In the Autumn of 1968, the next logical progression for the highly successful Martins Unicorn is a TV ad, shown on the newly re-arranged ITV Network. We are still no nearer tracking down a copy of the ad, but thanks to an email from someone who was actually there when filming took place, we can now tell the story of Martins’ first and last foray into the world of TV advertising…
These five pictures (SEE BELOW) are sequences from a 30-second television commercial used in conjunction with large advertisements in the national Press to publicise the Unicorn Assured Savings Plan. The commercial had its first screening at the end of October on television networks covering Lancashire, Yorkshire and Southern areas. These areas cover about one-third of homes in this country. With up-to-date electronic aids investment today is fast-moving and needs expert management. This is the theme of the live action commercial which ends by telling viewers that they can get into the investment would for only £2 a month through Unicorn's unit-linked assurance scheme.
We were delighted to receive an email recently from Mike Ludbrook, who worked for Martins Unicorn and watched the filming of part of the TV ad. Mike recalls how the director was inspired by the photogenic qualities of what was then Unicorn’s state of the art computer system. There’s nothing like the science fiction appeal of flashing light and whirring tape reels to excite the imagination…
I worked for Martins Unicorn in 1968 as a computer programmer and was privy to the making of part of the TV advertisement, some of which was filmed in the computer room at Unicorn's premises, Unicorn House, Romford Road, Forest Gate, East London. As the daytime duty operator/programmer I was asked by the Computer Departments Manager, the late Les Lofts, to show the director from the film company around the computer room. He explained that the company was here to make a TV advertisement, I assumed  the look around  was  to  get  the director's creative and inspirational juices flowing. On the morning in question I remember there appeared to be very little happening in the room, which was always kept pristine, the only noise being the quiet background hum of the air conditioning and the almost silent chugging away of a reel-to-reel magnetic tape update.
I remember he remarked about the lack of action. On hearing this I explained that although the room was unattended, there was lots going on. I took him to the Computer's (An ICT 1500) main Control Console, which could be likened to a modern day personal computer key board, but was about the size of a small church organ with illuminated keys inset into a table. I opened the hinged panels above the consul to reveal the computer's memory with its many different coloured lights flashing. His eyes immediately lit up and he was fascinated to hear that this was the computer’s ‘brain' which did all the processing. That got his interest and I knew immediately that he would want to film it. Remember main frame computers were relatively rare in 1968 and probably this was the first one he had seen close up. I told him that the memory was flashing away because a magnetic tape file update (remember this was pre disc drives) was taking place on the reel to reel tape drives.
I led him across to the bank of magnetic tape drives and opened the glass fronted doors. Again he was pleased to see more action with the tapes juddering round. Now I knew he was only interested in action. So I demonstrated the card reader which read, program run parameters, and data, on punched card into the computer at about 1000 cards a minute. Now he was really getting excited. My next demonstration was the Line printer which could print approximately 1400 lines a minute. I set up a test run for aligning and printing cheques which turned to be the best display of action in his eyes when he saw the rate at which the dummy cheques were printed. He left the Computer Room far brighter eyed than when he first entered that morning. After a brief chat between the Film Director, his name escapes me, Les Lofts and myself, it was agreed that the film crew would be back in a few days to do some filming.
The filming did indeed start in a few days. I have never seen so many people in the Computer Room, there were about 10 film crew and most of the computer staff. Once the word had got around amongst the staff that an advert was being filmed everyone wanted to be in it. The first thing the Director requested was the ejection of as many of the staff as possible. It was also agreed at the morning discussion that some staff would need to remain for security reasons. I knew he wanted me to set up similar action on the computer as demonstrated during the previous tour. So apart from an operator and the Computer engineer, the room was cleared leaving 3 staff and the film crew. The filming did not last as long as I had anticipated. They filmed most of the peripherals that had moving parts or flashing lights. Also he wanted someone to be filmed operating the keyboard on the Computer Console.
For this I called in my longtime friend Nick Sault, who was at the time the fastest computer keyboard operator on the staff. Incidentally, Nick subsequently left the company to work in Saudi Arabia as a Senior Programmer with ARAMCO. He has long since retired and now lives in New Zealand breeding small horses.      Months seem to go by before the finished article was given a limited showing to a few privileged members of staff, me being one. From my very vague recollections of the advert, in seemed a bit dull and conservative to say the least especially compared to today's TV offerings.  I also recollect the only part of anybody's human anatomy that appeared in the Advert was Nick Sault's fingers, they appeared to look very fat flashing over the computer keyboard. At the same viewing I also recall asking my boss if the advertisement had yet been aired. Again from my vague recollection I believe that the advertisement had been shown on Tyne-Tees Television, and possibly the Yorkshire or Anglia TV Regions* of the time, never to be heard of again… x IPR © Mike Ludbrook 2010 Images Text and Layout Martins Bank Archive 2010
x*We believe that as mentioned in the Martins Bank Magazine article above, the commercial did have a limited showing on Granada, Southern and the brand new Yorkshire TV, which at that point was less that three months old.
x© gut informiert! 2007 to date

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