Cointreau | 1939

Vintage ad for Cointreau, 1939

In 1849, in Angers, France, Adolphe Cointreau and his brother Édouard-Jean founded the Cointreau & Cie distillery, making liqueurs from fruits of the Loire Valley such as cherries.

In 1875, with one of Édouard-Jean’s sons in charge, the company bet on an “exotic” fruit, using sweet and bitter orange peel as the base of a revolutionary new liqueur: Cointreau.

He also revolutionised the company’s marketing at a time when marketing as we know it did not exist: magazine ads, a square bottle that became a symbol of the brand, and even a cinema commercial just three years after the invention of film.

At the end of the 1980s Cointreau merged with Rémy Martin to form Rémy Cointreau, still run by the Cointreau family after almost 170 years.

Present in more than 160 countries, Cointreau is one of the world’s best-selling liqueurs.

This ad ran in Plaisir de France in 1939.

Text in the ad

Cointreau Liqueur
Known the world over

Brand: Cointreau
Year: 1939
Decade: 1930s
Country: France
Medium: Magazine
Themes: Drinks
Original publication: Plaisir de France, 1939

Cointreau | 1939 · Vintage Ad Museum

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