This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Toronto’s buildings and advertisements have a long history together. You may have to look closely but many of the city’s old and historic buildings still bear the remnants of old ads. These faded paintings have survived through the weather, graffiti, time and some have even outlasted their own company.
Another great place to find beautiful vintage advertising is storefronts of old convenience stores or greasy spoon restaurants. The most popular ones are signs advertising for Coca-Cola and Canada Dry Ginger-Ale.
I look at these old advertisements, refusing to disappear and providing us with a glimpse into the history of Toronto and they ways in which advertising Media has changed. In 50 years from now, there will not be any ads for the popular products of today. One must then ask, do we really want future Torontonians to remember us by today’s ads for Vitamin Water or Koodo? Regardless, ads of today have a lifespan of a few weeks before they are stripped down from the billboards, replaced in the subway cars or just deleted from the video screens in Dundas Square. While we now use more practical and economic methods for displaying ads, it does reveal the current state of advertising in which everything must be new and shiny and easily disposable.
Question: What ad or advertising campaign of today do you think will be considered important or groundbreaking in 50 years?
(All photos courtesy of Daniel Neuhaus – cinespeak.ca)
