HAT Archive Turns 50, Showcases Classic British TV Ads
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- History of Advertising Trust is celebrating its 50th anniversary, showcasing a collection of 10 million items and 50,000 commercials housed in former barns in Norfolk leased by Sir Nicholas Hickman Ponsonby Bacon
- HAT's archive includes iconic British TV ads like Ridley Scott's 1973 Hovis commercial (a boy pushing a bike over cobbles to Dvořák's New World Symphony), the Gold Blend couple's 1993 Nescafé kiss watched by 30 million viewers, and the 1986 Hamlet cigar ad featuring cricketer Ian Botham with the slogan "Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet"
- HAT executive director John Gordon-Saker still drinks PG Tips out of loyalty to the chimps and openly admits he prefers Compare the Market's meerkats over Go Compare's opera singer — proof that advertising creates "passionate, biddable creatures" swayed by "cunningly deployed cuddly animals"
- HAT's smoking ad collection documents how the 1962 Royal College of Physicians report and the 1964 TV cigarette advertising ban pushed creativity into surrealism, with Silk Cut's purple slash and Benson & Hedges' mousetrap imagery treating consumers "with a bit more intelligence"
- HAT's oldest artifact is a 1680 London Gazette ad inviting subscriptions to a northern European atlas, while a 1684 Observator ad selling fire insurance essentially functioned as a protection racket
- Deputy director Alistair Moir warns that algorithms have pushed modern advertising into being "formulaic and data-driven," with brands obsessed by ROI rather than "big campaigns that really draw people into a story and connect with emotion"
Why it matters: HAT's 10-million-item archive serves as both a social history resource (its oldest piece dates to 1680) and a working library for today's copywriters learning from campaigns like the WWII "Squanderbug" public-good drive — but with modern advertising losing the emotional storytelling that made Gold Blend or Hovis cultural moments, the archive's lessons may matter more than ever to an industry at risk of becoming "diabolically effective" but creatively hollow.
