Shell Motorist's index

Gee I wish!

A very advanced, for its time, form of advertising. Got all their products in front of prospective clients - educated them to as to service intervals for oil changes, bearing repacks etc....... and then told them the products to purchase.

Wrapped it all up in an informative package that had the user regularly referring to the publication - known as reinforcement.

Worked for the Shell Company in a previous life and their marketing people were second to none.

Those members of a "certain" age may remember the "Pears Encyclopaedia", there were probably few homes in this country without one. The Pears was dragged out to settle arguments on almost any subject, it's atlas section showed half the world shaded in pink to denote the British Empire. Same principle as the Shell publication.

Interestingly enough some spark decided that Pears did not need to spend the huge sum that they did in heavily subsidising the encyclopaedia and stopped publishing. In a few short years their sales dropped to virtually nothing and are today almost unknown.

Ian

Brilliant!

Look after it Dave, I doubt that it will be worth a packet because there were millions distributed in Australia, not to mention the rest of the world. Having said that, there will be a collector somewhere who will lust after it.

As a kid we had a pristine example complete with loose outer cover, printed immediately prior WW2, 1938 from memory. Have no idea what ever happened to it.

Ian