A clever bit of advertising gimmickry from Guinness: these pint glasses bear QR codes than can't be read when the glass is empty, nor when it is filled with amber-colored beers. But when filled with black, murky Guinness, the revealed QR code can finally be scanned: "it tweets about your pint, updates your facebook status, checks you in via 4 square, downloads coupons and promotions, invites your friends to join, and even launches exclusive Guiness content."
One more M-Day Vintage Ad: a Philip Morris piece from a 1956 Saturday Evening Post celebrating its new packaging by inviting an association between cuddling a newborn and smoking.
There's a good case to be made for tobacco companies as the original sinners of corporatism, with their development of this kind of advertising, not to mention their key contributions to self-serving junk science. There's a (dotted, convoluted) line joining up the MMR scare, climate denialism, and this industry's Mad Men, sentimental illustrators, and tame scientists.
There are some who'll say that X-Ray Specs illos are the zenith of old-timey kid-targeted comics advertising. Those people are wrong. Cardboard spaceships, with their Voyage to the Mushroom Planet promise, are so far beyond anything ever drawn in service of X-Ray Specs that the championship is easy to perceive. This thing is pure desiderata pheromone.
A pair of posts on the Vintage Ads LJ group by Man Writing Slash collect a series of ads from the golden age of men's sleepwear, when pajamas were glorious, stylish, and the kind of thing you'd hang out with your buddies and compare notes on. I am a huge believer in pajamas (many commented on my sleepwear sartori when I posted a photo of me in the morning at a hotel, and there were a lot of comments when I mentioned flying in pajamas). The jim-jams on display in these ads are total catnip for me.
The illustration in this 1943 Listerine shaving ad is totally perfect, and really makes the case that the MAD Magazine parodies of old time ads were basically faithful recreations. I love that they gave the guy a double chin.
At The Awl, TG Gibbon collects unsettling British television Commercials, "Just the sort of thing you might expect from a country with the rich asshole from an '80s teen movie where its Barack Obama should be". Embedded above, a life insurance ad with a delightful twist ending.
Having seen the aspirational consumption-dreams of the nation, I'm sure you'll know what to expect from its public information films.
On Behance, art director Bjoern Ewers shows off the gorgeous macro-photo ads he produced for the Berlin Philharmonic, which depict the insides of instruments as airy atria (or, as Colossal has it, "vast and spacious, almost as if you could walk around inside them.")
This wartime ad from Life encourages you to get loaded on fine booze at home while cleaning your guns, to leave the roads and railways clear for Our Boys.
Before the "Nintendo wars" of the early 21st century, there were these toys, which invited young children to practice accurately releasing atom bombs. I'm not sure that the skills you learned with this gadget would translate into real A-bombing practice, though, which probably disappointed some youngsters.
On the always-excellent How to Be a Retronaut site, a great collection of 1960s fallout shelter ads, a perfect capsule of upbeat, cheerful fear-selling.
A pair of posts on the Vintage Ads LJ group by Man Writing Slash collect a series of ads from the golden age of men's sleepwear, when pajamas were glorious, stylish, and the kind of thing you'd hang out with your buddies and compare notes on. I am a huge believer in pajamas (many commented on my 
On the always-excellent How to Be a Retronaut site, a great collection of 1960s fallout shelter ads, a perfect capsule of upbeat, cheerful fear-selling.