Nothing dates more so completely than an advertising campaign.
At best they look quaint and mildly amusing and at worst are just bad and painful to watch.
But all of them offer an insight into the period they were made.
Some are sexist, others a caricature of how we lived and some just got it so right.
Of course many have their moment offering up a catchphrase which for a while is absorbed into popular culture and then fall away.
All of which is an introduction to Buzby which “was a yellow (later orange) talking cartoon bird, launched in 1976 as part of a marketing campaign by Post Office Telecommunications
It appeared in a series of television commercials with the catchphrase: ‘Make someone happy with a phone call.’
The campaign spawned many marketing items, such as toys, badges, a comic strip in a TV comic, and books, and lasted until well into the 1980s.
British Telecom produced and sold a "Buzby" wrist watch with Buzby perched on the second hand.”*
It is all a long time ago when we still had publically owned companies with names that harped back to the 1940s and you could still talk about the Gas Board and the British Rail sandwich.
Picture; Buzby badge from the collection of David Harrop
*Buzby, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzby
But all of them offer an insight into the period they were made.
Some are sexist, others a caricature of how we lived and some just got it so right.
Of course many have their moment offering up a catchphrase which for a while is absorbed into popular culture and then fall away.
All of which is an introduction to Buzby which “was a yellow (later orange) talking cartoon bird, launched in 1976 as part of a marketing campaign by Post Office Telecommunications
It appeared in a series of television commercials with the catchphrase: ‘Make someone happy with a phone call.’
The campaign spawned many marketing items, such as toys, badges, a comic strip in a TV comic, and books, and lasted until well into the 1980s.
British Telecom produced and sold a "Buzby" wrist watch with Buzby perched on the second hand.”*
It is all a long time ago when we still had publically owned companies with names that harped back to the 1940s and you could still talk about the Gas Board and the British Rail sandwich.
Picture; Buzby badge from the collection of David Harrop
*Buzby, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzby
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