"How Do You Eat Yours?" - British Advertising Quiz

Answer: Shake 'n Vac

The advertisement made for this household cleaning product was first screened in 1980 and starred the actress Jenny Logan. Produced by the Benton and Bowles advertising agency for S C Johnson & Son, it has often been cited as being cheesy despite its frequent high placing in television popularity polls. In one such poll during 2007 'Do the Shake and Vac...' took the top placing ahead of other memorable jingles including 'secret lemonade drinker' featured in a campaign for R Whites lemonade and the singing gondolier's operatic rendition based on the aria 'O sole mio' for a Wall's ice cream product in second and third places respectively.

The jingle was the work of Jonathan Hodge, a prolific writer who has also been nominated for an Academy Award for his film scores which include the theme to feature film 'Babe'.

Answer: Fruit and Nut

'Everyone's a fruit and nut case
Crazy for those Cadbury's nuts and raisins
When you've got your feet up
What a joy to eat up
City gents of consequence and blokes who dig the street up...'

Made by Young and Rubicam and first screened during 1978, this advertisement for Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate starred the popular writer, wit and raconteur Frank Muir, well known to television viewers at the time as a team captain in the BBC2 television quiz show 'Call My Bluff'. Two tunes were used in a series of ads for this product; the tune 'Return to Django' was used briefly during 1976 but the music that most viewers of a certain vintage will remember was the 'Danse des Mirlitons' taken from 'The Nutcracker' by Tchaikovsky which was used from 1977 onwards.

Answer: Rolo

The 'Rolo' is a small chocolate cup filled with deliciously sweet soft caramel. The slogan 'Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?' initially accompanied a short cartoon made by the Richard Williams Studio which featured a young couple sat on a park bench, talking. First broadcast in 1981 this advert had, at one time, been voted the most romantic of all time by readers of Marketing Magazine.

It certainly made an impact with fans of these delicious sweets. In more recent years, what is perhaps the funniest advert ever made for this product featured a young boy teasing a baby elephant at the zoo with his last Rolo. Cut to some thirty years later and the same boy, now a grown man, is watching a circus parade when he receives a tap on his shoulder followed closely by a hard slap around the face from an elephant's trunk... Priceless!

Answer: Mars

Produced by the D'Arcy Masius Benton and Bowles agency, this long running slogan first came to public attention in 1965 and, although not seen as often as it was two or three decades ago, it still makes occasional appearances during advertising campaigns. According to a junior copywriter, Peter Pfeffer, the slogan 'A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play' was created by Francis Harmar-Brown, a copy group head at the agency commissioned to produce adverts for Mars Ltd. Harmar-Brown explained that he had added the word 'rest' because Mars had requested that their advertisement use three words in its new slogan whilst echoing the slogan used previously which announced that 'Mars feeds you goodness three good ways.'

Answer: Humphrey

"Here's a message for my English fans
Your milk quenches my thirst
But you gotta drink it quickly
Or a Humphrey'll drink it first
Now everybody know's I am the greatest
But that's in the boxing ring
But when it comes to drinking Unigate milk
A Humphrey is the king
So while I'm enjoying a Unigate pinta
I'm watching my left and my right
Because if a Humphrey comes near my milk
There's gonna be a fight!"

This catchphrase, from the Unigate Company, was used to advertise their milk products during the 1970s and proved so successful that Unigate went on to produce a wide range of marketing materials including mugs, beanie hats, t-shirts, pens and pencils and many others; there was barely a British schoolchild that had never heard of a 'Humphrey'. Humphrey's were never seen, their existence only alluded to by a line of red and white striped drinking straws coming into shot from the side of the television screen. In this famous example the product was advertised by none other than Muhammad Ali, truly 'The Greatest'... How the Unigate marketing department pulled that one out of the bag is anyone's guess!

Answer: Tiger

The 'Put a tiger in your tank' slogan was created in 1959 by Emery Smith, a young Chicago copywriter working for the McCann Erickson agency who had been commissioned to produce a series of newspaper advertisements aimed at boosting US sales of Esso Extra gasoline, but the advertisement wasn't to appear in the United Kingdom until 1964.

The tiger mascot however was not a new idea as it had been used in Norway since the turn of the 20th century and not appearing in US advertising until the end of WW2.

As a youngster growing up in the United Kingdom during the 1960s and early 1970s, I can recall the myriad of posters and bumper stickers that appeared on garage forecourts everywhere. One of the more amusing results of the Esso campaign of the time were the fabric tiger tails that were offered as gifts and which could be tied around the vehicle exhaust...

This was all well and good until the exhaust achieved a temperature high enough to ignite the material from which they were made!

Answer: Sid

It was difficult to get remain unaware of this slogan and accompanying advertisement whilst this UK government backed campaign was in full swing! It was used during 1986 as part of a campaign to encourage the British public to apply for shares during the Conservative government's privatisation of the then nationalised energy company, British Gas which eventually valued the company at nine billion pounds; small change by today's standards but a huge sum at that time... If only we'd known back then where this privatisation would eventually lead us.

Answer: Egg

In 1953 the lowly egg was removed from rationing and in 1957 the Egg Marketing board was formed in order to promote the health benefits of eating eggs. The ads, which starred the comedian Tony Hancock, were so successful that by middle of the 1960s the average consumption of eggs in the United Kingdom had risen to five per person per week.

In 1988 the good work done until this point was undermined by Edwina Currie, a government minister, who stated that she believed that most egg production in the UK was infected with Salmonella; her faux-pas resulting in a 60% reduction in egg sales almost overnight. Fortunately this trend has since been reversed and egg sales in the UK are now as healthy as they have always been.

The 'Go to work on an egg' slogan has been attributed to the author Fay Weldon, in spite of the fact that she has stated that as she was the manager of the team working at Mather and Crowther she is reluctant to take any credit for it.

The series of at least eight short films were created by director Len Fulford, each varying in length from between 30 seconds to just over a minute and were broadcast with titles such as 'The Average Englishman', 'Burst Pipe' and 'Electricity Bill' all of which starred Tony Hancock and the actress Patricia Hayes; a further short film, 'Violin,' also included the popular comedy actress Pat Coombs.

Answer: Haig

The advertising slogan 'Don't be Vague... Ask for Haig' came from the Lord and Thomas advertising agency and first appeared in an advertisement from 1934; it was still being used on television and in print some four decades later. Haig is believed to be the oldest large scale whisky distillery in Scotland and possibly in the entire world having first produced their whiskies in 1824... That can't be right, surely? Perhaps the most famous product from the Haig stable is a fifteen year old blended whisky packaged for sale in a distinctively shaped bottle known in the UK as 'Dimple' and in the US as 'Dimple Pinch', a glass of which my Dad, bless him, was never seen without!

Answer: Black Magic

Boxes of Black Magic chocolates, a product of Rowntree, went on sale for the first time in 1933. This highly successful brand was the brainchild of George Harris a marketing executive who began working for Rowntree's after marrying into the family. Prior to this date chocolates had been the exclusive preserve of the wealthy; boxes of chocolates, often contained in elaborate hand-carved wooden boxes, might cost upwards of the equivalent of three hundred pounds by today's values.

The voice over in the advertisements was provided by voice coach Steve Hudson who also provided voice-overs for a number of other brands which include Old Spice after shave, Gallo wines and Guinness amongst many others.

When launched, Black Magic brought the luxury of chocolate within the reach of the ordinary working man for a mere two shillings and ten pence in old currency...

It's hard to believe that when the UK adopted the decimal system on the 15th of February 1971, this cost equated to just fourteen new pence!