The Creation of a 1940s Advertisement

By The Little Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising in the R.O.C (MOFBA) //

The companies of Old Shanghai left behind their buildings, but what happened to their products? Following Duncan Hewitt’s post on Brunner Mond/ICI, we’re delighted to publish MOFBA’s story on the making of a 1940s ad featuring one of ICI’s products.

Product advertising was a boom industry in 1930s and 40s Shanghai, and numerous examples of ads can still be found. Much rarer, though, is this unfinished 1940s advertisement for Gammexane, a treatment for lice and scabies, which offers a unique glimpse into the creative process of Chinese advertisement design.

The poster features illustrations of the product applications, hand-drawn lettering and a glued-on product packaging cutout (yes, that’s where the term “cut & paste” comes from!).

The manufacturers’ company name and crescent moon logo remain unfinished; the outlines were sketched, but not inked. The poster, in fact, was never completed, and there is no evidence that Gammexane was ever formally advertised or sold in China. In fact, since it turns out that the brand was never launched, this might represent the only draft of the Gammexane ad ever created.

In 2009, the production and agricultural use of Gammexane’s underlying molecule lindane was banned under the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants.

CLOSE-UPS OF THE DRAWINGS, LETTERING AND INKING

Gammexane, ICI, Brunner Mond & AstraZeneca

Introduced in 1943 by Imperial Chemical Industries, Gammexane was a new type of insecticide whose development was the result of wartime discoveries by I.C.I.

I.C.I., Gammexane’s parent company, was created in December 1926 through the merger of four companies: Brunner, Mond & Co., Nobel Explosives, the United Alkali Company, and British Dyestuffs Corporation. For much of its history, it was the largest chemical manufacturer in Britain.

Brunner, Mond, which had been operating in China since 1890, was easily the most recognized of the four companies in China. In 1923 the company erected its own building on 133 Szechuen Road, just behind the Bund, later renamed the Imperial Chemical Industries Building.

Left: Brunner Mond logo. Right: The company’s building on Sichuan Road. Top left image is the building in the 1930s.

The company’s famous logo featured BM&Co under a crescent moon and was so well-established that I.C.I. continued to use the BM&Co brand (卜內門  /Bu Nei Men) to advertise its products in China. By the mid 1990s I.C.I. and BM&Co’s business eventually became what we know today as AstraZeneca. For more on the company’s long history in China, see Duncan Hewitt’s post, AstraZeneca, China, and the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

“The Little Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising in the R.O.C. (MOFBA), or 民國中外廣告微博物館 in Chinese, is a private collection in Shanghai, showcasing the captivating history of Western brands advertising & selling in China during the Golden Years 1912 to 1949”: www.mofba.org