Sepia Saturday - Sales Promotion

The theme picture of this week shows a North Carolina shop front. It seems the proprietors, the Dughi brothers, sell a.o. fruit and vegetables including bananas. The latter surprised me a bit. Assuming they are not grown locally (wrong?), they have been imported. The picture is from the very early part of the 20th century. In those days it must have been quite an achievement to import bananas possibly from Central America and get them to destination in an edible condition. An oyster saloon seems to be part of the Dughi's enterprise. It is difficult for me to imagine what that is. It is the saloon part that intrigues me. To me that is not the most logical venue to eat oysters. Or does the word 'saloon' also have other meanings? But I digress. The fact is that we have very few shopkeepers in the family. And the number of pictures showing their enterprises corresponds with that fact. The best I can do is refer you to an earlier post about my grandfather. He was managing the accounting department of a grocery store procurement organization.
So I allowed my mind to make some overtime to see whether I could come up with an associated subject. After an hour or so, and after having rejected all thoughts about saloons, my brain produced the word 'advertising'. Because that is what the Dughi's have been doing as well. There are a couple of signboards visible and may be they did some advertising in the local newspaper. And, very important, they were also dependant on mouth to mouth advertising. Upsetting their clientele was not in their interest. So advertising it is. I'll show you a few examples from the world where I came from: air transport.
Most pictures are part of a collection of photo's saved from a KLM Copenhagen office by two of my colleagues, the late Bert Besseling and Aris Zwart.

Say it with Flowers

The above Danish poster is a joint advertising campaign of KLM and Fleurop, also known as Interflora. Originally a German organization, Fleurop is instrumental in delivering bunches of cutflowers to individuals worldwide. They started doing this in 1908 and they still do this today!

A fine banking relationship, advantageous travelling

 The background of this ad is the situation just after WW2. In those days it was not allowed to exchange limitless amount of your own currency into foreign denominations. But KLM was claiming that things were possible thanks to the good relations they apparently had with the banking community in Denmark. In the bottom right hand corner it is suggested that foreign currency matters can be handled. My understanding of  the Danish language is no more what it used to be. So my interpretation of this ad may not be 100% correct.

Who gives parcels under 100 kg a service that is beyond the clouds?
KLM's Worldspeed!

KLM's Worldspeed product was a small package serve intended to compete with the so called integrators such as Fedex, DHL and UPS. Despite a worldwide advertising campaign in all kinds of trade journals, it turned out to be failure. My involvement in the development of this product apparently was not decisive...

25% reduced fares for round trips during night time

KLM had its own bus company providing scheduled service from Schiphol Airport to a.o. Amsterdam (Leidseplein) and The Hague (Varkensmarkt). And why not use these buses to display your ads. Here 'red eye specials' to a number of European destinations are being promoted.
The last picture shows that not everything displayed in a shop window is intended for sale. It is a photo I made in the city of Maastricht several years ago. The city is situated in the Dutch province of Limburg. Please also note the photobomb in this picture. For those who think this photo is in reaction to attempts by one Sepian to seduce us with erotica, you are wrong.

For more shops, their owners and their marketing efforts, please click here and you'll get to see everything you (n)ever wanted to buy and more.