How the movies have inspired creativity in advertising
by Julian Gratton
When I was a kid I had a friend who lived next door whose dad was in the Territorial Army. The best thing, as far as I could see, about having a dad in the Territorial Army was that he would come home on a weekend in an old Army Land Rover… an Army Land Rover that was perfect for firing-up our boyhood imaginations.
You see, this was not just any Land Rover in our eyes… it was a Nazi Land Rover! A Nazi Land Rover carrying the Ark of the Covenant to a secret lair where it would be opened in some bizarre ritual. Cue then lots of walking down the side, sliding underneath and jumping on top of this battered old vehicle as my friend and I took it in turns to be in intrepid archaeologist… Indiana Jones!
During the 1980s and 1990s, two giants of the soft drinks world went to war. In the red corner we had the Coca-Cola Company. In the blue corner was PepsiCo. While Coca-Cola would entice us with the ‘New Coke’ before seducing us back again with ‘Classic Coke’; Pepsi used a whole host of pop and movie stars to show us they were the ‘Taste for a New Generation’ and even went as far as demonstrating to us that the average person on the street preferred Pepsi thanks to their ‘Pepsi Challenge’.

