When I visited Portland this summer I noticed that the city is home to The American Advertising Museum. Hmmmm. I considered visiting the place, but then this question came to me: Wouldn’t an ad museum be ads nauseam?
Then again, still smarting from having talked myself out of visiting the Bowling Hall of Fame the last time I was in St. Louis, I decided to take the chance.
This is what I found:
The first thing you see at the Advertising Museum, mounted on the wall, at the entrance, is this quote from Marshall McLuhan:
“Historians and archeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.”
And, sure enough, the museum is a cultural time machine. Take for instance, the ads from the 1920s. You notice first that some things haven’t changed. Mr. Peanut was around back in the ’20s, as were the Campbell’s Soup Kids. Even then, Maxwell House Coffee was “Good to the last drop” and Ivory soap was “99 44/100% pure.” But you also see that a 1920s product called Boston Garter Velvet Grip asked the question, “How did your garters look this morning?”
And, get this: Lucky Strike cigarettes ran ads that claimed, “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.” Worse yet, the slogan for Chesterfield cigarettes was “Blow some my way.”
Then, past the exhibits of the old print ads, past the room devoted to radio advertising, you reach the museum’s theater.
That’s where you get to watch the 100 “All-Time Best” television ad campaigns, as determined by an Advertising Age poll.
Television and I grew up together, and the some of the ads carried me back to boyhood. For instance, there is one TV commercial where all we see is a close up of a frying egg. No, it isn’t “your brain on drugs.” It’s a housewife getting a phone call, then trying unsuccessfully to get off the phone. As we listen to her end of the conversation, we watch the egg burn. The commercial was selling the idea of adding an “extension phone.”
It transported me back to the ’50s, to Wichita Falls, Texas, and to the house where we had a single phone on a “party line,” enshrined in a “phone nook” in the hallway to the bedrooms.
Another commercial, this one was for Braniff Airlines, was devoted solely to new dresses for the stewardesses.
It declares, “Even an airline hostess should look like a girl.” Remember the time when air fares were regulated and airlines competed on hospitality and even sex appeal?
Seeing that old Braniff ad, you can’t help but compare how today’s airline “hostesses” wisely choose clothing more appropriate to their current function as cattle drivers, with the typical crew resembling the brothers on the old “Bonanza” show.
On the other hand, “Even an airline hostess should look like a girl” might make a person second-guess the judges who selected the “All-Time Best” reel. But this you won’t debate: When you leave the American Advertising Museum and turn on your television, you’ll see how few current advertisements deserve to be remembered.
It’s aggravating to realize how many ad campaigns are an opportunity wasted-just the same old situations, same old devices. Instead of a Creative Department, most ad agencies have a Recycling Department.
That’s why anyone in need of marketing inspiration-Blow some my way!-should visit the American Advertising Museum. But who knows the place exists? Which raises another question: Haven’t the folks running the museum ever heard of advertising?
