The greatest percentage of the vintage advertising we and others sell on eBay are of course from American magazine. But due to our international business travel we are often able to include some very lovely items from well known overseas publications.
Our most recent upload to eBay included a number of ads from the German edition of Elle magazine as well as several ads from a number of different Chinese magazines.
Triumph
What often makes these unique and appealing to our local audience is that they are the same ads that we see here in US magazines, but with an international character set. Take for example this Triumph lingerie ad that appeared in the 2006 edition of Elle magazine in Germany. A the same ad appeared in the US version but with English wording. So a collector whose Ephemera collection focused on either the Triumph brand or lingerie in general might want to have several versions of the same magazine ad.. but in different language sets.
Bobbi
Here’s another one for Bobbi Brown cosmetics that appeared in a Chinese edition of Cosmo in Hong Kong. Most of the text in the ad is in Chinese characters. Again, a very similar ad appeared in the US around the same time. I’m sure if you are able to read Chinese you will notice that much if not all of the copy reads the same as the US version… after all, they are selling the same product, just to a different market made up of a different audience.
Sharon Stone
Sometimes of course the picture says it all.
What caught the eye of the readers as they flipped through this Chinese magazine was not necessarily the name Dior, but rather the wonderful picture of Sharon Stone. The product is Dior’s Capture Totale but the ad agency was hoping that the international stardom of Sharon Stone would be what caused the Chinese audience to stop ad read.. and of course hopefully buy their product.
McDonalds
Just to show that I am not totally focused on just beautiful women, here’s yet another German ad, for our well known fast food chain McDonalds. It appeared in a 2006 publication called Brigitte but was of course all in German. The German text reads something along the lines of “I like the clear answers that I get at McDonalds”.
As I continue to post these international advertisements, I am trying to link them all so that one can search either on “Chinese” or “German” or whatever other publication languages we have, and get a complete list of all the ads available in those languages. Try it yourself, click one of the languages above and see what we currently have on offer.
I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the Encore it deserves.
Have a look at my eBay Ephemera store
or have a look at my eBay Auction site
Technorati tags: Encore Ephemera, Ephemera, Ephemera Network
About Tom Murphy
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