Vintage Telegram Marketing
These are Western Union and Postal Telegraph promotion stickers from the 1940s - 1950s — small lick and stick marketing decals to put on folders, notepads, briefcases, and personal items. The 1940s equivalent of a laptop sticker.
What makes them fascinating beyond their bold colors and vintage typography is what they reveal about how telegrams fit into everyday life. Birthday greetings. Father's Day. Mother's Day. Wedding congratulations. Bon Voyage wishes. Even Greyhound bus reservations and airplane tickets could be booked through Postal Telegraph.
Telegrams were not a novelty then — they were infrastructure. And Western Union and Postal Telegraph marketed them accordingly, for every occasion, at every price point, to every corner of American life.
Some things do not change. The occasions are still the same. Only the price and delivery by mail is
Our two favorites from the collection. The salesman sticker captures a whole lost era of business culture in a single image — telegrams as a sophisticated sales tool, at a time when breaking the ice with a prospect was worth 25¢. The Swing into Action sticker earns its place for
sheer economy of design — bold, direct, and it still works eighty years
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Also . . .
Vintage TelegramsVintage Telegram Forms