Distovagal

Today I had the chance to browse through one of my old books, "Ajedrez brillante" (Brilliant chess) by Máximo Borrell, which I bought for a few cents more than twenty years ago. I found this ad in page 93. It is about some kind of medicine. Distovagal: estabilizador del equilibrio emocional. (Distovagal: stabilizer of emotional balance).

Checkmate to your sight problems

A friend sent me this fine example of chess-related advertising. "Check mate to your sight problems" reads the ad on the window shop. There is also a real chess set beside it. Funny that the chessmen aren't glasses or contact lenses or similar. It is just chess in all its purity. Well spotted.

Yebisu beer chess ad (Japan 2007)

Another of my travel pics, taken on a Tokio train in March 2007. Yebisu (ヱビス) is a beer brand that belongs to Sapporo Breweries. One must take into account that whereas in the Western world the use of chess in advertising is quite common, in Japan the game is quite exotic so I think I came accross a gem. Probably the Western culture is better known in Japan than the other way round, but I think that trying to visualize the effect that go or shogi would have in a Western audience helps to understand the idea.

Also beer is or used to be an alien element in the Japanese culture. When I go to a Japanese restaurant I never see Yebisu in the menu. Asahi seems to be the standard Japanese beer abroad. Looking for a better quality pic, I discovered a game called Beer Chess, which I would not recommend.

Czech mates

I came accross this car in Dawson st, Dublin, in December last year. It is advertising Pražský beer (from Prague). This pun has already been seen before in examples such as the sexy girl in a T-Shirt asking to Czech it out.

The Monarchs of Strategy

This is an autopromotion ad that appeared in the Spanish pop-science magazine Muy Interesante in 2006. It is advertising a special edition dedicated to ths Catholic Monarchs; Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Their marriage was instrumental in merging both kingdoms and creating the biggest empire of their time.

King and Queen are represented as the equivalent chess pieces, on top of a chessboard whose shape is in the form of a map of Spain. It is actually the current map of Spain, as when they got married in 1469 there were 5 Kingdoms in the territory of the Iberian peninsula. Apart from Castile and Aragon, there were Portugal, who has remained independent, Granada the last Muslim kingdom in Western Europe, conquered by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 and Navarre, annexed by Ferdinand in 1512.

A significant milestone for the history of chess happened in Spain at that time. In this era of transition from the Middle to the Modern Age, chess was living its own transition from old to modern rules. In this context, Lucena published one of the oldest chess books in Salamanca in 1497.

Spanish radio station ad on a newspaper (2006).

This is a double-page ad I scanned somehow (you can see the line). Funny that a radio station advertises itself in a newspaper, you may say. The reason may be that Cadena SER belongs to PRISA, a media group that contains, among others, the influential "El País" newspaper and television channels such as "Canal +" and "Cuatro".

There is no other reference to the game of chess, apart from the image. In which there is a huge black King (which supposedly represents SER) and three small pawns, one of them fallen. In a way, we could say this is a Freudian image. The fact that the winner is the Black side draws my attention as it breaks a convention, the white-black contrast as a representation of the good-evil dichotomy.

For the sake of completeness, I include the text even if it has nothing to do with chess.

Gana la radio. Gana la Ser.
4.896.000 oyentes diarios.
[...] en 2006 la SER es la radio más escuchada de España. Así lo confirman los datos oficiales del Estudio General de Medios (EGM) correspondientes al primer trimestre del año. La radio gana en oyentes y la SER vuelve a ganar. a Enhorabuena a nuestros competidores y a los 4.896.000 oyentes que hacen que la SER esté siempre un paso por delante. Pase lo que pase.

The radio wins. SER wins.
4,896,000 daily listeners.
[...] in 2006, SER is the most listened radio Station in Spain. The official data of the Media General Study (EGM) confirm so. There are more radio listeners than ever and SER wins again. Congratulations to our competitors and to those 4,896,000 listeners of ours that make SER to be, always, one step ahead. No matter what happens.

On the right side, close to the faraway pawn, you will see the logo of "Cadena SER". On the bottom you can see the logo of the Quixote year (which was actually 2005), and the reference to the EGM.