Cortina, outdoors

I was peering through Ford’s archive as it celebrates 100 years in Great Britain. This brought back a few memories: the Araldite glue campaign. Right next to it is an outdoor ad for the 1982 Cortina—Taunus 80 to those outside the Empah.

Ford Cortina Araldite ad

   The Araldite ad showed how commonplace the Cortina had become. And back in the early 1980s, Ford seemed untouchable: British Leyland—Austin Rover by this point—didn’t have much decent product apart from the Metro, SD1 and a few others; Vauxhall had just launched its new front-wheel-drive Cavalier (Opel Ascona C) but it hadn’t achieved sales’ supremacy yet.
   From memory, the other ads included a second Cortina (‘The tension builds’, I believe) and the cars torn off (‘How did we pull it off?’).
   There have been some creative outdoor campaigns over the years, but, in my mind, this still ranks as one of the best of the 20th century.
   And I can’t think of any of late that’s had quite the same effect, though a combined Volkswagen–insurance one here in New Zealand comes close creatively. You think it’s a New Beetle ad till the car on the creative gets progressively wrecked each week. The last one advertises the insurance company. Down side: I have no recollection as to which insurance company it was, which says something about the failure of its branding, but have an inkling it was AA Insurance.

PS.: And that was the 250th post done on this blog with WordPress, after I replaced the old Blogger system in January 2010.—JY


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2 thoughts on “Cortina, outdoors

  1. “There have been some creative outdoor campaigns over the years, but, in my mind, this still ranks as one of the best of the 20th century” I will second this statement–Very original.

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