“Launderette” was a commercial for Levi 501s. Made in 1985 by Bartle Bogle Hegarty it starred Nick Kamen and first ran in the UK. Very clever, very memorable. It made Nick famous, won lots of prizes and regularly tops the list of British viewers’ favourite commercials. Watch carefully.

LEVI STRAUSS BY BARTLE BOGLE HEGARTY 1985

Advertising ideas famously have many parents. It’s hard when projects are discussed collaboratively over and over again to remember exactly where each thought came from. Ideas emerge out of one another; as another adland cliché has it, “An idea doesn’t care who has it”. Clients and agency bosses don’t either, but with so much at stake, people in creative departments are jealously protective of anything that looks remotely like an original notion. They go out of their way to avoid being accused of plagiarism and have long memories for famous work. But sometimes not long enough.

Have another look at the Levi’s “Launderette” commercial, then watch this:

HAMLET CIGARS BY COLLETT DICKENSON PEARCE, 1968

Uncanny. The Hamlet ad was made by Collett Dickenson Pearce in 1968. (Points for the afficionado: in those early days the Hamlet music – Bach’s “Air on a G-string” performed by Jacques Loussier – played throughout the ad. Only later would it start at the moment of disappointment to tell the audience they were watching a Hamlet commercial. I wonder who thought of that refinement?)

The Levis commercial is a straightforward reworking of the Hamlet, right down to the man’s white boxer shorts. It has the women on plastic chairs, the expressions of delighted shock. However in the Hamlet film the sixties girls really are sixties girls, whereas the Levi’s commercial has eighties women playing fifties girls and the film has acquired a kid with a knowing grin and backwards baseball cap. The Hamlet commercial has all the innocence of its era: Twiggy coat dresses, Biba, Sergeant Pepper, and cigars at four shillings eightpence halfpenny a pack; it must have cost hardly more than that to shoot. The set is a row of washing machines and four chairs, and like many of Alan Parker’s early films it was probably made in CDP’s basement.

The Levi’s ad transfers the scene to a New York of nostalgic memory. It has an expensive set and screams the production values de rigeur in the knowing and self-regarding eighties. Of course it also has Nick Kamen, who is far sexier than the gent in the bowler and despite the clear borrowing and added kitsch it’s the Levi’s ad that people remember. But I prefer CDP’s original.

I don’t for a moment think that John Hegarty or Tony Scott would stoop to purloining someone else’s work. I prefer to think of the Levi’s commercial as a tribute to its predecessor which, although not the most memorable Hamlet ad ever made, was an idea so natural for Levi’s that it proved simply too good to waste.

Just to show how much can be squeezed out of a strong idea, here is a 2006 commercial for Childline.

CHILDLINE BY THE OUTWARD FILM COMPANY, 2006