Who actually enjoys seeing an advert nowadays? Not me. Irritating pop-ups, banners pasted all over your screen, screaming 'CLICK ME!!', minute-long videos interrupting gameplay, and those creepy adverts that show the exact product you were just talking to your friend about, even though your phone isn't meant to be spying on you...
I've always wondered how persistently annoying people encourages them to buy your product. It makes no sense to me. I want the good old days back, when advertisements were pieces of art in shop windows. Look at the header picture. Isn't it beautiful? I'll take this poster over a flashy video any day.
Companies used to take pride in their products. Observe the Parker advertisement below, from the early 1900s. $6000 spent on this single campaign, just to tell potential customers to test their pen. Try to break it. Use it as intensively as you want for those ten days, and if you aren't happy then we don't deserve your custom.
They were so confident, so proud of their quality products, that they didn't need to beg for customers. Parker didn't want you to take their word for it, they encouraged a thorough test to prove the truth of their statements.
Parker, and many other fountain pen companies such as their rivals Sheaffer, took such an extraordinary level of pride in their pens. They wanted you to be happy with your purchase, and the pens really were designed to outlive you. Which, as somebody born way after the age of products designed to last, is slightly flabbergasting to me.
The idea is alien, a foreign concept.
Designed... to last?
Forever?
The mind promptly boggles.
I'll give you proof, solid proof, of the longevity of these vintage pens.
4 pens in this picture need new ink sacs, but the innards have been cleaned and everything is still in top condition:
The two long desk pens need ink sacs, as do the ring-top Parker and the greyish-green-marbled-with-red Sheaffer, but they still look as gorgeous as they did in the 30s and the mechanisms work perfectly. All the others are complete and write like a dream.
Can you imagine buying anything in 2022 that would last nearly 100 years? Or over 150, because I guarantee that if these pens are well looked after, they will last another 60 trips around the sun, at the very least.
I feel like true craftmanship is beginning to be lost. We live in a world where we buy things on subscription - the brand-new washing machine breaks, so we purchase another one next year, then that one dies, so we get a new one, year after year until we've spent thousands on gadgets that should be lasting decades. But the quality of manufacturing isn't there.
That is why I restore and maintain the vintage pens that I own. Because in return, they serve me well, providing a beautiful writing experience even though they are many times older than I am. I want to preserve a little bit of history, because I don't want the effort and pride that went into making the pen to be lost. They should be taken care of, treasured, held up as an example that shames all the companies who churn out cheap, disappointing products that aren't so cheap when you have to buy 15 every year.
Wouldn't it be nice to see good old posters in shop windows, or in magazines again? Not intrusive or annoying, just an advert that invites you to try the product, and lures you in with stunning hand-drawn and painted graphics?
I don't suppose we'll ever live in a world like that again. But if you do own a company, consider going for a more classic approach instead of spamming our phone screens. I, for one, will applaud you.
(The images in this article were saved from Google pictures - if you are the owner of these pictures, all credit is yours, not mine, and thank you for the beautiful pictures!)