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Telling a story in a commercial
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“I wonder if we can pull this off as being some sort of sextology (the 6-version of trilogy? My best guess for the correct word) and tell a story over the course of the 6 ads. The client is flexible and I can pitch this, with the last ad being due in December as the Christmas special. Has anyone done this? I guess it’s a form of branding.
”You never saw the Taster’s Choice” campaign?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Gold Blend couple was a British television advertising campaign for Nescafé Gold Blend instant coffee. The original campaign ran for twelve 45-second installments between 1987 and 1993. It starred Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan as Tony and Sharon, a couple who begin a slow-burning romance over a cup of the advertised coffee. The ads were in a serial format, with each ad ending on a cliffhanger. The commercials were extremely popular, and as time went on, the appearance of a new installment would merit considerable media attention. The ads were developed by McCann Erickson. They are one of the most famous examples of serialized advertising.Beginning in 1990, new versions of the ads were produced for the American market, where Gold Blend was called “Taster’s Choice,” and the ads were referred to as the “Taster’s Choice saga”. Head and Maughan reprised their roles, but used American accents in the reshot ads. After the first two nearly identical ads, the American ads diverged into their own storyline.
The campaign was a remarkable success, producing various tie-in products, including a novelization entitled Love Over Gold by Susan Moody, a video compilation of the ads, and two music CDs. The ads had a notable effect on sales, increasing them over 50% in the UK alone. They have been heralded as a premier example of positioning, creating an atmosphere of sophistication while remaining relatable. They were frequently compared to a soap opera, even sometimes favorably compared to their contemporaries, such as Dynasty, Moonlighting, or thirtysomething. Famously, Head and Maughan appeared on the cover of The Sun after their campaign concluded and the two characters confessed their love for each other.
In later years, there were two additional series of ads starring new couples. The second series starred Louise Hunt and Mark Aiken and focused on a younger, more career-oriented woman, running for six installments until 1997. In 1998, a new version with Simone Bendix and Neil Roberts began, but the campaign was discontinued after only one ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meJDrMW6mns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLRJu-dS704
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No Mark, never knew about the “Gold Blend” series until now… Very good reference! It seems to me like Gold Blend was being marketed as an upscale, fancy coffee for people with refined taste. The overall theme IMO was luxury, taste, class. I like that they focused on that.
For my series of ads, the client is a retail chain and wants to focus on their large selection, friendliness, buying power, 12 thousand distribution centers, employee knowledge and enthusiasm about the products, and that they’re neither a big-box store nor a small boutique, but something right in the middle (just the right size). I don’t know how to get all of those points into a 30-second spot AND tell a story, but we are still working on it.
Lowell Niles
Creative Director, Sunword Studios
https://sunword.com -
I worked on a radio campaign for a company like that one time. They wanted to stand apart from the big box stores but show that thru a dealer network, they could compete on products and prices, and they wanted to stress that they were a reliable, trusted and knowledgeable town institution going ‘way back 2 generations.
What I came up with was I interviewed the two sons, now running the family business, and wrote scripts that played on the dynamic between them, trying for a homespun, friendly rivalry theme, where the older brother played more or less the straight man for the younger brother’s more enthusiastic approach to things. This let each brother represent different aspects and features of the business thru their personalities. The trick was not to take it too far into goofiness on the younger brother’s part, or to make the older brother too stiff and humorless. And to make the spots real conversations, not two guys reading script copy.
I went thru a lot of work to develop the campaign in stages, getting each “chapter” to lead to another week’s spots and specials, pretty much swiping the Gold Blend model ( if you crossed it with Prairie Home Companion, maybe).
The brothers, enthusiastic at first, took my complete package to their dad, who was still the tie-breaker behind the scenes, for his blessing. He said it wasn’t hard-sell. I countered that it was “smart-sell”: rewarding the listeners attention and entertaining them, in a way they wouldn’t tune-out, so that even if they weren’t in the market for an appliance, *today*, the store name would stick, and would be top-of-mind when they DID need an appliance, *tomorrow*.
In the end, the brothers passed on my campaign and offered me some store credit by way of making things even. I didn’t need any app;dances at the time so I let it go. Three weeks later, I hear a re-cut, much abbreviated attempt at the same type of spots I’d pitched the appliance guys, only done by the local shlock radio guy. But the guy pirating my playbook didn’t have the research and deeper understanding I had, he’d tried to graft my homespun guys theme onto a hard sell message to please the dad, and it didn’t really work. The mutant version of my campaign didn’t last very long at all. The appliance store didn’t last much longer than that, either, but I think it was because dad never did really “retire” to let the sons run the biz, and they each had disparate visions of how that should work.
Epilog: I was still able to enter the original scripts I’d written into a regional contest, and they won a first place in the radio script copy category, even though they’d never been produced and aired my way. I got a hoot out of that.
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Your story reminds me of the guys who do “Car Talk”. Great radio show. I’m glad you got some positive affirmation in the end.
I can’t tell you how many times pitches my team was sure would be a hit have been rejected in favor of the old fashioned, hard-sell, formulaic approach. I keep a notebook and save my ideas for other clients. We were able to produce ads that got millions of views on youtube and other outlets, so this is what I point clients to when they balk at our ideas.
Anyway, sorry to digress the thread from the original posts!
Lowell Niles
Creative Director, Sunword Studios
https://sunword.com
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