RCA Victor Record Store Banners

By Bob Pakes
 
 

When it came to selling the Presley-product in the 1960’s, everything was always full circle: the single promoted the album, the album promoted the movie, and in turn the movie promoted the album.
The Colonel and RCA, as well as the movie company executives, came up with clever tactics to make as much money of as little investment as possible.
Starting in 1961, most of the covers for Elvis’ singles would contain a short advert for an LP, or a calender, or whatever else his latest single could be linked to. And if a single wasn’t directly linked to a new movie, these singles would be released “By popular demand!” and “By special request!”, and of course also by a combination of the two: “By popular request!” . RCA in the 60’s would even release old Elvis recordings and present them as “Summer vacation special!” in order to fill the gap between regular releases. And of course, over the years they squuezed out a bunch of Christmas and gospel singles that really made no sense at that time, but once again by so-called request from the public (most of which are now rare because of their extreme poor sales …).
When it came to sellng the albums, the public was also presented with some brilliant marketing moves from the powers that be. For instance, to make up for the shortage of titles on certain soundtrack-LP’s, these albums would include “Bonus songs!”, as if the audience was treated to an extra song free of charge. Yeah right!
 
Well, we all know about the Colonel’s nasty habits, and we love him for it. On the movie sets we can see him walking around in ridiculous raincoats advertising that certain movie, and to the right we see him in 1966 showing an in-store poster/banner for his milk cow’s latest escape. And to bring this little intro full circle too, that’s what this article is all about:
the IN-STORE RCA VICTOR BANNERS.
And there are some nice HMV promotional posters too!

 
 
 

 
 
 

1956

 

1957

(From the UK)

 

(From GERMANY)

 

1958

(From the UK)

 

 

1959

(From the UK)

 

1960

 

(1965)

 

1961

 

 

 

1962

 

 

1963

Below we see Elvis and Priscilla (in November of 1963, on the Kissin’ Cousins lot) in front of a wall that has all sorts of promotional stuff from It Happened At The World’s Fair and Kissin’ Cousins, including the banner pictured above.
It’s even more interesting to see where The Colonel’s eyes are. For once they are not on the money …

 

 

 

1964

 

 

 

1965

 

 

 

1966

 

 

1967

 

1968

 

1969