Is advertising clutter getting worse?

Or are the media just getting more diverse? Whenever this topic comes up, I bring up how cluttered with ads the physical urban environment of a century past was. In the days before electronic media, but after the emergence of commercial brands, there was a time when every square foot of public space seemed like a potential ad medium.

These Retronaut photos of NYC's Times Square, circa 1900, are a good example of that.

Bust cream, or food?

Both, apparently. This product was featured in an 1897 Sears catalogue (always a good source for all things busty).

From the context, I guess the "food" part means that it "feeds" breast growth, as opposed to being something that you would eat. Check out that plunger, ladies!

These images are from Retronaut. Check out the ad in the original context on Google books.  I also found an interesting cultural analysis of the ad here.

Labatt's corporate drinking songs of the Great Depression

Here's a fun bit of history for beer, music and communications industry fans.

I found this artifact at an antiques sale in Kingston, Ontario. I estimate its vintage as 1930s, based on the label on the IPA bottle on the front cover, as well as by the design. 

Note that many of the popular folk and drinking songs have had their lyrics modified to make in-jokes about beer, brewing, and the Labatt family. Also, cringe at the casual racism ("darkies") of the time.

An interesting peek into early 20th century morale-building HR campaigns from one of Canada's major beer brands.

More on Labatt's history here.

Cross-posted on Retronaut.

These heroin ads are not a PSAs

From Wikipedia:

In 1895, the German drug company Bayer marketed diacetylmorphine as an over-the-counter drug under the trademark name Heroin. The name was derived from the Greek word "Heros" because of its perceived "heroic" effects upon a user. It was developed chiefly as a morphine substitute for cough suppressants that did not have morphine's addictive side-effects. Morphine at the time was a popular recreational drug, and Bayer wished to find a similar but non-addictive substitute to market. However, contrary to Bayer's advertising as a "non-addictive morphine substitute," heroin would soon have one of the highest rates of dependence among its users.

Yes, that Bayer. The story of how Heroin was first marketed as a treatment for opium addiction is a popular one. But this is the first time I've seen an actual ad for it (via Retronaut).

There was soon also competition to the German drug, in this case from the Martin H. Smith Company of New York:

New York University at Buffalo's Addiction Research Unit writes:

Heroin was widely used not only as an analgesic but also as a remedy for asthma, coughs, and pneumonia. Mixing heroin with glycerin (and often adding sugar or spices) made the bitter-tasting opiate more palatable for oral consumption. 

 Candied heroin. What could possibly go wrong?

Cigarette marketing to women, 1930s style

Retronaut unearthed a couple of weird 1930s ads for Virginia Rounds (grandmother brand to Virginia Slims), a cigarette by Benson & Hedges aimed at women.

The example above, with its sharable dark humour and user-generated content contest, isn't that different from "breakthrough" social media campaigns today. (Although the disregard for the baby's health would also create a massive social media PR meltdown in today's more sensitive media era.)

The campaign also used celebrity. Illustrator Russell Patterson was a legend, having helped define the flapper style in his 1920s cover and interior artwork for publications like The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Cosmopolitan, Redbook and Photoplay. He was also a successful syndicated cartoonist. 

The dated, but interesting, "girl power" approach in the ad above foreshadows Virginia Slims' 1960s pseudo-feminist marketing strategy of "You've come a long way baby". And like it, it commits the unforgivable crime of co-opting female empowerment to sell a deadly product.

I found one more ad from the series at tobaccodocuments.org:

If you know of any others, please share.

Guaranteed nightmare pillow

Via Retronaut.http://www.retronaut.co/2012/09/bedding-ads-1970s/

Have a nice weekend.

Have you ever had a bad time in Levi's?

Via Retronaut

In my early copywriting days, I was taught that it was bad form to write a headline in the form of a question. "It makes the audience feel obligated to answer," I was informed, "so think of the worst possible answer they could come up with, and that's how they'll read the ad."

That said, how could anyone have a bad time in such festive pants? Levi's struggled to remain relevant in the '70s, before briefly regaining their dominance in traditional bluejeans in the 1980s.

I spent most of my teens and early 20s in those latter Levi's, and I can say that I did, in fact, have a few bad times in them.

More ads from the campaign here.

Does your husband yawn at the table?

Via Retronaut

It could be your cooking. But it could be worse: "Most husbands, nowadays, have stopped beating their wives..."

Why be skinny?

Retronaut has a great collection of Wate-On ads from several decades when thin was definitely not in.

Check them out here.

Guess who's building nuclear power plants? #FdAdFriday

"You don't have to go as far as Iran for an endorsement of nuclear power."

Via Retronaut

Frog in Your Throat: Early 20th Century viral marketing

Retronaut just posted some wonderful old packaging for Frog in Your Throat, an early 20th Century patent medicine by Philadelphia's Hance Brothers & White.

What I really love is the included series of marketing postcards. 

I often indulge myself in a smug chuckle when I hear people bemoan the present day's media saturation as if it were something very recent. It was actually the Victorians who began the onslaught, and by 100 years ago, cities and towns were literally plastered with ads. You can still see the remnants of whole side of buildings painted with logos, and people on the street would have encountered endless posters, handbills, and even human ads in sandwich boards on every corner.

Their newspapers, of course, were full of ads. But so was their mailbox. 

You see, viral marketing is nothing new. From the late 1800s on, people went absolutely nuts over postcards. Cheap to mail, and decorated with interesting views, pithy sayings, or even a custom photograph, they made communicating with friends and family almost effortless. Like greeting cards, they allowed the sender to take ownership of someone else's creative idea and participate in popular memes.

"Memes"? Yes. They existed before Richard Dawkins coined the term. And with the mail being the social media of the day, is it any surprise that companies soon started virally marketing their brands through series of promotional post cards?

And so the Frog in Your Throat mascot became an early viral marketing star, interacting with the fashionable ladies of the day in a rakish manner:

Think of him as an ancestor of Looney Tunes' Michigan J. Frog and good old Kermit.

You can see more Frog in Your Throat marketing at Kosmic Dreams.

Your world, wrapped in Cellophane

When Cellophane was invented at the beginning of the 20th Century, it must have seemed like a miracle. Foods and products once wrapped in ratty old paper and sack could be kept fresh, clean and attractive under wrap.

After all, this was an era in which the discovery of germs had created intense hygienic anxiety (My paternal grandmother used to Lysol-bomb the bathroom several times a day; my maternal one was a bleach fanatic in the kitchen.) The new synthetic packaging was the perfect way to keep contagion out of your cheese:

Bacon:

Smokes:

 And... underpants?

But perhaps those plastic-age consumers were a little too enthusiastic...

These baby ads have been lampooned by Copyranter, among others. I can see what those naive old admen were up to, just using the old standard of using a cute baby to sell anything. But couldn't they at least have punched a few air holes?

Collection via Retronaut