The Golden Age of Advertising
Tall, shabby, awkward, and lovable, everything about Marty- from the flannel shirts to the fogged safety glasses- screams hobbyist.
As our previous landlord, we came to know Marty through the piles of ham radio parts he stored in our basement. Among the transistors and bulbs he collected over the years lied dormant the oddities of Marty’s quirky existence that were too dear for him to part with.
Among these decade-spanning gems was a cache of late 60’s Playboy magazines , which, aside from the $5 bootleg copy of Jackass 2 I bought in Soho last week, is the coolest thing I own. My hat is off to you old Playboy:
While counter-culture movements were taking hold and beginning to dominate pop-culture, Playboy and its loyal base of advertisers were there cultivating the womanizing, jet-set, socialite drunk businessman that would soon come to dominate the landscape of western culture.
Motorcycles, whiskey, business suits, loafers, malt liquor, sports cars, gentleman’s clubs, Las Vegas; all find a place and begin to develop an aesthetic that, over time translates into an associative brand essence, an identity, for their products. I thought it would have been harder to ingest these vacuous elements of capitalism that went wild in the 80s, but the ads are so kitchy and direct they are hard not to appreciate. Playboy’s own ads, for example, asks the reader,
WHAT SORT OF MAN READS PLAYBOY?
To which they answer with a slew of statistics and lifestyle associations.
A young guy whose program for pleasure includes everything from beautiful sights to swinging sounds, the PLAYBOY reader is a buyer of the highest fidelity.
He’s a man with a design for living and a plan for the future. And part of that plan calls for proper insurance planning.
The host who provides that extra measure of pleasure- the kind it takes to ignite a party. And when it comes to spreading good cheer, he pours with a lavish hand. Facts: PLAYBOY is read by one out of every three males in the U.S. Who regularly drink Scotch.
Yet to truly create this archetype renaissance man, they threw in a good bit of international news, and quality journalism. Feature articles, among my handful of issues, include an article on civil liberties by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, a posthumous testament/tribute to Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy called “Martyrs of Hope”, and a cartoon series by Shel Silverstien making fun of hippies.
Many magazines nowadays have filled the role of trend generators and aspiring social justice crusaders, Playboy has not. Gone are the days of real boobs and jet-setting travel, Playboy dutifully takes its place somewhere along the Jersey shore, with all the airbrushes and orange tans and super boobs they can find…
Here’s a few of our favorite old school ads.
Country Club Malt Liquor? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Porn.Darsteller - L’ingenue || From the second Das Dremoment comp on Genetic Records
