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Ads
For
many years, tattoos
have been used
in advertising
to promote and
sell a variety
of products. Tattoos
are seen in advertisements
selling Marlboro
and Silk Cut cigarettes,
and used by such
corporations as
the Sony Company
and the Coca-Cola
Company in both
their print and
television ads.
The oldest example in the Archive's
collection is an advertisement
for Phenol Sodique, This product
was guaranteed to stop bleeding
and heal all wounds. The ad depicts
tattooed sailors having breakfast
on the deck of the warship Olympia.
Although the battle rages in the
distance, and the sailors are wounded,
they smile as they drink their
coffee because they have Phenol
Sodique! This dates from the Battle
of Manila Bay in 1898.
The late Frank Howard reminisced
that he once tattooed a man with
a panorama of pictures showing
a cigar store. This man exhibited
himself at fairs to promote the
cigar store.
Possibly the first large American
company to use tattoos in their
advertising was the Coca-Cola Company
which featured an Army Sergeant
showing his eagle chest piece to
a tattooed Maori chief while they
both enjoyed a Coke. Another ad
showed a shipyard scene where a
tattooed workman shared a Coke
with a Rosie the Riveter type.
Perhaps one of the largest advertising
campaigns to ever use tattooing
as a way to advertise and sell
their product was for Marlboro
cigarettes. In 1956 the makers
of Marlboro, whose sales were beginning
to sag, set out to change the image
of the typical Marlboro smoker.
The firm of Leo Burnett Inc. was
brought in to accomplish this. Up
until this time, Marlboro cigarettes
had been known as a woman's smoke.
Burnett's idea was to feature rugged
tattooed men in an effort to create
a new market for their cigarette.
You can be the judge as to whether
or not this advertising was a success!
The print ads showed men, mostly
with military tattoos on the backs
of their hand, posing with a cigarette.
These tattoos were simply painted
on. This ad alone resulted in hundreds
of letters from men wanting to
pose as a Marlboro Man.
In the 1970s, the Sony Company
ran ads for their small pocket
transistor radios. These ads featured
the radio slung over the shoulder
of a heavily tattooed member of
the Tattoo Club of Japan. Unlike
the Marlboro ads of the 1950s,
the Sony ads depicted real tattoos.
Today in the San Francisco Bay
Area, hardly a month passes without
seeing an ad in the local papers
showing a tattoo.
Tattoo
Archive © 1998
See
a postcard with
an ad in our
online store.
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