What’s the oldest television commercial that is still regularly used in its original form? Two that come to mind are the (very old) tootsie pop ad (how many licks…) and the salad girl commercial (the one with the redheaded girl that eats salad with hidden valley dressing while the scenery around her changes). They made a new version of the tootsie pop ad awhile back with computer generated graphics, so the original may have been retired. I guess the definition of regular use would be an ad that is shown at least a couple of times a year since it debuted, on a network station (so those really old ads that tvland shows sometimes wouldn’t count).
Is there even a way to figure this out? Do companies have any control over which one of their commercials a network shows at any given time?
What about the oldest non-updated print ad still in use? The change of a price, phone number or address wouldn’t disqualify an ad, for the purpose of this question, but an update of a slogan or drawing would.
I work in broadcasting. Considering the companies pay for the time on TV, you better believe they know what they’re airing. We have clients that refuse to pay for commercials if we air the wrong one.
Most commercials are coded by what’s called an ISCI code. It’s generally four letters followed by four numbers. On a weekly or monthly basis, broadcast outlets will get copy instructions from advertising agencies (run spot ABCD 1234 at 100% through Such and Such a Date.) It is important to know that just because you get copy instructions it doesn’t mean you have permission to air the commercial. There must also be an order placed for the commercials. If you don’t have that, the commercials don’t get aired. Sometimes the commercial instructions get very complicated. You’ll see this with movies…There’s a Starting on This Date, Starting on Friday, Starting Tomorrow, Now Showing.
A lot of commercials have talent fees that expire after time, so except for the Tootsie Pop commercial or the Coca-Cola Christmas commercial ("I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke) I can’t think of anything that’s an “antique.”
When I lived in Kansas City a few years ago, unaltered retro ads were not uncommon on local television. A 1950s-era Hy-Vee grocery store commercial frequently aired intact. Also airing was a black-and-white 1960s-era commercial for a home improvement contractor, complete with animation typical of the era, and a jingle that included an old-fashioned six-digit phone number, like Delaware-3500 or Hudson-5421. (A new phone number was overlaid on the screen when the jingle gave the old number.)
In ham radio magazines, Burghart Amateur Center ads look like they’ve been running unaltered since the 1950s, with only inventory items and contact information changing. The ads include a very dated logo and 1950s-ish clip art, all presented in an un-ironic way.
BTW, do Canadian television stations still air that Cottonelle toilet tissue commercial where white kittens drag toilet paper throughout the mostly white interior of a foo-foo house? That commercial ran through the 1970s and 1980s.
ivylass, so does run ABCD 1234 at 100% mean that you’re to run the entire ad, and a lesser percentage mean that they want you to run a condensed version of the same commercial?
BTW, do Canadian television stations still air that Cottonelle toilet tissue commercial where white kittens drag toilet paper throughout the mostly white interior of a foo-foo house? That commercial ran through the 1970s and 1980s.
It means for the date range indicated, we are to run that ad for 100% of the spots scheduled. So if the advertising agency wants us to run that particular ad for two weeks at 100%, every time you see the commercial, it’s the same one. If there are three different commercials, we might get instructions to run them at 33/33/33 (for every three spots scheduled, each commercial airs once) or 50/25/25 (for every four spots scheduled, one particular ad runs twice.)
I may be confusing you with my terminology. I get an order to run 100 :30 spots. That means 50 minutes of time is taken up by one advertiser. However, the copy co-ordinator may get instructions to air 10 different pieces of copy for that one advertiser. So when I say “Spot” or “Unit” I mean time that is taken up by one advertiser and “Commercial” or “Copy” refers to what the advertiser wants to air in the :30 they’ve bought.
We don’t run condensed versions of anything unless the client sends it to us that way. You have to keep in mind, we don’t own the commercial. The client does, so we can’t alter it unless they ask us to (adding a local phone number, for example.) We reserve the right not to air a commercial if it doesn’t meet our broadcast standards for either technical or aesthetic reasons.
As mentioned in the other thread, the Discount Tire Ad holds the record for the longest running unaltered ad campaign. Nitpick with the ad- why would the glass just happen to fall so that the name of the store is magically reformed?
Okay it makes sense now. Sometimes I see a long ad on tv that will be shortened after a couple of months, so when I saw the percentage listed I thought that might be a code for the length of the ad that they wanted you to play. I envisioned them sending out the full ad and clipped ad at the same time, and labelling them by percentage, then saying “play the ad at 100% for X days, then play the shortened ad (perhaps called 85%) that we sent you for X days).”
Yes I get that. I was just confused about the terminology. Thanks for clearing it up.
The client might send a :30 version and a :15 version, but unless there are :30 and :15 spots scheduled, we can only air the commercial that matches the length of the spot booked.
Do you want me to get into bookends and piggybacks?
A :15 spot for Product A, followed by two or three :30 spots for other stuff, then either the same or a different :15 spot for Product A?
Every time I see that done, I wonder if the ad agency thinks we all suffer terribly from amnesia and won’t remember that we saw the same spot a minute ago.
For the past few months, I’ve been seeing a commercial for Orville Redenbacher popcorn featuring the man himself. It appears to be unaltered from when it was first produced. Since Orville died in 1995, the ad is over a decade old. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the ad during prime time on network TV.
Ideally, the first commercial for Product A should end with a “cliffhanger,” to be “resolved” with the second commercial for Product A. If it’s the same one it does look like an error. It’s not really a “blipvert,” those are :01 ones that some radio stations are considering airing. They’re really only useful for enforcing name recognition, like the NBC chimes.
Piggybacks, to the viewer, look like one long commercial, but they may be a :60 spot married to a :30 spot, like when you see an ad on FoodTV talking about food safety followed by a commercial for Lysol Wipes.
Slight thread deflection: why do I often see (on a cable channel like USA or Speed) an ad come
on, then it is immediately pre-empted by another ad? Wouldn’t that violate the contracts
mentioned above?
Roy O’Brien Ford was still occasionally airing an old commercial (not regularly) in the 1980s that had been created in 1949 or 1950. I don’t know whether they still ever run it (even for nostalgia) although a tag line from the jingle appears on their web site:
Stay On The Right Track, To Nine Mile & Mack
(Originally:
*Get on the right track
To 9 Mile and Mack
Roy O’Brien’s trucks and cars
Make your money back.
Roy O’Brien’s got them buyin’
Buyin’
They come from many miles away
To save yourself a lot of dollars
Dollars
Try driving out this way today. * )
