The Financial Post (Toronto), August 5, 1988, by Rob McQueen
"New Woman has long way to go in Britain."
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The suprise delight of British commercial television is not 
the high-quality programming for which the country is justly 
famous but the creativity of the advertisements. They're so 
good you go to the fridge for a snack during the program 
itself rather than miss the sponsored messages. 

One ad in particular is better than any soap although it 
lasts all of 40 seconds. In it, a svelte and apparently 
unattached woman is entertaining dinner guests and runs out 
of coffee. She goes next door to borrow more from a man who 
has just moved into the building. In this, their first 
meeting, the eye contact and conversation between the two 
crackle with promise for the future. As he hands over his 
jar of Gold Blend, a smile plays at the corner of his mouth 
as he warns: ''It's a very sophisticated coffee.'' She meets 
his jibe with ease: ''My guests,'' she replies, ''are very 
sophisticated people.'' 

Later, with the borrowed coffee served, she's asked if she 
has met her new neighbor. She looks dreamily into the middle 
distance and loads her otherwise mundane words (''We've had 
coffee together'') with the promise of good times to come - 
if she chooses. 

The two neighbors, played by actress Sharon Mughan and actor 
Tony Head (he appears in the London hit musical Chess) 
became instant television stars when the ad began to appear 
last November. 

More important, the message worked. Sales of the Nestle 
brand have jumped by 15% as a result of the (ps)7-million 
campaign created by agency McCann Erickson. 

Act Two of the Coffee Clutch premiered in June and it was 
announced by a (ps)25,000 print campaign, like some rock 
star concert. The plot advances only a tad; she returns his 
coffee jar. The tension between the two, however, heightens 
immeasurably. Her smile and thanks are steamy, but in the 
best soap opera tradition the episode is a cliffhanger. 
Whatever happens, however, you know she'll be in charge. Act 
Three airs this fall; your cup or mine? 

The ads are typical of a genre that has appeared aimed at 
the New Woman. She's an upscale buyer who cares about more 
than just a clean wash. The New Woman, at least as imagined 
by the Old Men at the ad agency, is single, attractive and 
in control of her life. She is also ambitious and sensual, 
practical and emotional. 

In a Black Magic ad, for example, a couple fights until she 
kicks him out. But she keeps the chocolates. Further, in the 
mind of ad men, the New Woman has reached such levels that 
she can safely turn her back on power. In one Renault ad, 
his car won't start so they travel together in hers. He 
drives but she pokes fun at his misfortune and haughtily 
sprays herself with perfume, comfortable in the knowledge 
that she can ask for the wheel back just whenever it suits 
her. 

Entertaining stuff, but, as ads often are, a distance from 
reality. Most British females don't fit the pattern of the 
New Woman because men won't let them. Education levels may 
grow and some executive opportunities follow, but just as 
Canada lags behind the U.S. in corporate promotions for 
women, Britain is that much farther behind Canada. Only a 
few entrepreneurially minded women - such as Anita Roddick 
of The Body Shop International - lead the way with any high-
profile business success. 

Even the Anglican church is making more progress than 
chauvinistic business. The Lambeth Conference this week 
defeated the final foot-draggers trying to stop female 
bishops. The vote sends a clear signal that most bishops 
throughout the world think that local churches should 
proceed as they choose. New Zealand, the U.S. and Canada are 
all more or less ready for their first female bishop, having 
had female priests for a decade. 

PARADE FORMING 

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was a latter-day convert to 
the cause. Just before the vote Monday, she declared: ''I 
personally think there will be women in the priesthood and I 
do not myself find it at odds with the Christian doctrine, 
although I accept that some people do.'' Not exactly a 
ringing endorsement, to be sure, more a realization that the 
parade was forming up and she better join it before it 
marched away. 

Still, in a nation where the prime minister and monarch are 
both female, women remain second-class corporate citizens. 
And there is little, apparently, that either leader will do 
to help women. With her sense of political timing, when 
Thatcher finally does pronounce herself in favor of more 
female executives, you'll know that something's about to 
happen. And by then, the coffee ad will be the world's 
longest running serial.  



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