“The Zeppelin is Coming to Our Town ......”

Like any other city where the Zeppelin was about to arrive, for the first time, the merchants of Rio de Janeiro tried to make capital out of the event and mold their advertising around the Zeppelin's appearance. During my research for this flight at the archives of O Globo (from which all the examples shown here stem), I came across several examples of merchants trying to cash in on the event. Here a few selected examples, some of which are eye-openers.

It all started with an announcement that ran in the newspapers, this case O Globo.

Initial Announcement

Immediately, the ad people got to work and produced the following three examples of large scale ads:

From the left, a general/department store, followed by an automobile dealer (Cord) and the mass transit company, offering deluxe buses to visit the planning site (which was quite a distance from the center of town). And even smaller merchants, some directly connected to the event had their ads too.

Casa Mattiy seems to have been the manufacturer for all the Condor cancels. The other company sold shoes like those worn by the crew.

Note: the following ad was NOT made specially for the Zeppelin arrival. It appeared regularly in the papers. Even though the Fascist/Nazi star was rising in Europe and was already felt in places like Brazil, the Anglo-Mexican Oil Company thought nothing was a problem in their name for their oil lubricant product.

An interesting historical fact with no connection to the events in Europe nor the Zeppelin.