1001 And Other Ads

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1950s old vintage original advert british magazine print advertisement advertising 1001 carpet cleaner dated 1958 Stock Photo - Alamy

While I was writing this week’s Tuesday Tunes piece, which ‘celebrated’ being my 1,000th post, I had the number of the next post stuck in my mind: 1001. There was a reason for that: back in the Sixties, when we first had a TV, there were regularly ads for a brand of carpet cleaner called 1001, with their catchy little jingle which is still etched in my brain after all that time. TV ads have come a long way since then, and I sought it out on YouTube for a trip down Memory Lane. I couldn’t find a proper one, but this test version gives you the idea:

For those from outside the UK – or those who are too young to remember it – prior to going with decimal currency in 1971 we used sterling: pounds, shillings and pence. One eighth of a pound – two shillings and sixpence – was known as half a crown, and we had coins to that value. I always thought it clever the way they built that into their jingle: judging from that ad I’m guessing it would have been around 1960, when I was 7 and easily impressed. But this got me thinking about the TV I used to watch in those days, and about some of the ads we saw – they seem to be from a different age! Before I move on to a few more from that time, I also found another 1001 ad which was made in 1997. Someone had clearly told the ad agency that sex sells:

Maybe not the way it is usually used, but aimed at a particular part of the market! That upload of the clip has been on YouTube for eleven years and hasn’t had many views, and it only got its first comment a month ago: “I bet that new 1001 costs more than half a crown.” It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who remembers the old days! And yes, the product is still around and costs a lot more – but doesn’t everything?

You probably noticed that the 1960s ad was very clearly spoken. Though ads were broadcast on ITV the standards of diction known as BBC English were still very prevalent. And it was very factual: no attempt at humour to sell the product. Here are two more from that time, both of which are promoting food. Firstly, who fancies an ice cream?

Walls ice cream was already a well established brand by 1960, and was very much a part of my childhood! I find it interesting that they set that up as a kind of mini documentary, introducing us to East Kilbride, which had been established as a new town in 1947. The town is near Glasgow, which might explain why the little boy is wearing a kilt: was it his Sunday best, specially worn because he was going to be on TV, or was it just stereotyping? To my eyes sixty years later it just looks odd!

There were often ads in those days which went out on location, presumably as a way of telling us that the product was for people like us. This 1962 ad for Stork margarine is another:

Again very factual, with a direct sell for the product and a promotional offer. Though if they drove round the country offering it on a door to door basis the marketing effort must have cost them a fortune!

One thing you may recall from those days was the popularity of cartoon tigers in ads. Remember this, from 1965, with a theme that ran for many years:

Or how about this, from 1956, or many others like it?

Esso attempting to tell us that cars using their fuel ran on tigerpower rather than horsepower, and Frosties selling the idea that a breakfast cereal with a high sugar content was good for us. But like most kids I preferred my cereals sugar-coated as they tasted, well, grrreat! At the end of the Sixties Esso ran a promotion giving away mock tiger tails, which were intended to be hung around the driving mirror in your car. I had one which I fixed to the windscreen on my Lambretta – the effect was rather lost when it rained! It wouldn’t have been good to get your tigers mixed up, though: Frosties tasted much better with milk than I imagine they would have done with petrol.

Another food ad next, with a jingle that will be recognisable to anyone of my vintage:

Beans are better for you than high sugar cereals, aren’t they? We had our own rhyme for them at the time:

Baked beans are good for the heart, the more you eat the more you fart,

The more you fart, the better you feel, so let’s have beans for every meal!

Surprisingly, they never used that…

But that series was an early one to place the ad in a little story, rather than going for a documentary effect, and as kids we definitely preferred that style – they were fun, unlike some of the programmes they were placed in: ITV had a lot of crap in those days. I’ll leave it to you to decide if they still do.

Another long running series of ads began in the Sixties, though I expect most will more readily remember the musical versions from the Seventies. This is one of several I have found from 1963 which use the same basic script with different scenarios:

So, are you a Fruit and Nutcase? Here’s one of their Seventies offerings, in colour, no less:

They ran loads of those, and they were always a delight. For those who don’t know him, the chap in the ad is Frank Muir, who was a comedy writer, radio and television personality, and raconteur. Among many strings to his bow were his appearances as a team leader on the TV show Call My Bluff, which is where most will probably have seen him. And yes, Frank, it is a good tune – it is the Danse des Mirlitons from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

Just one more for today – I could go on for ever with these! The Sixties saw the beginning of one of the most popular and long running movie franchises of all time, and guess where the inspiration for this came from:

Yup, blame James Bond, though the movies were as sexist as that ad so it’s probably a good companion piece.

Aside from offering a little whimsy and nostalgia there is a point to all of this. When I did my MBA in Marketing (in 1979/80) much was made of the role of advertising and promotion in stimulating consumer buying behaviour, as you might expect. I still remember an essay I wrote as part of the course which drew the narrative that much TV advertising could be described as social commentary and history. Think back to the Walls and Stork ads early in this piece: their purpose was to sell their product, but viewed from the perspective of sixty years later they are like little time capsules, depicting an everyday lifestyle that would have been familiar to many back then. Nostalgia may not be what it used to be, but while there are reminders of those days in little 30 second snippets like these it is, I think, alive and well. And look how chunky those chocolate bars were back then!

 

44 thoughts on “1001 And Other Ads”

  1. Pingback: So Long, July | Take It Easy

  2. The only product I knew was Frosted Flakes, but I still enjoyed the flashback! I had seen something last week about commercials from the 80’s and I still knew all the catchy jingles. LOL! The things our brains remember!

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    • I think that was an American ad imported over here and given a British voiceover – we know them as Frosties. Remembered jingles are the mark of good ads.

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  5. Different times. Having watched a few 60s programmes lately the leisurely pace is amazing to me now. You can actually even read the credits at the end. Nowadays they fly by in the blink of an eye in a blur.

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  7. In the 70s and unitl late 80s we only had 4 to 5 TV channels. Austrian, German, and Swiss channels. Therefore we only had different commercials. But I remember some well (coffee, shampoo, tooth paste,…). I remember it was fun watching them like short movies. The commercials were much longer.

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    • We had two until the late Sixties, when BBC2 was added, then Channel Four in 1982. When Sky took off we had a lot more choice. The standard ad slot here is 30 seconds so most are geared to that. Many of them were better than the programmes!

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      • Amazing how everyting changed. We were lucky with 4 channels due to our central location in Liechtenstein, since it is surrounded by three countries. In Vienna they only had two channels as well. Time changed! I also remember that the German channels hat played short cartoons between the commercials.

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      • It sure is! We have so much choice now, but not all of it is good. Remember the Bruce Springsteen song 57 Channels (and Nothing On)? That came out in 1992, so I guess he wasn’t enamoured of it, even then!

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      • That puzzled me too, so I did some digging. Frosted Flakes launched in the US in 1952 and came here in 1954. That ad dates from 1956, and I couldn’t find any record of a name change, even on the Kellogg site, so it looks like they went for the cheap option even though they called them Frosties here! The voiceover is clearly British, though some of the voices near the beginning could be American.

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  12. You certainly did! I guessed you would have remembered the Oxo adds they were legendary! The adverts were better than the programmes them …sadly apart from the odd ones most adverts are mediocre these days 💜💜🌅

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  14. Oh! Clive I really enjoyed this post and remembered them with affection. Do you remember the Oxo adverts?
    The first Oxo television commercial appeared on screen in 1958 in the form of Katie – played by Mary Holland – a devoted wife committed to caring for her family. They were terribly terribly proper the BBC English that could cut crusty bread.

    Then Linda Bellingham played the central character in the long-running “Oxo Family” series of TV commercials, starting in 1983, playing a mother who binds her family together by cooking them meals featuring Oxo products.

    So much fun thanks for brightening my day.

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