Osi Osgood
Film God
Posts: 10204
From: Mountian Home, ID.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted September 11, 2018 11:31 AM
I must, confess, a guilty passion … a life-long obsession.
Commercials … advertising.
For most people, these are, in large part, no better than an annoyance that they’d rather get past in order to get back to they’re TV show of choice …
… but in truth, there is an incredible art to these little gems as delicate and intricate as any TV show or theatrical feature. In fact, if a commercial is successful, it actually becomes more memorable than the TV shows they were meant to sponsor and even, at times, outlive the very products that they were meant to advertise.
The first reason for a commercials (or “advert” for our British friends), existence is, of course, to show off a product which as a general rule is something that is placed in the marketplace for the public’s consumption. The only times when this is not true is when it is a company that is just naming themselves, making themselves known without an actual product to sell, but these kind of commercials are rare in nature.
However, be sure, the commercial is designed to make you feel like you’re life is not “complete” without the sponsors product.
However, while the early commercials basically just put a copy of the product up on a screen for the public to see; in short form, advertising companies realized that if they could create not only a product on the screen but some kind of storyline or characters that the public would remember and even “befriend” in they’re everyday lives, they could move far more merchandise than ever before.
This took two elements in order for this to happen. Every successful commercial has either one or both of these qualities in they’re advertising …
1. A catchy “Jingle”
A catchy jingle is something, usually in rhyme and usually accompanied by music
And is something that, if successful, would cement the product in the publics mind and therefore, when shopping, they would recollect the product and buy said product. This was first done on radio, so this quality predates TV.
Who can forget the great “Jingles”?
“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t!”
“My bologna has a first name, it’s O.S.C.A.R. …“
“He likes it … Hey Mikey!!”
“Can’t get enough of that super golden crisp, It’s got the crunch with punch!”
“Hey, how about some nice Hawaiian Punch? Sure!!”
“I’m Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”
Note: a jingle does not have to have accompanying music and is therefore listed as a “catch-phrase”
2. An “Icon”
Or some form of character that identifies with the product in some way that they are definitively identified solely with said product. This “character” does not have to be a cartoon character, though we do identify with them quite well and so they are used for various products.
The Jolly Green Giant (and “Lil Sprout”)
The “Keebler Elves”
Countless cereal characters!
Some ad icons would be stop motion characters as well … some of the most famous being …
The Pillsbury Doughboy
The “Swiss Miss”
(Did you know that the “finger” that pokes the doughboy, was actually a stop motion life-like hand that was moved frame by frame, in and out of the shot?)
Live actions “Icons” are still firmly in our memory long after they have passed on. Who can forget …
Mr. Whipple for Charmin Toilet Tissue …
“Gladys” for Bounty the “Quicker Picker Upper”
… and, of course, probably the most famous live action “Icon”
Ronald McDonald and the whole McDonald-land!
In some cases, (as Mr. Whipple and “McDonald-land illustrate brilliantly) some ad icons become so famous and so long running that they have whole story lines and lives associated with them. In time, Mr. Whipple would not only have regular customers, but would also have children and even a wife in later “episodes”.
Really popular “icons” would have continuing storylines much like a soap opera and people would actually tune in to find out what would happen to they’re favorite icons, many, (such as Mr. Whipple), actually having fan clubs for themselves!
How many children, for instance, actually wanted to go to “McDonald-land” as a child?
To actually write a successful commercial is no easy task.
Think about it.
For a feature film, you have upwards of 80 minutes to around 2 hours to tell a story. For a commercial, you have to create a whole world and tell a story in either 30 or 60 seconds AND advertise the sponsor’s product all at the same time! (earlier commercials ran as a general rule for 60 seconds and then, by the late 60 into the early 70’s, as a general rule, commercials were trimmed down to a 30 second time window, due to networks wanting as much product placement sales per hour on TV as well as the rising cost’s of producing said commercials).
One commercial will tell a sponsor if they had a “hit or miss”, to be sure. A good commercial could take a floundering product and, literally overnight, make the product a household “must”!
Now, back to this author!
I first actually ran into collecting these things quite by accident when, walking by a dumpster outside of a TV station, I saw all these little boxes with commercial names on them and then repeatedly “dumpster dived” to get two big banana boxes of these films!
Sadly, I lost all those over time …
… but I got back into collecting these things in the last 10 years and it is quite a feat to find “good” commercials today. The reason for this is that, as a general rule, since these commercials were only meant to be seen/screened for a limited time period, they were printed on (in large part) quick fade Eastman and to make matters worse, most people who did get these just stored them in warm or hot environments and so the commercials have completely faded away, (note: only the three top networks ever got the 35MM commercials, the local TV affiliates got the 16MM reductions to splice into either they’re daily newscasts or syndicated shows, (like Gilligan’s Island, for instance).
If you are lucky, however, you can still find vintage, perfect color prints of these 16MM gems, but they had to have been held by collectors in “cool dry places”, or, (the rarities), they were printed on some form of low fade stock.
Sadly, for us “Cine” lovers, prints of TV commercials stopped being made in-between 1982 and 83, as those who produced such prints realized that they could much more cheaply shoot the commercials on film but distribute them on VHS, so the golden age of commercials on film ended as of that time (however, there is evidence that a few here and there have been seen at later dates on 16mm but these are the very rare exceptions).
However, most TV commercial admirers have the “concensus of opinion” that the great era of the commercials ran from approximately the mid fifties until the early 80’s, (as there are very few Iconic characters that have come forth since then, for some odd reason), so, fortunately, the great commercials we remember so fondly, can be found on 16MM!
I can personally tell you, nothing (apart from music when you were young), can take you back to when you were a kid then those wonderful classic commercials.
As stated earlier, at times these characters have far outlived the product they sold. Except for the Pink Panther Show and Bug’s Bunny, I really do not remember nearly any of the other TV shows I watched as a kid in any major way, but I still remember all those wonderful TV commercials
As anyone who knows my own history can tell you, commercials are such a part of my life and such a passion that I even dedicated my one and only Super 8 release to them, that being “Saturday Morning Madness”, which chronicled mostly animated cereal commercials from approximately 1965 to 1982, but also included such other non cereal commercials as Hostess “Twinkee the Kid” and “Charly: from the Starkist series of commercials.
So yes, I’m Cuckoo for Commercials!
Following the review, you will see a bunch of screenshots from assorted commercials in my collection which I have been lucky enough to find good copies of. Enjoy!
[ September 11, 2018, 09:58 PM: Message edited by: Osi Osgood ]
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"All these moments will be lost in time, just like ... tears, in the rain. "
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