This Aqua Di Gio ad is from a pic taken by Herb Ritts in 1997. It’s still in magazines all the time, much to my delight because that guy is hot and the cologne smells really good.
I remember seeing that Oil of Olay commercial with Virginia (“Miss Fitzhenry?”) Hey over quite a few years and it was Australian so it likely ran there for a while too.
Virginia’s hot.
I don’t know, but I’d like to add that I’m also curious about this. When I lived in Fort Riley, Kansas, this was probably the norm rather than a once and awhile thing, and they (Charter Cable) went crazy pre-empting commercials. A lot of the time they would screw up and have the audio from one commercial playing over the video of a completely different one. Hilariously often, it would be the sound of a commercial for Charter itself playing over the video for Directv or Dish Network or something. I say hilarious but they probably did it on purpose. Is it not breaking the contract if you ‘air’ the commercial, but run the audio for a Charter ad on top of it?
If the original ad is on a broadcast station that is included in the cable package according to the contract with the local community, the cable company may have no business relationship with the advertiser. In that case, it might be that the cable company has the right to sell their own time for that slot, but does not have the technical competence to make it a seamless overlay.
This is a WAG.
In this link I posted and ad for IDEAL.
Here’s a website with the jingle!
http://mcnally.cc/ideal.htm
Excerpts from the (1950s?) Aeroplane Jelly and Vegemite advertisements still show up on Australian television.
This is really interesting. Thanks ivylass!
Talk some more…
So what’s the deal when two different 10-or-15 second spots for the same product air back-to-back in the same commercial break, as I have been seeing for at least 15 years?
Those are piggybacks. Sometimes they’re sent separately, sometimes the client edits them into one :30 spot.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread…keep talking about oldest commercials!
John DiFool, what you’re seeing is a local cable commercial. The cable outlets (USA, TNT, TBS, ESPN, etc) set aside a certain amount of time each hour for the local cable outlets (Comcast, Adelphia, Brighthouse, DishTV) to air local commercials. Joe’s Auto Shop, for instance, can’t afford to run in a national show, but they can have their commercial aired during the local break. What you’re seeing is a lag time between the cable network and the outlet. The cable network sends a tone (called a cue tone) that is supposed to trigger the local cable outlet that it is time to Insert Local Commercial Here. After the time (usually a minute, but it varies) another tone is sent down that says Okay, Come Back to Our Show Now. If the cable outlet isn’t in sync with the cue tones, you’ll see a bit of the commercial the cable network airs in their local break, in case the cable outlet chooses not to use it for local businesses. After all, you can’t sit in black hoping every single cable outlet that your network runs on will use the local time.
The advertisers that run in the local breaks on cable networks know their commercials may be covered up by the cable outlets.
No, feel free to answer the questions. You have lots of interesting info to share.
“Does your home need a little repair?”
“KAW!!!”
<jingle>
“For better living now,
and better values later…
Call STANDARD!
::bum ba bum ba bum::
IMPROVEMENT COMP-NY”
“At Westport, 1- 7 100”
I’ve been singing along to this commercial since I was a little girl. I still find it rather charming. Here it is, for your entertainment.
Funny. No, as it now airs, it ends just after the owl hands the kid back the lollypop stick and the kid looks at the camera with a mildly disgusted expression. As I remember the original ad, there was a voiceover announcement and a closeup of the Tootsie Pop. Or am I misremembering it?
Thats the way I remember it too. It ends with a close up of a wrapped tootsie pop, and the wrapper floats up off of the sucker as the voice over says “the world may never know.”
And I think the candy shell gets cracked in half as if some invisible person has bitten it.
Chicago dopers will know this one. There’s a commercial for an auto salvage company that’s been running unchanged for at least 17 years (that’s how long I’ve been here. I assume it’s even longer) with the same footage of a guy hesitantly opening the door of his 70’s Dodge or whatever, having the door fall off, then cutting to a tow truck driver handing him a stack of twenties.
I often wonder if the bad actor playing the driver is still even alive.
There’s a commercial from the National Arbor Day Foundation that has been airing since I was a kid. It’s got a cardinal (the bird) in a top hat singing a song about trees. Damnit, now the song is stuck in my head.
In looking for the history of commercial campaigns I ran across this morbid bit of trivia: The first “Mr. Clean” was murdered in 1964.
His name was Antonio Provenzano and he never got around to telling Proctor and Gamble that his other job was bodyguard for Carlo Gambino. For various reasons it seems Mr. Gambino had Provenzano rubbed out.
How about that. . .The first Mr. Clean was dirty!
No.
Victory Auto Wreckers.
According to the Wiki, it has run since 81 and the actor was alive and well in 05.
I seem to recall a print reference in the Trib more recently than that.
The wiki links ot a Quicktime vid.
I found 2 vectors for this story, but nothing that smells remotely of cite. I doubt it for several reasons:
- The name is similar to Anthony Provenzano, boss of the Genovese mob. “Tony Pro” is famous as one of the 2 people to meet with Jimmy Hoffa at the latter’s fateful Michigan lunch date.
- There are already too many “famous person was product spokesman” and/or “product spokesman suffers oogy fate” stories. It just falls in line with a well traveled path in legendry.
- If Papa Gambino truly valued Antonio’s services as bodyguard, why would he let him out of his sight for long enough to make TV commercials?
Still snopes.com and alt.folklore.urban haven’t touched it…and maybe they know better than to try. :dubious: Don’t want nobody should get hurt or nuttin’, capeesh?