iDidn'tKnowThat


And you thought the 1999 iMac was first word processing technology available in designer colors.  Au contraire.  Go back about 45 years:

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Who is Mr. Thomson and why can't he keep his hands to himself?

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An oddly intriguing 1960s-era campaign I stumbled across recently.  Let’s handle this part right up front: Obviously, seen through modern eyes, it’s sexist as all get-out – but if you just want to reinforce your disgust at the ads, there are other web sites out there that will indulge you.    Here, I’m more interested in examining these ads as an  ad campaign  – what made them attention-getting, recognizable, and endlessly reproducible, as well as how they channeled the zeitgeist (for better and worse). So who is this Mr. Thomson with the audacity to feature himself as a handsy designer of women’s apparel?    The internet is surprisingly barren when it comes to The Thomson Company , the textile manufacturer behind the ads, the brand, and the exclamation – but digging deep, here’s what I’ve been able to find out and suss out. Though he was the public face (so to speak) of the company, our Mr. Thomson was, in fact, an advertising creation, as fictitious ...
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Fly Me Again

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We referenced this ad campaign in an earlier post , but it really deserves its own entry. This memorable/notorious American Airlines campaign appeared back in 1971, at the behest of National Airlines'  Lewis Maytag  who sought to modernize the airline and the image of its stewardesses.  (Yes, they were still known as stewardesses back then.) At the time, airline advertising had frequently based their messages on the friendliness and attentiveness of their stewardesses, but previous efforts tended more toward the chauvinistic end of sexism spectrum, treating them more like Ladies Of The Air than ladies of the night: (Despite the caveman ethos of the headline and illustration, if you click on the ad to enlarge it and read the copy, you'll see it's actually about men being so beguiled by their stewardesses that they often took them for wives -- after first mistaking wives for servants, I suppose.) But now, with the sexual revolution and women's liberation in full swing (an...
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"Beam...Jim Beam."

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A 1966 holiday ad for Jim Beam in anticipation of the upcoming James Bond film, "You Only Live Twice": Where to begin, where to begin? How about with the awkward pairing of couplets (Should I be buying a gift for Sean Connery? Did I draw him in the Secret Santa?).   It was, apparently, an ill-advised spinoff of a previous ad: That ad, at least has the virtue of simplicity and clarity of message.  But did it occur to anyone at Jim Beam that the adult beverage that James Bond is most associated with is the vodka martini?  In truth, according to t his web site , Bond does partake in whiskey more often in several books and some of the film versions, but it's Jack Daniels or Haig & Haig -- never Jim Beam.  Still, Jim Beam is fighting the tides of pop culture if they think Bond will ever be identified with any other drink.  Thanks to the conspicuousness of Smirnoff's vodka martini -- a relatively new, and thus, exotic, alternative to the gin martini -- in the first Bo...
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