Image: Unsplash.com
An Italian-born bodybuilder and his business associates created a legendary advertising campaign and business.
It all started in the US in the 1920s.
The bodybuilder was Charles Atlas (born Angelo Siciliano).
During his lifetime and beyond, the company ran hundreds of press advertisements.
All were about developing a more muscular body, and all were aimed at men.
The element that hit home was usually about turning a scrawny body (as Angelo himself originally had) into a muscular, chiselled Adonis.
The ads also hit at the secret fear of many young men.
Here’s how the most famous version of the ad describes it.
In this full-length version (of the ad), the protagonist, “Mac”, is accosted on the beach by a sand-kicking bully while his date watches. Humiliated, the young man goes home and, after kicking a chair and gambling a three-cent stamp, subscribes to Atlas’s “Dynamic-Tension” program. Later, the now muscular protagonist goes back to the beach and beats up the bully, becoming the “hero of the beach”. His girl returns while other women marvel at how big his muscles are. (An earlier but otherwise almost identical version, “How Joe’s Body Brought Him Fame Instead of Shame”, debuted in the 1940s.)
The extract is from Wikipedia, and you can read the full article here.
Those muscle-building ads were still running when I was in my teens (my younger brother bought the course).
And the Charles Atlas business is still trading ninety-four years later.
The trade show version of having sand kicked in your face is often felt by exhibitors on shell scheme stands.
In well-established events, their stands are dwarfed by bigger spending players.
However, there is one thing a shell scheme exhibitor can do to transform what they see as a puny display into something more polished, hard-hitting, more Charles Atlas-like.
You can see what that is by clicking this link.
Very best,