Decade
1910s ads
The best ads of the 1910s, from Woodbury's "A Skin You Love to Touch" and Lord Kitchener's pointing finger to Uncle Sam's "I Want You".
All ads
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Soaring to Success! Daily Herald – the Early BirdDaily Herald1919
Soaring to Success! Daily Herald – the Early Bird
Britain's landmark modernist poster began life as an orphan.
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1919The Instrument of the Immortals
Steinway found advertising distasteful and did little of it, until a young N.W.
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1919Within the Curve of a Woman's Arm
The ad that taught American women to worry about sweat.
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1918If Ye Break Faith – We Shall Not Sleep (Buy Victory Bonds)
Canada's 1918 Victory Loan poster turned a war poem into a sales line.
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1917Fate tutti il vostro dovere! (Fourth National War Loan)
Italy's fourth National War Loan of 1917 borrowed Britain's most famous recruiting gesture and pointed it at savers.
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1917Food Will Win the War
Herbert Hoover's new U.S.
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1917I Want You for the Navy
Howard Chandler Christy took the most imitated line in recruiting and changed who was saying it.
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1917I Want You for U.S. Army
Uncle Sam's stare and outstretched finger first appeared on the cover of Leslie's Weekly in July 1916, above the question "What Are You Doing for…
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1917It Is Nice in the Surf, but What About the Men in the Trenches?
Australia relied entirely on volunteers for its First World War army, so its recruiting posters had to persuade and shame rather than order, and…
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1917Wake Up, America! Civilization Calls Every Man, Woman and Child!
The United States declared war on 6 April 1917, and thirteen days later New York staged "Wake Up, America" Day with this poster by James Montgomery…
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1916On les aura! (Second National Defence Loan)
France paid for much of the First World War by borrowing from its citizens, and this poster sold the second National Defence Loan, launched in…
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1915Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?
A British recruitment poster that sells enlistment by staging a moment from the future.
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1915The Penalty of Leadership
A car advertisement that never mentions the car.
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1915Women of Britain Say – ‘Go!’
Instead of addressing men, this 1915 recruitment poster recruits the people closest to them to do the persuading.
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1914Lord Kitchener Wants You ("Your Country Needs You")
The pointing finger every recruitment ad since has borrowed.
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1911A Skin You Love to Touch
Until 1911, soap ads mostly showed soap.
Advertising in the 1910s
Print carries the 1910s entries, and the decade's biggest change happens in the copy: advertisements stop describing products and start selling what they might do for the buyer.
In 1911 J. Walter Thompson's Helen Lansdowne Resor showed what Woodbury's soap might win you rather than the soap itself, and A Skin You Love to Touch is widely regarded as the first campaign to use sex appeal. Cadillac's The Penalty of Leadership never mentioned the car at all, positioning the brand as the standard others envy. By 1919 the methods were sharper. James Webb Young's Odorono ad, the prototype of anxiety-led "whisper copy", stopped selling a remedy and started selling a social danger after research showed that most women felt no need for the product. Raymond Rubicam's The Instrument of the Immortals sold Steinway pianos on the company they kept.
The First World War produced the decade's most imitated image. Alfred Leete's Lord Kitchener Wants You cover gave recruitment its pointing finger and locked gaze, and James Montgomery Flagg adapted the pose for the US Army's I Want You poster. After the war, E. McKnight Kauffer's flock of angular birds for the Daily Herald proved that abstract avant-garde art could work on a commercial hoarding.