N.W. Ayer & Son (First advertising agency in the United States)

Beautiful engraved specimen certificate from N.W. Ayer & Son printed in the 1950's. This historic document was printed by American Bank Note Company and has an ornate border around it with a vignette of the company's corporate headquarters. This item is over 47 years old.




Certificate Vignette

N.W. Ayer & Son was the first advertising agency in the United States, founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1869. N.W. Ayer was responsible for some of the most enduring slogans in advertising history, including:

"When it rains it pours", advertising salt for Morton Salt, coined in 1912 "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", advertising Camel cigarettes for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, coined in 1921. Sometimes this slogan was formed into a jingle,"I'd walk a mile for a mild, mild Camel." [1],[2],[3] "A diamond is forever", advertising diamonds for De Beers, coined in 1948 "Reach out and touch someone", advertising long-distance telephone service for AT&T;, coined in 1979 "Be all you can be", advertising military service for the United States Army, coined in 1981 In 1973, the company relocated to New York, New York. Following a general trend in the advertising industry, N.W. Ayer was subject to a number of mergers and acquisitions and was eventually acquired by the Publicis Groupe (based in Paris, France), which closed down the N.W. Ayer offices in 2002.

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About Specimens

Specimen Certificates are actual certificates that have never been issued. They were usually kept by the printers in their permanent archives as their only example of a particular certificate. Sometimes you will see a hand stamp on the certificate that says "Do not remove from file".

Specimens were also used to show prospective clients different types of certificate designs that were available. Specimen certificates are usually much scarcer than issued certificates. In fact, many times they are the only way to get a certificate for a particular company because the issued certificates were redeemed and destroyed. In a few instances, Specimen certificates we made for a company but were never used because a different design was chosen by the company.

These certificates are normally stamped "Specimen" or they have small holes spelling the word specimen. Most of the time they don't have a serial number, or they have a serial number of 00000. This is an exciting sector of the hobby that grown in popularity over the past several years.