Hills Bros. Coffee Ad – Sept. 4, 1945

Back when everybody read a newspaper every day, advertisers had to come up with a way to cut through the clutter to grab the reader. After all, we've all seen how every page of the Lorain Journal from the 1920s up until about the 1970s was packed with news items and ads. So the ad agencies had to be creative – and sometimes came up with ideas that seem a little odd or quaint today. 

A good example is the ad above for Hills Bros. Coffee, which ran in the Lorain Journal back on September 4, 1945. The ad compares how pearls are the only thing that oysters produce, and coffee is the only product of Hills Bros. Coffee Inc. It's a little goofy, but the cute illustration accomplishes its goal of "making you look."

And by George, a glass jar just like the one shown in the ad is on eBay right now, with the Hills Bros. coffee still in it – about eighty years later!

Hills Bros. Coffee (of course) is a favorite topic on this blog, as it was my parents' favorite coffee for years. Although these days I'm a big Tim Hortons fan, I bought a can of Hills Bros. a couple months ago for old time's sake and just finished it. I enjoyed it very much. And it was like being back on Skyline Drive again, although I don't make it as strong as Mom did.

Going back to the 1945 ad, I like the way that Hills Bros. is marketed as "good coffee." That's not unlike Old Dutch Beer, whose longtime tagline was: The Good Beer. Maybe that's what attracted my parents to both of them: no gimmicks, no pretentious branding, just a claim to be good.