Decade
1900s ads
The best ads of the 1900s, from Cappiello's Chocolat Klaus and Bernhard's Priester matches to the Michelin Guide and the first Tour de France.
All ads
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1909Le Thermogène
A green-clad Pierrot hugs a wad of Thermogène to his chest and breathes a plume of fire, his shadow looming across a dark ground beneath the brand…
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An epoch making eventSelfridges1909
Blériot's monoplane at Selfridges
On 25 July 1909 Louis Blériot became the first person to fly across the English Channel.
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Hermann Scherrer. Breechesmaker. Sporting-Tailor.Hermann Scherrer (tailor, Munich)1907
Hermann Scherrer: Breechesmaker, Sporting-Tailor
A young rider in cap and waistcoat strides toward us with saddle and crop, a bulldog at his heel, and the loudest thing on the wall is his checked…
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PriesterPriester (match manufacturer)1906
Priester
Two matchsticks and one word.
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1903Chocolat Klaus
A green-clad rider on a scarlet horse, a black void and the brand name: nothing in Leonetto Cappiello's poster depicts chocolate, and that was the…
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1903The Tour de France
In 1903 the French sports daily L'Auto, losing a circulation war with its rival Le Vélo, launched a bicycle race around the whole of France.
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1900The Michelin Guide
The world's most powerful restaurant rating began as a tyre promotion.
Advertising in the 1900s
The 1900s entries show the poster splitting into rival modern styles, and brands discovering that they could build things people valued for their own sake.
In Paris, Leonetto Cappiello abandoned the detailed manner of Chéret and Mucha for a single bold figure that could catch the eye from far away. Chocolat Klaus showed a rider on a scarlet horse and nothing resembling chocolate, and shoppers were soon asking for "the red-horse chocolate". His fire-breathing Pierrot for Le Thermogène became the maker's logo.
In Germany, the object poster took the opposite view. Lucian Bernhard's Priester, pulled from a competition wastebasket, threw out everything but the matches and the brand name, and launched the Sachplakat. Ludwig Hohlwein's posters for the Munich tailor Hermann Scherrer built the style from bold, flat planes of colour.
Away from the hoardings, brands created institutions. Michelin gave away the Michelin Guide on the logic that people who drove more would buy more tyres, and the sports paper L'Auto launched the Tour de France to win a circulation war. In 1909 Harry Gordon Selfridge showed what speed could do, putting Blériot's monoplane on show in his store the morning after the first flight across the Channel, an early piece of newsjacking.