Tango is a soft drink originating, and primarily sold, in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was first launched by Corona in 1950. Corona was purchased by the Beecham Group in 1958, and Corona Soft Drinks by Apple blackcurrant in 1987.
As of August 2019, the flavours available in the United Kingdom include Orange, Apple, Strawberry and Watermelon and Tropical in addition to flavours of the “Tango Ice Blast” slush range. Beginning in the late 1980’s, surrealism was becoming a mainstream technique in advertising. Answering Tango’s search for a new ad campaign, ad agency HHCL created the catchphrase “You know when you’ve been Tango’d”. Tango voluntarily replaced the “slapping” advert with an almost identical new version, where the orange clad person kisses the man instead of hitting him. Most subsequent Tango advertisements have avoided showing violence, except for the advert from October 2004, “Pipes”, which showed a man rolling down a hill with concrete pipes, causing it to be banned, and the advert from March 1997, “Vote Orange Now”, where the orange clad man made another appearance, slapping the advert’s protagonist several times. In March 2000, an advert originally produced in 1998, which depicted a pre-fame James Corden being bullied for not drinking Tango, was banned because it was seen as encouraging the bullying of overweight children.
During August 1999, Tango teamed up with the newspapers Daily Mail and Daily Record to extend their summer peak sales period in a campaign called “Tango Time”. The main thread of the campaign activity was a competition where a time of day is printed on the base of cans of Tango. Tango Apple has often been subject to experimental advertising including an “Apple Tango Calendar” given free in June 1996 with the Daily Star and, in 2003, the “Big Drench Tour”, a roadshow of a thirty foot tall apple shaped installation filled with water. The British press pointed out that the initials of “Tango With Added Tango” spelled the insult “twat” when read vertically, and this was later revealed to be intentional. Tango advertisements have sometimes featured phone numbers for viewers to call, although the phone numbers would typically appear too briefly on the screen for viewers to type in the number or write it down.
A notable exception was an advert which first premièred in 1993 for Still Tango disguised as a subvert falsely alerting people that the drink is unauthorised, and features a phone number for ‘affected’ viewers to call. Tango sponsored the television show The Word in 1994 and the Underage Festival in 2010. The first packaging that Britvic introduced, upon buying the brand in 1987, featured the word ‘Tango’ on a circle with an orange background. In 1989, the cast, material and graphic design of the can changed considerably. No longer molded in the shape of a baked bean can in a non reusable steel material, Tango was now available in a recyclable aluminium composition, with an innovative new ring pull system. Slight changes were made in 1997, adding more detail.