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By the very fact cards are in existence these ludicrous slogans were only part of the advertising ploy.
I have just been watching a Formula One race on television. No I have not been watching the incredible skill of the drivers or indeed the technical wizardry that gets them around the track at such mind numbing speed.
I've been watching the advertising. Once you notice it you just cannot stop. Advertising is mighty important, it keeps the wheels turning for Formula One, without sponsorship Williams is about as likely to be able to run a Formula One team as I am. Things have got frighteningly sophisticated now in-car cameras are common place.
The advertisers know just what they are doing, one car shot looks over the drivers shoulder into the cockpit, there are various adverts on the steering boss and the like but what amazed me was the advert that was stuck to the side of the drivers helmet.
You could only read it from that angle as it was designed to be seen in the driving mirror of the motor car from that position. Perhaps I am easily impressed with the sort of mind set than can think these things up. Simple things, simple minds and all that.
There are interesting parallels between Formula One and cigarette cards. Okay, so perhaps I am forcing a square peg into a round hole here but it might be fun watching me try to do it at least, so read on.
Cost Considerations
Cigarette cards were never cheap to make. A lot of time, thought and effort was expended in creating them. Although there were always meant to be collected they were never the primary product and were more in the style of a 'giveaway'. As such costs were always a consideration.
... print runs were hugeThe major costs are setting up the set, once it had been compiled, the art work was in place and the blocks had been cut the actual cost of printing was minimal for each additional set.
Printing one set is going to be expensive because of the initial cost. Print a million sets and the costs of each set have dropped dramatically.
Although the print runs were huge there was obviously a limit to how far you could push this. The big issuers of cards would produce a set every three or four months.
It kept the market fresh, if you did one huge print run of one set, once it had been collected the incentive nature of the set would tail-off dramatically.
So given there was going to be a limit on the number of sets which could be produced other methods were going to have to be employed if costs were to fall any further.
One method was the 'alike' series. In the early history of cigarette cards there are many of these instances. A publisher would have a set of cigarette cards and then would 'sell' them to numerous cigarette companies.
These would have the advertising of the 'sponser' company on the reverse of the card. Potentially this could be just a rubber stamp exercise at point of sale, the reverse of the card being blank as it left the printers.
An example of some of the 'alike' series:
Army Pictures, Cartoons etc : 16 issuers
Colonial Troops : 21 issuers
Actresses FROGA A : 23 issuers.
This is fine but it rather dillutes the use of a card as a sales incentive. If you can get the card from any of 15 packets of cigarettes why buy a particular brand. Now this is not such a problem if the markets for the cigarettes were geographically diverse which in the early part of the 20th century can be considered true.
However this was all to change with the larger business interests moving in and the smaller manufacturers being swallowed up or driven out of business as economies of scale kicked in, prompted by the improvement in road and rail communication.
Although 'alike' series still appeared, there is another way to reduce the costs.
The British television industry is an interesting example of this. The British Broadcasting Corp. is paid for by compulsory subscription, the television licence. As a result the BBC is not allowed to have advertising on its channel.
Grab the remote control and switch to an Independent channel. This channel is not paid for by public subscription but rather by selling advertising in program breaks. All well and good but the trouble begins during the programs. Take a scene in a soap-opera.
Chap walks into a local shop and makes some purchases. In the Independent channel, leading brands are on prominent display, he purchases leading brands and walks out, perhaps past a few advertising hoardings, he makes his way home.
Remember how much Pepsi paid to get M. Jackson advertising their product.All good for business, product placement and adds to the reality of the situation. If the same chap walks into the BBC version of the shop things are different. There should not be the same prominence of leading brands on the shelves. A few years ago there would be an outcry if there was. Nowadays the BBC tends to have its Mr Kipling Cake and eat it.
Business is keen as Colmans to be associated with the right type. Remember how much Pepsi paid to get M. Jackson advertising their product (and how much more they had to pay when they set fire to his hair).
At the time he was the right man for the job, part of the happening youth market. Later it turned out he might have had a bit more to do with the youth market than perhaps was necessary.
Now despite the fact I contacted Pepsi offering my services in the next advertising campaign they seemed oddly reticent despite my very modest appearance fee. No Pepsi wanted to be associated with a fellow with a Peter Pan complex bolstered by plastic surgery to the extent he came to believe he was some sort of demi-god who managed to turn himself from smiling black kid to white guy behind a mask. Perhaps it is best they turned me down afterall.
The internet itself is a huge repository, I have spelt that right ;-) of product placement. I am often turning down sponsership deals for this site you know the type of thing, I make a fraction of a cent and you get to read even more tedious bannerads. Lucky for everyone I don't need that fraction of a cent, I know they add up, drop me a line of you want to read banner ads.
I am drifting a bit 'off-message' here (who said a Labour government hasn't changed anything, I have learnt the language of spin.)
Cigarette cards were almost an ideal mechanism for product placement. You could just create a set which would appeal to a particular business sector.
Example: RJ Hill, Wireless Telephony a series of 84 cards produced in 1923.
The first 24 cards of this series bare that title. Cards 25-36 get a sub-title, Crystal series and cards 37 to 84 are called Marconiphone Series. The cards after card 36 are just to make sure you got the message because nearly every card up to card 36 manages to mention Marconi.
Another example of this is again within the media business is the Morris set, How Films are made [1934]. Each card manages to remember to tell the reader about the facilities which were granted to them by Gaumont British Picture Corp Ltd.
All subtle as a sledge-hammer but fear not this is no chat show presentation where there is a prize for mentioning your latest cook book as frequently as possible.
This is more like the rash of television programmes which revolve around other television programmes. It all started with out-take shows, a rather unpleasant idea of a business living on its own waste, and now has moved onto cheap quiz shows about television. I think Marx had something to say about Capitalism nurturing the seeds of its own destruction. Rather like young feeding on their ageing parents, programs about programs.
I must try to keep 'on-message' here. There was a rash of Famous Poster type sets. A simple idea, reproduce an advertising poster and get someone else to pay for part of the costs, everyone wins.
Finally back to the BBC. I am watching a program, 'Breakfast with Frost' he is interviewing two people via satellite. Each of these people have a 'library' of books behind them. You know one of those ones that come out on a roll.
The people are seperated by great distance but strangely they have the same taste in books. Lots of old leather bound books, the sort you like to see but can never be bothered to read. However just to the right of the person's head is a brand new book, with silver lettering, standing out in an inconspicous way. The silver lettering spells out, FROST. In the London studio, Frost himself has a picture behind him which says BBC. Franklyn Cards never misses a trick but you would never find Franklyn Cards, Probably the best resource for cigarette cards in Cyberspace pushing an advertising message at every available opportunity. No that is not the policy of Franklyn Cards.