Yesterday's radio commercials and related jingles are disposable flotsam and jetsam. Often rescued from the dumpster and tape eraser, here's where they live to celebrate another day, and give us a peek into the pop culture of the past. All material has been sourced from tapes or vinyl discs (records) used on the air at radio stations or dubs of said tapes, transferred for pristine quality when possible.
Well, with a statement like that on the jetsam, it's not what you think, but hell you knew that right? All we have around here is jingles, and it's not a seedy part of a city where anything is for sale for the right amount of cash. There's probably a blog for it out there somewhere.
This month, we feature a mixed back of material, taking a break from the generic jingles on production LP's. It's very time consuming to do those. These are easy. just grab a few jingle tapes from my archive and awwwaaaaaay we go.
This first one is a nice find, some musical stars of the 70s, doing their thing on 4 Schlitz Beer ads from 1977. There are 5 cuts on the tape, but the last one it seems are studio singers musicians. details are on the tape box label pic below.
Canada Day Is July 1st, and the start of the summer.....YAY!!!! Let's check in to see what Mcdonalds offer as a promotion in Canada in the summer of 1989.
Finally, here's the "Romp" full sing jingle for Shopper Drug Mart, also from 1989. Shoppers Drug Mart is the biggest chain of drug stores north of the 49th, and certainly is up there with Canadian Tire and Tim Horton's as a well known canadian brand (despite using some american TV stars to be in their TV spots around this time!). It's everything I want in a drug store...I go there regularly.
While I strive for 2 postings per month, from time to time, there may be some additional postings based on relevant topics in the news. This is my first one in that context, and there will no doubt be more in the future.
It was announced this week, that Zellers, a major retailer in Canada for 80 years and the last of the Canadian retail brands with such a history, had its store leases sold to Target in the US for $1.8 billion. Within the next 2 to 3 years, plans are to convert most of the Zellers stores to Target stores and the remainder will be closed and properties sold off.
It's a sad day for Canadian retail. Now all the brands that people my age (in my early 40s) grew up with in Canada are largely gone. Eaton's, Woolco, and now Zellers leaves just The Bay, or the Hudson Bay Company as the one Canadian brand left. It's the oldest company in North America, dating back to the Hudson Bay Trading Co of the 1600's. I'm hoping they'll be around for a little more time.
Likewise, the Hudson Bay Company has a Wiki history also HERE
Here at the Jetsam, with me being the Curator Of Nostalgia Commericals I thought I'd dig into the vault (well, it's cardboard boxes, but vault sounds so much better!) and see what I can find. What I did find was material, mostly from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were pushing two main promotions - Club Z (pronounced the canadian way of "ZED" not "ZEE") and "The Lowest Price is the Law" positioning statement.
Club Z was a points system now very common today with retail, but was fairly unheard of in the late 80s to reward loyal customers to your brand. It started out ok, but as people tended to hoard their points for something they wanted, the company started pushing up the points you needed. It likely PO'd more then a few people.
"The Lowest Price Is The Law" was also an effective way to retain people to your brand. It really takes a commitment to retain that statement however, so eventually that statement disappeared, likely due to the arrival in canada of the rather aggressive pricing retailer Walmart when it bought the bankrupt Woolco chain in the mid 1990s.
I have also included a no doubt rare "disco" jingle package for Zellers from 1979 that is as dated sounding as you think and were likely hoping for :)
For the purpose of this exhibit as there is quite a bit of audio when we factor in all the versions from 7 tapes, I have compiled a 5 minute montage of the Zellers creative to stream and download here.
For those who want everything, a 45 meg zip file with all the tape reel dubs and scans of the tape boxes is also available. It also includes the montage.
In Canada....People's is a well known chain of Jewelers, you could call them the Zales of Canada....literally, Zales bought them out years ago.
Before they did however, they produced some unique 80's Canadian sounding jingles (which makes sense, as hell, it was 1987!)
What do I mean by "80's Canadian"? some of the music in the late 80s in Canada seemed to have some kind of saxophone solo pop up somewhere in the song...not every song mind you, and not necessarily just songs, as we can attest here, but after awhile, as everything mushes together in my mind after listening to what seems to be a lot of songs and jingles in the 80s and what's left over that you remember from growing up as a teenager in that time? The saxophone stays with you.
This is one of the better produced jingles i've heard in the late 80s.
Peoples Jewellers "Diamonds" Full Sing :60 (1987)
(details on tape box pic above)
