A sprint through history (Best / Worst TV Adverts)

Member Name: jesperado

Product:	Best / Worst TV Adverts
Date:	10/01/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Memorable

Disadvantages: Quite long for an ad!

One of my favourite adverts at the moment is the Hovis advert. Hovis have a history of making memorable adverts such as Ridley Scott's advert of a young boy pushing a bicycle carrying loaves of bread up a cobbled street to the score of the 'New World' symphony by Dvorak. There most recent advert however is one of the longest adverts to air on British television at 122 seconds long. Each second is for each of the brands 122 years of making bread. The advert begins in Victorian times and travels through both world wars, the protests of the sufragettes and miners, the 1966 World Cup victory and sixties fashion. The boy runs through the streets with a loaf of bread under his arm as all these scenes merge from one to the next. The sky is full of fireworks to mark the millennium before the boy finally reaches home to give the bread to his mum.

It is a very memorable advert and really hammers home the message that Hovis has remained Britain's favourite for over 100 years. There is a great attention to detail in each scene and it doesn't shy away from showing the more negative events in British history. the boy pauses by the ruins of a house bombed during the Blitz and again pauses as he is caught between the striking pitmen of the miners strike and the riot police. It is a testament to the advert makers that they chose not to gloss over these more unpleasant memories but realised their importance in British history.

Summary: Very memorable