Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Totally irrelevant but weird
1927 ad for a small maker (or maybe rebrander) of tubes. Why is Dan Vers two words? It's not just a typo, because it appears in the ad and on the box. It feels like a pronunciation device to avoid confusion, like employER and employEE. But if Danvers is the confusER, what is the confusEE?
Later: Was this Champion's way of coding its responses? Spell the town differently in different magazines? Seems possible, but a much easier trick was to add a 'department' code to different ads,
as in these Billboard ads:
What did the Post Office do with mail sent to Dan Vers, Mass? POs in Mass were probably accustomed to this oddity, but a postmaster in Kansas would simply return the letter for ambiguous address.
1927 ad for a small maker (or maybe rebrander) of tubes. Why is Dan Vers two words? It's not just a typo, because it appears in the ad and on the box. It feels like a pronunciation device to avoid confusion, like employER and employEE. But if Danvers is the confusER, what is the confusEE?
Later: Was this Champion's way of coding its responses? Spell the town differently in different magazines? Seems possible, but a much easier trick was to add a 'department' code to different ads,
as in these Billboard ads:
What did the Post Office do with mail sent to Dan Vers, Mass? POs in Mass were probably accustomed to this oddity, but a postmaster in Kansas would simply return the letter for ambiguous address.Labels: Ask Ed And Un Answer Ed
¶ 2:38 AM
