We Must Blaze A Trail To New Media [1946]

Found a small stack of PDFs of scans of old issues of Grey Matter, Grey's research newsletters the agency sent out to media ("since 1935"). Particularly cool is a 1997 retrospective (pdf) of what Grey had published about television over the years.

From a 1946 issue:

"Throughout the still-raging dispute concerning the precise position television will occupy in the advertising firmament, a point has been missed... television is just one phase of a new advertising age (we might call) the "electronic age" of advertising...

We hope we will not be charged with being anti-newspapers, anti-magazines or any of the established media... but we see a brilliant future for radio, for television, for (other electronic media). And we would be sadly remiss in our duty to advertising... to clients.. to future clients if we did not firmly resolve to explore those new media intensively and utilize them to the maximum of their potentials." 

In Memoriam: Kodak Scenic Spots

I took my first Kodak Photo Spot (wiki) pictures at my spring break trip to the Disney World in the mid-1990s, and through all these years I've never stopped admiring their genius. It's a marketing idea whose elegance has rarely been emulated. I love how organically spreadable the signs were, how they subtly nudged you to spend another scarce frame of  film, and how they made people's lives a little bit better by giving their memories just the right composition.

Of course today the Kodak Picture Spot is something that could probably be built straight into the digital camera wired to recognize the subject and to statistically analyze thousands of photos taken from the same spot to recommend the optimal composition and camera settings.

A Kodak photo spot, (K. Mikey M on Flickr / group)

Eastmanhouse.org:

"As photography became more engrossed in American culture in the early 20th century, The Eastman Kodak Company began to look for new ways to advertise photography and its cameras. With the rise of the automobile industry and the development of American highways, the company began a campaign called “Kodak Scenic Spots.” Starting in 1920, Kodak began to place signs throughout American highways that advertised both their name and the practice of photography by marking interesting and beautiful scenery. Initially, these signs appeared on the roads outside of Kodak’s hometown of Rochester, NY in order to test the effectiveness of the idea. Within a year, they began sending members of their advertising department across the country to select the most scenic views to be awarded signs. By 1939, Kodak had placed 6,000 scenic spot signs across the country.

The exact phrases used in these signs changed over time. When the company began the campaign, the signs read: “Picture Ahead! Kodak as you go.” Eventually, the use of the work “Kodak” as a verb was stopped and the signs were changed to read: “Kodak Scenic Spot.” After the initial campaign ended in 1939, Kodak continued to place these signs sporadically in theme parks and tourist locations until the late 1980s. These signs also carried a new label, which read: “Kodak Picture Moment.”

Map of Kodak Picture Spots at Magic Kingdom (source)

The iPad and the Return of Tummy TV

One of my first iPad impressions last year was how different it felt to hold moving images in your hands: "Watching HD videos on the iPad gives a strange sensation you don’t get from TV or laptop, a feeling of proximity, almost intimacy." Adam Lisagor, in a much longer post, shared a similar feeling:

"The iPad is for the nightstand. And for the sofa, and for the places between where you stand in line and where you sit at your desk. That’s why every iPad poster and billboard features it on a lap or a knee. They’ve stopped short of showing it on a chest in bed, but that’s where mine gets its most use."

"To my mind, holding a 10” screen a foot from my face in a dark room is more immersive than staring blankly at a 40” screen twelve feet away."

"iPad. It’s TV for your chest™."

Which reminded me of an 1965 ad from Bernbach's book for the new 5-inch TV sets by Sony that had become known, likely thanks to Bernbach, as tummy TVs ("so that your wife can sleep, we also include a personal ear plug").

-- image credits: 1, 2. Also from the same Sony series: Pee Wee Tee Vee and The Walkie-Watchie

The First Digital Copywriter

It's Joe McCambley, who is listed as copywriter on that very first 1994 banner for AT&T on HotWired.

According to his bio (pdf), "Joe conceived and developed the first advertising experience that ever appeared on the Internet in October of 1994. It was a banner that led to an online tour of the world’s best art museums, sponsored by AT&T and developed for the inaugural issue of HotWired Magazine."

Which also answers an old question -- what happened when people did click "right HERE".

Human Billboards in 1920

Walking billboards for run-free stockings, 1920s
- source

Electronic Blackboard Transmits Writing Over Phone Lines (1974)

"A new, experimental system devised by Bell Labs may make an old teaching tool more alluring. Called an electronic blackboard, it uses ordinary (and low-cost) telephone lines to send writing that is chalked on a pressure-sensitive surface to any remote point for TV-screen display. The audio portion of a lecture or other presentation can, if needed, be sent via a second phone line, using a portable conference phone available commercially. The system is being tried out at the University of Illinois."
-- Popular Science, June 1974

Pocket Bargain Finder from 1999

In 1999, a team of researchers at Accenture described what you now know as a barcode-scanning app on your phone; they called it Pocket Bargain Finder. Pocket Bargain Finder "combines the global scope of Internet shopping agents, the ease-of-input of a barcode scanner, and the portability of a PDA. The result is a convergence of electronic and physical commerce that we call augmented commerce."  In their research paper (pdf), the authors have described the potentially disruptive effects such technology would have on traditional retailers: "With consumers able to find the best price regardless of where they shop, the physical retailer is left at a distinct disadvantage."  (Related from AdLab a few years ago: The Future of Retail: Instant Price Check.)

This is apropos of the Price Check for iPhone, a new app that Amazon launched today that lets you scan barcodes, snap pictures or say the product name into it and it will show you product prices, reviews and ratings along with a big Buy On Amazon button.

Chex Quest, The First Game Ad Mod

This is a TV spot for the 1996 Chex Quest, which I think was the first time when a standalone mod of a popular game (Doom) was used to promote a product. It was distributed on a CD in more than six million of Chex cereal boxes, attracted a lot of fans, and apparently won an EFFIE for its effectiveness. I couldn't find the game on the list of winners on the official site, but one of its creators claims the game was responsible for a 248% lift in sales.  The game was developed by Digital Café in Minneapolis, an early interactive agency co-founded in 1991 by Dean Hyers and Michael Koenigs. You can still download the game and its 2008 sequel here.  If you'd rather watch than play, here's a five-minute speed run through the game.

Vintage Ads For Social Media

So, not only was there a cell phone in a Charlie Chaplin movie, but it turns out folks in the 1950s already had Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Skype if  these vintage ads are any proof.

Scratch-Off Video Game Cards

TRSrockin.com: "Released in 1989, the Nintendo Game Packs was a series from Topps that consisted of 60 scratch-off game cards and 33 stickers from six NES games: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Punch-Out!!, and Double Dragon. Each of the stickers had a "top secret tip" for one of the games on the back. Each series of the scratch-off cards followed a particular game, with 10 cards per set. The goal was to uncover certain symbols while avoiding enemy symbols."

- via Vintage Computing

iPad-like Newspaper Tablet Concept from 1994

This video of Knight-Ridder's concept newspaper tablet is pretty prescient, except for the stylus and perhaps the size of the device. There's video content embedded in a newspaper page, interactive classifieds, wireless connectivity.  Created in 1994, 16 years before the iPad.
- via Paleo Future

Record Analog Podcasts With Gramophone

Fire up your Skype and record that interview old-school style, with a real gramophone.

The Gakken Premium Gramophone ($149) "supports all record sizes, features speed and tone adjustment, and even lets you record music! No file formats to worry about, no batteries to replace, and the warm, nostalgic sound of analog - this just might be the perfect music player."

iPad Media Coverage Thirty Years Ago

This news clip about Compuserve's (?) experimental news delivery service from 30 years ago is a lot like the iPad coverage we have all been enjoying over the past month.  "Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee, turning on your home computer to read the day's newspaper. Well, it's not as far-fetched as it may seem."
-- via

Cardboard Record Player As Direct Mail Piece

Grey Canada took an obscure ancient device called Cardtalk -- a foldable record player made of cardboard -- and brought it back to life as a direct mail piece for Griffiths Gibson and Ramsay Productions. Jealous?  Then head over to our retromedia department, there's still plenty of forgotten goodness left around. May we recommend carboard records on cereal boxes, ad games on vinyl disks, and paper ringtones.




- via

10 Advertising Inventions Of The 19th Century

The original tweet ads (!), shoe printers, an improved advertising brick and much, much more in this list of ten new media patented in the 19th century, for the fans of our retromedia series.

Pavement Ad Printer from 1930, and Modern Printer Robots

Remember Nike's cool Chalkbot (a descendant of StreetWriter) that printed SMS messages for Tour de France cyclists on the road surface? Here's a similar idea: a drum of water, a stencil, and an ad message. Done in 1930 in Spain to promote a wine merchant.

And a modern-day "sea-tagging" campaign to promote an aquarium in London through sea-water prints on pavement:



A few other writing and drawing machines:



Hector the Graffiti Robot (from, like, 2004).




A wall-climbing printer.




PixelRoller (we wrote about it a few years ago).

Movie Theater Advertising in 1920

From "The Essentials of Advertising" textbook published in the 1920s:

"The latest, and by many large distributors of merchandise regarded as one of the most important advertising mediums, is the motion picture. The popularity of motion pictures as a form of entertainment or for educational purposes is attested by the statement that there are 14,000 theaters in the United States devoted to their presentation, with daily audiences aggregating 14,000,000 persons, or over 5,000,000,000 a year. The possibility of placing an advertisement of any kind before an audience of this vast size strongly appeals to the imagination of merchants and manufacturers with products to sell.

Motion picture advertising is presented under ideal conditions. In the darkened theater the attention of the audience is centered upon the brilliantly lighted screen upon which the pictures appear, as it is the only thing that can be seen. The spectators are in a receptive mood. They are there to be entertained or instructed. When they enter the theater they leave business and household cares behind and, with open minds, are ready to receive impressions from the film productions."

- Read it on Google Books (+ iPhone version), Archive.org.

P.S. Starting next week, you can stop by the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge and have this and other titles from Google Books custom-printed and bound (see background in Wired).

Interactive Signage in 1902

Here's one clever advertising contraption "actuated by the opening and closing of the [glass] door to attract the attention of the person entering.

In order, however, to attract the attention of those who might not be attracted by the rising of the card, I provide a sounding device."

Patent #715886 awarded in 1902.

Emerging Media in 1930s

Raided the Modern Mechanix site to see what advertising media were budding in the 1930s.




1931: Someone had a great idea to put ads in the middle of  Newton color disks (like these). Notice the combination of "high school science classes" and "package of cigarettes".




1933: Sales robots!  Some guy hid phonographs behind  cut-out cardboard dummies. Guess nobody could tell the difference anyway.




1934: Wow, something like this passes for emerging media even today. Person standing in front of a mirror triggers light that illuminates an ad layer behind the mirror's surface.






1936: Advertising mirror, perfected. Now with a phonograph record triggered by a light sensor.

Western Electric Crosses Phone and TV

1969, but a prototype was tested in 1956. A lot more details here.

Image via