Another week, another Open Book Blog Hop! I am getting quite into this series now!
The topic for this week is adverts. And more specifically the best and worst ones in my opinion.
And remember to pay a visit to my fellow writers to see what they have come up with. You can find their works here!
This one is an interesting topic. With the rise of set-top boxes such as TiVo, we can record so much content and skip through the ad breaks. Ad space is more of a premium here in the UK where a break tends to be around 5 minutes, and only once every 15 or so minutes of TV. I still remember when I first visited America and discovered an hour of TV had as much time for ads as the actual shows!
But I just about remember a time when this wasn’t an option, what with me being a young’un and all! Some adverts just stick in the mind. That’s the mark of a great advert for me, when even years later you can remember the ad and the product. It doesn’t even need to specifically relate to the product! Some of the most irritating adverts can be catchy.
For my favourite, I am actually picking two. The first often appears at the top of the pile of top UK TV ads. It’s an ad for Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate. The whole thing is set on the iconic purple backdrop that is synonymous with Dairy Milk and features a rather impressively realistic gorilla drumming to the epic Phil Collins song, In The Air Tonight. The song is incredible, the animation, and the simplicity of the set. I just love it.
Another favourite of mine is this little beauty from the 1995 Superbowl – the iconic Budweiser frogs. Simple, eye catching and effective. In fairness, Budweiser have loads of ads that stick in my mind so many years after they aired!
An honourable mention has to go to basically any Christmas advert from British retailer John Lewis. They aren’t overtly about selling stuff. They have great music, wonderful narratives and always manage to play on the emotions.
As far as adverts I don’t like – anything perfume/fragrance related. I alwats find them to be strange. No narrative, music that doesn’t match and quite often are sprinkled with Hollywood celebs to really sell. Not for me.
Steven Smith 
I remember more of the ads from the 1970s than those of the last few years. There were some classics in there. But the Gorilla, good choice!!
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The gorilla is an absolute classic!
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Ha ha, I picked that one too. I also remember the Budweiser ads, and the time when a male frog sat on a lily pad and a female frog appeared…
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I’ve never seen the gorilla one before. And I remember the Budweiser one and enjoying it, but none of their commercials will ever convince me to drink their beer!
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I used to quite like a bottle of Bud, but now I am more into craft beers and ales
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Everybody liked Bud until they tasted good beer.
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In my youth I was a lager drinker. Fizzy, awful tasting lager. Bud fitted that bill. I’ve not looked back since. I know in the UK we joke about American beer, but there are some genuinely nice ones! I love a Sam Adams, Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada or Goose Island.
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I live in a community in Interior Alaska with a long (and often quite illegal) history of beer brewing. I used to help my parents bottle their homebrew — it came with tastes. They preferred lagers – Bud and Oly (shudder), their homebrew was better but still pretty hoppy. Our town has more than a half-dozen breweries and you can get an incredibly array of beers, often seasonally. I prefer darker ales myself.
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Perfume commercials are creepy, usually. But then Alaska woman’s daily scent is au d’Cutters — evergreen-scented mosquito repellant.
I’ve seen the gorilla commercial somewhere. We used to get some British channels when we had Dish. It was cute.
America used to have an ad-to-show ratio similar to yours, but as people bailed from broadcast stations for cable and TIVO, the ads gobbled the shows–which is one reason not to watch network television. It’s the definition of cutting your nose off to spite your face. “This feature annoys you, customer? Well, we’ll just give you more of it. That’ll larn ya!”
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Wow, that’s really interesting to hear how it all changed!
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And now I want chocolate. I haven’t seen that one before, so that was fun. I’m also now nostalgic for 90s ads.
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Who doesn’t love a bit of nostalgia??
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I couldn’t think of any remotely recent adverts for this prompt, but I do like yours.
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I think, here in the UK anyway, the oldies are more memorable. I think the only recent ads that stick for me are some of the better Christmas ones.
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Yes, I like your (UK) Christmas adverts. My sister is in advertising and a few of hers have been quite good.
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