Vintage Street Furniture

Love it or hate it, vintage is a popular trend ranging from clothing to homes and especially within advertising here at JCDecaux. We never seem to tire of it and our styles are forever changing. We have decided to look back and see how campaigns and marketing strategies have evolved dating back to the 19th century. Back to the days where black and white advertising was the norm and before JCDecaux was even founded. In 1865, communicating to mass consumers was nowhere near as important as it is today. However, this did not mean there was no advertising at all. As you can see, there are multiple mini advertisements stuck to the side of the building. With no colour and no images, the message would be conveyed accurately. Moving ahead to Lyon, France in 1926, this is an example of how advertising began (or would begin to grow) with a major billboard type style. This is an advertisement for Cadam, a soap for babies with a slogan 'Cadum for madam'. The image is dominant which suggests that images can make more of an impact than words can. There is no way that this advertisement can be missed. There is definitely potential for this type of advertising as technology and creativity grows. Fast forward to 1964 in Lyon, France. Jean Claude Decaux revolutionised the concept of outdoor advertising by maintaining bus shelter networks for councils and generating revenue through selling advertising space on them. Since then, bus shelters would be a very popular form of advertising. Here is the first JCDecaux bus shelter with an advertisement attached. There were subtle yet eye catching changes to bus shelter advertising constantly being made. The more vibrant and modernised the bus shelters become, the more colourful and attractive the advertisements were.     This just proved that there was plenty of growth and potential for Bus Shelter advertising to remain a dominant form of communicating to mass consumers. This was just the beginning of Street Furniture. However, bus shelters are not the only form of vintage street furniture we have. Take a look at the public toilets.   The design of them may seem very different to the modernised and plain black public toilets we see today. However, the design remained consistent with the Large Format panels. It would be very difficult to miss these Large Format campaigns on the side of the road taken from 1988.   If we jump ahead to the past few years, we can see that Street furniture has definitely changed dramatically over the years and design has become ever more daring and striking. We are no longer restricted to bus shelters and billboard types. Instead we have progressed to columns, bus shelters, telephone boxes and so much more. There is a lot more colour and communication with the consumers. It's surprising how we started and where we are now. Who knows where we will end up?!   References: internal sources