Apparently this one guy does

September 5, 2024 12:59 AM

Nobody Reads Ads. "A small archive of old and new print & outdoor ads + ONE thing each ad does well. Curated and snackable copywriting breakdowns by Miguel Ferreira."
posted by gentlyepigrams (28 comments total)

Now I want some Dynamite Chilli Marmite
posted by chavenet at 1:17 AM on September 5 [4 favorites]

i read the environmental ones
posted by HearHere at 3:20 AM on September 5

As a culture we should bring back magazines, and fund them with ads where brands bashfully tell us how bad they are.
posted by mittens at 3:47 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

These are superb ads. It was always quite rare when you’d get a client who was open to novel or quirky concepts like these, and it was a pleasure to be given the opportunity to actually do something fun and creative with a team.

Sadly, print ads like these are all but an extinct species. Broadcast/streaming ads are where the creativity is today, with catchy copywriting having been largely jettisoned from the mix. Things are still interesting, though, what with environments like YouTube forcing creatives to solidly get into a viewers consciousness in 3-5-second bursts. Blipverts have become a thing.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:31 AM on September 5 [3 favorites]

is this something i'd need to be able to read to understand?
posted by logicpunk at 4:50 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

As a culture we should bring back magazines…

I always love finding a stash of old magazines; less for the articles than the advertising, which to me really gives you a feel for the times.
posted by TedW at 5:04 AM on September 5 [9 favorites]

For those nights when the only thing you want to stick in the oven is your head.

(Bringer's fast food delivery)
posted by kozad at 5:05 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

is this something i'd need to be able to read to understand?

🐕
posted by HearHere at 5:11 AM on September 5

"snackable" might be the worst word I've ever heard.
posted by lkc at 5:12 AM on September 5 [4 favorites]

Lileks ads of the 50s
posted by Ideefixe at 5:13 AM on September 5 [5 favorites]

"snackable" might be the worst word I've ever heard.

Second worst. #1: Instagrammable
posted by kozad at 5:41 AM on September 5 [3 favorites]

I guess I used to read ads, in magazines and newspapers.

I find animated and/or video ads completely intolerable, and they became universal at some point, so I've used ad blockers for years. It's possible to imagine a different present, a different web, where I might still see and even read ads. But the ad business has paperclip-maximized itself into a hole.
posted by Western Infidels at 7:29 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

TedW: I always love finding a stash of old magazines; less for the articles than the advertising, which to me really gives you a feel for the times.

That cracks me up too. A full page ad with five paragraphs of copy for Doc McGillicuddy’s Original Patented Dick Salve, now with 32% more mercury for verve and pep!
posted by dr_dank at 7:29 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

Those typefaces, man. Linotype was the look of the 70s and 80s.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:34 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

Unputdownable is the worst -able and it's not even close
posted by oulipian at 7:47 AM on September 5 [2 favorites]

Linotype was the look of the 70s and 80s.

Much of the look of 70s advertising (especially headlines, and heads overlaid on photos) was thanks to the advent of optical typesetting and compositing. I was a graphic design student through this period, and the freedom offered by optical setting was amazing. The era was the golden age of supe-tight kerning and negative leading, done, in part, because we finally could. Kids and new toys, y’know.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:48 AM on September 5 [8 favorites]

Someone should make a Reddit-ad-to-70s-print-ad converter
posted by credulous at 7:51 AM on September 5 [3 favorites]

Now I want some Dynamite Chilli Marmite

I can tell you that it is frigging delicious
posted by Kitteh at 7:59 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

Not even one Silk Cut ad — all of which were delightfully brilliant — from back when I lived in England.

I think there’s a site that compiled a bunch them — off to reminisce…
posted by concinnity at 7:59 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

I miss the days of witty copywriting and instantly memorable taglines. Nthing magazine ads that worked to be distinctive, as opposed to "One Weird Trick That Doctors Hate" over a photo of a not-immediately identifiable body part.
At least a couple of those I saw on the site were done by the Della Femina agency, whose founder, Jerry Della Femina, wrote a book I read several times in the '70s, From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor, sort of the Ball Four of the ad biz.
That slightly snarky, "playing to the band" vibe that ads in New York magazine had around that time is mostly gone, from what I can tell. Unfortunately, Della Femina turns out to be an Objectivist, but his agency's ads, and those of other Mad Ave agencies of the day, were consistently eye-catching and engaging in the way spotlighted by this site.
posted by the sobsister at 8:23 AM on September 5 [3 favorites]

As an American seeing the Church of England advertising is a little surprising. They're certainly well done, though.
posted by tommasz at 8:41 AM on September 5 [1 favorite]

In the 1990s I worked at a small agency in Boston for an old school Ad Man named Jim Fitts. He cheerfully called himself a "design-a-saurus," using paper & markers where his young designers used Macs with big displays.

He had a wicked sense of humor and purely played with words: one of my colleagues called him "a silver-tongued devil who could sell snow to the Eskimos."

I once asked him how to get into ad copy-writing, and he just said to get back to him at the end of the week with ten ideas for a campaign they were just starting. No mood boards or focus groups or survey data to start with, just get on with it.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:14 AM on September 5

~Now I want some Dynamite Chilli Marmite
~I can tell you that it is frigging delicious

Soooo...not at all like Marmite?
posted by Thorzdad at 9:28 AM on September 5

Nobody? Well, they should. Pre-war Advertisements, ye, even unto the 18th century are the best part of flipping through old magazines and newspapers. Nothing better for getting a sense of a time and place.

Useful, too. Through them I learn that while one of my physician ancestors who specialized in illnesses of the poor made a reportedly really useful rubefacient but refused to capitalize on it, others were happy to cash in.

(Adverts so far have proven less useful for my alleged black sheep ancestor, Uncle Gil Coffee (sp?), said to be a snake oil salesman and the shame of the family. If anyone can back this up, I would be most grateful to hear of it.)
posted by BWA at 2:06 PM on September 5 [3 favorites]

Tommasz, that isn't the Church of England advertising. It's our good old homey Episcopal Church. The American part of the Anglican Communion.
posted by branca at 4:14 AM on September 6

Mod note: This excellent post has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 6:25 AM on September 6

GAMES Magazine had (has?) a regular feature: "find the fake ad"
Great way to encourage readers to actually pay some attention to the advertisers. I recently discovered the Internet Archive has about a decade's worth of issues, and the advertisements (both real and fake) have been fun from a cultural perspective.
posted by cheshyre at 11:15 AM on September 7 [2 favorites]

I was fortunate enough to wordsmith at a boutique studio in the mid 80s - early 90s with a bevy of wildly talented designers who utterly kicked ass with type and an owner who was among the last of the obsessed hand-lettering artists so not only did I get to spend many of my days penning pithy headlines, I could do it while visually imagining - sometimes even outlining - the kinds of treatments that might make them punch above their weight. It was a magical time as the owner went all in early to become a Midwest beta agency site for Apple and witnessed firsthand the entire industry's often awkward embrace and lumbering mastery of digital design while maintaining a solid reverence for all the old-school roots and traditions.
posted by thecincinnatikid at 4:14 PM on September 8