Persil: Looking Ahead

1930
Silent
2m

Behold the future! Where meals are consumed in pill form, and hankies are washed on television

There's nothing like a science fiction future to give you an insight into the concerns of its time. The ultra-modern city in this 1930 cartoon cinema ad for Persil is utopian in ambition, but also strangely lonely. A businessman lands his plane on a skyscraper roof and eats a solitary meal in pill form. His only company is a headless washer-woman on television who washes his hankies by hand. Utopia? You decide.

Adlets was an animation production company set up around the skills of Australian David Barker and specialising in cinema adverts. The future skyscraper bearing the company's name in this film turned out to be wishful thinking, as the company disappeared not long after this film was made.

Animated Ads

British animation won great success as an entertainer, but it has long had a lucrative second career in sales

In cinemas and on TV, animated adverts have frequently outshone the main attraction. In the early days of the cinema, animated ads were often relative epics, with five-minute comic encounters leading to a pack-shot punchline. The arrival of commercial television in 1955 brought the animated ad down to bite-size, but if anything they packed an even harder punch. Advertisers found that animation could soften the edges of a hard sell approach, and bring cartoon brand characters to life.