Classic Ads From Simpler Times artwork

Classic Ads From Simpler Times

35 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 3 years ago -

Welcome to a podcast hosted by unemployable fourth-rate advertising suit Steve Cooke and eminently-employable award-winning advertising creative and TV commercial director Tony Williams (no not that one - the other one).


Each week, in an attempt to transport ourselves back to a world where there was no global plague, we all had expense accounts and white dogshit was still a thing, we review a classic TV ad and try to work out whether or not it was any good. We're already attracting some great reviews...


"WTF is this shit?" - Sir John Hegarty


"I f*cking hate these people..." - Unnamed bread brand marketing director


"Why do they think my name is so funny?" - Award-winning TV commercial director Tom Kuntz


"This podcast is brilliant, I'm going to tell all my friends about it..." - Tony Williams' Mum


"I'm going to sue these dickheads..." - INSERT NAME HERE


"Everyone loves the Hovis ad, WTF is wrong with you c*nts..." - Sir Ridley Scott


"I was brilliant in that ad..." - Ray Wilkins


"Eccellente." - Colonel Dietrich from Raiders of the Lost Ark


"Both these blokes use lady-scented body wash..." - Isaiah Mustapha


"Lovely boys. I knew their parents you know. Well worth a listen." - Clarence Frank Birdseye II


"The mark 2 Ford Transit is basically exactly the same as the original 1965 version except it has square headlights. Don't edit that out you wanker." - Tony Williams




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Business Comedy advertising tv ads nostalgia 1970s 1980s 1990s funny marketing tvc tv commercial
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Episodes

Telstra : "The Emperor Nasi Goreng"

June 07, 2021 09:11 - 1 hour - 83.6 MB

This week you can eavesdrop as Tones manages to insult our Tokyo correspondent (who also happens to be Mrs Tones), drops in a reference to expensive 1970s British furniture, and humble-brags his way through turning down a night on the slops with that bloke from Maroon 5 and sitting next to Daman Albarn at a pissup in Hong Kong.  Steve puts on his favourite cocktail dress to act as the quizmaster for some questions about the winners of the 2005 MTV Australia music video awards, leading to so...

Levis Launderette - Nick Kamen tribute

May 18, 2021 17:00 - 52 minutes - 71.9 MB

I’m afraid you’re going to have to indulge us in another BBH-John Hegarty fan club swoon type of thing this week. We’d had decided to give BBH a bit of a swerve for a while but recent events made a review of this ad pertinent so let's put away the wobbly lips and jog on shall we? Buy a ticket on this week’s fun bus and you’ll be part of the discussion about what Levis want in their ads where we discover that unsurprisingly its America and arse shots in that order. Tones mines a rich vein o...

Scores on the Doors - Our Top 20 ads ranked

May 16, 2021 17:00 - 6 minutes - 8.8 MB

Welcome to a tiny-weeny bonus bit of Classic Ads from Simpler Times. We’ve reviewed quite a few ads on the pod now so it seemed like as good a time as any to have a quick look at what we loved and what we didn’t and to create a hit parade of the top 20. Of course once we looked at the top 20, a couple of glaring errors became obvious…so we changed them around. You probably won’t agree with the list, ten minutes after we’d finished it Tony didn’t either, but there’s lots more important stu...

KitKat + Shake & Vac (feat. Captain Alberto Bertorelli & Jenny Logan)

May 11, 2021 17:00 - 43 minutes - 60.4 MB

This week the pod takes a slightly different format to the usual assault on your credulity. All will become clear as you do the listening thing. In the year that Bonn Scott drank himself to death, Kleenex went to a remote Scottish island to make a TV advert with an adult grizzly bear as the talent. The bear escaped. Of course it did, 1984 was that kind of year. Join as we have a chat about a KitKat ad that features Captain Alberto Bertorelli, a Connect 4 ad of unknown provenance and the ad...

Maltesers + Shake & Vac (feat. Captain Alberto Bertorelli & Jenny Logan)

May 11, 2021 17:00 - 43 minutes - 60.4 MB

This week the pod takes a slightly different format to the usual assault on your credulity. All will become clear as you do the listening thing. In the year that Bonn Scott drank himself to death, Kleenex went to a remote Scottish island to make a TV advert with an adult grizzly bear as the talent. The bear escaped. Of course it did, 1984 was that kind of year. Join as we have a chat about a KitKat ad that features Captain Alberto Bertorelli, a Connect 4 ad of unknown provenance and the ad...

BONUS : Don Tacos (feat. Jason Ayers)

May 06, 2021 17:00 - 10 minutes - 14.1 MB

Any time there’s a temptation to take this whole podcast lark a bit seriously we'll just play a loop of Jason Ayers saying “When you asked me to do this I didn’t put much thought into it.” That’ll give us a bit of perspective. Jason's the founder and CEO of Sector 5, the Asia Pacific’s foremost Executive Search business for advertising agencies and their clients. The team at Classic Ads Towers were on a Zoom call with Jason (who lives in Tokyo) and thought it'd be great to get him to tell u...

John West - Bear (feat. Bob the Builder)

May 04, 2021 17:00 - 54 minutes - 74.6 MB

Thanks for joining us again as we continue our mission of making it impossible for you to underestimate us. This week on the pod Tony’s Uber passenger rating raises its ugly head before we segue into me having a generic old man ranting at the clouds session about exotic birds parrots in ride-sharing vehicles. We meander down memory lane, swerving the white dogshit and that bloke your parents called uncle who spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get you to come and have a look at the...

Sony Bravia - Balls (feat. Jose Gonzalez)

April 27, 2021 17:00 - 49 minutes - 68.5 MB

This episode is recorded live in Tony's kitchen here in sunny Perth, Western Australia, where the time is 20 past 1987 and we’ve just been dropped back into a mini-lockdown because some bellend from Melbourne got Covid then went for a chicken parmi in Kardinya before dropping in at Coles so he could fuck up a long weekend for 2.8 million people. UK listeners probably have little sympathy over a mere three day lockdown when they haven’t been outside since April last year, but let’s be honest...

Nissin Cup Noodle - Primitive Man (best Japanese ad ever?)

April 21, 2021 04:03 - 44 minutes - 61.4 MB

Hello pod-people. This week after a less than optimal start where once again I forget to turn on the voice recorder, we eventually get off the beaten track and look at the first ad from a Japanese advertising agency to ever win the Grand Prix at Cannes. Luckily enough Tones has a bit of experience working in Tokyo and even more luckily we persuaded his wife Natsuko to put in her 10 Yen’s worth as we look at an ad for the world’s most popular cup noodle brand. By the end of this episode we ...

Maxell - Me Ears Are Alight (feat. Desmond Decker)

April 13, 2021 17:00 - 40 minutes - 55.7 MB

Hello pod people and welcome back to Classic Ads from Simpler Times, where the tone of recent email correspondence suggests that if this podcast were the prize at the end of the race people would be learning to run backwards. Some of our listeners, or at least those who are not permanently glued to the sunny window in a fugue state, may remember that we recently reviewed a 30 second ad for lemonade that managed to shoehorn the brand name in 24 times. Well brace yourself, we’ve been contact...

Honda - Cog

April 06, 2021 17:00 - 45 minutes - 62.2 MB

In this episode we will deliver a piece of trivia about how a well-known Japanese car brand sources the leather for its car seats that will literally. Blow. Your. Mind. Your mind. Will. Be. Blown.* This week the Pound shop time machine that is our podcast about old ads makes a crash landing in 2003… where I haven’t slept for two years, Tones is probably still out and about with Jennifer Love-Hewitt hanging off his every word and everyone’s worked out that if you’re doing an impersonation of...

Honda - Cog (Feat. Garrison Keillor)

April 06, 2021 17:00 - 45 minutes - 62.2 MB

In this episode we will deliver a piece of trivia about how a well-known Japanese car brand sources the leather for its car seats that will literally. Blow. Your. Mind. Your mind. Will. Be. Blown.* This week the Pound shop time machine that is our podcast about old ads makes a crash landing in 2003… where I haven’t slept for two years, Tones is probably still out and about with Jennifer Love-Hewitt hanging off his every word and everyone’s worked out that if you’re doing an impersonation of...

QANTAS - I Still Call Australia Home (feat. Wolf Kahler)

April 04, 2021 03:48 - 52 minutes - 71.8 MB

In this week’s drama-filled episode Tones let’s his guard down and reveals that he’s still not recovered from the shock of finding out that Tommy Cooper didn’t do the voiceover for the Lego Kipper ad. He snaps out of it just in time to seize the opportunity to go full-Bill Clinton during the intro then indulges himself with some vintage Jimmy Saville / Operation Yewtree references before insulting the entire population of Ireland. Perhaps more importantly we’re treated to some phone-in act...

Boddingtons Bitter - Gondola (feat. Duckface)

March 16, 2021 17:00 - 30 minutes - 42.5 MB

This week on the pod we'll hear how Enya cracked the shits with Steve and Tones over the Jean-Claude Van Damme Volvo advert review where Tones suggested she was from Scandinavia. The girl certainly has a bit of a potty mouth on her and may have over-reacted a tad…you can judge for yourself.  Elsewhere there’s a lot of love for the actress universally known as ‘Duckface’, more speculation about the Queen’s toilet habits and some erotic anticipation on a canal up north. In another edition of...

(Just one) Cornetto - Venice Gondola

March 09, 2021 17:00 - 54 minutes - 75.2 MB

In this week’s episode we’ll find out what an advertising agency specifically created to flog deodorant, washing powder and margarine comes up with when they’re presented with a brief to sell ice cream made in a factory just off the A38 in Gloucester. We’ll hear how a young Gene Wilder got his big break in a gondola and how one half of a one-hit wonder got the gig massacring a classic piece of 19th century Italian music so that Walls could put a chest freezer in every Spar in the UK. More ...

R.Whites - Secret Lemonade Drinker

March 02, 2021 17:00 - 36 minutes - 50.8 MB

This week TV sitcom dinosaurs roam the earth and you can't pitch a TV ad to a client unless you're playing the jingle on a white grand piano whilst wearing fancy dress. Ah yes the seventies, where a glass of lemonade is a guilty pleasure to be taken in the middle of the night and the ad industry believes the only way to get you to buy some is to sing the brand name to you 24 times in a 30 second advert. Come along with us as we hopscotch through the white dogshit of 1973 and we'll introduc...

Maltesers - Lockdown Saggy Pants

February 24, 2021 01:40 - 29 minutes - 40 MB

This week another in our occasional looks at interesting ads on your screens right now (or right recently in this case) in this episode we look at some ads for Maltesers that ran in the spring of 2020 during the first UK COVID lockdown. There’s a bit of friction between Steve and Tones about the quality of the talent’s knickers and what they say about veracity in advertising. Some chat about when a pot plant can be referred to as a bush and we’ll find out why one of the ads needed an MA cer...

Lockdown Quiz - British ads of the 1970s (part 2)

February 17, 2021 17:00 - 35 minutes - 48.3 MB

Both of our listeners will remember that we left off in part one with our lockdown quiz not so much teetering on the cliff edge of bad taste as flying off it like the Milk Tray man. I have tried to explain to Tones that every time he mentions Jimmy Saville a nun gets syphilis but he remains unconvinced.   Part two is the riveting quiz denoument and a cheeky listen will hear us dragged into discussions about bad jeans and worse ads. What’s that you say? It’s like deja vu all over again, aga...

Lockdown Quiz - British ads of the 1970s (part 1)

February 16, 2021 17:00 - 37 minutes - 51 MB

Hello pod-people. This week we’re straying from our usual format to bring you something a little bit different.   After 10 months without any community COVID infections we got a live one here in Western Australia and last Sunday the state went into a 5-day lockdown.   So what did we do? Just like every other right-minded West Australian we jogged straight down to the bottle shop for some Daddy’s Little Helper then sparked up a quiz about British advertising in the 70s.   If it’s drama ...

Lego - Anti-Kipper Ballistic Missile

February 09, 2021 17:01 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MB

Join us this week as we travel back to the beginning of time, when classic sitcoms began to climb out of the primordial ooze of the British TV industry. A time when Terry and June was considered edgy and the country was so bereft of talent that the same person could play an animated rodent secret agent in one series and Rodney’s big brother in another. Yes, welcome to 1981, where this week you get to listen to Tones and me argue about who the target audience is for a 45 second TV ad (with n...

MLA - Straya Day Lamb feat. Sam Kekovich

February 02, 2021 17:00 - 48 minutes - 67.1 MB

Welcome back as we attempt to bring another bit of simple into your complex lives, in this case by looking at an old ad, with some very old attitudes. This week’s listen takes us back to 2005 and an Australian TV ad that suggests that if you’re dinkie-die then your celebration of yet another stop on the global Euro-sponsored genocide tour known as colonialism should be marked by eating baby sheep. It’s fair to say that this little beeeeee-wdie from Meat and Livestock Australia has not trav...

Budwesier - Wassup

January 26, 2021 17:00 - 23 minutes - 32.3 MB

Is it getting any simpler pod-people? Is anything helping? How about time travel? Maybe that would do it… Come with us back to 1999. In 1999 all some of us had to deal with was deciding which party you were going to where you wouldn’t cop off. It was nailed on that at the turn of the millennium, wherever you ended up, some bloke was going to shout “Wassup” at you and your liver was going to end up looking like a beefburger. Tones was probably at some soiree with Jennifer Love-Hewitt doing...

Budweiser - Wassup

January 26, 2021 17:00 - 23 minutes - 32.3 MB

Is it getting any simpler pod-people? Is anything helping? How about time travel? Maybe that would do it… Come with us back to 1999. In 1999 all some of us had to deal with was deciding which party you were going to where you wouldn’t cop off. It was nailed on that at the turn of the millennium, wherever you ended up, some bloke was going to shout “Wassup” at you and your liver was going to end up looking like a beefburger. Tones was probably at some soiree with Jennifer Love-Hewitt doing...

Volvo Trucks - Epic Splits (feat. Jean-Claude Van Damme)

January 19, 2021 17:00 - 38 minutes - 53.5 MB

Ah yes, simpler times. Prepare to be entertained by; (a) An old-fashioned Old-Etonian pervert. (b) The Queen and her bowel problems. (c) The ad-industry giant now forced to live in a cave in the middle-east because he hit Nigella. (d) A Belgian bloke with a face like Ivy Tilsley after the plastic surgery. Have a listen and join us back in 2013 as we take a look at the sixth advert in a series called Live Test which Swedish advertising agency Forsman & Bodenfors had created for Volvo Tr...

Hovis - Boy On a Bike

January 12, 2021 22:00 - 37 minutes - 51.6 MB

In this week’s episode we hear how a Two Ronnies parody of a bread ad wiped the memories of 1,000 people and then find out why Ken Barlow and Joanna Lumley’s love child got a pudding bowl haircut and spent two days cycling up and down a hill in Dorset. You’ll need to prepare yourself as we enter the murky world of political campaigning and expose the role played by verucas in shaping the course of the Brexit campaign. The people who voted it the most heartwarming TV ad ever are all now sat...

Everybody hates us...but we gave Jerry Seinfeld a platform

January 11, 2021 06:08 - 7 minutes - 11 MB

It’s an ethical dilemma that doesn’t exist. We get paid to make ads that sell stuff that people get paid to make so that they can go out and buy stuff that we make adverts for. You know how it goes, and it’s not our problem if the stuff you’re paying us to sell is shit right? No matter how much we explain our role in the free market economy you still all hate us apparently. None more so than Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry’s a hypocrite and he’s quite mean as well, although he does have a collecti...

Sony Playstation - Double Life

January 06, 2021 11:35 - 28 minutes - 39.8 MB

Is your life mundane? Do you hate your job? Is your world full of people who aren’t happy that you drive like an Italian plumber?* Yes? Never mind. Watch this ad and it’ll be OK to tell the world that your best mate is an animated marsupial** or that all you really want do with your life is take on jobs for various crime syndicates in a world that allows you to do whatever you need to get the job done.*** Welcome to Classic Ads From Simpler Times where in this episode you can join Steve a...

Fiat Strada - Handbuilt by robots

December 30, 2020 07:25 - 35 minutes - 49 MB

Is it ever OK to celebrate great advertising for shit products? Join as we discuss the issue in our review of an ad for the brand-new Fiat Strada, a car handbuilt by robots out of tissue paper. No voiceover, no shots of the car driving around town with a British man at the wheel smoking a pipe and smacking his children at the traffic lights. Simply a ballet of machinery accompanied by an opera, with a nod to Star Wars and The Italian Job. Join us in a world where the working class has bee...

Levis - Flat Eric

December 22, 2020 11:45 - 49 minutes - 68.7 MB

Life imitates art. Advertising steals art. Agency usually calls it derivative to avoid lawyer stuff. In this case French artist-man says he doesn’t care as long as he can go to Los Angeles and spunk £400,000 making a telly ad. So off we go… Who do you turn to when you’ve just closed 11 of your 22 factories and laid off 6,000 workers? Bartle Bogle Hegarty of course. There are two theories about how to win an argument with John Hegarty and as we’ll hear, neither works. So settle down and li...

John Lewis Christmas 2020 (in partnership with Short Walk and a Handshake)

December 17, 2020 07:46 - 31 minutes - 42.8 MB

We're mixing things up a bit this week and in partnership with our sister-pod looking at an ad that's actually running in the UK today and asking is it worth A Short Walk and a Handshake? John Lewis Christmas ads were ‘event’ advertising when things like that mattered. Now the world’s fucked do we care and are advertising agencies and their department store clients really best placed to raise national morale? If this ad tells us anything it's that there’s a corner of the internet that's re...

Tango - Apple Seduction

December 09, 2020 07:07 - 40 minutes - 55.7 MB

A society under the microscope, the unmasking of a perfectly British perversion…we think it’s fair to say that this is our most gripping episode to date. Join us as we review an ad for a fizzy drink that doesn’t feature a comedian, an American jazz singer, an ex-professional footballer and an overweight orange bloke. Instead, prepare to be seduced by a commercial so compelling that Tony loses control of his bowels after discussing its role in post-modern British advertising. A beautiful, ...

Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills - Hope It's Chips

December 09, 2020 06:11 - 38 minutes - 52.8 MB

Classic Ads From Simpler Times prides itself on being of the people for the people so this week we’ve got a working-class-austerity vibe going as we look at a TV ad from 1982 for a product that looks like steak, cooks like steak but isn’t steak. Really. It’s not steak. It's so much less than steak. Join us as Tony waxes lyrical about the mark 2 Ford Transit, Margaret Thatcher starts a small war, Steve explains how his family was poor but unhappy and we review a Birds Eye ad for steakhouse g...

Old Spice - The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

December 09, 2020 05:23 - 34 minutes - 46.8 MB

This week the cut-price time machine that is Classic Ads From SImpler Times lands us back in 2010 from where we launch into a review that encompasses feminist theory in Australian politics, a Nazi sympathiser who wrote the Big Mac of classical music and the removal of Jack Duckworth from Coronation Street as part of David Cameron’s culture wars on the north. Join us as fourth-rate advertising industry suit Steve Cooke and first-rate advertising creative director and TV commercial director T...

Yellow Pages - Fly Fishing by J.R.Hartley

December 09, 2020 04:33 - 28 minutes - 39.7 MB

This week’s review of a Classic Ad From Simpler Times takes us back to a land where Yellow Pages thought it was a good idea to show the proletariat how the middle classes were free to fuck about fly fishing and stalk book shop assistants in their spare time. We’ll find out why Norman Lumsden never had to slum it again with bits parts in dodgy 80s telly shows after appearing in this commercial, and there’s more than a chance that we’ll question the premise of an ad featuring an author who - ...

Ferrero Rocher - The Ambassador's Party

December 07, 2020 08:27 - 26 minutes - 36 MB

Hello and welcome to the first-ever episode of Classic Ads From Simpler Times. In our opening effort you can find out if Bill Clinton ever shagged Mrs Mangle from Neighbours and listen as we re-write a pivotal scene from the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark to include a massive Italian chocolate. Buckle up and join us as we review the legendary Ferrero Rocher TV ad, The Ambassador's Party, an irony-free effort from 1993 starring Colonel Dietrich and a bunch of random Euros all trying to p...