In these days of Sky Plus, Tivo and Virgin Media it's really no longer necessary to wade through a bunch of ads, waiting for your programme to begin or resume. Fast forward is a wonderful thing. But back in "the olden days", when I were only knee-high to a thing I were only knee-high to, we had no such luxuries. When "end of part one" or whatever hit the screen we all groaned and went to make a cup of tea, use the toilet or sometimes just sat there immovably, too lazy, bored, tired or bothered to move. As a result of this we ended up sitting through some godawful ads --- I'd say eighty percent plus of them --- but there was the odd good one, and the very odd great one, which have now gone down in popular culture as "classic ads", some of which even have their own dedicated website!
Often certain brands would emerge as being cleverer or more interesting than others, and we actually looked forward to a new ad from them. These were companies whose advertising arm understood a critical truth: if you're going to watch an ad it had damn well better be interesting. Interesting in a funny way, interesting in a shocking way, interesting in a memorable way. Think Kit Kat, Weetabix, Audi, Guinness. These are names that you not only associate taglines with (so their marketing campaign obviously worked ---
Vorsprung durch technik!) but whose ads you can remember even if they played twenty or more years ago. The Guinness dancing man. The pandas on the Kit Kat ad. And of course, the various road safety ads, although we remember them for other, darker reasons.
One of the ads I always looked forward to --- still do, to some extent, were the ones from Carlsberg. I don't drink it, and the ads would never convince me to, but by god they were clever. Down the years they've had some amazing ones, usually based around a tagline of "Probably the best lager in the world", which was later changed for more recent ads as they replaced the word "lager" with things like dreams, night clubs etc. Now their strapline is "That calls for a Carlsberg!" which is not as snappy as their original motto, but the ads are just as good. Here are some of my favourites.
The first of course is one of the most famous. For those who couldn't be bothered clicking the video and don't know the ad, here's a brief synopsis. A man is leaving work, hears a phone ringing and not being answered. Puzzled, he follows the sound to a door which leads into a very dark, deserted, musty room which looks like it hasn't seen any use in years. Fighting his way through the cobwebs he gets to a desk, whereupon a very old phone is ringing. He picks it up, listens. "No," he says, "this is 4724. That's quite all right." and replaces the phone. Looking around him he marvels once more at the decrepit state of the room and then leaves, closing the door behind him. It's only then we see the plate on the door:
Carlsberg Customer Complaints Department. Subtle and brilliant at once.
"Carlsberg in Irish" is funny. Though only if you know Irish. I do. Enough to get this one anyway.
Then they began their campaign of replacement. Each ad would feature a "dream idea", as I said from football to night clubs to girlfriends, and they would say "Carlsberg don't do [insert here], but if they did, they'd be the best in the world!" Here's one about apartments and flatmates.
And a great one about night clubs. Not that I'd know anything about that sort of thing...
I hadn't seen this one before, guess it's new, but it's good. Based around their new strapline, "That calls for a Carlsberg", it's long but worth sitting through. Sort of.
"The crate escape" is of course based on the World War II movie...
"The Fan Academy" is for all your fans of the England team...
... and this is for all us fans of the Irish team! One of my favourites.
In memory of the late Neil Armstrong. Maybe.
And this is the latest, based around Spartacus. Kind of.