Kiss History

COMMS FROM THE VAULTS 28 July 2008

Early Kiss advertising and giveaways

Here’s a few things we dug up from deep in the Kiss vaults, giving a good idea of the strong comms ideas that the station has always prided itself on.

The advertising, produced to mark Kiss’ legalisation on September 1, 1990, was by BBDO’s Tom Carty and Walter Campbell, both hardened clubbers and Kiss listeners. The brief was to translate the energy of years of Kiss flyers, fashion and partying into above-the-line advertising. Part of the campaign involved using dancefloor luminaries of the time, like Wumni Olaiya (below), who also appeared in silhouette on Soul II Soul’s debut album.

BBDO’s Tom Carty said of working on the campaign: "We really wanted the Kiss campaign. It wasn’t just some project, like Pepsi or chewing gum.”

One of BBDO’s most popular posters, ‘Join Them On 100 FM’, featured original Buffalo Boy Barry Kamen among the models. It wasn’t uncommon for clubbers and Kiss fanatics to steal these posters from subways and bus-shelters.

The CD is also from 1990. One of the earliest magazine-mounted CD giveaways, it came on the cover of MixMag and featured exclusive mixes from Kiss DJs Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson, Colin Faver, Danny Rampling, Tee Harris and Judge Jules.