Gillette Atra Plus (Pan Regional, 1988)

[radiotelefonia]

I usually hate pan regional commercials; they are annoying based on the starting idea that the same ad can work in different countries at the time. But I found them fascinating when you have access to as many different versions as possible and find out similarities and differences between each version.

This kind of ad were originally introduced around the late twenties or early thirties when magazines where exported from the United States to other countries; the ads had to be generic and the products available in the target markets. Television took over this idea and this kind of commercials are usually restricted to brand products from international companies.

A few weeks ago, publicist Omar Di Nardo published adverts in which he was involved. The ads are for the most part great, but for some reason his tapes were uploaded to YouTube with a lot of interlacing defects. Among those ads, there is one from 1988 Gillette Atra Plus production that aired simultaneously in several countries. At the time I was able to see on the air, unusually, many versions from different nations because Argentina allowed Satellite broadcast reception to anybody and, in my case, the cable operators were lifting several signals.

Since the Argentine version was damaged, I looked for alternative versions from other countries. But they were also in bad shape and they have a number of differences: the editing is never the same, the running times vary from ad to ad, and there us a different announcer for each one in order to establish nationality. And one version has a different soundtrack.

Lifting pieces from all the versions I reconstructed the Argentine version that, considering the running time, is the longest version and probably the "original" from which all of the others were produced. I have not found an English language version, but here are the ads.

BRAZIL:


CHILE:


VENEZUELA:


ARGENTINA, URUGUAY and probably PARAGUAY