Tag Archives: MAA blast from the past

Mad Man. Booze. Fags.. In his inimitable wisdom, Stephen has asked me to contribute to the on-going series “MAA blasts from the past.” As I have more of a past than just about anyone reading this, it should be a ...

For me, nothing sums up Brexit Britain quite so perfectly as this comic gem from HHCL in 1996. In what first seems like a cringey corporate video, we are introduced to Tango spokesman Ray Gardner, a heady mix of David ...

My friend and long-time MAA supporter Bob Collins recommends these venerable communications: Strand cigarettes from Ogilvy, often described as adland’s biggest own goal, and all-conquering Daz. “You’re never alone with a Strand” it said, but you were as it flopped. ...

Here’s a blast from the past that actually changed things, Apple’s ‘I’m a Mac’ campaign from TBWA which ran (I think) between 2006 and 2009. In those days (pre-iPhone) Apple was the young pretender to the mighty Microsoft and this ...

This is about as woke-free as it gets, A Benson & Hedges Silk Cut cinema ad from 1970 from the clearly over-stimulated psyches of CDP’s Paul Weiland and Graham Fink. Zulu had been one of the big hit films of ...

Heineken 1985 by Lowe Howard-Spink I joined Gold Greenlees Trott (GGT) in 1984 and found a place with widely diverging social backgrounds from Dave Trott’s proletariat view of the world versus my assistant Bella who was from the Hanson family, ...

I remember so many bad ads from childhood. Take the Vortex one, where a woman visits a “bleach lab” and asks a boffin with a Petri dish and a weird voice which one performed best, “S’Vortex” he says. My brother ...

Renault from 1986 by McCormick Publicis They really don’t make them like this any more – a little drama in 60 seconds. Beautiful craft in the writing and production, perfectly cast, with believable characters and a wryly amusing twist in ...

We’re re-running some older faves as striking new campaigns are rather thin on the ground and here’s an oldie from 1976, Honey Monster from the great Boase Massimi Pollitt, probably the best TV agency under creative director John Webster. But ...