What Is Television Serialised Advertising And Is It Effective?

There is a somewhat complex intersection between different forms of television, film and video production, as the varying format requirements and genre expectations can lead to some rather interesting results when various conventions are intermingled.

The development of adverts which adopt the aesthetics of short films such as Surfer and Gorilla highlighted that a brand can sell a product without having to mention it, trusting evocative and meaningful imagery to carry a statement.

Both of the adverts mentioned above ended up not only being highly influential for the future of television advertising production but would ultimately help increase sales, and the same was true of the Gold Blend Couple, one of the most famous and beloved serialised marketing campaigns ever.

To understand why, it is important to understand what serialised advertising is, why it worked for the Gold Blend Couple and why this type of long-form episodic marketing is remarkably rare.

What Is Serialised Advertising?

Serialised advertising is the use of episodic narrative and production techniques as part of a long-running marketing campaign. 

Advertising, when it even has a narrative at all, typically needs to be self-contained and is produced to stand up on its own, whilst serialised advertising tells a long-running narrative over multiple episodes, each of which typically ends on a cliffhanger.

Other than the original radio soap operas in the 1930s, which were sponsored by cleaning products, the first major example of serialised advertising in the UK was Life With Katie starting in 1958 and promoting Oxo stock cubes.

The promotion proved to be a success, lasting nearly 20 years and inspiring the similarly long-running Oxo Family.

The format is very similar to a short-form soap opera, something played for comedy with the Cleaner Close series for Daz washing powder, which often featured actors who had previously played roles in the shows they were parodying.

They have typically proven to be remarkably popular, with the Adam and Jane campaign for BT highlighting the level of engagement these types of campaigns can inspire when millions of people voted for the pair to get married and how the wedding would look.

However, one campaign was so successful that it not only increased sales of instant coffee by 50 per cent in the UK, it took on a life of its own, leading to novelisations, merchandise and two albums of music inspired by the series.

Love Over Gold

Aired from 1987 until 1993, the Gold Blend Couple was an advertising campaign for Nestle’s instant coffee brand of the same name, featuring two middle-class neighbours who slowly fall for each other through 12 coffee-related installments.

The ultimate goal was to position instant coffee as a sophisticated, refined luxury choice rather than a product of convenience and the production was particularly important in shaping this perception.

The cameras rely on a particularly soft focus, with warm lighting creating a particularly welcoming albeit refined aura that proved to be remarkably influential to advertising in the early 1990s.

The editing was particularly effective, with each advert featuring a cliffhanger-style scene after the announcer reads the advertising copy, something that subtly broke a major advertising convention and helped make the final scene stand out.

There are a lot of elements that make it work, but by far the biggest of these was the chemistry between Anthony Stewart Head and Sharon Maughan, who managed to create a remarkable amount of romantic tension simply in the way they say “Gold Blend” to each other.

Each new instalment, typically released every six months, became a minor media event, and the final advert was watched by 19 million people, which made it one of the most watched television programmes of the entire year.

It spawned a novelisation, Love Over Gold, two music CDs and an American version, known as the Taster’s Choice Saga based on the name of Gold Blend in the United States.

Why Is Serial Advertising Not Used More Often?

The biggest reason why it is so rare is that it requires a significant commitment. Unlike a soap opera where each episode is broadcast weekly if not multiple times a week, advertising campaigns are often run on a seasonal basis.

The eight minutes that constituted Love Over Gold were broadcast as advertisements over six years, and only certain types of established brands will be willing to make a commitment that could potentially last years if not decades tied to the same campaign.

Various attempts to repeat the Gold Blend formula were far less successful, with a 1998 campaign fronted by Simone Bendix and Neil Roberts lasting just one advert before being discontinued.

Most companies instead opt to tell a self-contained story, inspired by the anthology of John Lewis adverts around Christmas.

However, with this rarity comes opportunity; as the concept is undertaken so rarely and given how it can engage audiences not only on television but on social media, it may only be a matter of time before it is attempted again.