Fishermans Friend etc, to being an outpost of the global network, doing average work for global clients (Ford, AmEx, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever…).
Hiving off the media operation in '96 weakened it further and it’s never properly recovered, despite its swanky new offices at Sea Containers House on the South Bank.
It was a brilliant agency to work for, though, and I have some great friends from that time.
So much more fun than it is now!
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