Barbara's Secret
Lifebuoy Soap holds the key to love and happiness in a coastal Devon village
It smells so sweet and wholesome. How did you manage it?' The marketing of Lifebuoy soap is hung here on an entertainingly flimsy boy-meets-girl story, told tongue-in-cheek and filmed on location in a gorgeously picturesque coastal village. It purports to take place in Seaporth in Devon. There is no such place, but the village of Lynmouth in North Devon provided the backdrop for the most scenic shots.
Lever Brothers (the UK company that later merged with the Dutch Margarine Unie to become Unilever) was always ahead of the pack when it came to using film as a promotional tool. In the pre-television interwar years, cinema advertising would often run for well over five, 10 or even 15 minutes - burying the product placement in drama, comedy or documentary. With the rise of longer-form online branded entertainment, the advertising industry today is arguably returning to those roots. Thanks to Guy Bunclark for identifying Lynmouth as the principal location for this production.
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Pioneers of Screen Advertising
Almost from the dawn of film, advertising was a part of the filmgoing experience. This collection showcases some of screen advertising's earliest steps, as companies learnt to mimic the evolving forms of film comedy, drama, documentary and animation with the careful addition of their product as co-star.
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16 videos in this collection
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Rudge-Whitworth - Britain's Best Bicycle
3
Girls Packing Soap
4
Changing Hues
5
Trojan Car Advert
6
Mr.........Goes Motoring
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Cinema Commercial - Candy Cushions
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The Tale of the Amp-lion
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The Boy Who Wanted to Make Pictures
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Looking Ahead
11
Does Your Wife Know?
12
Ransomes Trolley Buses
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Barbara's Secret
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Transporting Loads - With or without Roads
15
Sound Advice
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