Tag Archives: MAA blast from the past

Mobile brand Orange (it still exists in France) is much missed in the UK, absorbed into the great blob of EE. But its 1980s launch was an example of WCRS at its best and later it moved its efforts to ...

Everybody was swinging in the mini-skirted ’60s it seems, even charity Oxfam. Here’s an ad for Vintage at Oxfam, which seems to have been an early chain of charity shops. A reminder to today’s charity advertisers to think outside the ...

Tango HHCL 1992. I can’t believe it’s almost 30 years since the orange man ran onto TV screens across Britain to slap a Tango drinker’s face. It feels way more contemporary than that. It turned everything on its head. Not ...

Ridley Scott’s legendary ‘1984’ Super Bowl commercial for Apple is supposed to have only run the once (job – or Jobs – done.) Actually it debuted on an out of the way cable channel late the year before so it ...

Seems odd to pick a bank campaign for one of these but Lowe’s work for HSBC ten years or more ago was outstanding – “the world’s local bank.” Then HSBC (Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation) decided, as bankers do, ...

Stella Artois’ ‘Reassuring Expensive’ campaign by Lowe Howard-Spink kept the brand at the top of the UK tree long after it started to be made in the UK (as opposed to Belgium) and wasn’t that good any more. The campaign, ...

This is about as good as it gets, BETC Paris’ multi-award winner for Canal+,’The Bear,’ back in 2011. It’s beautifully crafted by Technicolor studio Mikros (best known for its feature films), funny and original. Director Mathijs Van Henningen perfectly captures ...

BBC ‘Perfect Day’ Leagas Delaney 1997. “My ‘blast from the past’ has to be 1997’s Perfect Day, directed by Gregory Rood for the BBC. A somewhat strange brief, it was ostensibly created as a charity single to raise money for ...

MAA could probably fill a few dozen “Blast from the Past” columns with John Webster commercials but the one that stands out for me is from around 1980 for John Smith’s Bitter. It features the lovely flat-capped Gordon Rollings and ...