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In marketing, we all pay lip service to the need for long-term

consistency.

Great brands, we claim, do not chop and change their images at the drop

of a storyboard. New marketing directors and trendy creative fashions

may come and go, but successful brands hold steadfast to their core

values.

But do we practise what we preach? How consistent are we really, over

the long haul?

To explore these questions I visited the History of Advertising Trust

(HAT) archive in Norfolk and selected a group of ads from its

magnificent collection. HAT holds more than two million ads and other

marketing communications, from 1800AD to the present day, so there was

no dearth of choice.

This year marks HAT's 25th birthday, so as a celebratory gesture I

picked ads for eight strong brands from 1976, the year of its birth, and

compared them with current ads from the same eight advertisers. It was

not intended to be a quantitative statistical sample, more of a focus

group.

In addition to its galaxy of print ads, posters and commercials, HAT's

archive now contains background research data on many of the campaigns

it holds, plus one of the finest advertising libraries; it is easily

referenced and accessible. There could hardly be a better place to begin

an investigation of long-term advertising consistency.

When HAT was conceived, advertising was in the throes of a

revolution.

Consumers' increasing affl-uence and knowledge meant they were becoming

less interested in the minutiae of product specifications, typically

communicated in words, and more interested in brands and branding,

typically communicated in imagery.

Reflecting this trend, ads stopped being 'words with pictures

attached'.

Instead they began to fuse words and pictures into single, sophisticated

messages. Smart advertisers integrated this fundamental change

seamlessly into their advertisements - proving good brand management can

navigate its way through sea changes in advertising fashion.

The evidence of this study suggests that while successful brands

continuously change their campaigns, their tone of voice hardly wavers.

Few if any brands persistently hit the top notes, but in the words of

the great Leo Burnett, those advertisers who always reach for the stars

rarely come up with a handful of mud. Great brands stick to their

knitting.

Thanks for your unstinting help, History of Advertising Trust. Your own

place in the history of advertising is assured.

Winston Fletcher is vice-president of HAT. The HAT archive is open to

all. For more information visit the web site: hatads.org.uk

Pretty Polly

When HAT was born the young Collett, Dickenson and Pearce agency was

leading Britain's creative revolution and Pretty Polly was one of its

showcase accounts along with Heineken and Benson & Hedges.

In 1976, this svelte ad scooped up just about every creative gong

going.

Verbally deft and visually stunning - a perfect fusion of words and

picture - it confronted emerging feminism in a way over-zealous

feminists found hard to refute. It was sexy without being male

chauvinist, crude or offensive.

Consequently it was the subject of high-profile media controversy and

heated debate among the chattering classes - its target market.

It was an almost perfect fashion ad - memorable, provocative, and

relevant to the brand and to its time. Pretty Polly's ads, now by TBWA,

have never since been quite so feisty, but they have consistently been

brave, contemporary and sexy.

Guinness

Guinness recognised the power of visual, rather than mainly verbal,

communicat-ions long before most other advertisers. The famous John

Gilroy Guinness for Strength posters of the 30s, described by David

Ogilvy as the finest posters ever created, were masterpieces of design.

When its next slogan, Guinness is Good For You was banned by the ASA in

the 70s, it seemed to lose the plot for a while, but never its faith in

tasty creativity, such as the above 1976 ad by J Walter Thompson Recent

ads have marked a return to top advertising - Sunday Times readers last

year voted Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO's 'Surfer' the best ad ever

made.

Sony

From the start, the creativity of its ads, like the above spot by BBDO,

has helped Sony punch well above its weight. Contrary to most consumers'

beliefs, Sony is not of the largest Japanese behemoths. Next to many of

its competitors it is, like most of its products, small but perfectly

formed. Its far-sighted founder Akio Morita recognised the need for

brilliant brand advertising. Initially employing small budgets, Sony

used John Cleese, and then Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones, to enormous

effect on radio.

As it moved on to other media, its ads won awards. Sony shows the power

of truly creative ads - the above is by Saatchi & Saatchi.

Halifax

After the Second World War, advertising was dominated by FMCG brands,

particularly groceries. But by the mid-70s competition was starting to

hot up in financial services. The start, it must be said, was pretty

tentative.

Almost unbelievably, for many years all the high street banks worked

with the same agency - no worry about competitive accounts there,

then.

One of the fundamental difficulties for financial advertisers is that

key brand differences are based on customer service and attitude, which

are hard to encapsulate in advertising - and harder still to

deliver.

Halifax Building Society was one of the first to address this dilemma

with its 'You'll get a little extra help' campaign. But that wasn't

until 1979. In 1976 its advertising, left, by Brunnings, was about as

stirring as a low-interest investment.

In the mid-90s it lost its way again, but the Halifax has never

mortgaged its faith in knock-out creativity, and its current campaign,

by Delaney Lund Knox Warren, starring selected employees, has put it

back at the top of the awareness charts.

Special K

Nutritionists and food consumption campaigners like to imply that

gluttony is a recent phenomenon, provoked and promoted by

advertising.

Codswallop. One glance at the 1976 Special K advertisement by J Walter

Thompson is a salutary reminder that the existence of tubbies has little

or nothing to do with TV.

Slimming product ads have to choose whether to visualise delectable

perfection or the realistically achievable. Special K has consistently

opted for delectable perfection.

But one aspect of its ads has subtly changed over the years, in the

opposite direction to what might have been expected. As society

increases its emphasis on health and fitness, you might have expected

Special K's more recent ads to show sport-fanatics working out in the

gym. Instead the latest campaign by J Walter Thompson reflects slimness

as a fashion accessory.

Few advertisers do more research than Kellogg, so its findings must

confirm the continuing relevance of Shakespeare's advice: 'Vanity,

vanity, all is vanity'.

Heineken

Heineken was another Collett, Dickenson and Pearce triumph, and a

perfect example both of long-term campaign-building and of words and

pictures working in concert.

Standing alone, the famous slogan makes little sense. The visuals

deliver the meaning and the whole is far greater than the sum of its

refreshing parts.

Poor old Humpty Dumpty demonstrates this to perfection. 'Refreshes' must

rank as one of the outstanding long-running campaigns of the past 50

years - if not all time. It began even before HAT itself, in 1974.

Thereafter each round of new ads, such as the one by Lowe Lintas shown

on the right, refreshed the campaign, keeping it alive and well.

During that time it built a high quality, but relatively

undistinguished, lager into a brand leader, and kept sales frothing.

Like all ad campaigns, even the very greatest, it eventually went a bit

flat. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Heineken has yet to come up with an equal

successor. But Heineken's creativity, like its beer, has never lost its

sparkle.

Benson & Hedges

When cigarettes were banned from the small screen in 1965, cigar

advertising was at first allowed to continue, cigars being deemed

healthier than cigarettes. Consequently, the tobacco companies dragged

out new TV campaigns for their cigars, particularly those that happened

to share their names and packaging with cigarette brands.

Benson & Hedges' cigar commercials, again created by Collett, Dickenson

and Pearce, built on the tradition for creativity established by earlier

B&H fag ads. The films were little epic dramas mirroring the style of

the cigarette's final TV executions, breathing life into both products

by building on B&H's established brand values.

The CDP campaigns for B&H were among the wittiest on the box. The TV

spot shown above features George Cole playing a hapless spy who rolls up

a map and puts it in his cigar packet for his colleague to find.

Unfortunately he gives it to the wrong man, who lights it like a cigar,

before we see the real spy arrive. Cole's expression is priceless; as

gems of advertising these ads are sadly missed.

Heinz

What does not merely collect the outstanding ads, which are recorded in

awards annuals and elsewhere. It holds advertising of all kinds - good,

bad and indifferent. Once upon a time, in the era of Beanz Meanz Heinz,

Heinz ads were a byword for creativity such as the camp-aign above, by

Doyle Dane Bernbach.

Despite current creative work by Leo Burnett for Heinz Salad Cream,

Heinz has become a fairly conventional food advertiser: yum-yum

photography and a pleasing headline. Nothing wrong with that, but such

ads hardly set the taste buds aflame. Well that's my view. You may find

them scrumptious.