Golly!
Is my post invisible?
The EXACT SAME radio ad for 47 years!
Sorry, I meant longest-running television commercial. 
Ah…
I’m not invisible.
can’t tell you how relieved I am
I’ve just seen an ad aired on a local station about IDEAL; A ladies’ clothing store operating out of a Quonset Hut on the White Horse Pike in South Jersey.
This Ad is the same one they’ve been running since the 70s.
If you got a passion for fashion,
And you got a craving for savings,
Take the wheel of your automobile
and swing on down to IDEAL!
Roy O’Brien Ford, at Nine Mile Rd. and Mack Ave., St. Clair Shores, MI had a cartoon recorded in 1949 or 1950 that they still ran in the 1980s. Their web site still has a link (mp3) to play the jingle beneath a frame from the cartoon. (I don’t know that they still show the cartoon on TV (since I’m not living in Detroit to monitor it), but the presence of the jingle and the image suggest that they are still running it, since including it on the web site would only appeal to geezers if it was no longer on the air.)
That damn Marineland commercial!!
Sure, it only debuted in the early 90s, but you only need to hear it twice to make it feel like its been an eternity.
The Budweiser beer ad that runs at Christmas showing Clydesdales pulling a wagon through the snow with minimal copy or voiceover, has been running for a couple of decades, I believe. There may be a few variations. It’s a welcome respite from the rest of the jangly ad clutter at that time of year.
Not just Chicago, we have the Empire Carpet ones here in Baltimore, too. Highly annoying. I hate the Empire Carpet guy. It’s actually **1-800-**588-2300.
Also the one for the Time-Life Christmas Collection. That’s alos run for a couple of decades.
The only update is how you get the music. It used to be records or 8-tracks, then cassettes, now I believe it’s CDs only.
That song has haunted me my entire life.
The Honey Nut Cheerios commercial with Scrooge has been playing every Christmastime since I was a very small child, and possibly before. I know it’s not the oldest, but it definitely has staying power.
The Apple Computer ad that ran only once. That’s surely the shortest.
Norelco ran the same ad of Santa Claus riding an electric razor head from 1961-1991.
A computer-animated version of the same was released last year.
And why did they stop? The “Noelco” ad had been running so long that people started to look forward to seeing it.
Damned MBAs! Kill 'em all!
“…Everyone LOVES Marineland…”
tfire:
The famous Macintosh “1984” Super Bowl ad. Run only one time on TV.
LL
The longest running car commercial (totally unchanged from the moment it aired) belongs to Jeep! It’s the add that shows a snowcovered road with the moving mound of snow (ala Bugs Bunny) that halts at a stop sign, flashes its turn signals, and then goes on. The reason that it’s ran for so long, is that you can’t see the car! So it never gets dated in that sense, whereas other car commercials become dated as soon as there’s a significant model change.
…uh…same thing, PC owner.
The Lonely Maytag Repairman has been running since the 60s, first with Jesse White, now with Gordon Jump.
And I’m happy to report to Dooku that the K-SHE ad hasn’t been seen in years.
I think it might be Mr. Clean.
Sorry, no cite other than my fevered, patchwork memories of an ill-attended Advertising course two semesters ago.