See also TV adverts as having a longevity beyond the actual ads
Some turns of phrase are surprisingly old advertising slogans – ‘Gone for a Burton’ is often used to describe something lost, damaged or to describe someone having some sort of bad fortune. Its from a poster campaign in the early 20th century for Burton ales in which a picture of a famous event would have someone important missing and the phrase ‘He’s gone for a Burton’ underneath to suggest he’d gone to the pub instead. In the second world war it became a euphemism amongst airmen to describe someone lost in action – to refer to the person from the scene that is now absent – and that changed to meaning to how we using it today.
Not used in that way at all – as in people don’t think they’re quoting anything – is the idea of breakfast being the most important meal of the day – which has no scientific basis at all and is just an old Kelloggs slogan.
I think even ads these days don’t have that effect though. TV and Film used to be much more of a shared experience – only a few channels, only one TV in the house, people watched everything together, whether it was kids tv, top of the pops or current affairs people watched it all together in the same room and more broadly we watched it all at the same time. So they way these phrases entered common parlance was through talking about having watched the same TV the night before. Nothing really has that saturation now.
I can’t think of an line from an ad or and tv show from say the last 5 years that people would drop into conversion with the presumption that anyone would know what they’re quoting
