No, this is not me getting all Proust on you. Or maybe it is. I’ve never read Proust, so you’ll have to tell me. It’s mostly the heat getting to me. Or something.

I am “of the right vintage” to actually remember cigarette ads on television. One of the brands that still comes to mind every now and then is Benson & Hedges. Their “hook” was that their main product, the “100”, was longer than the typical cigarette. This led, as you might easily imagine, to many a sight gag in their TV spots.

But it’s a print campaign of theirs that came to mind recently. Again, capitalizing on the “100” gimmick, they ran a sweepstakes where you could choose from 100 individual little sweepstakes, where the prizes all had “100” worked into them. Some were clearly meant to be silly, like “100 rolls of duct tape” (for example)…but you never know. Others, like “100 pints of ice cream and a freezer”, were of the sort where you’d think “You know, I could use that”. A few, like “100 minutes on a gondola in Venice” were travel packages or other big ticket items that would certainly garner a LOT of entries. I enjoyed looking over those two-page spreads, and picking out the ones I’d like to win.

I can also sing quite a few advertising jingles from way back then.

Thinking on all this now, I can’t help but notice that advertising has gotten quite dull. It is entirely possible that this is because my media consumption has changed over the decades, as well as because the media landscape itself has changed. No one seems to write jingles anymore (I understand that’s because it’s cheaper to use already existing stock music than to commission someone to come up with a new tune), and a lot of what passes for marketing is in corporate sponsorships and simply getting the brand name “out there”.

This may or may not be a “bad” thing, but I find it bland and boring. We’ll have to see what ad campaigns from the 2010’s are remembered in the 2030’s.

Any recent ads or ad campaigns strike you as truly creative or memorable?