Sunday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.
In this ad, a three-panel format, an unhappy-looking maid holds a dirty mop and frown into the camera. In the next panel, the frown is still there, but now she’s also holding a mug of Heineken. After drinking some of the beer, she’s been completely transformed in the final panel. Now she’s smiling, dressed in a bright yellow (beer-colored?) suit. She still has the remaining beer in her hand, but the mop has been replaced with a microphone. Judging from the new tagline, I believe she’ll be singing the Cab Calloway classic Hi-De-Ho.
The Beer Nut says
That’s Peggy from the sitcom Hi-de-Hi!, portrayed by Su Pollard. Her character was the holiday camp’s cleaning lady who dreamed of joining the entertainment crew, the Yellowcoats, and lots of her storylines involved her attempts at finagling herself into entertainment jobs.