What Can TV Learn From Coffee Adverts That Gripped A Nation?

On 1st June 2026, Anthony Stewart Head tragically passed, leaving behind an almost incalculable legacy on stage, screen and television.

Whilst everyone will have a different memory of Anthony Head, from his incredibly influential role as Rupert Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to his later role in Ted Lasso, his extensive filmography and work in musical theatre, perhaps his most influential role is in the world of advertising.

Amidst a career that included being the second best version of Dr Frank-N-Furter and almost but not quite saving the musical Chess, Anthony Head was also part of perhaps the greatest and most effective advertising campaign of all time, one that invented an entire genre and influenced the shows between which his face appeared.

Whilst advertising is often assumed to be an entirely separate genre for production agencies to manage, the enduring legacy of Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan’s serialised marketing merged marketing and storytelling in a way that has still left an impact.

What Was The Gold Blend Couple?

In 1987, Nestle were working on an advertising campaign for their Gold Blend brand of instant coffee, and wanted to create a sophisticated impression of a product that was typically geared towards a more downmarket audience.

The solution was to adopt a style of narrative serialised marketing rarely seen on TV and more associated with stock cubes than coffee. 

The Gold Blend couple campaign (also known as Love Over Gold) was a six-year serialised advertising campaign that somehow gripped the nation as two neighbours (Tony and Sharon) bonded and then fell in love over slightly more upmarket instant coffee.

The couple, played by Anthony Head and fellow stage actress Sharon Maughan, started with the latter borrowing a jar of the eponymous instant coffee before a romance slowly ignited over six years of adverts.

It took three years before the couple finally kissed, a moment that became a national media event, following years of tiny bite-sized soap-opera-like episodes.

How Did The Gold Blend Couple Change Television?

From an advertising standpoint, Love Over Gold was a phenomenal success. From a wider television standpoint, it changed everything.

Nescafé reported a 50 per cent increase in sales in the UK whilst the original Gold Blend couple was shown on British television, leading to an American adaptation (marketing Taster’s Choice) and two follow-up series that would ultimately be quickly discontinued.

However, what was different is the wider cultural impact of the Gold Blend couple; almost no advertising campaigns before them had received a tie-in video compilation of the adverts, a novelisation, two compilation albums with thematically appropriate music and other merchandise.

Outside of advertising mascots explicitly aimed at children, it was extremely rare for an advertisement to have that level of cultural impact.

Part of the reason for this was production values; the scripting was akin to a sophisticated soap opera, but the filming was closer to a romantic drama of the period, with soft focus, an emphasis on lighting and particular emphasis on sophistication.

Some critics noted that the soap opera between two advertising mascots was more compelling than many actual soap operas of the era. The adverts predated the Emmerdale plane crash and the huge effect it had on television as a whole.

The biggest reason for the success, however, was the acting. Mr Head and Mrs Maughan had unmistakable chemistry with each other, and the adverts turned out to be a breakout role for both of them.

Why Isn’t Serialised Advertising More Common?

After Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan moved on to bigger projects following the end of the Taster’s Choice adverts in 1997, serialised advertising had rather mixed results.

The second and third Gold Blend Couples, starring Louise Hunt and Mark Aiken, and Simone Bendix and Neil Roberts, respectively, had far less impact and saw much shorter runs.

The former lasted six adverts whilst the latter was cancelled after the first.

Other products have attempted serialised advertising, such as Oxo’s revival of the Oxo Family, the Cleaner Close adverts for Daz and the BT family starring Kris Marshall from My Family.

What makes it particularly difficult is that an advert’s brevity means that it does not have time to get audiences up to date with the storyline.

Given that a typical “Previously On” segment is longer than most adverts, such a concept would be infeasible.

However, it also emphasised how storylines can be regularly followed by audiences, and this can improve engagement and create a bond between an audience and a product.