Vintage

So I was cleaning out one of my old external hard drives last night in order to free up some much-needed space when lo-and-behold I came across this old favorite of mine. It’s a scan of an advertisement Ogilvy & Mather’s put out to promote themselves.

It is definitely something that you don’t see too often these days, especially in long-form copy.
For more great pearls of wisdom from some of advertising’s best, I’ve kept up an online storage of interesting articles that can be reached by following the “Knowledge Base” link on the right sidebar of my blog.

But here is - How to create advertising that sells - by David Ogilvy. (click on the link or image for the full-size version, i know the following cropped one is too small to read).

So what do you guys think, is self-promotion a thing of the past? Or have we just forgotten that every now and then, advertising does actually work…. even if you happen to be your own client?

Here’s a little bit of vintage advertising for a rainy Tuesday afternoon.
I came across this post on BoingBoing where a user submitted scans for two WWI/II era documents. The first was his grandfathers’ WWII engineering journal, complete with illustrations (he was a phenomenal sketch artist), and then second was the first edition of a magazine produced INSIDE a WWI camp for English POWs in Germany. The whole piece is a great read, being both touching and funny(at times). Above all, it is definitely British…. really, really British. The thing that struck me first though were the advertisements found in the magazine. Posted above is the first page of ads, with my favorite being:

“Boots!Boots!Boots!
(To say nothing of shoes and clogs!)
Small repairs done! Very neat work. Small patches a specialty.
W.Chapman, Barrack 8, Loft S.”

He used a strong, attention grabbing headline, followed with a bit of humor letting the reader know he repairs all types of shoes, not just boots. He then goes on to state what his specialty is, which just so happens to be something that every soldier had on their uniform(small patches). Great work! Another one of note is for the barber:

“Try the RUSSIAN BARBER in Barrack 11.
All the Barrack likes him. You will like him too.”

They used a larger font to call out that he wasn’t just any old barber, but specifically a Russian barber(does that mean he gives better haircuts? Is cheaper?). They also put his location in bold, so that if you didn’t remember much, you’d probably still recall that there was a well liked Russian barber in Barrack 11. The other ad-laden pages can be viewed here and here.

You can view the rest of the magazine here. (Or on the original Flickr page here.) There is also an article, which gives a good background of Sol Geduld(the man who saved the magazine/was a prisoner) and how his grandson came across the documents. For even more information, there is an interesting book written by another Ruhleben prisoner that does a good job of describing the experience that Sol Geduld most likely went through. That can be found here.

These are pretty cool looking magazine ads for the International Surf Museum that’s now open in Huntington Beach, CA. Done by Christopher Gyorgy (AD) from YR/Irvine, these incorporate a vintage look and feel in order to showcase surf legends. My favorite is the third one with the copy: “Before Jesus walked on it, Polynesians rode on it.” Checkout the little Jesus icon towards the top of the ad (I like that added little touch).

snagged from Advertising/Design Goodness

The other day I stumbled across a few advertisements from the 1950’s and I was reminded of back when I was younger and would sift through old TIME magazines in my grandparent’s garage. I remembered how I enjoyed the story that all the Norman Rockwell style ads would tell through use of imagery. For instance, in the first ad above, even Father Time is perplexed by the GE brand refrigerator. Notice that the cooler is on what is likely to be the moon, as if the product was light years beyond what was currently on the market! Then in the second ad, it shows Hunt’s Tomato Catsup as being, “Deliciously Yours!” Even in the 50’s and 60’s, brand loyalty was sought after with ads prodding the consumer to make Hunt’s your brand. This practice is still done today as seen with all the campaigns aimed at creating user generated content as a way of both personalizing and promoting the brand through consumer usage.

Then I stumbled across this gem:
There is no way you would ever see this in any form other than an anti-meat ad. I’m not even going to comment on the copy, however, I will comment on how disgusting those hamburger patties look. I guess that’s just one more advancement in advertising that we’ve grown accustomed to: food photography. Never again will you see a fatty, greasy burger on a stained tray. Instead you’ll only see food that looks so good that it would have to be plastic in order for it to be real.

Here is a gallery of ads that I’ve pulled from Plan59(Definitely worth checking out, I only pulled the ones that I liked, there are a bunch more up there).

This is only the tip of the iceberg when comparing ads from the 1950’s to today. So much has changed but at the same time, a lot of the concepts behind the ads are still the same: Make the user relate to the product, promise a better life, tell a convincing story, or everyones favorite - use sex(or the promise of sex).

I wonder what strategies used today will still be in use 30 years from now. Anyone care to take a guess?