Racial sensitivity in 1969

In 1969, this is what passed for racial sensitivity at ABC:

Meanwhile, over at the Tiffany Network, CBS took a more sobering, more provocative approach in their 1968 ad on their coverage of similar cultural issues:

(The CBS ad, by the way, is the work of legendary designer, Lou Dorfsman.)

"Bureau, Wool Bureau."

I know I should just chalk this up to a coincidence, or a parallelism that only I see, but come on! The veddy British fashion, the converging lines of the background, and the year of this advertisement, 1964...

...isn't it possible, just possible that the designer was inspired by the opening credits of this movie franchise, in its third installment by that same year:

Weird about beards

The wording is a bit confusing (is Dad talking about himself?), but that's the least of the curiosities in this 1969 ad for Oneida:

Once again, Madison Avenue attempts to engage the counterculture, with the awkwardness typical of the time. Here, the beau with the neatly trimmed beard seems neither beatnik nor hippie. In fact, his facial hair seems almost professorial; it's the Beatlesque mop atop his head that would seem more likely to raise Dad's hackles.

But while the copy insists "what a groovy guy he is," the kid seems more like a budding member of The Establishment than a Timothy Leary devotee, considering

That he was captain of the soccer team for three years straight and worked on the Cultural Center Committee.

So in the end, it's not a plea for understanding of the younger generation, it's just another reinforcement of the values of the older generation, dressed up in a "can't judge a book by its cover" homily.

And if Dad is such a traditionalist that he was put off by young men who didn't shave, you can imagine how he felt about seeing a young woman who did, four years earlier:

Going for the juggler

Think all the fretting over TV shows pushing the envelope in sex and violence is a modern concern? Here's an ad from 1961:

"We own Sylvania TV.

We're worried about some of

the shows you see on our sets."

begins the ad, under a depiction of programming types of the era that Sylvania apparently finds objectionable, violent westerns and cop and detective shows prominently featured, along with other programs waiting to implant violent and impure thoughts into the minds of the American viewing public, like medical shows, historical dramas and beauty pageants.

And of course, shows that feature jugglers:

More real people, unscrubbed

Back in my first post in January 2008, I showed this ad, as an example of the recognition (and celebration) of "real people" that's been absent in modern advertising (except as a source of humor, over-romanticism and post-modern irony). Here's another ad I recently discovered from that same campaign:

Contrast that with this spot two decades later. Similar laundromat setting, a similar depiction of an overweight laundromat lady (around :46) -- but here, she -- and the others -- are just used as visual shorthand for the prim, traditional sensibilities our counter-cultural jeans-washer offends:

A darn good question

This headline from this 1969 ad is surprisingly effective in stopping the reader, even after all these years.

Usually, when advertising poses a question, the answer is obvious. Not this one:

An intriguing question, with no clear answer. When you're talking cranium protection for pro football players, we know the stakes are high. And likening the construction of football helmet to a that of a hair dryer is a dramatic comparison.

But what answer are they hinting at? There are two possibilities:

1) That competitive helmets are made of a plastic material more suitable for hair dryers and that the one being advertised here is much stronger; or

2) That the helmet being sold here is amazingly impact-resistant, given that it's made from the same material as women's hair dryers.

Here's the entire ad:

Even if your eye jumps down to the "Deacon does." subhead, I'll bet most readers took a few seconds to scan the copy for details like these:

...all the NFL teams trust the same material...CYCOLAC Brand ABS, a tough, hard rigid thermoplastic...the same plastic specified by major appliance manufacturers...it can take the brutal punishment of head butts, cleat kicks and earth slams...

...and that's just at the beauty parlor! (RIMSHOT!)

Time, for a lesson in headline writing

John T. Elson passed away recently. As Time Magazine's religion editor in 1966, he wrote the cover story for the April 8th issue of that year, the edition that would give Time its biggest newsstand sales in more than 20 years and provoke 3,500 letters to the editor. As the New York Times notes:

For more than a year, Mr. Elson had labored over an article examining radical new approaches to thinking about God that were gaining currency in seminaries and universities and spilling over to the public at large.

When finally completed, it became the cover story for the issue of April 8, as Easter and Passover approached. The cover itself was eye-catching, the first one in Time’s 43-year history to appear without a photograph or an illustration. Giant blood-red letters against a black background spelled out...

Okay, that's not the cover. That's actually the title of the article as it appeared on the inside. For the cover, the editors instead chose the first sentence of the article:

Shorter, punchier, and most importantly, much more provocative, while still being true to the content of the story. Makes you want to open the magazine, if only to see which way they go on the answer.