The Boston Sound Ad Campaign

Cashbox January 20, 1968

Lets go back to the very beginning of the Boston Sound. People talk about the ad that was in Billboard, the one that is on top of the main page of this website. There's just a little more to it than that.
The ad that was in Billboard in January of 1968 was also in Cashbox and Record World. There were three weeks of teaser ads before that (in all three magazines).

The images here are from Cashbox. Some people don't know about Cashbox.That was the main competition for Billboard. Cashbox was active from 1942 to 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashbox_(magazine)

The first teaser ads were in the December 30, 1967 issue.

There were 14 that I could find. They were just several inches wide, often tucked in corner of a page. They looked like they borrowed old prints from Currier and Ives and put their one line joke on the top. Boston is rich in revolutionary history, so they linked that to the coming of the Boston Sound.

The first 5 are from December 30th issue which is three issues before the campaign is reveled in the January 20th issue. So, there were three weeks where people were going, "huh?". This is a normal teaser campaign often used in the music magazines of the day, so that's not a big issue.
The next 4 are from January 6th. The last 5 are from the January 13th issue. The last ones mention 'next week' and one gives the date January 15 which must have been the official day the Boston Sound campaign began.
The next week Cashbox had the big ad that is shown at the top of this page.

Even though this ad campaign was only to push three groups (The Beacon Street Union, Orpheus and The Ultimate Spinach) it came to represent all the groups that came out of Boston during these years.

The Boston Sound campaign did it's job. The backlash hit hard but that campaign got people's attention and started the ball rolling and it was rolling pretty good before it got stopped.