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Do
History Through Advertising
Advertisements are much more than mere mechanisms for selling
products. They also provide a valuable window onto a changing
American culture. They offer insights into, among other things,
the growth of a consumer economy and American society’s
shifting conceptions of masculinity and femininity and its changing
attitudes toward sex and sexuality.
Advertising played a crucial role in the transformation
of the American economy from one in which most goods were produced
and sold locally to one dominated by brand names and products
distributed nationally.
Before the 1880s, most advertisements consisted
entirely of print. The print itself was primarily informational:
It described the product and where it could be obtained. The few
images that ads contained were highly stylized and rarely illustrated
the specific product for sale. Very few ads featured slogans or
brand names.
Beginning in the 1890s, however, advertisements
underwent a profound transformation. They began to resemble advertising
today, emphasizing visual images, slogans, catch-phrases, and
appeals to individual’s health and psychological well-being.
The J. Walter Thompson advertising agency promoted Scott tissue
by warning consumers of ''the troubles caused by harsh toilet
tissue.'' Lucky Strike promoted cigarettes to women first by adopting
the slogan “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet”
and later by describing cigarettes as “torches of freedom,”
as symbols of modern values.
Advertisements helped to transform American values.
They made Americans aware of such “problems” as halitosis
and body odor. More seriously, they helped promote a shift from
an emphasis on savings toward consumption. They also helped to
shift a culture oriented toward words toward visual images.
A
collection of 7,000 advertisements from the period 1911 to 1955
is available online at:
Ad*Access
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/adaccess/
1. Use these and other ads to trace changes
in the strategies that advertisers adopted at various times.
1890
- 1920
Advertisement
encouraged consumers to buy brand name products. An ad for Kellogg’s,
the cereal maker, portrays an assertive woman telling her grocer:
"Excuse me. I know what I want, and I want what I asked
for, Toasted Corn Flakes. Good day."
The product itself remained at the center of advertisements.
1920 - 1929
The
1920s was the decade during which the phrase “Madison
Avenue” was first used to describe the advertising industry
and in which many products are sold because they hold out the
promise of a more modern and freer life, filled with exciting
opportunities to consumer new products.
Some
ads stressed that ordinary Americans could have the same products
as the rich and the socially prominent. Others described natural
products are superior to artificial products. Many ads for cars
and refrigerators treated these products as objects worthy of
worship by surrounding them with halos. Invented characters
like General Mills' Betty Crocker and Philip Morris's little
bellhop, Johnny helped consumers establish a personal connection
with a particular product.
1930 – 1941
The
Great Depression ushered in a heightened concern with thrift;
but many ads also featured celebrities who promised that ordinary
Americans could also be glamorous.
Scare
campaigns were popular during the Great Depression. Thrift is
increasingly treated as a virtue. Prices are increasing mentioned
in ads. Men in overalls begin to appear in advertisements. Some
products (such as soap) are sold as ways of ensuring employment.
1941
– 1945
During the war years, private businesses produced posters—like
the famous portrait of Rosie the Riveter—as a way to remind
consumers about their companies while demonstrating their support
for the war effort. Image campaigns sought to associate companies
with wartime concerns. Stetson hats promoted its product with
the slogan “Keep it under your Stetson,” reminding
the public about the importance of maintaining wartime secrecy.
It was in 1942 that the Advertising Council, the industry's
chief trade association, was founded; it was originally called
the War Advertising Council. It was established as an adjunct
of the Federal Office of War Information and sponsored public
service ads, such as Smokey the Bear campaign that reminded
the public that "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires."
Postwar Era
Much
advertising emphasized the family and the theme of family togetherness,
including such products as the family cars and the suburban
home.
The art in many ads became much more self-consciously artistic.
2. Evaluate how ads work.
Many cultural critics, including the economist
John Kenneth Galbraith and the writer Vance Packard, viewed adverts
as hidden persuaders, which create needs in consumers and employ
deceit to promote the growth of a wasteful consumer culture. Others
reject the view of a passive and manipulated public and argue
that people buy products that meet their needs and aspirations
and address their anxieties.
John Kenneth Galbraith:
In the absence of the massive and artful persuasion that accompanies
the management of demand, increasing abundance might well have
reduced the interest of people in acquiring more goods. They
would not have felt the need for multiplying the artifacts—autos,
appliances, detergents, cosmetics—by which they were surrounded.
--The New Industrial State, 219
Vance Packard:
Advertisers treat consumers "as bundles of daydreams, misty
hidden yearnings, guilt complexes, [and] irrational emotional
blockages." But advertising "not only plays a vital
role in promoting our economic growth but is a colorful, diverting
aspect of American life."
--Hidden Persuaders, 4-6
How persuasive do you find these arguments?
Can you think of an alternative interpretation
of the role advertising has played in 20th century American history?
3. Trace changes in the advertising of
specific products, for example, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, or Listerine.
To learn more:
Stephen
Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising
and Its Creators (New York: Random House, 1984).
Jackson
Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising
in America (New York: HarperCollins, 1995).
Roland
Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for
Modernity, 1920-1940 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1985).
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