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Clip description
This clip shows three different ads from the late 1960s or early 1970s which feature the tagline 'when you get Roses, you’ve got yourself a man’. In the first ad, two young women sit in a train carriage. One (played by Tina Bursill) is offered a chocolate from her friend’s (Sue Smithers) box of Roses only to learn it was given to her by a boy at the cinema the night before.
In the second advertisement, two men in a car are about to drive off when the passenger notices his mate has a box of Roses chocolates beside him which he’s about to give to his girlfriend.
In the third ad, an older married couple are watching television. The man brings out a box of Roses chocolates for his wife. He says that he won them in a raffle before quickly making it clear that he bought them especially for her.
Curator’s notes
These 30-second ads from the 'you’ve got yourself a man’ campaign would have screened on television in separate slots. Cadbury uses the ads to position its product across a wide field by aligning Roses with different stages of relationships and covering male and female perspectives. In the 1980s the Roses campaign developed the memorable 'thank you very much’ jingle, broadening the product’s appeal even further. By contrast, each of these ads rely on dialogue rather than songs or music to convey their message.
It’s not entirely clear from the ads whether they are linked, but the men in the second ad could well be talking about the blond woman on the train in the first ad (she refers to 'Alan’, and it’s 'Al’ who drives the car). In the first two ads, the person with the chocolates has an advantage or is shown to be superior in some way, another subtle method of making the product desirable.
