A Look At Newspaper And Magazine Advertisements For Whiskey

As long as they have been making whiskey, they have been advertising it for sale in the newspapers and magazines. The early 19th century is when Bourbon was first advertised for sale in a newspaper. The first written record of Bourbon is from the Western Citizen newspaper by the firm of Stout and Adams in 1821. It was a written advertisement that was little more than a personal advertisement. This was common in the early days of newspapers and magazines. Colored advertisements were to come in the future as the technology of printing improved.

In the 1840s, the lithograph was invented, allowing colored advertisements to be printed. Before the lithograph, if you wanted color in printed material, it had to be hand painted, a costly and lengthy process. Even with the lithograph, colored advertisements were rare, as magazines were just beginning to become popular reading material. It is after the American Civil War that magazines really began to become popular. However, whiskey advertisements were mostly in newspapers and were not the color advertisements we see later. The distillers were advertising in print and spending a lot of money doing so. James E. Pepper and Green River were distilleries spending money on print advertising, mostly in newspapers. Pepper had the slogan “Born With The Republic” and advertised that his whiskey had a strip stamp on the cork and if it looked to be tampered with, don’t buy it because it may be counterfeit whiskey. Green River had the slogans “The Whiskey Without A Headache” and “She Was Bred in Old Kentucky”.

Prohibition saw an end of advertisements in print and it was not until after repeal that we see it come back. However, the industry set self-imposed restrictions on advertising. They agreed that there should not be any mention of health benefits to drinking, that advertising should not appeal to children and images such as Santa Claus should not be used in holiday advertisements.

The distilleries did invest heavily in print advertising after repeal. Magazines were very popular and color advertisements showing bottles of whiskey were common on a national scale. Newspapers were still getting advertising money from distillers as they promoted their products locally. Print advertising was the main way the distillers promoted their brands. This is because the self-imposed regulation the distillers agreed to after Prohibition forbid advertising on the radio and television. This ban on radio and television lasted until the 1990s. It was decided that since beer and wine were advertising in these media, the distillers should be able to do so as well. However, the distillers did keep some restrictions such as not advertising in prime time when under-aged people may be watching.

Today, there is still some print advertising being done by distillers. However, it has become a mere shadow of the investment percentage that distillers spend on advertising. Print magazines and newspapers have shrinking readership for hard copies of their publications. For better or worse, the internet has become a main forum of consumer reading. Print advertisements are becoming a thing of the past.