Follies of the Madmen #289

Erotic embrace of gasoline pump by 1920s woman indicates America's love affair with cars dates to earliest era.

Original ad here.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 30, 2016 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Motor Vehicles, Public Indecency, 1920s

Follies of the Madmen #288

This was not a model of car that had nine lives.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jul 13, 2016 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Cats, 1960s, Cars

Follies of the Madmen #287

Click to enlarge.

Original images here. (Pages 10 & 11.)

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jul 05, 2016 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, Comics, 1950s

Follies of the Madmen #286

Lots of goofy stuff here.

First commercial: who's the publisher for that special Mom propaganda book?

Second and third commercials: love that trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey sequence as we fly thru the aspirin particles.

Fourth commercial: once upon a time, hairy chests were okay.

Fifth commercial: this woman has ingested so much iron that her bare feet are comfortable on metal stirrups.

Sixth and seventh commercials: life in a circus-acrobat household.

Eighth commercial: multivitamins promote blue balls.

Ninth commercial: children are iron-vampires.

Tenth and eleventh commercials: psychedelic scrumpcheroo!

Twelfth commercial: hey, a rerun! Or is this a flashback from dropping too many Chocks?

Thirteenth and fourteenth commercials: Charley Chocks, pusherman.

Fifteenth commercial: Chocks and chopsticks!

Sixteenth commercial: And you thought the Archies were too fake!

Seventeenth commercial: interplanetary Chocks colonialism!

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jun 18, 2016 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Drugs, Psychedelic, Children, Elderly, 1960s, 1970s

Follies of the Madmen #285

Wait a minute--I'm confused by the graphics. Does this product come from outer space?

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 14, 2016 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Spaceflight, Astronautics, and Astronomy, 1950s, Hair and Hairstyling

Follies of the Madmen #284

Reminding me of that old proverb, "If billfolds were neckties, publicists would be geniuses."

Scanned from Good Housekeeping for December 1953.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 09, 2016 - Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Fashion, Holidays, Surrealism, 1950s

Follies of the Madmen #283

"But, Betty, I can't fit the corpse into the upright model so easily!"

Posted By: Paul - Thu May 26, 2016 - Comments (13)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Death, Appliances, 1950s

Stealing Boosts Staff Morale

Companies do all kinds of things to boost staff morale. They hire motivational speakers, have team-building exercises, give employees gifts, etc.

But the industrial psychologist Lawrence Zeitlin, in an article published in June 1971 in Psychology Today ("A little larceny can do a lot for employee morale"), argued that the most effective way a business could boost morale was by allowing its employees to steal a little from the company.

He argued that theft added to a sense of "job enrichment" by making the job more interesting. It gave employees a sense of satisfaction at getting away with it. Also, workers "often looked upon theft as a condition of employment." Furthermore, he noted, allowing the theft could be cheaper than installing elaborate security precautions.

In her book Management and Ideology, business author Judith Merkle provides some background info on Zeitlin's article:

Sydney Morning Herald - May 30, 1971

Posted By: Alex - Wed May 25, 2016 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Crime, 1970s

Follies of the Madmen #282

Chimps improve every product.

Posted By: Paul - Mon May 16, 2016 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Products, 1950s, Cars

Find the movie tickets

September 1994: Georges Wache, managing director at a French furniture company in Vietnam, offered free movie tickets to employees as a morale booster to reward them for good work. The only catch was that to receive the giveaway, the employees had to "put their heads between his thighs" to search for the tickets.

One man refused and reported the odd demand to the authorities. When word reached the media, it sparked national outrage. Saigon newspapers branded Wache "The Ugly Frenchman" and demanded his deportation from the country. Wache insisted that his actions had simply been innocent fun that was misinterpreted. From what I can gather, Wache eventually was able to keep his job.

Sydney Morning Herald - Sep 13, 1994

Posted By: Alex - Sun May 15, 2016 - Comments (3)
Category: Business, 1990s