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  These
five pictures 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 are still
trying to track down a copy of the ad, but thanks to someone who was actually
there when filming took place, we can now at least tell the story of Martins’
first and only foray into the world of TV advertising. We were delighted to receive an email 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…
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IPR © Mike Ludbrook 2010 to date
Images Text and Layout Martins Bank
Archive 2010 to date
*As
mentioned in the Martins Bank Magazine article above, the commercial was
actually shown in THREE ITV areas – Granada,
Southern
Television and the brand-new Yorkshire TV, which at that time, October 1968,
was less than three months old.
 M
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