Advertising

Interesting advertising technique. Paint your ad on 1,000 cats and let them roam. This ad was featured in the Camden Daily Courier (a Camden, New Jersey newspaper), dated July 16, 1898.

Below is what is considered to be the very first ad featuring a radio for consumer purchase, though it’s not the radio we think of today. Rather, it was a wireless telegraph guaranteed to send and receive Morse code signals with other telegraphs up to one mile away.
The ad for this telegraph, sold by the Electro Importing Co., in New York City, appeared in the November 25, 1905 publication of Scientific American. The transmitter appears on the left of the ad and the receiver on the right.

An item consisting of this technology, now available for the home, should be very expensive, or so one would think. Residents of New York City were so suspicious of the low price advertised, that the New York City Police Department received numerous requests to visit the company’s location at 32 Park Place to make sure it wasn’t a scam. An officer was sent over, in which the company and their ad were both found to be legitimate.

Celebrity endorsements have been around a very long time. They’ve been used since the 1760s, with ads featuring the name or likeness of kings and queens in order to sell a product. This Fowler Bicycle ad from 1896 features several celebrities endorsing the product. There is Sarah Bernhardt, the most popular stage actress of her time. Her name is still widely known in theater today. There is also Eugen Sandow, a pioneering strongman, or bodybuilder as we’d now call him. The rest are opera stars Sofin Scalchi, Jean de Reszke, Edourd de Reszke, Lillian Nordica, Camille D’Arville, Emma Calve, Victor Maurel, and last but not least, Dame Nellie Melba, whose character was portrayed in the popular PBS show “Downton Abbey”. With opera being one of the most popular forms of entertainment during the late 19th century, opera singers were often used for product endorsements at the time.

One of the most successful marketing campaigns in the early 20th century was Kellogg’s “Wink Wednesday”. In an effort to boost sales of their new Corn Flakes cereal, which became available to the public in 1906, Kellogg’s launched a campaign in New York City in 1907. It was thought if they can build interest in their cereal in a city as large as New York, sales would catch the interest of other grocers in different states, who would want to carry the cereal as well.

Grocers in New York City were notified by Kellogg’s about the upcoming campaign, and on June 5, 1907, ads began appearing in New York City newspapers and local magazines stating that Wednesday is “Wink Wednesday”. The ads read “Give the grocer a wink! (and see what you’ll get)”, which was a free box of Corn Flakes. The ad was directed at housewives, which caused much buzz around the city, especially since a married woman winking at another man was considered inappropriate for the time. However, this advertising technique worked, and Kellogg’s more than doubled their sales of Corn Flakes.