70s Vibe: Lessons for Modern Marketers

We're back with another post regarding images, marketing, and lessons learned from the past. We hope you've enjoyed your Fourth of July, and will stay tuned to our further musings.

While the so-called millennials sit back and browse Instagram while listening to their new downloads folder on the iPhone7, the old-timers recall the good old days of large format media, the vinyl. Of course none of said old-times have that coveted collection from their teenage years and the average teenager has more music on, or is accessible via their phone than one might think possible. Still, we can look back to the days of yore, 12inch square album covers ruled the music store and every yahoo had a crate or two full of them.

These magic album covers, whether by virtuoso or sheer tenacity of commercial repetitiveness, wore a groove in our collective consciousness and remain iconic to this day.

Tall Tales

Perhaps it was the lack of actual music footage at the time, but 70s album covers featured a sort of mystique to them; the large majority find the group, photographed at large, and in a predicament. Perhaps this was an effort to profit off the fact that these figures didn’t seem real, and had a larger than life persona.

The vast majority of Pink Floyd albums concern something slightly otherworldly, even if at a mundane pace, a handshake between two immolating business, or just the band itself, sitting next to a photo of itself, next to itself, ad infinitum. Regardless, volumes could be, and have been, published on the symbolism portrayed.

Perhaps Pink Floyd would have been lesser known like their contemporaries had they not been able to capture the true imagination of their music on the now iconic record sleeve. Having this kind of knowledge about branding for the masses and applying it to art is what creates the most memorable works.

We have much to learn from these hulking figures of marketing. The creation of these works surely took a great effort and while the medium has changed and culture has progressed in different ways, much like all history, there is much sense in stepping back, and steeping ourselves in the glory days.

Just as historians learn from the past to avoid mistakes of the previous generations, marketers and videographers (or anyone working with media for that matter) can reap the rewards of learning from the past.