David Farnor | On 05, Jul 2019

The BFI National Archive is opening up its library of screen adverts to stream on BFI Player.

One of the world’s largest screen advertising collections, the archive holds over 100,000 cinema and television ads ranging from iconic brands, including Guinness, Cadbury’s, Shell, Heinz, Persil, Hovis, Kelloggs and Coca-Cola, to more obscure products – Andrews Liver Salts or CDF Dog Food, anyone?

Working with regional and national archive partners across the UK, the BFI has digitised 300 adverts for BFI Player. With the earliest advert on film dating from 1898 (Vinolia Soap) to the late 1980s, Commercial Break: British Advertising on Screen traces the history, overarching themes and development of the art of British screen advertising from its earliest days, finding maturity with the rise of the cinema in the 1930s and going on to transform the commercial television viewing experience with the launch of ITV in 1955.
 
Providing snapshots of what we ate, how we travelled and the lives we aspired to, this collection includes classic campaigns from the golden age of advertising in the 1970s and 1980s from the likes of Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) and J. Walter Thompson, featuring early work by Sir Ridley Scott (The Boy on the Bike, 1973), Hugh Hudson (Fiat Strada: Figaro, 1979) and Tony Scott (SAAB: New Delivery, 1985).  The collection also showcases unexpected delights from established directors, including Nicolas Roeg’s Guinness: Hop Farm (1974), Lindsay Anderson’s Black Magic: Taxi (1964), Joseph Losey’s Silvikrin Shampoo (1964) and theatre legend Joan Littlewood’s Egg Marketing Board: Sheila  (1964).
 
Famous faces onscreen include Tony Hancock, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Sheila Sim, John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Beryl Reid, Sammy Davis Jr, Googie Withers, Geoff Hurst, George Best and Margaret Lockwood as well as before-they-were-famous appearances by Anna Karina, Michael Caine and Terry Thomas.
 
Women have long been a target of screen advertising, selling everything from baked beans and washing powders to labour-saving devices to help lighten the domestic load. Interestingly, in a male dominated advertising industry, this collections tells (and sells) a positive story of social progress for women, with increasing social and economic independence, tracking the ups and downs of female empowerment in the 20th century, with its false steps as revealing as its forward ones.
 
BFI National Archive Curator Steve Foxon says: “There’s an art to selling, as any ad man or woman will tell you. Britain’s screen advertising has been a central part of the British film story since its earliest days, It found its feet in the cinema, transformed television and its ripples have even influenced Hollywood.
 
“A perfect blend of nostalgia, salesmanship and craftsmanship, screen advertising at its best is incredibly potent, affecting our emotions as well as holding a mirror up to reflect society’s changing aspirations, values, fears and desires. Few films can capture all this in such a compact and expressive format.”
 
Commercial Break: British Advertising on Screen highlights the evolution of the UK’s extraordinarily dynamic industry across the twentieth century, showcasing the astonishing variety of approaches, strategies and tricks advertisers have used over the decades for us to part us with our money, entertaining us even as they subtly manipulate us with promises of a new, tastier, brighter, cleaner, healthier and better lifestyle.
 
You can watch the collection at https://player.bfi.org.uk/

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