Forcibly halted advertising boom
The roots of real television advertising in Czechoslovakia can be seen in the tradition of so-called advertising films. These began to appear especially in the cinema at the end of the 1930s, during the First Republic. The dawn of advertising films was preceded by the establishment of the Prague Advertising Club, REKLUB, in 1927, which gradually elevated the whole discipline of advertising marketing to a modern business standard. Thus, an expert community began to form, within which other platforms and projects were gradually created. One of them was the magazine for successful businesses called TYP, which had become an essential item for all manufacturers, tradesmen and entrepreneurs. As such, the breeding ground for the emergence of audiovisual advertising formats was sufficiently nourished.
It is probably not too surprising that relatively soon, Tomáš Bat’a, the renowned businessman from Zlín, rose to the role of one of the main trendsetters of Czechoslovak marketing. His factories had a strong advertising strategy, which was largely carried out through traditional channels. But he did not shy away from the challenges of adapting advertising formats to the needs of the film industry. Baťa’s commercial messages gradually earned a regular place in film screenings. However, this dawn of Czech audiovisual advertising was violently interrupted by the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the troops of Nazi Germany. For the duration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, marketing seemed to revert to prehistory - the vast majority of promotion was again in the form of banners, posters and street signs.
Video: Advertising film - Baťa Pneu (1935)
The Nazi chief ideologist and propaganda master, Joseph Goebbels, can be considered an important figure in the history of political marketing but the same cannot be said of him in the segment of commerce, production and industry. And certainly not when it comes to the countries that Germany has occupied. After the end of the war, it was therefore necessary to set up the entire industry from scratch. But soon, the situation got complicated by the rise of another authoritarian regime.
Merkur and Rapid dream factory
For the Czechoslovak communists, the word “advertising” was basically a dirty word. What is more, in the rhetoric of official ideology, the term was considered to be a synonym for Western capitalism and imperialism. It was therefore necessary to look for alternatives, and the regime eventually identified itself with the word “promotion”. Within the state machinery, this agenda was entrusted to two enterprises - Merkur (formerly Reklamní podnik) and Rapid. With a bit of exaggeration, it can be said that both institutions operated in much the same way as today’s media and event agencies. Merkur and Rapid were able to create a turnkey promotional event for the state and its allied enterprises but the very lengthy implementation where every step was subject to approval from superior authorities was a problem. At first glance, it may seem that the two enterprises were easily interchangeable but the opposite is true.
Merkur was an agency designed primarily for the domestic market. In addition to the standard forms of promotion, it soon acquired skills in the field of television advertising, and over time Czechoslovak Television delegated all responsibility for these activities to Merkur. Moreover, sources of that time recall that Merkur performed its tasks with unprecedented efficiency and “Stakhanovite” enthusiasm. The company was producing 500 television adverts a year in the late 1980s, and on a good day, it was allegedly not unusual to run five promotional campaigns in 24 hours. But their quality was questionable, and if you look at them today, most of them are unintentionally very comical. Over time, Merkur was interfered with by the Artists’ Fund, which emphasised that promotional spots should not be oriented just on commerce but first and foremost they should be of high aesthetic quality. Coupled with the increasingly intense market competition between Czechoslovak companies, Merkur’s position became untenable, heralding a complete paradigm shift after 1989.
The life of the other state agency was not a bed of roses either. Rapid was originally based on its history dating back to the First Republic but the new regime nationalised it shortly after seizing power. The company was entrusted with the complete promotion of Czechoslovakia and its industry in the international environment, which was not an easy task given all the restrictions and the regime’s conservatism. Nevertheless, Rapid did more than well - it published professional periodicals in several languages, took care of the production of printed promotional materials and advertising, and in conjunction with Merkur, organised the promotion of Czechoslovak companies at world fairs. One of its most memorable achievements was the exhibition of Czech glass in Arab countries, which saw a grand opening by a group of Czech blondes in wedding dresses. In the 1960s, the company also frequently sent its employees on internships abroad, including to Western European countries. For this reason, it was often a source of paranoia in the highest levels of the Czechoslovak power pyramid.
It must be stressed that both Merkur and Rapid operated under the conditions of real socialism, which is a very difficult task for an institution that is an advertising agency by its nature. Especially after the 1948 coup, advertising was viewed with outright hostility, especially advertising that, heaven forbid, moved or spoke. Under such conditions, we cannot even speak of any enthusiasm on the part of the public. The regime originally liked all publicity to be done on paper, preferably on signs and posters, which could easily be removed if they struck the wrong chord. And then came an epiphany. In 1953, the first television broadcast was launched in Czechoslovakia. The first real Czechoslovak television advertisement was shown in 1966. Representatives of the then monopolised television began to think about the best way to keep viewers with the advertising breaks. And so, a year later, “Pan Vajíčko” (Mr. Egg) enters the scene...
Mr. Egg on the scene
The legendary Mr. Egg was born with a simple goal - it was meant to be an easy-to-recognise barrier between the promotional break and the rest of the television broadcast. Until 1967, television at that time used static caption, but with the general social relaxation, it began to consider a more playful and creative format, which it knew from, for example, West Germany or from the production of the domestic company Reklama obchodu. Therefore, at the end of 1966, the broadcaster approached the artist Eduard Hofman from the Bratři v triku studio with the task of creating an animated character for television that would become a true symbol of Czechoslovak television promotion.
Hofman, undoubtedly an experienced artist, considered various more or less complex designs - according to some sources, he presented up to forty of them to the promoters of state television - before a general consensus prevailed. The new face of Czechoslovak television advertising would be a simple, ovoid-shaped animated character, similar to those Hofman’s studio had already created for several cartoons and puppet films. No official name was chosen for the character; one day it simply appeared on TV screens with the sign “TV Tips” (which was later replaced by the more modern - and capitalist - word “Advertising”).
The rest was left to the creativity of the Czech people. Naturally, the character quickly got many nicknames. In the beginning, the most popular was “Pumprlík” (Tot) but there were many others (such as Panáček, Šiška or Panďulák referring to its ovoid shape and appearance). In the early 1970s, however, the name Mr. Egg was adopted for the character, which lasted until the revolution in 1989, after which the character disappeared from television screens. What did the classic appearance of Mr. Egg in broadcasting look like? Since the animators had to work with a highly limiting two-second running time, they chose grotesque gags as the ideal format. Mr. Egg is usually the catalyst for some kind of accident, which - with a few exceptions - is ultimately not serious. Nearly five hundred short animations have been made, and the reason is simple - to prevent viewers from getting bored and running away from the adverts en masse.
Given that advertising in Czechoslovakia was logically a purely political discipline, it was in the interest of the state and television that Mr. Egg entertained people. Therefore, as early as 1967, the Dramaturgy Department invited viewers to send their ideas and suggestions to Kavčí hory [the seat of the broadcaster] about what Mr. Egg could do this time. And they came pouring in. These specific micro-stories were therefore not created only in Czechoslovak Television but were made in a certain dialogue with the “end customer”. At least until the state advertising company Merkur took over all the creative work behind Mr. Egg and madly accelerated the production of animations. During the 1970s, Merkur produced over 2,500 stories of this animated character.
Video: A series of advertising jingles of Czechoslovak Television (ČST)
Around the same time, Mr. Egg got a partner - or a female partner to be precise. As the second channel of the state television broadcast was not free of advertising either, the programmers quickly came to the conclusion that the second channel should avoid recycling what was happening on the first channel. The second channel thus became the domain of another animated character, Panenka (Doll). She did not become a competitor to Mr. Egg, they appeared together on the television screen several times. Various troubles typical of women were her domain. Both Mr. Egg and the Doll had a clear role to play - their escapades were meant to awaken feelings of empathy and belonging in the audience. This is exactly the frame of mind that marketers want to put potential clients in before subjecting them to an intense advertising massage. In short, it made sense in terms of programming.
And that is how Mr. Egg and the Doll lived together until 1989. During the 1970s, they moved together to colour television and in 1982, they even played a cameo role as puppets in the popular competition show Hádanky s písničkou (Riddles with a Song), which they presented alongside the live presenter Ondřej Šrámek. And then, together with the Velvet Revolution changes, both characters took a “well-deserved retirement” after decades of service to socialism.
And there it is... The socialist advertising stereotype!
What actually happened after Mr. Egg’s performance on the screen? The key word here is “stereotype”. Czechoslovak socialist advertising is full of stereotypes, which is logical given that it was mainly intended to promote the regime and draw attention to surplus consumer goods. Even today companies in the advertising business cannot avoid localisation but it is a free decision made strictly for economic reasons. In communist Czechoslovakia, economic motives were subordinated to political ones. Common advertising was designed to promote the impression that Czechs and Slovaks were no worse off than people in the West. The promotion of domestic products was intended to discourage people from looking for what was available abroad and in what quantities.
Advertising in the period of Czechoslovak socialism was rather sandwiched between two millstones. On the one hand, it was supposed to promote Czechoslovak products and give them the desired hallmark of uniqueness, but on the other hand, it was obvious that many of them would fail in a direct comparison with products from abroad, with Vitana’s instant pizza mix being the most blatant example. Although advertising was subordinated to the agenda of the state regime to a certain extent, it could not afford to go to extremes. If it had been outright false or presented dubious information, it would have had exactly the opposite effect and led to even more intense consumer dissatisfaction, which the regime could not afford to do from a certain point onwards. A sort of hybrid of brief and transparent information presented in a light and entertaining way took hold as a universal format (which is all the more entertaining if you are watching it in 2023 and for very different reasons). If we take into account the aforementioned increasing pressure from artists and designers on the aesthetic qualities of the spots, we cannot avoid some marketing schizophrenia.
Video: Advertising spots 1
And so, for example, a bear entered the living rooms of Czechoslovak households looking for his brother who had gone to the grocery store called Jednota for honey. This advertising gem came from the creative team of Spotřební družstva and was intended mainly to promote the sale of bee honey, while pragmatically not forgetting to highlight the uniqueness of the Jednota retail chain. The absence of specific brands was striking - an advertisement for unbranded bee honey would hardly stand up in today’s conditions of fierce competition.
The State-Owned Vegetable Stores were other frequent suppliers of TV advertisements. They are responsible for a similarly memorable presentation in which coleslaw played the lead role. The spot starts idyllically - the viewer watches bunnies grazing in a meadow amongst the heads of cabbage tossed around. But then a hunter appears on the scene, loading a shotgun, which makes the viewer fear that he is about to shoot those cute little bunnies. Fortunately, the opposite is true. A hunter with the skill of a professional sniper shoots one of the cabbage heads, which falls to pieces. This is followed by the serious declamation “And there is coleslaw!”, which is actually the highlight of the whole presentation. So all went well and the call to action for the consumer is more than clear. Again, there is a lack of a specific brand, but the intention to draw attention to surplus consumer goods is definitely fulfilled.
Video: reklamní blok 2
Last but not least, the creative work with advertising jingles is certainly worth mentioning. It should be appreciated because it is basically unrepeatable. For example, a spot designed to promote Pavone stockings made by Elite Varnsdorf, a traditional stockings producer, comes to our mind. The spot, which in the light of the conditions at the time flirted with forms of light eroticism, is undoubtedly specific - all the more so because it does not completely ignore marketing trends from abroad. But the bitter truth is that Pavone stockings were virtually impossible to buy at the time, so it is an advertisement selling an illusion rather than a real product.
Another advertising presentation begins with a view of the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza. The non-diegetic narrator refers to them as the result of human dedication and determination, and today's viewer would probably expect the whole spot to turn out to be an advertisement for a travel or experience agency, or an educational programme. Not at all. There is a plot twist. The narrative gradually works its way to the conclusion that architectural wonders like the Egyptian pyramids could only have been built because the workers regularly ate garlic. Then we get into the mode of a brief history of garlic, and we are back where we were with coleslaw or bee honey. Sales of consumer products in the first place.
And so we could go on forever.
It is not surprising that after decades of marketing being subordinated to the economic and ideological goals of the state, it took a while for the newly independent Czech marketing to develop to a level where it can match foreign production. It took almost the entire wild 1990s for companies to get used to the new rules and possibilities. However, today’s marketing still benefits from the legacy of socialist advertising. Despite all the problems - from logical obsolescence to bizarre narrative arcs - there is no denying that there was often a good deal of creativity and professional skill involved. And what is more, the advertisements were produced under conditions that were not exactly conducive to this type of work. Although this is now ancient history, these qualities continue to survive in the genes of the Czechs, and today’s Czech advertising designers are proof of that.
