The good old Hippie 7 Up sign
Wilson Bowl - Wilson, Kansas
Taken on September 14, 2019
Don't see that many of these out in the wilds anymore. Just coming across this shot again has me lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy!
I remember the great UnCola campaign of the late 60s-early 70s. "Un for all and all for Un!" Many of the wild psychedelic designs used were credited to artist Peter Max, but no - there is so much more to the story. And this ad campaign was crucial because it saved the company!
"If it weren’t for hippies, 7 Up, the clear lemon-lime soda pop many use to calm the stomach flu, might not exist today. In the late 1960s, just when the company was about to go out of business, brilliant advertising executives at J. Walter Thompson Company in Chicago pitched a complete rebranding of the soft drink. Declaring 7 Up “The UnCola,” paper billboards posted above highways mere months before Woodstock in 1969 exploded with colorful and trippy cartoons of pretty girls, rainbows, sunbursts, flowers, and butterflies. Creatives at the agency mined the popularity of the Beatles’ psychedelic phase and appropriated the “peace, love, and understanding” zeitgeist of the youthful antiwar counterculture—all in the name of selling sugar water."
This comes from a very interesting (well, if you are an old sign and advertising nerd like me anyway) article by Lisa Hix in Collectors Weekly. You can find it here:
www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/collecting-7ups-most-be...
The Dallas architect and collector mentioned in the article, Bob Treat, was one of the college kids influenced by this ad campaign. He has a whole collection of the old billboards posted on Flickr. They are so creative, fun and gorgeous!
Have a look: www.flickr.com/photos/30559980@N07/albums/72157623502964435/
The good old Hippie 7 Up sign
Wilson Bowl - Wilson, Kansas
Taken on September 14, 2019
Don't see that many of these out in the wilds anymore. Just coming across this shot again has me lookin' for fun and feelin' groovy!
I remember the great UnCola campaign of the late 60s-early 70s. "Un for all and all for Un!" Many of the wild psychedelic designs used were credited to artist Peter Max, but no - there is so much more to the story. And this ad campaign was crucial because it saved the company!
"If it weren’t for hippies, 7 Up, the clear lemon-lime soda pop many use to calm the stomach flu, might not exist today. In the late 1960s, just when the company was about to go out of business, brilliant advertising executives at J. Walter Thompson Company in Chicago pitched a complete rebranding of the soft drink. Declaring 7 Up “The UnCola,” paper billboards posted above highways mere months before Woodstock in 1969 exploded with colorful and trippy cartoons of pretty girls, rainbows, sunbursts, flowers, and butterflies. Creatives at the agency mined the popularity of the Beatles’ psychedelic phase and appropriated the “peace, love, and understanding” zeitgeist of the youthful antiwar counterculture—all in the name of selling sugar water."
This comes from a very interesting (well, if you are an old sign and advertising nerd like me anyway) article by Lisa Hix in Collectors Weekly. You can find it here:
www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/collecting-7ups-most-be...
The Dallas architect and collector mentioned in the article, Bob Treat, was one of the college kids influenced by this ad campaign. He has a whole collection of the old billboards posted on Flickr. They are so creative, fun and gorgeous!
Have a look: www.flickr.com/photos/30559980@N07/albums/72157623502964435/