Bright to the last drop…
Reffells Bexley Brewery issued a number of advertisements over the years, and some of these would probably not be very acceptable nowadays!
As was typical of those days, early advertising was text driven and informative about the types of beer produced, how much they cost and with an emphasis on the ‘purity’ of the Gold Medal winning beers. That began to change around the 1910s with the ability to create drawn images in the local newspapers. The main slogan used was ‘Bright to the Last Drop’ and this was used for many decades.
With the advent of images, use was made of characters in the early days of working class type, wearing flat caps and working clothes. At the time of the First World War, there was advertising in French and Flemish intended to especially appeal to those displaced to Kent from Belgium.
Emphasis changed from 1921 onwards using male characters of a class perhaps at odds with the usual clientele of the working class public houses of the brewery at that time. Then during the1930s along came the very chummy Uncle Reff who was clearly of an even more upper class type, often wearing a top hat and formal clothes. He is depicted in many guises and often with a number of friendly types, including his nephew Knut Browne.
Adapting to the spirit of wartime South East England with the 1940 Battle of Britain taking place overhead, the advertising changed to more morale-boosting anti-German depictions. It is interesting to note that the Shepherd Neame Brewery still used the phrase ‘Bottle of Britain’ in their later long-running Spitfire beer campaign….
Another type of advertising was to promote what we would now call the brand image was through various breweriana.