Maxell blown away poster
Headphone sound is inherently more intimate, so buyers care more about their headphones' sound. Sound is there to fill up empty spaces and rarely engages the listener. Now that most mainstream speaker buyers are stuck in multitasking mode, sound quality is irrelevant, because sound is just background to other activities. In those days iPods were just music players there was no texting, video, games, or streaming, just sound. Again, the theme is all about movement and total immersion in the sound of music.
MAXELL BLOWN AWAY POSTER TV
Tape was big business in the 1970s and 1980s, and sound-quality advances (and creative marketing) were crucial to the success of tape manufacturers.Īpple's early iPod TV and print ads with silhouetted dancers grooving to their iTunes are definitely contenders for iconic status. Back then it wasn't just a handful of audiophiles who cared about sound quality Maxell's ad catered to the sound aspirations of millions of tape consumers. People loved the ad because we all identified with the concept. This item: Maxell Blown Away Vintage Ad 11inx17in Mini Poster Master Print 01. MAXELL (Blown Away) POSTER 24 X 36 Inches Looks GREAT Opens in a new window or tab. The other thing I love about the ad is the man is really listening he is at one with his sound, but multitasking was still decades away. The Maxell ad was so popular it was expanded into a TV ad campaign. Sound never stands still, it's constantly in motion, and the image makes that perfectly clear. The photo is by Steven Steigman, and there have been endless parodies of the image over the years.Ĭommunicating great sound in a black-and-white still image isn't easy, and the ad's creators' achievement has never been surpassed. This rather iconic image was first created in the early 1980s and became a great advertising success for Hitachi Maxell. Maxell's "Blown Away Guy" campaign debuted in 1979, and it was perfect: the hipster is on the right side of the picture slouching in a massive Le Corbusier chair, with a table lamp and martini glass "blown away" by the sound of a JBL L100 speaker on the left side of the frame. 'Steve was a pioneer in limiting rights, and that was one of the first major photos using restricted rights,' says Gary Hurewitz of Hurewitz Creative Partners, one of Steigman's early reps.
CNET's Geoff Morrison used the above image from a Maxell tape ad in his " Music multitasking: How 'background' listening enhances life" blog post a few weeks ago, and that image really took me back. His best-known photograph, a popular icon that has served as Maxell's logo since the 1980s, shows a hair-blown man sitting in front of a speaker.