advertising history Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Pepsi’s “You’ve Got a Lot to Live Campaign

Do you remember this Pepsi jingle? Because this one was designed to do a lot more than sell you a bottle of soda.

This 1970 commercial, called “Portrait of America,” was part of Pepsi’s “You’ve Got a Lot to Live, and Pepsi’s Got a Lot to Give” campaign. Watching it again, what strikes me is how little time they spend actually selling Pepsi. Instead we see racing, boats, city streets, beaches, children, couples and ordinary Americans simply living their lives.

And then there’s that song.

The music was written by Joseph Brooks, who years later wrote “You Light Up My Life.” Pepsi described the sound as “gospel rock” or “jubilation rock,” with a big communal chorus meant to sound hopeful and uplifting. It reportedly grew out of a protest song Brooks had written before being reshaped into the Pepsi theme.

That makes a lot more sense when you remember what America felt like around 1970. BBDO realized that the carefree “beautiful young people doing beautiful things” advertising of the earlier Pepsi Generation no longer completely reflected a country watching war and social unrest every night on television. Their new goal was to be real and involving, even searching the country for real people doing real things.

Maybe that’s why this jingle stuck. It didn’t tell us Pepsi tasted better. It told us we had a lot to live for.

Do you remember hearing this one on television?

Before Taxi, Judd Hirsch Was Selling Us Listerine

Take another look at the young radio DJ in this commercial. That’s Judd Hirsch, years before Taxi, Ordinary People and the long career we know him for today.

This spot appears to be from around 1970, when Hirsch was still trying to establish himself as an actor and doing commercials to make a living. What I didn’t know was that before acting, he had earned a degree in physics and actually worked as an engineer. A few years after this commercial, his career began taking off, and by 1978 he was Alex Rieger on Taxi, eventually winning two Emmys for the role.

But the other star here may really be Listerine’s advertising.

Most companies tried desperately to convince us their products tasted good. Listerine basically said the opposite. Its famous campaign was “The taste people hate twice a day.” In other words, yes, it tastes awful — but that must mean it works!

And boy did we believe that.

Listerine had actually been around since 1879, originally developed as an antiseptic rather than an everyday mouthwash. By the 1920s, advertising helped make the word “halitosis” part of the American vocabulary and convinced generations that bad breath could ruin everything from a date to a marriage.

Looking back, I think the burning sensation became part of Listerine’s identity. You swished it around, tried desperately to make it the full 30 seconds, and then came up gasping for air!

And sitting there in this old commercial is a young Judd Hirsch, probably with no idea that millions of us would someday know him as one of television’s most familiar faces.

Did you recognize Judd Hirsch right away — and be honest, how long could you actually keep old-fashioned Listerine in your mouth?

National Donut Day: Time To Make The Donuts With Fred

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Today is National Donut Day, so it feels like the perfect time to celebrate with Fred the Baker and his famous line: “Time to make the donuts.”

Fred was played by actor Michael Vale, who became the face of Dunkin’ Donuts in commercials from the early 1980s until 1997. The whole idea was simple: while the rest of us were still sleeping, Fred was dragging himself out of bed before dawn to make fresh donuts. That tired little walk and mumble made him feel like every hardworking person who had to get up early and do the job.

National Donut Day itself goes back much further. It was created by The Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938 to honor the “Doughnut Lassies,” women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I. It also helped raise money for people in need during the Great Depression.

So today, grab a donut and give a little nod to Fred. He made getting up before dawn look exhausting, funny, and somehow heroic.

Time to make the donuts!

Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee

As a kid growing up, I didn’t understand why everyone said “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee” was incorrect English. I just knew they made great baked products.

The famous Sara Lee campaign was built around that odd but unforgettable line:

“Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

It was catchy, a little strange, and maybe not what your English teacher wanted to hear, but that was the point. The double negative made people notice it, remember it, and repeat it.

The commercials usually showed off Sara Lee cakes, pies, pound cake, coffee cake, and other desserts that looked like they came from a bakery, even if they came from the freezer. For a lot of families, Sara Lee was the “company’s coming” dessert you could serve without doing all the baking yourself.

Looking back, the grammar may have been questionable, but the advertising worked. Everybody had foods they didn’t like, but the campaign wanted us to believe Sara Lee was the one thing nobody could turn down.

And honestly, as a kid, I wasn’t diagramming the sentence. I was looking at the cake.

Virginia Slims: “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”

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The Virginia Slims commercials were some of the most memorable cigarette ads of the late 1960s and 1970s, built around the famous slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

The campaign launched in 1968, aimed directly at women during the era of women’s liberation. The ads usually compared an old-fashioned scene of women being told what they couldn’t do with a modern, confident woman enjoying her independence. Then came the message: women had come a long way, and Virginia Slims was supposedly the cigarette made for them.

Looking back, it was clever marketing, but also pretty calculated. The ads borrowed the language of women’s progress to sell cigarettes. They made smoking look stylish, modern, and independent at a time when cigarette advertising was still everywhere.

For those of us who remember the commercials, the slogan is the thing that stuck. “You’ve come a long way, baby” became bigger than the product itself. It was catchy, bold, and very much of its time.

Today, the campaign feels like a time capsule: part advertising genius, part cultural manipulation, and a reminder of when cigarette commercials could still shape pop culture before they were banned from television in 1971.

Wendy’s Soviet Fashion Show: “Daywear… Eveningwear… Swimwear”

The Wendy’s Soviet Fashion Show ad was a wonderfully odd 1985 commercial from the same general era as Wendy’s famous “Where’s the Beef?” campaign.

The setup was simple: a fake Soviet fashion show where every outfit looked almost exactly the same: gray, shapeless, dull, and joyless. The announcer presents each look as if it’s glamorous high fashion: daywear, eveningwear, and the best-remembered punchline, “Swimwear.”

The joke was Cold War-era contrast. Wendy’s was saying other fast-food burgers were all the same, boring and uniform, while Wendy’s offered something better and different. It was a very 1980s ad idea: take a shot at Soviet sameness, then turn it into a hamburger comparison.

The spot was directed by Joe Sedelmaier, who was known for offbeat, deadpan commercials, including Wendy’s Where’s the Beef? work. IMDb lists the writers as Cliff Freeman and Joe Sedelmaier, with Lily Monkus among the credited performers.

It also drew some complaints at the time, though not as many as you might think. A 1985 Washington Post article reported Wendy’s received about 120 letters criticizing the Soviet-themed commercial, while the company noted that was small compared with its daily customer count.

Looking back, it’s pure 1980s advertising: Cold War humor, deadpan delivery, one unforgettable visual gag, and a punchline people still remember decades later:

“Swimwear.”

Josephine the Plumber: Comet’s Cleaning Queen

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Josephine from the Comet cleanser commercials was played by Jane Withers, who had already been famous years earlier as a 1930s child star. Later, a whole new generation knew her not from the movies, but as Josephine the Plumber.

Josephine appeared in Comet commercials from the 1960s into the 1970s, usually dressed in white work overalls and showing how Comet could handle stains, sinks, tubs, and other tough cleaning jobs.

What made the campaign stand out was that a woman plumber was highly unusual on TV at the time. That was part of the hook. Instead of using a typical male repairman, Comet gave viewers Josephine — friendly, confident, and no-nonsense. She knew the pipes, the porcelain, and exactly what cleaner to use.

The character worked because she felt practical and believable. She was not glamorous or fancy. She was the woman who knew how to get the job done. Jane Withers reportedly even took a plumbing course to make the role feel more authentic.

For a lot of viewers, Josephine was one of those commercial faces you trusted. If she said Comet cleaned better, you believed her. She had that perfect old-school ad quality: part neighbor, part expert, part TV personality, and completely unforgettable.

Smokey Bear’s Creepiest PSA?

Before CGI, jump scares, and viral ads, Smokey Bear managed to give some of us a double take with one strange little public service announcement. Actress Joanna Cassidy calmly warned viewers about forest fires, then removed her red-haired “mask” to reveal she was actually Smokey Bear underneath.

It was supposed to remind us that everyone has a part to play in preventing forest fires. But if you saw it as a kid, you probably remembered the face-removal trick just as much as the message.

Effective? Absolutely.

A little creepy? Also absolutely.

“My dog’s bigger than your dog, my dog’s faster than yours!”

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Here’s another earworm from the ’70s to get stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Ken-L Ration was one of the big names in dog food for decades, dating back to the 1920s. The brand became known for canned dog food and later dry food, but most of us remember it because of that insanely catchy commercial jingle.

The song was based on “My Dog’s Bigger Than Your Dog” by folk singer Tom Paxton, and the ad turned it into a playground-style brag between kids. The idea was simple: my dog is bigger, faster, shinier, and better because he eats Ken-L Ration.

It was the kind of jingle advertisers loved because you didn’t just hear it — you repeated it. Kids could sing it, parents remembered it, and the brand name was baked right into the hook.

Ken-L Ration was eventually owned by Quaker Oats and later sold to H.J. Heinz in the 1990s, but the product faded from store shelves. The jingle, though? That survived. For a lot of us, all it takes is one line:

“My dog’s bigger than your dog…”

…and suddenly the whole thing comes running back like a dog hearing the can opener.

Sorry, Charlie!

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The StarKist “Sorry, Charlie” campaign started in 1961 and gave us one of the great advertising mascots: Charlie the Tuna. He was created by Tom Rogers of the Leo Burnett Agency as a beatnik-style tuna with a beret, thick glasses, and plenty of confidence. Charlie thought his “good taste” made him perfect for StarKist, but the joke was that StarKist did not want tuna with good taste — they wanted tuna that tastes good.

Charlie himself was originally voiced by actor Herschel Bernardi, who gave him that hip, New York, slightly theatrical sound. The famous announcer line “Sorry, Charlie” was voiced by Danny Dark, one of the biggest commercial voice-over artists of his era. StarKist’s own history page credits Dark as the narrator who delivered the line.

The commercials worked because Charlie was trying so hard to be chosen. He dressed sharp, talked cool, and acted like a sophisticated fish who deserved to end up in the can. Instead, he was rejected every time. Poor Charlie never understood that he was selling the product by not being good enough.

Looking back, it was a perfect old-school ad gag: one simple joke, a catchy phrase, and a character everyone remembered. “Sorry, Charlie” became bigger than tuna and turned into something people said whenever someone got rejected.