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Saturday 15 December 2012

Just Couldn't Wait


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MARTINI & ROSSI VERMOUTH
LIFE
12/12/1938
BACK COVER

  W. A. Taylor & Company advertisement for Martini & Rossi Vermouth: Life, 12 December 1938 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

I. W. HARPER KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY
LIFE
12/16/1940
p. 40


Bernheim Distilling Company advertisement for I. W. Harper Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey: Life, 16 December 1940 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

SCHLITZ BEER
LIFE
12/27/1948
p. 79

Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company advertisement for Schlitz Beer
: Life, 27 December 1948
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

SCHLITZ BEER
LIFE
12/25/1950

 Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company advertisement for Schlitz Beer: Life, 25 December 1950
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

OLD FITZGERALD WHISKEY
LIFE
11/14/1955
p. 139

Stitzel-Weiler Distillery advertisement for Old Fitzgerald Whiskey
: Life, 14 November 1955
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

CHIVAS REGAL BLENDED  SCOTCH WHISKEY
TIME
12/07/1962
p. 61

General Wine & Spirits Company advertisement for Chivas Regal Blended Scotch Whiskey: Time, 7 December 1962 (Gallery of Graphic Design)

HAIG & HAIG PINCH SCOTCH
TIME
12/07/1962
p. 87

Haig & Haig advertisement for Haig & Haig Pinch Scotch
: Time, 7 December 1962
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

EARLY TIMES BOURBON WHISKEY
TIME
12/06/1963
p. 4

Early Times Distillery Company advertisement for Early Times Bourbon Whiskey
: Time, 6 December 1963
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

SMIRNOFF VODKA
LIFE
12/22/1967

Heublein Inc. advertisement for Smirnoff Vodka: Life, 22 December 1967
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

HEUBLEIN ADVENTUROUS COCKTAILS
SATURDAY EVENING POST
12/28/1968
p. 13

Heublein Inc. advertisement for Heublein Adventurous Cocktails: Saturday Evening Post, 28 December 1968
(Gallery of Graphic Design)

7 comments:

TC said...

Independent research finds it notable that American liquor ads undergo a sea change in the early 1950s, from which point the subliminal signaling becomes more complicated. Class markers enter the picture, then sublimated sexual signals. In this abbreviated survey the change occurs with image #5, those disembodied phantom hands preparing the sixty year lost weekend at the end of which humans dwelling in this damaged land can't wake up from the nightmare which is their ersatz secular history, i.e. the only kind of history they will ever have.

TC said...

Linking mass marketing to unconscious desires wasn't built in a day. In a brilliant BBS documentary called The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis traces the story of modern advertising back to Sigmund Freud and several of his relatives and acolytes.

The first figure in Curtis's version of the history is Freud's nephew Edward Bernays. "An honest boy when I knew him," uncle Sigmund later said of Bernays. "I know not how far he has become americanized."

Then there is Ernst Dichter.

The Economist: Ernst Dichter, Freud, motivational research and "retail therapy".

Once prosperity overcame America in the 1950s, nobody needed all that product, but the system depended on somebody buying it anyway, so...

Freud, for his part, writing to the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones in the 1930s, opined that "America is a gigantic mistake".

Freud was no adman of course, but his emigré disciples in the American advertising industry took his basic idea about the role of the irrational in human behaviour, made it feel at home in a suburban consumer focus group, and the rest is that long lost weekend mentioned above.

An interesting condensed history of the mind control strategies demonstrated in this branch of the ad industry can be seen in this collection of alcohol adverts, 1840-2000.

Dalriada said...

♪♫ What made Milwaukee famous, made a loser out of me ..♫♪♪

My father was an alcoholic Nothing glamorous or classy about it

Now much of the scotch in Scotland has been upgraded (and up-priced) for a luxury market

Something of a reality check right now so far as disposable income goes for many here. Better get used to it. I'd like to think of it as an opportunity to rethink spending habits. Ho ho ho!

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Martini & Rossi

Elixir of the ancients
listen to their whisperings
through their careful wrappings--
is it Martini & Rossi?
on the rocks?
so dry so thirsty.

TC said...

Colin,

Ditto here on all points save the original locus of the loss.

(Christmas of course was always THE worst time.)

Mose23 said...

I'm particularly unnerved by the Lebensborn in the Smirnoff advert.

"The Century of the Self" is a must see.

TC said...

They all look drugged, there on that fake snow. "For sure those pure blondes came out of a bottle, and it wasn't a Smirnoff bottle."

(We felt bad for the stuffed albino reindeer.)