Definitely not the longest ad ever, same with that Honda ad earlier this year that was billed as the 'first ever live advert' even though one comes around every few years whenever a company is in a publicity-stunt mood.
I do wonder why on earth there's need of doing seperate 122-second and 120-second versions, what's so important about an edit cutting out two extra seconds?
Having said that, remember when Orange bought up the entire ad break just before Davina went to talk to (cameron?) when we won big brother to spite O2's sponsorship?
I take it the 2 seconds to make it up to 122 is simply to be the same as the 122 years that Hovis has been around.
I don't remember anyone on here complaining about LWT's final live announcement being 34 seconds after their 34 years of existence.
I
suspect
that the 122 second version will have to be specially played in, and will probably go to the entire network, because
as far as I know,
the playout software for splitting commercials between regions still likes everything to be in nice, 10 second multiples, so all the regions come back together tidily at the end of the break.
The 120 second version would, therefore, be for later screenings, not necessarily in all regions at the same time.
According to The Mirror this morning, the longest ad ever aired was a one-off for Great Universal Stores which went out on January 20th 1985, lasted 7mins 10secs, and cost £100k.
However it then says the advert aired "during TV-AM's Good Morning Britain" which could be taken as either it aired during an actual break or as part of a segment of Good Morning Britain.
However it then says the advert aired "during TV-AM's Good Morning Britain" which could be taken as either it aired during an actual break or as part of a segment of Good Morning Britain.
It would have been during a break. I remember the last ad break, the 9.20 one, on TVam being host to all manner of weird adverts. At the time, because TVam were always desperate for cash, they offered loads of deals, one of which involved massive discounts for companies making special announcements to their staff, sort of like corporate videos on telly. Certainly I recall seeing at least one ad with an MD at his desk congratulating all his staff, and they seemed to go on for hours.
Don't foget the first advert on TV-am was for Walls Sausages fronted by the Chief Executive of Walls.
I always thought the Valarie Singleton/McCain advert was the longest when that shown first time round, it took the whole break of Coronation Street IIRC.
I remember during the mid 1990's there were really long (if not a programme) style advert for Pepsi that were basically trying to look like
The Word
and featured Terry Christian and a bunch of midgets.
Wasn't there a commerical during the mid 90s featuring the Vauxhall Vectra (the one featuring Bjork's Play Dead) that went on for about 15 minutes and that the full premiere could only be played at 5.15am due to obvious space reasons?
