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During his time at
BMP, Pollitt worked on various accounts. Two of the accounts that
he worked closely with were Cadbury's and Courage Best Bitter. The
most famous of the two was Cadbury's. BMP became famous within the
advertising world for the Smash instant mashed potatoes commercials
featuring Martians.
The founders of BMP brought the Cadbury's account with them from
their previous agency. John Harvey, who was the international marketing
director at Cadbury Schweppes in 1979, comments on why he decided
to move the account to the new agency: "I happen to believe
that agencies are about people and when they (Boase, Massimi, and
Pollitt) walked out of PWP the guts of PWP went with them. They
made a superb team and that was enough for me." (Campaign,
1979) The commercials featured a group of robotic Martians discussing
how "Earth people" deal with eating their potatoes. The
jingle at the end of the commercial stated: "For mash get
Smash."
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Here
is the script for the commercial:
(The
scene is a group of Martian standing around in a circle in
their spaceship.)
Martian
1: On your last trip to Earth did you discover what the Earth
people eat?
Martian
2: They eat a great many of these (Shows the group a potato.)
They
peel them with their little knives.
Boil
them for 20 of their minutes.
Then
they smash them all to bits. (The group of Martians laugh.)
They
are clearly a most primitive people. (Even more laughter.)
Jingle:
"For mash get Smash."
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(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/572903.stm)
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(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/572903.stm)
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(To see the actual
commercial visit www.bmpddb.com
and look under the "classiscs" section.)
The commercial was
named by the advertising weekly, Campaign, as its favorite
in its top ten commercials of the century. (news.bbc.com.uk) Custardtv.com
also ranked the commercial #2 in its "Top 100 Commercials."
After the first commercial was aired, a whole Martian series was
created. The series featured a Martian family, including a cat and
a dog, making fun of earthlings boiling and peeling their potatoes.
(www.nostalgicentral.com)
 
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