Part 1 of this article on creativity in printed advertising covered the early period from the 1890s to the mid-1920s when photogravure and colour brought remarkable advances in the ability of such advertising to engage and attract readers.

Here in Part 2 we cover the advent of even bolder imagery up to the early 1930s – and for this we start as early as 1907. Why? Because the motor car, even from this early period, was so exciting and so costly that manufacturers could justify the most eye-catching and creative advertisements.

There is another point to be made from the two American examples shown above: the far greater quality and boldness of printed advertising in the USA in comparison with the rest of the world, right up to the 1950s and perhaps beyond. America had the population and the prosperity that justified this; the finest advertisements are often to be found there. Nevertheless, Britain could compete in its most august publications. Our next example is not strictly an advertisement but is an illustration from a 1921 issue of The Tatler. It shows the bright young things from the Roaring Twenties enjoying life ‘On the Plage at Deauville’ – the place to be seen. There is, however, some very clever product placement going on: the car is a Hispano-Suiza, a French car that was arguably more upmarket than a Rolls-Royce in the early 1920s.

Join us again for Part 3, where we shall look a little further into motor car advertisement in the 1930s, and at the way in which creativity in advertising had to grow up in the challenging years just before and after World War II.