I like to follow other designers on Twitter to get lots of inspiration, insight and well, just plain old information. A few weeks ago there was a post on the Brochures Printing Online Blog about
old car brochure designs. I'm not old enough to have any sense of real history when it comes to "retro" styling before the 1970's so looking at all these old magazine ads--some of them possibly for newspapers or billboards--was a real treat. The warmth of color and the hand-painted styling gives the possible customer a feeling of the care that went into creating the ad, and maybe leads to the line of thinking "if they put so much work into this simple one pager, how much more care will they put into the automobile they are trying to sell me"
In looking at the ads a lot of things sort of passed through my mind. Some of them would look great as framed art work--like the piece for the Rover 3-liter. A few of them reminded me of the "...of tomorrow" cartoons that were popular for a while, you know "the house of tomorrow" the "farm of tomorrow"; they would be "cars of tomorrow" with their mega streamline styling and unusual features. However,
none of those things have anything to do with this particular blog post. What I really want to talk about are the
values expressed in the ads.
The ad for the Chevrolet "Coach" originally appeared in the
Saturday Evening Post, I'm guessing sometime in the early 1900's based on the styling, with the tagline "Maintaining Economical Transportation Everywhere...Quality at Low Cost." Between 1900 and 1915 the average cost of a car was just over $600. The coach isn't too far off from that price point but that doesn't seem to be the point of the message. Selling the car, the maintainability
and the image all at an affordable price is the key. These days car commercials focus on MPG economy (and rightly so) but people are looking to save money in more ways than just in their gas tank. Showing that a company understands the pocketbook of its customer is what can, and will, drive home a sale. Kia is headed in that direction full force. I like Kias, I don't drive one, but I do understand their push to equate their product with a positive, affordable and yes down right sensible image. I'm happy for the little Korean Car Company That Could, but it makes me wonder how Chevrolet forgot an important part of its history? Maybe "Maintaining Economical Transportation Everywhere...Quality at Low Cost" was not the founding principle of the company but it is an ideal that the American public still holds dear and if anyone should capitalize off of it, it should be other Americans.
Pontiac is just as guilty of getting caught up in trends and not sticking to its guns. The ad campaign for the Big Six responded to the needs of a changing America and filled in the price gap between Chevrolet and Oldsmobile. Americans needed more car for the same amount of money, or less, and Pontiac filled that need. Admittedly the company has had a turbulent past, and was recently dissolved as a GM holding, but there remains the lingering question of Pontiac's commitment to "more for less" and whether adhering to what initially helped make the little company great would have helped pull it out of trouble this time around.
Looking at all these wonderful examples of early 20th century ad art was thought provoking--the quality of work, the thought, the time, the care that went into creating the image for a company around the ideals of Americans--where did it all go?
