Last week on Wammo, Pound and Mash we looked at the early years of Kiwi advertising. This time we look at the rest.
The 70s were years when the film industry started to flourish. Steady work and budgets meant that people could specialise and become professional. And this also holds true for all kinds of creative pursuits, like writing, editing and graphic design.
Ads like the BASF Dear John spot were mini movies. In fact, many ads from the time were full scale productions with large casts and ambition, as you can see in some of the efforts from this collection of ads held at the Film Archive.
This classic for New Zealand tourism seems more likely to scare visitors off than entice them to come. The 70s were obviously pretty kinky too. And it was definitely the era of the jingle, like this cracker for KFC, complete with fat kids concerned about fading away if they didn’t get their KFC fix.
The 80s were a lot of fun. And this ad for Lion 10 captures for me the over the top, laddish, anything goes kitchen sink feel the stories that the gents told at the long lunch episode of the Adshow to celebrate the 50 year anniversary of TVNZ set for me. It is very funny now, a bit sexist, there’s smoking, and pretty much every rule in today’s code about booze advertising is broken.
If the 70s were about finding our voice and the 80s were all about fun, the 90s were the glory days of New Zealand advertising. With work like the Spot the dog ads, Saatchi & Saatchi Wellington was consistently named as a top ten agency in the world. And they also helmed the Instant Kiwi bungee ad and the Fernleaf family saga.
And this hirsute and rather controversial character also made his first appearance?
Special mention was made about the work of Len Potts and we were helped in our research by an interview I did with Roger MacDonnell last year, interviews with Fred Dobbs, Bob Harvey, Len Potts and a few other ad legends.
