I enjoy a good jingle, especially ones that make me laugh. I rarely buy the product, but I like the creative approach of using psychology in marketing. I want to see how far a company will go to get my buck.
Today we are bombarded with commercial advertising. Buildings are named after soda (Pepsi Arena). School cafeterias sell only one brand of food. I'm surprised there isn't a print ad on birth certificates for newborns. It might go like this:
"We hope you are pleased with brand new baby Jane, brought to you by the gentle hands of Dr. X at hometown hospital. This certificate is good for our special -- two deliveries for the price of one. Act fast, it's good for one year only. Void where prohibited. Do not shake. Contents by weight. Some Settling may occur."
As much as we might hate getting hit with all this commercialism, advertising goes further back in human history than we care to admit.
Historians give credit to the Babylonians as the first people to introduce advertising through the use of store signs and street barkers back in 3000 BC. They're also credited with the marketing ploy called "sponsorships" when they allowed kings to stencil their names on the temples they built. For 3500 years, advertising techniques didn't change much.
By 1700, colonial postmasters were acting as the first advertising agents, accepting and forwarding ads to various publications.
By the 1830s, traveling patent medicine men combined selling product with entertainment and testimonials. Products were painted with slogans on the sides of the salesmen's wagons.
By 1841, with the Industrial Revolution creating national distribution channels, and the introduction of a cheap papermaking process from France, newspapers exploded around the country giving rise to print advertising!
Paper was invented in China in 105 AD , although in 59 BC, the earliest known daily news sheet Acta Diurna (Daily Events) was published in Rome. Yet, it wasn't until 1525 AD that the first print ad appeared in a German news pamphlet. For the next 300 years, ads in publications were small, similar to our classified section in today's newspapers, mostly because of the scarcity of paper.
Paper really didn't come into its own until the last half of the 19th century. It's sudden rise was memorialized in song. "The Age of Paper," was a popular music hall song in the 1860's. The first stanza goes like this:
Of "Golden Age" do poets tell,
The "Age of Brass" they laud as well;
While ev'ry age hath serv'd by times
A peg on which to hang their rhymes.
But as the world goes rolling on,
Strange times indeed we've chanced upon,
For Fashions progress never lags-
And now we're in the "Age of Rags."-
For paper now is all the rage
And nothing else will suit the age.
The paper boom was a result of the invention of the Fourdrinier machine and the paper pulp process. The Fourdrinier machine allowed paper to be made in long continuous sheets. The previous method of using paper frames limited the size of the sheet (basically whatever size could be held by the hands of one or two paper-makers).
Before 1850, most paper was made from rags, but with the invention and use of wood pulp, the price of newsprint dropped remarkably. From 1850 to 1900, twenty newspapers were started in Troy alone!
With the explosion of newspapers came the print ad. Not that they had to be accurate or truthful mind you. In the days before government intervention, a product could claim to cure everything under the sun. Did you know when oil was discovered, they had no idea what to do with it? They sold it as a stomach remedy.
Print advertising was here to stay, regardless of their claims. You can see some of the more interesting 19th century ads that graced the pages of Harper's Weekly (http://advertising.harpweek.com/).
Advertising did not confine itself to paper or the sides of wagons. It wasn't uncommon to see the sides of buildings painted with advertisements. You can still see remnants on several downtown Troy buildings for Coke, Frears, and others.
Print advertising continued to dominate until the invention of radio and television - and the popularity of the dreaded automobile.
In 1920, radio appeared and advertisers quickly followed. The first sponsored program to be broadcast was by the AT&T station WEAF in New York in October 1922. Television was next. In 1945, Lever Brothers signed on for four half-hour shows to be produced on the CBS station in New York, WCBW. Among the national advertisers using TV in 1945: Bulova Watch Co., Botany Worsted Mills, Pan American World Airways, Firestone Tire & Rubber, RCA Victor, Gillette Safety Razor, Esso gasolines, U.S. Rubber, R.H. Macy & Co., and Alexander Smith & Sons.
Advertising took to the pavement. With the rising popularity of automobiles came construction of thousands of miles of roads. Perhaps one of the most successful advertising gimmicks was the Burma-Shave signs. In 1925, Allan Odell convinced his father to use small, wooden roadside signs to pitch their product, Burma-Shave, a brushless shaving cream. At its peak there were 7000 signs across America. Three to six signs were placed each a distance apart with each having part of a rhyming jingle. The last one always said Burma-Shave. By 1963, there were none - replaced by large billboards. You can read more than 100 Burma Shave signs at The Fifties Web site (www.fiftiesweb.com/burma.htm).
And that brings us back to the jingles. Many companies wanted you to remember their product and often came up with cute short jingles. Do you remember any local jingles from the Troy area? Here is a sample to wake up those brain cells.
Don't sign your name, it would be a shame, until you see your Bumstead Man!
Considering the fact that I was about 6 years old and limited to driving toy cars when I heard it, that tune still stays in my head. Bumstead Chevrolet was on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Congress Street in the 50's and 60's.
Don McClaughlin can sing the old Stanton Brewery jingle:
With an S and a T and an A and a N
and a T-O-N,
spells Stanton's Beer.
By every rule and every test,
you'll find that Staton is the best.
With an S and a T and A and an N
and a T-O-N,
spells Stanton's Beer
Stanton brewed its beer on Fifth Avenue just south of Ferry Street until the 1960's.
Speaking of Beer. How about these two jingles on a beer coaster:
After a hard day's work, relax
Fitz fits a hero
Been Heroic Lately?
Fitz fits a Hero!
Those are jingles for Old Fitzgerald Brewery, formerly on River Street. I have special feelings towards that brewery. On my 18th birthday, I downed 4 quarts of Fitz and a dozen brownies. Have never been light headed since!
Finally, Kathy and Bob Sheehan know the words and melody to one of my favorites:
Freddie Freihofer, we think your swell,
Freddie, we love the stories you tell.
We love your cookies, your bread, and your cakes.
We love everything Freddie Freihofer bakes!
©2000 Don Rittner