Photo Booth ("Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet")
Hamlet Cigars1987
Photo Booth ("Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet") is a 1987 television commercial for Hamlet Cigars, created by Collett Dickenson Pearce, London.
The line
Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet.
Why it works
The finest execution of one of advertising's longest-running comic formulas: life goes wrong, a Hamlet is lit, Bach plays, dignity is restored. Gregor Fisher's balding man fights a photo booth — arranging his comb-over, missing every flash, his stool collapsing — before the smoke rises from below the frame. The cigar, the pack and even the logo never appear. Produced by CDP in 1987 near the end of UK tobacco TV advertising, it was voted ad of the century by a special jury at Cannes in 1997 and sits in the Paley Center's collection. It is studied for pure situational comedy craft — a product whose entire promise is consolation, demonstrated rather than claimed — and for how a sound signature (the Loussier Bach) can carry a brand for decades.
Techniques
- Humour A balding man battles a photo booth, fussing over his comb-over and missing every flash, until cigar smoke rises as consolation.
- Jingles and music The Bach theme marks the moment of consolation, a sound signature that stands in for the brand while the pack never appears.
Sources · 3
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