Young and Rubicam, "Impact", 1930
This is the 99th (out of 100) campaigns voted as best ads to date by Ad Age.
It is a self-promotional ad by this company meant to convince their perspective clients of the importance of the 'visual' in an ad as an attention magnet. I would say they were going for shock value (and see how far we've come!) To choose to use an African American having his face punched in, after all, it was 1930, no doubt made an 'Impact' on the reader. I doubt many blacks were used in advertisements, never mind one getting hit. Also as the ad is black and white you can't tell the race of the man hitting him, so the reader is left to draw their own conclusions.
It certainly had an "Impact" on me, but it was a negative impact. I don't respond well to violence, and as the hand hitting this man has no boxing glove on, I'm going to assume they aren't athletes. I would not have used this image and would be curious to know how other people in the advertising community feel about this choice.
I think it does exactly what it needed to, if their market was house wives they might have used children fighting, but their market was men, Orwell men who decided which add firm they would use in a see of "mad men".
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