Selling coffee is big business, very big business, and naturally companies use advertisers to promote their products in some very appealing ways to coffee drinking consumers. The chief medium for this is the use of TV commercials, which have been around as long as coffee itself , so it seems.
In this popular TV commercial from the 1960′s Comedian Andy Griffith runs out of Sanka Coffee and calls up the operator to order some more.
In this commercial, also from the 1960′s Opie hides under a bed and talks about Sanka Coffee.
Coffee has even been used to advertise other products, as in this beer TV commercial.
In the 1980′s someone came up with the idea of a blossoming romance between two neighbors. These TV commercials ran for a number of years, charting the various stages of the romance, as the woman constantly ran out of her favorite coffee “Gold Blend” by Nescafe. She popped round to her neighbor’s home, where the man would obligingly give her some of his Gold Blend, sometimes sharing a drink together. The format of these commercials became almost like a soap opera as viewers could not wait to tune in for the next installment to see whether the couple would progress beyond just sharing a cup of coffee.
Anthony Head and Sharon Maughan played the roles of the neighbors. In the UK these iconic commercials aired for twelve episodes, from 1987 to 1993. In the US the commercials ran for thirteen episodes, from 1990 to 1997 and were for Taster’s Choice coffee.
Whether they are funny, simply informative, or revolve around an ongoing story, there is no doubt that over the years TV commercials have kept us well informed about the brands of coffee available on store shelves.
