On the 70th Anniversary of the First UK TV Ad, What’s Changed (and What Hasn’t)?

But there’s also plenty to mark it out as what it is: a TV ad for toothpaste. “It’s tingly fresh, it’s fresh as ice, it’s Gibbs SR toothpaste,” the voiceover reads. Close-up product shots give way to an attractive woman brushing her teeth. A presumably not-all-too-accurate bar chart compares the effects of tooth decay and gum infection on tooth loss. An almost unpronounceable chemical is credited with the brilliance of the product.

Yes, although 1955 was long enough ago to have brought Winston Churchill’s retirement, the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the opening of the first Disneyland, the UK’s first TV ad already bore plenty of the hallmarks we still see today.

70 years of UK TV ads: A potted history

Though the first TV ad in the UK, that Gibbs SR toothpaste spot was by no means the first TV ad in the world or the first British filmed commercial. By 1955, American television networks had been broadcasting ads for 14 years, starting with a commercial on WNBT (now WNBC) for Bulova Watches in 1941. In the UK, cinema advertising had been running for decades, but TV ads were impossible until the 1954 Television Act created the Independent Television Authority and with it ITV, alongside the ad-less BBC. (The Act passed only after years of debate and only did so on the proviso that commercialization wouldn’t follow the American path and that ads would be clearly differentiable from programming.)

That first ad, created by Young & Rubicon copywriter Brian Palmer, won its position in a lottery with 23 other ads. Response was, apparently, muted: that night, it was overshadowed by the death of Grace Archer on radio soap The Archers; a write-up in the following day’s Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) from Bernard Levin minimizes the moment: “I feel neither depraved nor uplifted by what I have seen... certainly the advertising has been entirely innocuous. I have already forgotten the name of the toothpaste.”

According to former adman and historian of advertising Graham Thomas, the fundamentals of the TV ad were set quickly after that first debut. “While the TV ad has evolved, this is more to do with style rather than changing the fundamental building blocks,” he says. “To be successful, it needs first to grab attention. The executional devices to do that have remained the same over the years (in no particular order): a celebrity presenter; an animated character; a catchy jingle, music track or some sort of verbal mnemonic.”

Ads of the 1950s, Thomas says, took their cues from well-established principles across the pond. “Because American TV advertising had been around for longer, it acted as a template for the early British ads: a direct, in-your-face hard sell, led by a besuited male presenter. (Rarely a woman.)” With a thriving animation industry and the high costs of film production, animation quickly became popular; learning from radio, jingles found a home on TV. Towards the end of that decade, Thomas says, an influx of skilled directors and dedicated agencies started to create a “thoroughly British” alternative to the American style: “Colloquial, easy to watch but most importantly to enjoy.”

The 1960s brought a formalization of the industry behind the ads. 1962 brought the founding of Design and Art Direction (D&AD), a focal point for commercial work that stimulated the desire for award-winning work in TV ads. There followed a golden age, birthing legends from the PG Tips chimps to the Milkybar Kid. “These were campaigns that ran over a number of years (some over decades) and most featured some form of iconography: a personality, a celebrity, some form of personification or anthropomorphism of the brand and a whistleable tune,” says Thomas.

Further professionalization came in the 1970s, with the arrival of ambitious young directors like Ridley Scott, who would later recall: “It was very competitive and very creative; it was an exciting period for advertising. Probably the most exciting ever.” By this point, the bona fides were set, says Thomas. On the output of the decade, he adds: “All much loved, but nothing radical.”

The 1980s followed with increased production values and long-running campaigns. Even the 90s, Thomas says, delivered flickers of change but a familiar baseline: “Slowly, a greater diversity was appearing, but it came baby step by baby step. Yet what was one of the most popular campaigns in the 90s, Gary Lineker’s Walkers Crisps, was just a simple celebrity in a simple setup.”

Since the 90s, we’ve of course seen repeated media revolutions that have changed linear TV advertising’s place in the marketing ecosystem, but what about the TV ads themselves? Formats are changing, Thomas says – he calls out ITV’s embrace of branded entertainment (advertiser-funded programming) and an increase in cheaply made “moving forms of brochureware” as examples.

But it’s also since the 90s that large-scale quantitative testing has also taken off, giving us a closer picture of these shifts. But what are the biggest shifts? We asked research org Kantar to take a look at the data.

1. Yes, ads have been getting a little less funny

Lynne Deason, head of creative excellence at Kantar, says that “the use of humor has declined dramatically in TV over the years.”

Kantar’s data shows that in 1990, 76% of TV ads were funny. That number has been steadily falling; last year, it was only 41%. Deason says humor has become even less prevalent in other channels.

Why that’s happened is anyone’s guess, but it’s certainly not because funny ads perform badly, says Deason. According to both Kantar’s own data and research by the IPA, she says, “funny ads are more effective in both the short and long term.”

“Humor gets put into a box where people don’t think it can do certain things,” says Deason. “But it can.” Take, for example, a series of both funny and effective ads for Nationwide staring Dominic West: despite a regulatory wobble, Deason says, they were both funny and effective in a category that might be dismissed as too serious for humor. Instead, Deason says, “people should take humor more seriously”.

2. The death of the jingle

Though many of the marketing artefacts that have wormed themselves most deeply into our brains (for this writer, it’s ‘Autoglass repair, Autoglass replace'), jingle use has also fallen off a cliff. 10% of TV ads had a jingle in 1990. Now, it’s 2% (although 80% of ads feature music).

For Deason, this is another mistake. While presumably attributable to “a feeling that it’s old hat and just not the way you do things now,” Deason says she’d “campaign to bring back jingles,” not only as a reliable route to brand recall but as a safe shot at maximizing a key component of effectiveness: enjoyment. Coca-Cola’s Christmas ad unsurprisingly tests as one of the most enjoyable spots every year, thanks in large part to that track.

“It’s generally but not always better for people to enjoy advertising,” says Deason. “What really matters is that people feel something and they feel it powerfully.” A jingle can still be a shortcut to that enjoyment.

3. Synergy is more important than ever

Some of the most effective TV ads have long told a narrative over years or even decades (think the Oxo family). But according to Kantar’s data, in a modern world of diverse and fragmented media, telling a consistent platform across platforms is more important than ever. According to analysis of campaign reach and influence, the ‘synergy’ of working across multiple channels was responsible for 18% of campaign effectiveness in 2018, and accounts for around 41% now.

Good TV advertising could once be just good TV advertising, in other words. Now, it’s good in part because of how it works in relation to wider activity.

Deason notes an uptick in using TV ads as the centerpiece of a wider effort that aims not purely at entertainment, but experience. Cadbury’s Secret Santa, for example: it’s still TV that forms the focal point. “TV still has fame,” says Deason. “It’s still great at building enduring memories. And yes, the TV landscape is evolving, becoming more connected, but TV is still so powerful.”

4. Forget entering culture – ads are culture

While modern marketers fret over ‘entering culture,’ Deason says that one of the most significant shifts is in how we think about TV ads – “an awakening of the responsibility that creating advertising brings – well, a responsibility and an opportunity”.

“TV advertising is part of culture. It springboards from culture, it reflects culture, but it also shapes culture,” says Deason. That has always been true. But it’s only recently that we’ve been able to quantify it – and, from Kantar’s testing, it seems that “tapping into culture is becoming more important” to the effectiveness of a campaign.

One way in which advertising has started to do a better job of reflecting culture is, of course, in a greater effort to make diverse, inclusive and equitable work. But while DEI has become a political football this year in particular, Deason’s data shows that going beyond straightforward inclusion to an attempt to celebrate culture’s diversity in ads is a sound strategy in the quest for effectiveness too: “What our data shows is it isn’t just about inclusion. If we look at ads that are inclusive versus ads that aren’t, you don’t see an uplift in effectiveness. Where the real secret is in portraying people positively. That means really understanding the audience, portraying them authentically, seeing humans for how rich and interesting they are and not just for one dimension of their personality and their identity.”

70 years on, Deason says, TV remains both one of the most effective and one of the most rewarding places to do that kind of work. “You’ve got to be bold, you’ve got to be creative and you’ve got to tap into culture today to be successful. But it isn’t just about selling products. It’s part of our culture. In Britain, we can still be massively proud of this industry and what it does and a lot of the advertising that gets created.”