Monday, October 20, 2014

From days of yore.

Sixty-five years ago, my old man got a job in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. The job was in the advertising department of RCA, the Radio Corporation of America.

In those days, just after World War II, RCA was the Google of its day. It was a company that could do little wrong. And RCA dominated the audio equipment market, and the nascent television market, in a way that that no brand dominates the TV market today.

The commercial my father was most proud of was one where an RCA radio was dropped from an airplane and it still worked. I couldn't find that one on YouTube--I've never actually seen it, so it could be a product of my old man's memory. But I did find the one I pasted above.

It's a pretty rudimentary affair, but I happen to like it. What's more, I think it makes its points effectively. And it's pretty talk-provoking in the offing.

I don't really know where the ad industry has gone wrong. It seems to me we're too busy trying to be in the entertainment business and not busy enough being in the information business.

But that's just me.

And I don't get a vote.

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