advertising then and now. shop at binns.
Something caught my eye whilst browsing through a favoured tome of mine yesterday. Twas a bus (natch) with an advert above the destination blind that read simply “Shop At Binns”. Nothing else, just that. Simple, straight forward and sweet. I find it so strange looking at old adverts because the language used in them is so twee and coy, sometimes to the point where they are almost enough to make me cringe.!
“You will wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsident” went a TV ad from the 1950’s. That always makes me bite my lip. But maybe back then they had already got it right. Advertising, present day style, is an oft confusing mix of slogans, buzzwords and teasing two seconds screen flashes. Massive campaigns by the likes of Coca Cola, Microsoft, Sony and various other world wide brands plaster not only our televisions and radios but also our PCs, our mobile phones, High Streets, the whole country is smothered with over the top adverts. I know it takes a lot to sell a product nowadays because of advances in marketing, quality control and overseas production being cheaper than here but talk to anyone who was alive in the 1960s and I am willing to place a bet that they will tell you it was much nicer then than it is now (and no I am not talking from personal experience).!
Next time you are sat in the middle of town, eating your MacDonalds, texting on your Nokia phone to a Microsoft Hotmail inbox, whilst wearing your Nike trainers (tut tut, little chav you) and listening to your IPod (Why.? Why would you buy one. Why tie yourself to ITunes.?) then lean back and enjoy the international lampoonery that is advertising. People being paid to think up stupid slogans to sell you more tosh than you actually need, making the same people even more money.! Nice going people.
On the same sort of thinking, having just hopped out the bath (and had dinner number two, fish and chips only two hours after a chinese) I had kept in my mind a head spinning fact. Back in the days of sailing ships, canvas powered leviathons that graced the seven seas, majestic wooden creations moving silently from the four corners of the world, it took FOUR MONTHS to travel from India to England. FOUR WHOLE MONTHS. What a thought.! Now remember this was back in the very early 19th century, just as steam power was beginning to make an appearence and the Battle of Trafalgar was moments away from sending several hundred Europeans to a watery (or fiery grave).
Think how lucky we are to live in the age of the jet aircraft and the steam turbine powered ship. Imagine spending four months in a six foot by seven foot, canvas walled room, possibly with a cannon for company in lower deck steerage. Bad food (a burgoo made from oats and salted beef or fish) and thats about it, oh apart from the chances of being shot up by the French/Yanks/Pirates (wooden hulled boats don’t tend to sink by the very nature that their constituant parts float anyway) or catching scurvy, ships fever, malaria or simply getting washed overboard using the forrard heads in heavy seas.
The total wastage of someone’s life is astounding when you consider some merchants would have spent their entire lives doing nothing but sailing from India to England, unloading, reloading and going back again.! But now it is under 12 hours to fly to the Asian continent, whip your sunlounger out and lie on a beach in Madras, eating curry in the sun and flicking away young coconut sellers with a big palm leaf.
I still love the idea of those times though. My thankful ability to immerse myself in a situation that is long gone and empathise the sights, smells and sounds comes in useful. Put yourself in the place of someone stuck on a long and lonely voyage, eating rancid food and tapping weevils from the ships biscuits. The smell of salt, vomit, tar and unwashed bodies from the crew and fellow passengers. The smell of sulphur from the Royal Navy frigate ahead practicing their gun laying. Emotive. And gone forever. So strange.
The thing about advertising nowdays, its more of a social thing than an actual way of selling a product. We are all so aware of how adverts work, and are so surrounded by them that they’ve just become another way of life. They don’t really work, not on a grand scale. They are made these days just to keep up appearances almost. We all know coca cola are the top of the game, they could stop advertising and still would be. But they do it because they can, if that makes sense. Advertising is becoming more like our adapted and easily acceptable form of art. Picasso, Monet and now Lynx. Advertiisng is something I could talk about for hours, as unfortunatly, I am studying it. But to go back to the days of “product a will do b, c, d and z” would be so dull, from a personal perspective. I like the entertainment adverts can bring. The gimmicks, the slogans, they dont work on me, they just amuse me.