Thursday’s ad is a trade ad, by the United States Brewing Industry Foundation, from 1940. After prohibition ended, the industry started doing PSA-type ads in an attempt to create goodwill for beer and brewers. They would later go on to do a fairly sophisticated series of ads between 1946 and 1956, known unofficially as Beer Belongs. Officially, they were “The Home Life in America” series, consisting of 120 ads, with a new ad running in major periodicals each month. Last year, for my Beer in Ads series, I featured every one of them. But in the years before that, the U.S. Brewing Industry Foundation (a precursor to the original Brewer’s Association) dabbled with a variety of similar ads promoting the industry as a whole. These were especially popular during World War 2, and in fact they even won an award from the government for some of these ads. Most of the ads were black and white, although a few were in color, though usually in a minimal way, with a few colors accented rather than being in full color.
In this ad, it’s another one labelled as part of a series entitled “THE RECORD … Facts That Concern You.” As I mentioned yesterday, I’m unsure just how many were actually created and published but this one provides a clue. In the upper right-hand corner it says that this ad is “No 21 of a series,” so that suggests there were at least that many ads of this type. The ad describes hops by stating “Hops are for flavor. They give to good beer and ale their lively, appetizing flavor, their pleasant, aromatic tang.” Hard to argue with that.
