BARCLAYS BANK | Put Una Money For There | 1956

In 1956, Britain Bet on Calypso / Barclays Bank "Put Una Money For There"

This is the first British ad to win the Grand Prix at Cannes, back in 1956. It's called "Put Una Money For There." It's a three-minute animated ad built around a calypso sung in pidgin English (simplified English), urging West African farmers to "put the money from your harvest into Barclays Bank." Ba-ba-ba-boom. That tune is impossible to shake, and when you remember this was 1956, it's pretty wild.

The insight

This was an ad made for Barclays DCO (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas), aimed at farmers in West Africa, and the job of making it went to Larkins Studio. The music was written by Sam Akpabot, a Nigerian student studying at the Royal College of Music. The sponsor is said to have been nervous about caricaturing Africans for an African audience, but the animators didn't hesitate to turn the farmers into cartoon characters, just like all the other figures in the film.

The idea

The song "The Farmers High-Life" is the heart of this ad, the kind of earworm that sticks in your head long after one listen. That beat gives the animation a perfectly built structure, and the backgrounds are beautifully designed too. The credits go to writer Dick Taylor, art directors and animators Beryl Stevens and Trevor Bond, and director Denis Gilpin.

What happened

This was the first British work to win the Grand Prix at Cannes, in 1956. It was a wonderful first step for the British advertising industry.

Afterthought

1956 was right when TV advertising was just getting started in Britain. To make an ad for Africa at that time, using local music and pidgin English, and in animation no less, must have taken real nerve and a spirit of experimentation. Even setting aside the context of colonial-era advertising, the fact that this piece won recognition around the world on the strength of its music, its animation, and its sheer catchiness says something about the raw power of the creative work itself. Ba-ba-ba-boom, it's still stuck in my head.