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It was only yesterday when I was still into it…
The 70s through the eye of commercials and ads.

Dear visitors,

Centre Céramique proudly presents its newest exhibition “It was only yesterday when I was still into it… – the 70s through the eye of commercials and ads.”

We invite you to take your time to visit the exhibition with this English handout.

Colophon

This exposition was designed with the aim of offering an image of the Netherlands of the period 1970 – 1979, through the eye of commercial, political and ideal advertising. During the selection of the exhibition items, there was no connection whatsoever between Centre Céramique and the brand shown. No forms of sponsorships were involved.

Centre Céramique has done all within its power to retrieve all possible copyright owners. Permission for the construction of the series of TV ads was granted by Stemra. The one-time printing and exhibition of the ads and ad posters was approved by Cedar BV/ the Stichting Reprorecht foundation.

In case anyone should have a claim to any rights, despite all of these precautions, on the basis of this exhibition, they can send an e-mail to the creator of this exhibition: john.kampstra@maastricht.nl.

Texts: Guuz Hoogaerts

Design and construction of the conversation pit and the projection screen wall: Atelier de Vree

Ads digitalisation: X-Cago, assigned by Centre Céramique

Free loan of ads and TV ads: Het Reclamearsenaal and STER

Ad printouts, ad postes and text panels: Richard Hanssen, the municipality of Maastricht

Graphic design: Rico Bastin

Audiovisual engineering: AV&F

Lettering: MRHRoadstyling

Literature used: Wilbert Schreurs – “Leuker kunnen we het niet maken”, prod. STER 2004

Exhibition items selection, composition and artistic end responsibility: exhibitions team Centre Céramique

Ads from various weekly magazines 1970 through 1979

There are two ways to look at the seventies. Through the eyes of the journalist, zooming in on the train hijackings in Holland, the knidnappings and murders by the RAF in Germany and the Red Brigade in Italy, and the Vietnam War. Or the “The Limits to growth” report by the Club of Rome, the murder of Chilean president Allende, the oil crisis and the carless Sundays stemming from it, the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Music lovers may even label Dutch Singer Vader Abraham, with his collaboration with the Smurfs, as a worldwide disaster.

One could also look at the seventies from a different perspective: that of the advertiser. The Dutch population had increasingly more money to spend and wanted to go on holidays abroad for a change, as well as play progressive rock albums on proper stereo installations, have central heating throughout their houses, and if it wasn’t free-spirited sex they would get their enjoyment from, it would be from a ciggie or a drink. Advertising agencies stimulated this consumerism convincingly.

In 1978, as much as 58 percent of the Dutch population went on summer holidays, whereas this was only 46% in 1970. During that decade, energy consumption increased by 60% - gas consumption doubled. The beer consumption increased from 57.4 liters to 84.9 liters per adult per annum – wine consumption increased from 5.05 liters to 11.96 liters. The total number of owned cars rose from 2.5 million to almost 4 million in 1978. No wonder that the tone in many commercials and ads was quite chirpy.

All of these new products had to be explained elaborately. One thing that sticks out in that perspective is that in both magazine and daily newspaper ads, and radio and television spots, a lot of text was used. Social developments, like the arrival of the birth control pill and other anti-conception products and a somewhat less strict sexual moral, resulted in the commercial ads, ad posters and advertisement in the Netherlands becoming less and less prude during the seventies.

The best known examples are the ad poster with the naked lady of the Dutch Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) (“Disarming”) and the ad of the International Wool Secretariat (‘Better naked than fake’). Both of these can be seen at the exhibition

Former Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok in 1978:

“Advertising by banks is irresponsible; a lot of people will unnecessarily take on debt!”

With the arrival of the television commercial in 1967 and the increasingly different magazines market (e.g. the arrival of gossip magazines, as well as music magazines like Oor and the monthly feminist magazine Opzij), advertising became more and more visible. Not everybody was too happy about this.

Television advertising especially had a lot of criticism to deal with. In 1969, research agency Makrotest surveyed over 100 Dutch citizens about their opinion on advertising. Leaflets in the letter box turned out to be the biggest nuisance (43 percent), followed directly by television commercials (41 percent). Commercials for washing-up liquid or detergents were considered to be the most annoying. In the theatre and movie business, TV advertising wasn’t thought of too highly either.

Hugo Metsers, who had become a star by making movies like Blue Movie, organised the STER stars event, in which he urged his fellow actors not to work together on non-informative commercials. Kitty Courbois, Ramses Shaffy, Peter Faber and almost 200 other actors pledged their allegiance. In 1972, 6 commercials were shown in an episode of the show Avro’s Televizier, which were made in assignment of the Rooie Vrouwen (‘red ladies’), of Dutch left-wing political party PvdA.

In those clips, the usual roles between men and women had been turned around – the man did the dishes and made coffee for visitors. The Stichting Etherreclame Rooie Vrouwen – the ‘red ladies’ foundation for ether advertising , which was founded as a result of annoyance about advertising – opposed advertising, such as the Bauknecht commercial (which can be seen in the exhibition) that showed a set of pans with the slogan “Bauknecht knows what women want”. In 1975, two members of Dutch parliament for the ARP party introduced a bill for the abolishment of television commercials.

The Dutch commercial organization STER not only introduced television commercial icon Loeki de Leeuw to save the commercial break, director Chris Smeekes also asked parliament fraction representatives whether they would make 200 million guilders available to keep the national television stations affordable. The motion did not receive a majority of votes. In 1978, however, the commercial breaks before and after the 7 o’clock news were removed, to ‘protect’ the children.

During an international conference in that same year of a Dutch organisation for applied scientific research, named TNO, Dutch labour union front man Wim Kok protested heavily against advertising by Dutch banks, in which consumers were stimulated to take out loans. According to Kok, who would go on to become a board member for Dutch bank/ insurance company ING, this advertising would cause many people to take on irresponsible amounts of debt because of those commercials.

Creatives in power

Screw the customer

Despite the criticism (a 1974 survey showed that 65 percent of the interviewees showed little or no appreciation for advertising), the television spots and ads became more beautiful and of better quality. The idea was created at Dutch advertising agencies like FHV and KVH, yet mainly carried out in England. Because of the bad position of the pound, but especially because the circumstances (studios, actors, directors) were much better, many television ads were shot in England.

‘In the Netherlands, there were only a few actors that could keep things on a small level. If you were to ask a Dutch actor to look surprised, they would do so with big movements and gestures. However, this did not fit in well with commercials, which is one of the reasons why we went to England,” says commercial guru Frank Pels, creator of many well-known commercial ads, e.g. for Postbank, Bolletje and Volnij. In England, there was the opportunity to work with directors who would later go on to be famous, like Adrian Lyne, Allan Parker and Tony Scott. It wasn’t until the end of the seventies that a change came about, as a result of the improvement of Dutch directors and engineers, but also because Dutch spoken ads, in Dutch settings, were more appreciated and – as a result – remembered.

Humor was also used increasingly more, even though it took some effort for the creators to convince their clients that a funny commercial is more effective than a 20-second shot of a logo. Examples of funny commercials are those of the Postgiro (with Dutch comedian André van Duijn), Jamin (with Ton van Duijnhoven) and Volnij (with Johnny Kraaijkamp).

As the seventies progressed, acting in commercials became less ‘infected’ than at the start of the decade. Nobody heard from the anti-commercials action by Hugo Metsers again – his brother in arms Peter Faber would later act in commercials for Amstel beer.

However, acting in commercials had its risks. Frank Pels: “This one time, we put Johnny Kraaijkamp into an actual hot air balloon for a Volnij commercial. But during the shoots, the rope snapped and the balloon went adrift. Just when it was about to plunge into a lake, the balloonist managed to land the balloon onto the ground.”

According to Pels, the seventies formed the time in which the “creatives”, the idea creators, slowly but surely took over command at advertising agencies. They ended up on the company boards or started their own companies. “Of course, research had been performed into the target group and one had to make a case for the decisions one made. But, honestly speaking, we also often thought “screw the customer”. If we were convinced that something was funny, we kicked the account manager, who had to deal with the client, out of the meeting and did what we liked.”

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