It’s kind of comforting to know that people back in the 50s felt pressure to whiten their teeth, too. Maclean’s has been around for over 100 years and has been pressuring us all to whiten our teeth with their toothpaste for about as long. Their claim to fame is selling one of the earliest whitening toothpaste formulas directly to consumers.
It’s kind of amazing, really, how similar this ad is to many of the tooth-whitening adverts we see today. Although the styles and slogan are outdated, this 1951 ad still features a beautiful woman with a blindingly white smile. And yes, our modern-day tooth-whitening formulas still use peroxide.
All Eyes on Nestle
Did you know that the Nestlé brand has been around since the early 1900s? By the time this magazine ad came around in 1956, the famous chocolate brand was already over 50 years old. They obviously knew what they were doing, even if this ad is lost in translation for us modern viewers.
There’s really no reason or context behind this advertisement. Why is this woman all dressed up? Does she really find Nestlé chocolate to be that eye-catching? We highly doubt it, but maybe that’s the point of the ad. Nestlé chocolate was for classy people, and they really wanted you to know, so they drew that very literal dotted line between the woman’s eyeball and the chocolate bar.
Central Heating with a Touch of Infidelity
The 60s were a wild time in advertising. As we all learned from “Mad Men” and Don Draper, the marketing industry was dominated by men and hour-long boozy lunch meetings. Looking back, it really shows. This ad is for one of the most mundane things you could add to your home: a water heater.
Boring, right? Not in the 60s! They made it as suggestive as possible, featuring a seductive close-up of a woman inexplicably named Miss Meredith. What?! The thinking behind this ad was probably that men were the ones paying for a new boiler. So, why not draw their eye with voyeuristic attention from a fake single woman? It must have worked like a charm, honestly.
Cigarettes for Women
Undeniably, women have come a long way. The changes in the societal views show progress and gas up feminist ad campaigns. Women can work outside the four corners of a house; they are no longer stereotyped as homemakers by default. They can work in factories and toil in the labor industry. It was just right that from 60s-70s, feminists ads were screened on television.
Let’s look no further from Virginia Slims. It was the first cigarette brand to market cigarettes for women. Their ad shows a complete contrast from sexist ads that came before it. Suddenly, when you look left, you see the lyrics of “I Want A Girl.” Virginia Slims can ditch that song and the viewers can get the feminist message that it tries to convey. The lines are dated. Women can smoke and are given the right to suffrage. Thanks, Virginia Slims! Just let go of the lyrics.
VW Automatic for Terrible Drivers a.k.a Women
We’ve had enough of insulting ads. They recklessly stress that women are terrible drivers all the time. In their defense, they can say that they only released the Mini Automatic which is easier to maneuver. Basically, women can easily drive the new model. The marketing team failed to give off that message. They used the wrong set of tropes.
So, there’s a woman behind the wheels. She looks so terrified, with her widely-opened eyes and pursed lips. The ad comes across with a different message. It shows that women are clearly bad drivers that they had to create a new model just for them. Statistically speaking, women are more careful on the road. They could have simply said that they’re releasing a new model with automatic transmission for everyone. Simple, isn’t it?