I’m a sucker for vintage Swiss Army advertising campaigns. Partly it’s because I’m in the world of advertising and corporate communications as a vocation. It is helpful for me to see what some other creative person did in the past. Their work is often inspiring, humorous or could be a time capsule of the decade when they originally ran. I am mostly talking about a pre-internet era when companies still spent good money to advertise in monthly publications. Nowadays, most everything has a digital presence so it may be less often that you see a print ad for your favorite watch brand. Who knows, maybe in time I will start saving web banner ads for reference, but I doubt it. Those were never printed on paper and you expect them to disappear after a very short lifespan.
Click the image above to view the Victorinox Swiss Army Vintage Ad Gallery
I have been collecting Victorinox Swiss Army ads for a while now. If I ever ran across one of them on an Internet search, I would save the image for reference later. This proved to be invaluable becauseย these old Swiss Army watch ads contained information that might not be so easy to find today. This might include a feature, a SKUย number, and pricing. Seeing the ad as it was presented at the time of the watch’s release puts Swiss Army’s watches into context, that is you can almost see how they were positioning themselves in the market.
At first, they were makers of high-quality, no-nonsense Swiss quartz watches. That later changed when they started making more complicated and higher price-point mechanicalย watches. One thing that has remained consistent, at least to me, is the high quality of their watches. I see their body of timepieces as an excellent value-for-quality to consumers that spans a wide range of costs and purposes. Some brands cannot play both ends of the spectrum, but Victorinox does it expertly.
I invite you to visit the Victorinox Swiss Army Vintage Ad Gallery and see for yourself what a good, old-fashioned ad was like back in the 1990s. I think that you might be surprised that some of the copywriting is stellar and still holds up to this day… especially the award-winningย red ads from 1998. Since WatchHunter.org is a community affair if you have any Victorinox Swiss Army ads that I did not include, please feel free to send me a high-res image or scan so I can include it in the library. Enjoy browsing the Swiss Army ads… I know I did.
