Missing adverts

[Pete H]

Missing adverts

What it s the state of adverts ? Do the advertising agencies hold the originals ?

The reason I ask is that whilst going through some old cassettes, I've uncovered the audio to some TV adverts. These would have been recorded off-air from from some time in 1974. The quality is quite clear, although there appears to be some HT hum in quiet sections. Most are complete but a few are missing a fraction of second at the start.

The adverts are as follows

* Farmers Wife eggs (copmlete voice over by Bernard Cribbens)
* Marathon bar - "comes up peanuts slice after slice" (missing fraction at start)
* Cussons imperial leather - (complete)
* Scalextric ?? - "add to the excitement" (missing start)
* Shell - "Britain goes better with Shell". (missing start)

[Gareth R]

Guest-Pete said:

Missing adverts
What it s the state of adverts ? Do the advertising agencies hold the originals ?

AFAIK the situation is largely similar to programme archives - some things were kept, others junked.

[John G]

I heard that ITV central keeps an archive of adverts, but as Gareth says adverts have been lost and its by no means complete.
The advert archive world does unearth some surprises though. Victor Lewis Smith showed ad for buying BUDGIES! circa 1960s

[Gareth R]

Guest-John said:

I heard that ITV central keeps an archive of adverts

Really? I've never heard of any other ITV broadcaster officially archiving old adverts. LWT certainly doesn't, and never did.

[Laurence Piper]

The ad situation seems to be better than the programmes to a degree though. There are a large quantity that seem to survive from right across the years (as featured in retrospectives, TV Heaven, Washes Whiter etc etc) although these are mainly the filmed ones - most early VT ads seem to have gone (I haven't seen any from the '60s / '70s). I've turned up selections and agency reels of commercials compilations fairly frequently. Where the masters reside seems to be scattered across various locations such as the BFI, ad agencies, history of advertising trust etc. I'm not sure how much of the total putput these represent though and some that do get an airing sometimes seem to be sourced from off-air or early domestic video formats - possibly these are the only reference copies kept by the agencies or product companies.

I understand that the BFI are currently trying to launch a new initiative, setting themselves up as the central archive of film and TV ads. Anyone know any more about this?

[John G]

I think it was the ITV HQ (Hawley Court was it? Hampshire??) that kept a cross section of them.
The later ones were kept on Umatic video which does not appear to age very well, compared even to VHS.

The big brands though , usually have their own archive. I think for example Proctor & Gamble can account for all theirs? They dont tend to look after them though, so what you get from them is greasy films and smeary tapes. Maybe they should try some Fairy Snow on them