Fender’s electrifying ‘You won’t part with yours either’ campaign
Reading time: 2 mins
When Robert Perine was asked to create an advertising campaign to help Fender grow from a local company to a music industry leader, he wanted to convey the quality of Fender, and the love affair musicians have with their instrument. What came next was a compelling campaign that pushed this notion to electrifying limits.
Leo Fender: Changing music forever
More than 80 years ago in Fullerton, California, radio repairman and avid inventor Leo Fender began tinkering with his friend’s amps, making adjustments and improving the sound. In 1943, Leo teamed up with fellow local inventor and musician Doc Kaufmann, together forming K&F Manufacturing, where they produced a limited run of amplifiers and lap steel guitars.
When the pair parted ways a few years later, Leo continued working under his own name, developing the original Fender Princeton, Deluxe, and Professional amps in 1946. Both simple and stylish, Fender’s amps were revolutionary in sound and quality, setting the standard for amplifiers into the 1950s and beyond.
In 1951, Leo created the world’s first mass-produced, solid body electric guitar, the Telecaster. Unlike anything that came before it, the Telecaster offered a bright, clean and cutting sound and quickly became a favourite of rock n’ roll, R&B, and country guitarists.
The same year, Leo also invented the first solid body electric base. Named the Precision Base, it was the first to be held sideways like a guitar, creating new possibilities in sound and freeing the bass player from the rigidity of the traditional upright bass. To accompany the Precision base, Leo also created the Baseman – the first amp built specifically to cater to the base’s low and punchy beats.
Following the Telecaster’s success, in 1954 Fender unveiled the Stratocaster, a model that incorporated a host of innovations designed to make playing easier, including its improved contoured body featuring a double cutaway design that made it easier for musicians to access the higher frets and create new sounds.
Robert Perine: ‘You Won’t Part With Yours Either’
Still a relatively small company, Fender needed a powerful marketing campaign to get the brand’s name and industry-leading instruments and equipment seen by a mass audience, including a cross-section of genres and generations of musicians. Having seen an ad for the Rickenbacker guitar by F.C. Hall in Music Trade magazine in 1957, Stan Compton of Fender Sales reached out to the man behind it – Robert Perine, for his creative expertise.
An art graduate born and raised in Los Angeles, Robert Perine had left the smog of the city along with his office mate Ned Jacoby to set up their own advertising and graphic design agency, Perine/Jacoby, in a rented space overlooking Newport Harbour, Orange County.
Perine wanted the Fender ads to express the universal quality, and the love affair relationship a musician develops with their instrument. He came up with the concept of musicians in the most extreme scenarios such as skydiving, scuba diving, and surfing with guitar and/or amp in hand, unwilling to part with their beloved Fender.
The tagline ‘You won’t part with your either’, paired with the entertaining, fresh, and imaginative photography created such a compelling campaign that it ran for 10 years and received numerous awards.
One day in 1965, Perine was searching for a new idea for a poster, one that would appeal to fans of the trending Surf music craze that had gripped the nation. Driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, he pulled his Cadillac onto a beach in Doheny, California, where he approached a surfer named Jon Martin.
Agreeing to star in the photo, Martin took the brand new Fender Jaguar along with his surf board and headed to the waves. With the Jaguar guitar strapped to his back, he paddled out while Perine waited on the shore, posed ready with his camera. Catching the first wave, Martin stood up on his board, swung the guitar round to his front and began to play as he rode the wave all the way back to shore. The photograph was captured in this one take, and the Jaguar, amazingly unscathed, made the journey back to the factory before being shipped out to an unknowing customer.
Other shoots in the campaign feature more casual, less extreme scenes that still intelligently convey the attachment between musician and instrument. Bus Rider features Robert and Ned’s friend George Hall, who poses as a passenger standing on a crowded bus, holding his Telecaster close.
During the decade-long campaign, Fender catapulted from local Californian company, to a leading name in the music industry favoured by professional musicians, the novice player, and teenagers creating the sounds of the next generation. Since then, Fender has forged its place in history – and the biggest names in music haven’t bared to be without theres ever since.
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