When I read Rachel's highly interesting post about the death of Maurice Drake, creator of the Heinz Beanz slogan, I thought about advertisement - as funny as in Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey - novel "Murder Must Advertise" or as impressive as the above one - created by Charles Wilp.
I looked that one up on Youtube and beg you to watch it till the end. It is - and there I am utterly sure - one that will bring the political correctness-police into the arena - well: we enjoyed it immensely (and drank Coca Cola - the artistic video did not change our habits).
I am so glad to have been young in a wonderful time like that (even if you could take the video with a grain of salt - but look at the fashion! The make-up! You were allowed to be sexy! Men too! Me too! 😂)
Some of the (not highly intellectual) slogans here: "Girl power - woman's lib: Marriage or no marriage - that is no longer the question" "Woman becomes woman - and free" - "People who enjoy their time consciously - being in their right mind" (hahaha)
Thank you Britta. I had to look up Afri Cola first. before I could understand the adverts as I did not know it was real as a drink. I loved to see this and am quite blown away in fact. I like it that it is art in my eyes as well and a time long gone. Xx
ReplyDeleteI am glad you like it, Rachel. I loved your post today very much.
DeleteAfri Cola's image was always "second best" - it never reached Coca Cola, though they tried hard. And being yourself an artist you saw why they cannot just delete the video nowadays - it residents in the art sector.
I liked the angst-ridden music. Very refreshing, just like the drink.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Tom - the music is specially hyped - and with tongue in cheek as the whole video. Though it is good that today nobody would use the slogan then being popular in Germany for stewardesses (in the video shortened to "Tea, coffee, or... (me)?"
DeleteWhich one of those young ladies is you?
ReplyDeleteMake an educated guess, Tasker! :-)
DeleteGermany's answer to Joanna Lumley.
DeleteWow, Tasker, I'm stunned: I adore her, thank you!
DeleteI'm surprised it was only second. A commercial like that would have a lot of people racing to buy Afri Cola.
ReplyDeleteDear Mimmylynn, I understand the surprise. Maybe people use what they are used to use (sorry, that sounds a bit strange) - I mean: they pay lots of money for a bag that in my eyes is not the most beautiful one (and wait on a list for months to get it though they pay lots and lots of money) - because the image or the habit are so dominant?
DeleteWe had dinner in a Schnitzel Haus last night and on their wall of old German adverts and plates and car decals, there it was. An advert for Afri-cola.
ReplyDeleteMusic was kind of horror movie
Dear 50 and counting (by the way, I love that title of your blog - we don't wear an invisibility cloak if we stand up and refuse it!) - that is really a coincidence! The founder of the Schnitzel Haus must have collected that in the Sixties.
DeleteAs to the music: maybe the composer thought of a bad trip :-)
How ads have changed. Afri Cola equals sexy cola. Even sexy nuns like Afri Cola. This made me laugh. The lack of PC is refreshing.
ReplyDeleteDear Susan, that was exactly what I try to imagine nowadays: sexy nuns! Disgusting! Hurtful and detrimental! Ha!
DeleteIn Germany we say about a very grave person: "He/she goes down into the cellar to laugh". I laugh a lot - and as I say: take things with a grain of salt.
And if there is too much earnestness, I slip into a bath with BadeDas (hahaha - do you remember that advertisement?), and if it becomes worse, I go to Frank S. Thorn and his Polar Bear and ask if he might give me a drop of his vodka (hope that advertisement was international - otherwise you might think: "What is Britta bubbling in her BadeDas-Bath???"
Quite extraordinary - like an arthouse film at the end. I rather agree about the overreach of woke and pc attitudes. It's not that we don't need to progress and improve - far from it, there is more we should do - but I do wish we had a more understanding (and perhaps lighter hearted) perspective of the past.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the need of progress and improvement - but in the hand of prim prudes it becomes ridiculous. In Hannover the Court quashed an objection of a man against the "Afro-look- hair-style" an actress wore - he pleading that she was robbing the culture of Africans, and only Africans should be allowed to wear that. (At that moment I saw Robinson sentenced to send Friday away).
DeleteI hate ban of thinking, though I value decency and respect.
And not to forget in this vale of tears: fun and joy.
Goodness, this man really needs to get out a bit more! Has he never met any of the many non-Africans with the same kind of hair? His lawyers were very naughty to allow him to try to pursue this in the Courts - money before scruples!
DeletePip: one cannot believe what people try to bring to Court! My son and my daughter in Love are both judges (though she stays at home for the moment with the triplets), and thus I know a bit of how full the desks are with complaints and bizarre cases, making those "real" ones to be tackled late.
DeleteOh Britta, this advertisement is hysterical! And is it non-PC to say that I thinks it's also very German?! This ad comes a bit before my time but it makes think of the German band Silver Convention a bit later. My parents had one of their albums and I used to think the women on the album sleeve were the height of Glamour!
ReplyDeleteDear Pip, that is a completely fascinating (and new) way to describe the Germans! If we are like that, I am happy to be one -- (after hearing what you see as "very German").
ReplyDeleteHahaha - "A prophet has no honour in his own country" - I had to google "Silver Convention" (I was a Stones-Lover :-), and this kind of music "Fly robin, fly" I always thought "taarsome", as Georgie would say.
But when I watched the video I discovered something else: the three singers have the same "choreography" that we had to use in a wonderful job during vacation in my student's days in the mid-Seventies: I was model&dancer in a German-wide show for advertising some kinds of threads - Dralon, Perlon, what do I know. One scene showed me lying on a couch, big saxophone fanfare, then I raised one leg (of course in glamorous slacks) and a dancer came and lifted me up (dancers usually are not very tall - I am proud 1,78m - though slim).
My friend Anthea and I thought that job phantasic: new cities, big hotels, lots of fun and - for us - a lot of money (looking back at the professional models and dressmen I think: So good that I've been spared a second-class career as model).
Ah, synthetic fabrics, so accommodating for high-kicking in slacks! What adventures you've had in your girlhood! It would be so fun if there were some clips on the youtuberies to see you at "work"!
DeleteYes, Silver Convention et al fall squarely into the category of Disco Infero taarsomeness :)
Dear Pip, I still have an adventurous life!
ReplyDeleteBefore Corona I was silver-model for (sorry, not p.c.) leather and fur fashion - and I miss the fun. On youtube there is only one clip when in Hamburg someone interviewed me during a reading of Roger Moore. (If I find it I might post it; and another in Hamburg when they asked me how I drink my Nespresso - without George Clooney, I'm sorry to say :-)