Unusual, Vintage, and Quirky Advertisements Ever Used for Selling
As they say, it is necessary to explore the past in order to understand the present. It is a visual experience to flip through historic photos and find out about time-honored places and learn about their stories. Visuals give us a glimpse of moments we have long forgotten or weren’t even aware of. Illustrations, like old-fashioned ads, can provide a lot of insight into how our attitudes were shaped and often go unnoticed.
‘Vintage Advertisements’ on Reddit is hosting plenty of hilarious and outrageous ads that didn’t age that gracefully, so prepare yourself for a blast from the past. In this online community, we can poke fun at past behaviors and reflect on all humanity has accomplished in the past decades. Their efforts do not go unnoticed.
Keep Her on Toes
Talk about a perfect example of an ad depicting prejudice against women in advertising. The message may have been to show women’s fixation on men with great shoe choices. However, if you think about it, it’s never fun to put down any gender.
The tagline “Keep her where she belongs” is wrong at so many levels, especially as it calls for putting a woman under a man’s feet. These kinds of ads were common way back then, and a lot still needs to change to get rid of them. Advertising shouldn’t be done by looking down upon others.
Take a Chill Pill, Will You?
Coca-Cola is a household name that surprisingly used this advertising campaign at its infancy stage. The company needed to adjust and keep up with the changes taking place around it. New products were flooding the market daily, some of which still exist.
While marketing strategies may have evolved over time, major brands remained focused on what made them famous from the start. In the 1890s, Coca-Cola first marketed itself as a “brain tonic,” with the ad claiming that sipping on an ice-cold Coke relieved headache. The push of the product claiming to cure physical and mental exhaustion quickly made it famous globally.
An Outdated 1950s Trend
It is unbelievable that men could spank their wives in the 1950s as a trend, as seen in this picture, without anyone batting an eyelid. The practice has since died out, and anyone found doing it may face legal charges because it is wrong and abusive.
According to four people interviewed for Daily Mail, it was common for a man to hit his wife whenever she made a mistake. This ad shows a man spanking his wife for serving him stale coffee. It wrongly depicts women as second-class citizens at the mercy of their husbands, who must please them or get punished.
The Jokes Getting Old
Back in the day, men dominated the advertising world. They would greatly benefit from one another’s ideas, but they would miss the point, as seen in this 1950s ad for a Kenwood Chef food processor. The men could only manage to show women as cooking machines.
The ad couldn’t be rougher and more dominant as it only features men working. Ideally, in a family setup, every job is done by everyone together. Yet, this ad mentions no partnership or enjoyment in having quality time off when cooking as a family unit.