Things you don't see anymore: 1# Tobacco Advertising
From
"Benson And Hedges always fancied themselves as being on a higher plane of intellectualism and sophistication than their marketplace rivals, and in the early 1990s they took this pretence to new extremes by incorporating fiendish puzzles into their billboard adverts. No doubt hoping to attract a sudden influx of new customers from that small subsector of society who will chuckle quietly to themselves on recognition of something 'wry' that only intellectuals like themselves and their beards can understand, the company appeared to believe that the best way to accomplish this was to turn their adverts into overliteral visualisations of cryptic crossword clues. Hence, for example, the appearance in one advert of two cherubic figures made up entirely of ears. As the helpful '(3, 3)' hint suggested, this corresponded to the answer 'All Ears'. Another ad featured red crabs hanging from a tree, with the given duration '(4, 6)', leading Chris Morris to suggest rather tastelessly on his Radio 1 show that the answer may actually have been 'lung cancer'. Although quite what punters were supposed to do with these answers in the absence of any actual crossword is less clear. Add to this the fact that the majority of the target audience were probably wrestling with newspaper crosswords of their own anyway, and the whole point of the entire venture seems somewhat elusive."
Does anyone else remember any exciting or incomprehensible tobacco adverts of yesteryear? How would people advertise tobacco now, if smoking didn't have the stigma that it does now?
Also, can anyone think of any types of adverts that you don't see anymore?
The fact that you don't really get regional telly anymore leaves me sad that you don't really get local adverts anymore for carpet warehouses or caravan showrooms or discount lighting centres. The ones done by employees and bosses for shops in your high street were the best, with sweaty looking managers with beards and grey suits waving a zombie like hand toward a stiff looking employee saying something like
"Come to Grumbelows [pause] we've got the best tellies around at [shakey increase in volume to uncertain loud monotone] prices that [half arsed chorusing from fake smiling employees] are right up your street!",
followed by a cheesy jingle that would go something like
"Grumblelows, tellies, at prices, for yooooo-ooooooo".
Any others?
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