The Hard Sell  

There was some fascination with major world airlines and new age music at that time for some reason. It was probably the British Airways "Face" ad that started it, and admittedly a classic. I'm a Millennial aged Yank from Atlanta, and over here, our Delta Airlines had predominately used the new age tune "Adiemus" by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins at that time in their commercials. It was even used as their phone hold music. My father used to travel for business a lot, and while being put on hold while calling about flight arrangements, damn "Adiemus" played incessantly over the phone much to my father's annoyance. 😆 Almost nobody over here knows the name of that song, but everyone associates it with Delta Airlines if they hear it. It was used rampantly around the time the 1996 Summer Olympics were here in Atlanta when Delta was the "official airline of the '96 Games."

Whenever I hear Tom Conti's voice I can't help but think "it will hit, and crush, whatever gets in its way".

I'd somehow missed Part 1 so watched that quickly before this - it's provided such a concentrated burst of Advert Nostalgia into my Friday afternoon that I may struggle to recover from. Also having relatives working in the BA "family" in the 90s, the branding and That Music are even more embedded in my psyche than for some others. Thanks for these and all else.

On the topic of BA competition, I’m surprised you didn’t mention Go fly, which was arguably one of if not the most daring competitive projects BA ever undertook

19:25 .....the same synth tone/ sonar as in the 93 channel 4 schools

An excellent second part Matthew. Was the Gatwick advert aired nationally or just in the South East regions do you know? As for British Caledonian being headquartered at Gatwick, that's down to the merger of Caledonian and British United Airways (itself formed through a shedload of mergers) and was just one of those quirks of old airlines ;) I quite liked the PJ advert, very British naturally but that second one for the US was downright dizzying! I actually miss seeing the world tails liveries now, they brightened up the airports but were a bugger for identifying who is who unless you saw the whole aircraft...