The golden age of online dating is upon us. Just ask executives of Match.com, who last month reported a 195 percent increase in paid subscribers over the same quarter last year. Or look at Yahoo, where online personals have increased the company’s revenues despite a decline in income from advertising. Or talk to any youngish single person in New York. When I asked a friend, who met her last boyfriend online, how many of her single friends had used or are currently using online dating services, she replied, “Pretty much all of them.”

Look no further than the “Personals of the Day” you see pop up on this site, as well as the Onion and countless other sites, and you’ll realize two things: One, online personals have become a major source of revenue for content sites, and two, there are some damn fine-looking young folks floating around out there. Unless Spring Street Networks, the source of those ads, has been inventing fictional singles with a crack team of models, stylists, marketers and professional photographers, there appear to be a great many attractive people online these days, shamelessly hamming it up in the hopes of meeting that special anyone.

It’s a far cry from the spring of 1996, when I attended a party for Match.com that was populated primarily by computer programmers who looked like they hadn’t left the server room of their start-up offices in several months, their only contact with other humans limited to those moments when they braved the weak San Francisco sunlight to fetch a banana moon pie from the company’s vending machine, or to scuttle over to Cafe Centro for a quadruple nonfat latte. That tall blond girl who worked there sure was cute, but she was sort of mean!

Now that blond girl is prominently featured on the pages of Match.com, pensively biting a manicured finger while lounging across an unmade bed in her nightie under the moniker “sweet ‘n’ dirty.”

So how did everything change so quickly, and why have people begun peddling themselves so shamelessly online?

The truth is, most young people see nothing the least bit embarrassing about online dating or “man shopping” as one woman referred to it in a recent New York Times article. Maybe kids today are far less self-conscious about romance and love in general, thanks to not having been exposed to “The Love Boat” during their formative years. The more likely explanation, though, is that the anonymity of the medium, the prevalence of blogs, online photo galleries and personal Web sites, and the comfort most of us feel in corresponding entirely through e-mail have combined to make online dating a perfectly acceptable means of meeting new people.

Demand creates supply. When you think for a minute about how inefficient and circuitous the traditional delivery system for meeting potential lovers is, it’s not hard to see how we landed here. When your options are limited to getting set up by your friends, going out to parties or going to smoky bars in the hopes of getting drunk enough to knock over someone with a pulse, it’s clear why shopping for a mate online has been embraced by mainstream America.

Imagine, if you will, trying to buy a food processor without a Best Buy, or a Macy’s, or a Williams-Sonoma. Imagine if you had to go to crowded parties and other tedious functions and search the crowd for someone with an old Cuisinart at home that they might be willing to sell you. Furthermore, imagine if it were considered rude to bring up the Cuisinart straight off the bat — instead, you were expected to ask people about themselves, maybe buy them a drink, and feign interest in their rambling, self-involved banter, until finally, at the end of the night, loosened up by a few drinks, you could say what had been on your mind for hours:

“Um. I hope this doesn’t sound too forward, but do you … process food?”

And despite all that effort, imagine that the person’s face drops, and he or she replies politely, but in a clipped, uncomfortable tone, “No, I’m not really into that kind of thing,” and then exits the party without even asking for your number in case he or she ever does get the urge to process.

Now that love has finally been commodified and booty has an efficient distribution system, it makes sense that the branding strategies of those peddling their goods and services have become increasingly finessed.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before we gave up on classified ads and moved on to a more dynamic format. After all, how long could the same classy DWM, 50s, keep trumpeting his love for red wine and red roses and cuddling to any SWF who’s both idle enough and disturbed enough to pore over that minuscule print? As Scott Bedbury, the marketing strategist who helped to launch campaigns for Nike and Starbucks, writes in his book, “A New Brand World”:

“The most innovative product line will grow stale in the minds of potential consumers if the marketing has become static, undifferentiated, or — even worse — irritating for lack of change.”

A change has certainly come upon us. Browse the personals on Bust.com or Nerve.com and you’ll see for yourself: Gone are the candlelit dinners and the long walks on the beach. Cooking and travel and nights by the fire sound as old and lame as that “Like a Rock” theme song that Chevy can’t seem to leave behind.

We’ve entered a new era of self-branding, featuring tasty professional photographs and sales pitches feistier than those dreamt up by a skilled copywriter. Today’s online love-seeker isn’t looking for someone who’s “sexy and sophisticated and fit,” he’s looking for “[S]someone to end my hedonistic ways — or someone to take me headlong deeper into them.” You can almost hear Britney singing that bump-and-grind Pepsi theme song in the background: “The rrrride! Just enjoy the rrrrride! Don’t need a reason why!”

That jingle doesn’t actually include the word “Pepsi,” by the way — it’s the natural evolution of ads that we move from an exhortation to consume the product (“Drink Pepsi!”) to an invitation to enjoy a sensual experience that’s only loosely (but inextricably) associated with the product (“Just enjoy the rrrride!”). Similarly, today’s online ads are almost subliminal. What is he looking for? Not “a blue-eyed blond with a great rack.” No! He’s looking for “the connection, the compassion, the empathy and the acceptance we all seek.” I had no idea Deepak Chopra was single!

In keeping with current advertising trends, today’s online singles market themselves not by highlighting their best traits, but by creating an imaginary self that’s impressively snarky and carefree. Much like the recent spate of humorous TV ads for serious products like Washington Mutual or Budget Rent-a-Car, many personal ads use humor to draw in potential customers. For “Best (or worst) lie I’ve ever told,” one guy wrote, “I never lie.” And I found more than one straight man who listed “Deliverance” as the source of his favorite on-screen sex scene.

Of course, Spring Street Networks deserves at least some of the credit for provoking participants into offering up such original and zesty prose. When “self-deprecation” is listed next to cigarettes and booze under “my habits,” and you’re asked to answer whether you indulge in it “often, sometimes, or never,” the mind starts working in self-conscious yet creative new ways.

And who can’t help but get a little clever or provocative when asked to fill in the following: “(blank) is sexy; (blank) is sexier.” For example: “Flexibility is sexy; focus is sexier.” Why not just say “Good sex is sexy; great sex is sexier”? Or how about this zinger: “Appearance is sexy; attitude is sexier.” Sounds like the next Sprite campaign.

You have to hand it to these online daters for the enthusiasm with which they commodify themselves. Most seem unabashedly honest in exposing themselves, and few appear to be unfamiliar with the value-add. As Bedbury asserts, it’s important to “know that your advertising must create a proposition that your product or service delivers on, time and time again.” Accordingly, chirpy love-seekers offer up their services with the enthusiasm of merchants at a street market: “I visit the beach or the canyons at least once a week!” “I’m easy-going and intense!” “I give great massages!” And then there’s the more subtle: “I love cunnilingus!”

Furthermore, Bedbury explains, the great brands tell a story, like a great piece of mythology, “with the customer, not the company, as the story’s main protagonist.” Our online love-seekers seem to sense this intuitively: “[You're] not someone who thinks ‘Cathy’ is funny, but someone who thinks ‘The Jerk’ is funny.” “You love who you are, but you want so much more.” “You’ll love my vegan pancakes in the morning!”

And since we’ve become products ourselves, it make sense that we can only advertise ourselves by associating with other products. Indeed, each personal ad patches together an increasingly eclectic and romantic mélange of brands to create a signature brand: “The Anarchist Cookbook,” Moroccan Mint loose tea, Jack Russell terriers, “Naked” by David Sedaris, Tenacious D, Williams-Sonoma, “North by Northwest” starring Eva Marie Saint and Cary Grant, Vespas, late ’60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The cultural references become dizzying after a while, with each brand standing on the shoulders of a million brands that came before it. Pepsi is Britney Spears is Marilyn Monroe is “Pleasantville” is the idealized ’50s. Chevy is Bob Seger is the American Farmer is Marlboros is Wrangler Jeans is “The Grapes of Wrath.”

But as online ads become more aggressive and clever and self-consciously crafted, what impact does that have on the human interactions that result from them? What does it mean to peddle yourself so effectively before you even meet your prospective partner? Can there possibly be any room left for the real, flawed, fragile human behind the ad?

And after buying into the suave vegan pancake-maker and cognac-sipping reader of Whitman, can you possibly accept the humble, nervous accountant who stands before you? With such a marketing blitz, followed by frisky, flirtatious instant messaging and countless e-mails, followed sometimes even by long midnight conversations and phone sex, is it remotely possible not to be disappointed with the real thing?

Like reading a book and then seeing the movie, you don’t realize how much you’ve already painted a picture in your head until you see someone else’s vision on the screen. Similarly, it’s tough to know how much fantasy you’re bringing to the table until you’re sitting face to face, and you recognize suddenly that you’d ascribed a whole different set of verbal tics, affectations and gestures to the person in your mind without even knowing it.

The smallest thing about the person can send you spiraling inward, thereby shutting you off from the experience. You felt sure, based on his e-mails, that he wasn’t a mouth breather! It seemed obvious, given the flirtatious confidence with which she approached you online, that she didn’t have a flabby ass!

In “A New Brand World,” Bedbury quotes University of Michigan business professors C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy who contend that a “product is no more than an artifact around which customers have experiences.” Similarly, navigating today’s online personals can feel more like an exercise in fantasy: We take the artifacts before us, and use our powers of imagination to create an idealized mate from these offerings.

Strange how easy and familiar this process is to us; but then, most relationships are at least 30 percent imagination. Without a fantasy-driven notion of themselves as a pair, most couples’ relationships would collapse under the weight of years of compromise and self-sacrifice.

And besides, for as long as I’ve known her, my online dating friend in New York has been lamenting that she never meets any new men — ever! Now she meets them all the time. They’re not all perfect, and sometimes she’s built them up in her mind only to be disappointed. But now at least she’s getting out there and hanging out with new people, and for better or for worse, she says she has a real feeling of possibility.

“I might have stayed involved with the last guy even though it wasn’t working, because I would’ve thought, I’ll never meet anyone else!” she says. “Now I know I can just go online and meet someone else tomorrow.” That’s right. There are always more brands on the shelf — I mean, fish in the sea.

In a simpler time, when automobiles went slower and the pre-Eisenhower highway system in the United States was less developed, there was a popular advertising campaign that ran from 1927 until 1963. It consisted of rhymed messages sequentially staked on the right side of the road, all ending with the advertiser’s name, “Burma-Shave.”

Examples of vintage Burma-Shave road signs, including a blue South Dakota version. (Ray Crockett photo)

These red ads (one state, South Dakota, insisted that they be dark blue to keep them from conflicting with the red reserved for warning notices) usually consisted of five signs. For example: “DON’T PASS CARS/ON CURVE OR HILL/IF THE COPS DON’T GET YOU/ MORTICIANS WILL/BURMA-SHAVE.”

Some slogans touted Burma-Shave as a pre-aerosol “brushless” shaving cream—a cream you could scoop out of a jar and lather onto your face without relying on an old-fashioned brush and moistened soap in a mug.

 

("Thoroly"? I guess if the word doesn't fit the composition, change the spelling. . .)

In 1925, Clinton Odell, a Minneapolis lawyer, took the liniment his father created and transformed it into a brushless shaving cream. He named his company Burma-Vita—Burma, because most of the essential oils in the liniment were from the Burmese portion of the Malay Peninsula, and Vita from the Latin for “life”: “Life from Burma.”

Some of Burma-Shave’s primary “brushless shaving cream” competitors were Barbasol and Noxema.

The company was sold to Philip Morris in 1963, and all the signs were removed soon thereafter. As a testament to the campaign’s cultural significance, a set of signs was donated to the Smithsonian, where it still resides. But the brand eventually petered out. After being sold yet again (this time to the American Safety Razor Company) and then reintroduced in 1997, it never regained a hold in the market.

A history of the Burma-Vita Company, written by Frank Rowsome Jr. and illustrated by Carl Rose, was published by the Stephen Greene Press in 1963.

By the early 1960's, the rising costs of road-sign maintenance (as well as new and more effective ways of advertising) sounded the death knell for the Burma-Shave signs.

The following pages from Frank Rowsome Jr.’s book list all the road-sign Burma-Shave phrases produced from 1927 to 1963.

I became interested in pop bottles (I grew up in the Chicago area where we all said “pop”) and related stuff when I was about 12 years old. I had gone inside an old garage that was attached to a neighborhood house that was being torn down and inside was a cache of un-returned pop bottles that must have dated from the 1940-’50s period. I took one of each type home (about 20 of ‘em) and yes, still have them to this day. I really got off on all the different labels and colors of glass and because I used to like to read old magazines I actually recognized most of the brands that were no longer around or had changed their design. I’ll go into this more in a future post, but wanted to lay some sort of a foundation for this piece, which is exclusively on 7Up, with a special focus on their branding efforts of the 1950s.

The soft drink that would be known as 7Up was created in 1929 by Charles Leiper Grigg in St.Louis as part of his “Howdy” line of sodas and was originally called “Bib-Label Lithiated (it contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate until 1950) Lemon-Lime Soda.” It was almost immediately re-labeled “7 (7 natural flavors) Up Lithiated Lemon-Lime,” and then finally just “7Up”.

The first 7Up logo from 1929.

In terms of logos, an original winged trademark soon gave way to the red squared logo that lasted until the late 1960s that coincided with that period’s brilliant “Uncola” re-branding campaign. I always felt they had GOLD in that Uncola moniker. . .

A 1935 7Up label before the Howdy Company's name was changed to 7Up in 1936, followed by two Howdy beverage labels.

By the late 1940s 7Up was the third most popular soft drink in the United States. By the time the 1950s rolled around, the company had employed extensive branding techniques to keep the momentum going. The following three binders contain examples of what was offered to the bottlers and distributors to reinforce the product’s presence.

A catalog of 7Up sales/marketing items circa 1954.

This page includes tipped-in glossy paint chips.

These next three pages would NEVER fly with the HR Dept in 2012. . .

Before everyone had TV's in their home, it was common to go out to watch television.

7Up Sales & Promotion Merchandise Catalog circa 1954 - 59.

(would love to have those binders. . .)

Actual cloth swatches included.

More swatches.

1959 "Salesmakers" Catalogue

2 actual decals using the older logo with the woman reaching for bubbles- love the way the color is broken down into separate shapes and levels.

Actual booklet attached.

"Fresh Up Freddie" was the 7Up mascot created in 1957 by ad agency Leo Burnett and Walt Disney to help sponsor the Disney "Zorro" TV series.

Here’s a link to more info on “Freddie”: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/fresh-up-freddy.html

Remember, it's from 1959. . .

Ditto. . .

2 mid-1930's 7Up bottles.

Left: 1940's bottle with 8 bubbles on label. Right: 1950's bottle 7 bubbles.

"Like" was introduced in 1963 as a diet version of 7Up. It contained Calcium Cyclamate which was determined to be a carcinogen in 1969. "Like" was discontinued in that same year and Diet 7Up was introduced in 1970 sans the Cyclamates. This bottle is dated 1964.

Late 1960's/early 1970's can.

"The Uncola".

As a final footnote, I was lucky enough to work on spots for 7Up International using the Susan Rose/Joanna Ferrone character “Fido Dido”! Here’s one of my favorites done while I was at the Ink Tank Studio in N.Y.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JpHjeGXyw8

Copyright F+W Media Inc. 2012.

Salon is proud to feature content from Imprint, the fastest-growing design community on the web. Brought to you by Print magazine, America’s oldest and most trusted design voice, Imprint features some of the biggest names in the industry covering visual culture from every angle. Imprint advances and expands the design conversation, providing fresh daily content to the community (and now to salon.com!), sparking conversation, competition, criticism, and passion among its members.

As if Michael Jackson wasn’t creepy enough when he was alive. The self-proclaimed King of Pop, who died nearly three years ago, is making a return via a new Pepsi campaign. The fabulously un-self-aware tagline? “Live for Now.”

The corporation is set to festoon one billion cans of Pepsi around the world – that’s one billion cans – with the singer’s unmistakable silhouette. It’s a bold move for a company whose most famous association with Jackson is that back in 1984, his hair caught fire filming a commercial for them. Jackson’s estate orchestrated his sponsorship resurrection, and a family spokesperson confirmed to the Wall Street Journal Thursday that “more such marketing agreements are planned.” Did anyone else just feel that collective shudder of revulsion?

Somewhere, Charlie Sheen is laughing and saying, “At least I never did that.” This week, we learned what’s even less funny than Ashton Kutcher: Ashton Kutcher in brownface.

In an ill-advised Popchips ad spoofing online dating that launched Wednesday, the “Two and a Half Men” star appeared as a variety of love-hungry “World Wide Lovers” vying for your affection. In a spectacular display of racial tone-deafness, one of them included “Raj.” Raj, all darkened skin and heavy accent, is “a Bollywood producer looking for the most delicious thing on the planet.” He’s looking for something “Kardashian hot … I would give that dog a bone.” He brags that he once won a milking contest, and he does a little dance that will haunt your nightmares.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 2 to 1 this morning to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Web, making it easier for the public to see how as much as $3.2 billion will be spent on TV advertising this election.

The files — which, among other information, detail the times ads aired, how much they cost, and whether stations rejected ad buy requests from campaigns — are currently available only on paper at stations.