106 SELLING CULTURE

early: "You can buy space now for one dollar dollars. The Saturday Evening Post . be that later Will cost exceeding that of any weekly in the u's. tod S pushed into a cir yolau ~o

B nlte tates "69Th , cu tl . ut, as I noted earlier on, the most tetlin . . at s rnass cui on Interest was the agencies' relentle g_expresslon of this c lUre. f: ss promotion of d ornrn0 acturers. Many needed persuasion E a vertising to n

h H . ven at Quake 0 rnanu-w ere enry P. Crowell was one of th fi r ats, for instan

f th . e 1rst and mo t ce ponents o e national campaign h" s enthusiastic '

. d • IS partner Ferd· d pro-remame fixated on production and th h C tnan Schurnach budgets (for example, $500,ooO in 189~~~ f,t ~o~ell's huge advertisi~~ because of their different outlooks the c oo IS extravagance. Partly nal disputes culminating in the • total ompaf was troubled by inter­Schumacher was forced out in 1899 7o T< we;; o. a proxy fight before he, the agencies drummed out an i~sist~nst eptlcs less intractable than advertise? "ANYTHING AND EVERYfHIN~e~~: What should one PlACED ON SALE IN THE COUNTLESS STORES S~S GENERALLY THE COUN!RY · · · · ..,. One could think of publishers, ;:;;!~~dOVER and progressive manufacturers as a vanguard often collab . • men, times c · · • oraung, some­he I ompetmg, to mven~ the con_sciousness industry. Manufacturers

pe~ draw the boundanes of th1s new territory and without their needs It never c~mld have been discovered; but ad men colonized it, and took over a choiCe plot for their own domain.

!/ The New Sodal Relation" Of Tru" and Con<ealm<nt

'The purp~se of advertising is to sell goods to people Jiving at a dis· tanc~. Putting the matter thus, as J. Walter Thompson did in reflecting on h1s work late in his career, raises issues of trust, as Thompson well understood. Advertisers must give the buyer a thousand miles away, "who h as no redress, a square deal." Over distance, social relations attenuate. One cannot shake hands on a deal, look the other in the eye, and say, "My wo~d is my_ bond." The seller is a stranger; buyers are masses; anonym1ty preva1ls. The city figures this kind of distance. Artemas Ward, on~ of the famous writers of copy, characterized the new situation thus: "With the growth of the cities new demands have arisen- new avenues of consumption have been opened." What the farmer produces, the towns­man buys. "Artificial aids must support his artificial life. He must go to oth~rs ~or most of his supplies. He is urged forwar~ by the high ~re~~~e of City hfe to such an extent that he welcomes the s1gnposts ofad\·erus• g which direct him to the satisfYing of his needs. "72 Signposts key into a new map of society, point down "new avenues of consumption."

1 ·

N I d. -~:~1 J:nks tIS . ot ~n y •stance and cities, but t:!!7Porations ob~c;y_r.~ .§Qf.@.!.JMt d ·men mterest.mg how rarely that thought~the analyses of a like Thompson and Ward; perhaps it was too obvious to be remarked on.

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ADVERTISING: NEW PRACTICES, NEW RELATIONS 107

oration has a name and an address; it has the legal status of a per­A c~if>t acts as a person in the market; through advertising it speaks as a son, 1 .. th h . But it is not a person, nor IS It e many persons w o work for It, Person. h . C . .

· it even the persons w o own It. orporations are pecuharly nor IS "th h" h h I . b ct social entities, WI w IC , nonet e ess, consumers enter mto a s~le unequal relations every day of their lives. That fact, too, raised ~u of' trust a hundred years ago. In chapter 5, I touched on ways in iSSUeS "th th . fix d . b k

h. h the new retailers dealt WI ose Issues- e pnces, money- ac wiC · lb d d · I "d · return policies, and so on. Natlona ran a vert:Isers a so tne to g1ve b ers a "square deal," or at least the appearance of one. u~or advertising agents, the challenge of building trust was compli­

cated. Distance, cities, and corporations were their metier. In addition, they had to overcome the prehistory of t~eir own trade. It is probably no exaggeration to say that most ads for nationally sold, branded products before 1875 or so were dishonest, implicitly or openly making false claims. (The damage to public credibility was perhaps the more severe because at this time religious periodicals carried more national advertis­ing than any other medium.} In particular, ads promised instant cures for every illness, not only through medicines but by the use of many elab­orate devices. A steam bath cabinet "forces all impurities from the system" and guarantees successful treatment of rheumatism, neuralgia, grippe, gout, female complaints, insomnia, all blood, skin, nerve, and kidney diseases, obesity, the common cold, pimples, blemishes, asthma, and catarrh. (Why no~ tuberculosis and cancer too, one wonders, since those diseases were a pushover at the time?) And such ads appeared, not only in the 1870s, but in the late 1890s, even at that date casting doubt on the integrity of the cereal or garter modestly advertised in the adjacent column. In addition to cures, there was much early promotion of lotter­ies, land speculation, dubious securities, get-rich-quick schemes, spiritual panaceas, and the like. Wishful thinking was the coin of the realm.

Ad men in the 1890s and after understood that distrust of the manu­facturer tainted their own legitimacy even when they were innocent, ~ecause "Advertising implies a contract between the maker and the pub­lic · · .. "'~I have already mentioned two of their strategies, and very decent o~es, for restoring confidence. One was to turn away ads Mrelating to vile diseases [and] disreputable business" (Ayer), and court only "legitimate advertisers of the better class" (Thompson). There was some backsliding, but over the long haul they dissociated themselves from crooks, even when it cost them substantial sums to do so. Another was to preach hon­esty to one another. As Pope notes in an excellent chapter on "The Ethics of Persuasion," "Homilies on the efficacy of truth may be located in almost all writings on advertising," and he quotes a number of them from Printers' Ink during the 1890s, to the effect that lying is not only bad in itself but bad for business, too.,. Truth in advertising was and is a troubled ideal, but a necessary one for the enlistment of consumers' faith.

108 SELLING C U LTURE

T ther strategies recast social relations less forthright] th wo o . T d k y, ough l r "thout cynical mtent. ra emar s proved useful for

be Jearanve ~ee of unchanging quality and a bar to imitation· theymore than a gu . II · could"" .fy the company. Some dtd so natura y enough via the £" r--r-som L D 1 ( h 1ounde ' . ge The dour faces of W. . oug as s oes), the Smith b r s tma . .. G"ll ( ·-£" rather ( ough drops) , and King C. 1 ette :>dlety razors) soon carne t s c II d £" "II" o repre-

sent corporations as we as pro ucts 10r mt tons of peopl M l e. ore

confusing and much more common, ater, was the use of a fi . . . d th . I ICttonal

Character Baker's Cocoa msutute e practice ong before anyo 1 . . . ~e~ the painting it adapted m the 1780s, "La Belle Chocolataire," has f, '

. d th "th .d. or two hundred years assoctate e company WI t1 mess and comfort C h f Ras . d th . · ream

of Wheat's smili~g negro c e tus tie e mexpensive product to a style of life that mel uded serva~ ts; the C~m pbe II' s Soup twins allied the company with health, mothenng, and mnocence. An inevitable next step occurred in the 1890s when the Quaker Oats figure began to vary in representation and setting from ad to ad, appearing in well regulated hon~es and speaking. to "us" of ancien~ wisdom and modern eating habtts. The company mvented Auntjemtma about the same time, then gave her embodiment in the person of Nancy Green, who debuted at the Chicago World's Fair, and for many years traveled around teaching housewives how to use the product. Betty Crocker, Captain Crunch, and Mr Goodwrench have added little other than sophistication to this root idea of equating impersonal corporation with old friend.

Undoubtedly the main movement toward this end, however, was the evolution of copy styles. Ad men and (a bit later) professors theorized endlessly about rhetoric, argumentation, and voice. How could you most effectively address the public? Methods like "reason why" and "talking style" graduall)' gained favor. Meanwhile the practice of leading copy­-w-riters like John E. Powers led theory in this same direction, replacing the bombast or frivolousness of much early copy with a blunt, hone~t ~tyle that projected reliability and neighborliness. I will be examining tt m ch~pter 8. Here, the point is just that agents and writers gave the cor­poration a plain-folks voice, projecting an imaginary discourse among equals that obscured the nature of the company, the source of the speech acts, and the one-sidedness of the "conversation." Yet they achieved these mystifications through an earnest attempt to deal squarelywi~ the consumer, not deceive her. They were reaching toward a de~ocrauc style, in a matrix of inherently unequal relations. 7~ ~us contradiction derived easily enough from the fact that agents put

thetr talents and · . . . b · pro•ect . energtes at the serVIce of b1g capt tal, ut Ill a :J

;htch \unlike the domination of factory and workforce) did not allow •

1g capttal to coerce and intimidate. The contradiction took root deep

m the thoughts f d · . 1 do some­th" . 0 a verusmg men. How do you get peop e to 1 "mghthey did not intend to do, vet without exercising power over theodm. mu c ange th . . . ' f pr -

etr mtenuon. If the desired act is the purchase 0 a

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ADVERTISING: NEW PRACTICES, NEW RELATIONS 109

ou change their felt needs. Advertising agents began to think in this uct. Y 1 Presbrey says that by 1905, agents and manufacturers alike real­~y e~ ~ progress Jay not only in selling things "already established in aed t a mind as wants"; it entailed "creating wide desire for articles of th~ .mass Ieasure which among the majority of people would not be uuhtyd

0~ ~needs until advertising pictured their desirability" (p. 526). reg~r ~ urely right. Simply note thes~ical, u~ashed accounts of

0 e IS s ~ -- - ·---·

~e: l • Advertising is a "power:ul f~rce whe:eby the advertiser creates a

demand for a given arucle m the mmds of a great many people . or arouses the demand that is a lready there in latent form." /

(Calkins and Holden, P· 4) . I "Advertising aims to teach people that they have wants, whtch /

they did not realize before, and where such wants can be best /

supplied. If the merchant were to wait nowadays for people to I •

find out for themselves that they needed his .wares he .. would have plenty of leisure and plenty of nothmg else. (The ~ Thompson Red Book on Advertising, 1901, p. 12) \ The advertiser "takes the vague discontent or need of the public, \ _.../) •

•

•

•

•

changes it into want, and the want into effective desire" (Emerson P. Harris, 1893; quoted by Presbrey, p. 347). "[My aim in advertising] was to do educational and constructive work so as to awaken an interest in and create a demand for cereals where none existed." (Henry P. Crowell, on his success

with Quaker Oats; quoted in Marquette, p. 67) "The modern advertisement is not intended for the man who wants the thing already. It is for the one who don't [sic] in order to make him." (Edwin G. Dexter, Professor of Education at the

University of Illinois, in Printers ' Ink, 1904; quoted by Pope, P· 68)

Advertising is "literature which compels Action · · · [~nd] changes the mind of millions at v.ill" (Lord & Thomas, ChKago

ad agency, 1911; quoted by Pope, p. 13) "Advertising modifies the course of a people's daily wants" (NA .

Lindsey, Printers' Ink, 25 November 1891, p. 623).

Some of these writers qualified their claims in various ways, but eviden~y they all thought they could reach into the "mass mind," and alter Its desires. -

d d d"d I have -c-Oliid they? In certain circumstances they coul an 1 •. .

argued. But that is not the main issue, here; nor am I constdenng

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110 SELI.INC CULTURE

whether the wants they created were sociaU ben . or delcteriou!J.cigarenes?) by some transi . ~fic•al (breakf~ [slhat a men had entered into a new soc·

11

1stol n~al standard . .,..,_ -Cetr.al?)

. ·- . ___ . • •a re auon ·th •ne po· 10 wh•c , wufi ev~r-gro\\1ng resources the be ~ :_the-pUblic n~nt ation of wants. ihe results of lhese-eff~rts f ::;-th~u:.efiQ~~

. eyes of the public many times a day, so thaf::oued lns•stentiybefo~e-

1 had. entered the new relation: .. Once we s.ki) d g[htful people k~ththe

1 compelled us to read, while n ow we reaJ ~ fi ads] unless some..,.,~ I '"16Th. h .. o md out h .. ..,.,

want. IS was a c ange in what it meant. to be w. at we reaU As that last quotation implies if some c- da person In SOcieh, Y . , •oun adve t' . .,.

nUisance, many people welcomed the . ,~_ _ r •smg a vulg h · gUJUd.llce of ads, n · ar t e e\'er more engaging spectacle. E\'en com laisant ot to mention have taken offence, however, had they knoJ:. h addressees would tltem and this relationship to prospecti 1. ow ad men described Th ' ve c Ients. As usual J \\ ompson s language was especially frank d . 'd • · 'alter "lead the willing customer and drag the un~~r Vl~ · He offered to This adversarial impulse often flowed into mili~~g m~~a~d purchas~. the general public, aim at the Bull's Eye .. h Yd . l ors. '!o hu ·ammunition .. and "scores ... His methods w~re ~n~q::~ed ~pe:kl:l of succe~ul atta:ks on the public," leading to .. quick surrender?:n;"co~ plete Vlctory. To be sure, he alternated such bellicosity with temperate maxims ( .. Always appeal to the common sense of the p:o~~ by an ~1ment to their judgment"), but mainly he offered to engige the pubhc as ~u.u:ry, opponent, objecL n I readily acknowledge the bluff g~ hum~r 111 h1s tone. Still, the attitude that the metaphors exagger· ate 1s genume.

In a slightly different vein, Thompson likened advertisements to a salesm~n, "who accosts the lawyer in his office, the student in his study, ~.; n:~re~ man of wealth at the family fireside .. .. "78 To accost people . ecU\ely and change the structure of their desires, one must have an •~ea h~w they are constituted. Ad agents and theorists have carried on a ~~on about that for a hundred years. It has been inconclusive. Merle ~urtl, 111 an oft-cited article, reported on "The Changing Concept of Human Nature' in the Literature of American Advertising. "'19 Analyzing

the language of Printers' lnlt writers, he concluded that the majority of them took people to be rational and cost-efficient from 1890 to 1910, and a minority saw people as irrational and subje~t to the creation of ne_eds; the ~lance tilted the other way during the next two decades, and shifted agam between 1930 and 1950. 'Without question, e,·en while some turn-of-the-centu · · ofthe . ry part1c1pants were crediting the common sense !udlt~~c~, others spoke witl10ut embarrassment about the "credulity" or gu hb11ity" of th h'ld n" or e masses, conceptualized them as "grown-up c ' re re~ograde savages, and gave advice like "AIM LOW" and "you must write to trnpress fools " p ( ' · · of the custom · · ope pp. 24&-7) suggests that tl1ese op11110ns th .

er were prevalent. He is unquestionably right in attributing err

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ADVERTISING: NEW PRACTICES, NEW RELATIONS 111

. e to the new marketing situation, which "damaged, perhaps mcreas . . fb d repair, the approXImate panty o uyers and sellers in American ~y?n(p. 248). Face-to-face relations in more or less stable communities lue f · I' b h 'd d' " " the premise o rauona tty on ot s1 es; •stant masses are more foster d. . 1 'k 1 to seem childish an 1rrauona . hey . I . . d F m the perspecuve am urg111g, tt oes not matter a lot whether

:oad men read human nature as emotional or rational, or indeed, ;:;ther Schudson is right in arguin~ that ~dvertising pe~ple's theories

b t human nature were and are 111conststent, pretenuous, and only ~:r~inally related to the ac~al tec~niqu~s used in _ads (pp. _SS-60). The important thing for soc1al relauons IS that an mtense dtscourse

w in which those with access to the media theorized and constructed ~~s~ on the receiving end, behind professional doors and without in any way consulting the latter. This was a top-down debate, like so many others joined at the time - about education, about literacy, about the dangerous classes, about urban misery, about crime, and so on and on. To these managers and professionals, the people were a problem to be analyzed and solved by specialists.80

To me, their analysis is most interesting when it drops from the heady sublime of "human nature" into the canny pragmatics of characterizing real social groups. What counted in daily business was to reach particu­lar kinds of consumers, not abstract souls. For one obvious thing, ad men had to understand Americans, and they talked a good deal among them­selves about our national characteristics, often in ways not especially flattering - Americans are speed-driven and spendthrift, have short attention spans, and so on. More specifically, ad men segmented the audience in various ways. "The census is the foundation stone of real advertising study," wrote Artemas Ward, noting that 25 percent of the people already lived in cities, with that proportion rising rapidly.81 He pleaded for understanding of the urban ethos, but agents tried hard to enter the minds of farmers, too. Age, occupation, geographical region, ethnicity, all provided other ways of defining audiences. To illustrate the point, however, I will touch briefly on just the two most important dimensions of analysis: gender and class. (Race didn't count, since too few black people had the means to figure as a consumer group.)

Many have noted the feminization of the marketplace during the nineteenth century. Naturally, advertising people observed this change, and began to think about women as economic agents. Pope holds that "If humanity in general was rather weak and fallible, women in particu­lar we~e, in the stereotypes of advertising men, irrational an_d sub~ect to others control" (p. 247). That such views received full aruculauon by th~ 1920s is certain.S'l Yet Pope offers only one citation from the 1890s to ~ls effect, and my less extensive research hasn't turned up many. Pope mfers from a statement by well-known ad man Nathaniel Fowler- "Th; woman who will not read advertisements is not a woman"- the trades

/12 SELLIN<:: CULT U RE

belief th~t "lll-inf~rmed, emotional, and sug estibl interest m ad\·erusements'" (p. 248). This\\~ e, Women lOok admirer of adn:rti in g. he admired women &" ntlot. Fowler's ouu sPecial

. . •Or letr r Ook. L He saw women as dtrecung purchase "of eve . esponsiven '"I

• r}'thmg fi ess to · gle.s, a nd though! them capable in this role· "TL rom shaes to .•t . I li 1 • I ne Woma shtn aroc es. rom spoo cotton to uls ter overcoats f, n can buy~ ·

a\'erage man can buy \\ith more mo ney. "8J W • or l~ss money tha lter rationality in the marketplace. omen dtsplayed, preci~Jthe

J. Walter. Tho mpson a lso con id , m . h y, a .==:-:-;-=~";""'oL..~:~USJ!!...!t~e • f: ·r !18<'1115, to use a metaphor fro m a lat~'r rim .. wr.. am, urchas·

d ~· 1 ne women spe d 1n an to reach the women , o ne musr enter lhe [; .1 .. ~ lhe rnon set that as a goal in 1868, through ads in n ~ Y·, He clcttrned to ha?·

r t!><e, .. on s mag · e Rapnond. who worked for Thompson said n , aztne. Charles .. dd ' lOmpson s str. t a ress your message to the intelligence the curi . til a egy Was to

the cupidity of the wo?1~n, and the thing is do~s~~84 Ie love,, and.yes, TI10mpson thought CUI)tdttv aJJ bad Agr:un the m· . h' ~on t beheve . r. ·; · • • am t mg 1s lh

users saw women as a pnmary audience early on and be at adver-address til em through ads. A sunrey of all the iar e di~a~ consc~ously to issues each of Mun.S'J's a nd McCiuTP's (two "geneJ.. P ~ads tn three 189- d 1907 be th ' · magazmes) between

:l an ars ts o ut: etghty~ne ads indicate either th h · ture or throu.gh tc.xt til at they speak to women in particular: o I rolhu.g ptitc· · I Ad • n y trty-tve

smg e o ut men. men ~ought they could reach an important audience of women, and commumcate the rig ht messages to them. . They tho ught rathe r more specifically about the public as divided tnto c~asse~ I want to insist on this because others have not. Pope, the ~st htstonan of early n ationa l a dvertising , says that "campaigns rarely dtrected overt appeals to particular social classes or ethno-cultural groups, but admen were aware of social distinctions" (p. 13). I'm not sure wh~t P~pe means by "overt appeals"; certainly many ads traded on class asptrauons and feelings, as I will show in chapter 8. And ad men were no t just "aware of social dis tinctions": they made an understanding of thos_e distinctions a nd of the ir econ omic importance a key part of the experuse they offere d to manufacturers.

J. Walter Tho mpson, especially, insisted o n the centrality of cl~ss, and that was natural since he trafficked in m agazines, and magazmes far more than n ewspap e rs or billboa rds aimed at p articular social groups. You must "know how people live .... You must understand exactly ~ow a man can support a family on ten dollars a week - and you must 50

know how a tho usand-do llar-a-month family spends its incom~.~ Su~h claims made elementary business sen se for an agency specia!JZJng

1~ consumer groups. Thompson had to know which magazines reache

p~ople of each sort, in order to promise: "We can insure that au~o::; ~ties ~h~IJ not be exte n sive ly a d vertised to the working clas~ these ~rgamjack-knives to the well-to-do" (this was in 1901). He u~ }'Ie

kmds of k 1 d . . f agaztnes. now e ge early on to promote hts hsts o m

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ADVE RTI S ING: NEW PRACTICES, N EW RELATIONS 113

divided farmers into "two classe.s - o~e a shiftless ne'er-do-well; the other the bright, sharp, shrewd, and mtelhgent man, who is wide awake to his own interests" (1888?). The latter, Thompson went on, bought the same

nufactured goods as city people, and could be reached through lhe m~icultural magazines to which he subscribed. For an affluent audi­:~ce, Thompson recommended trade journals: "the combined weallh of the individual readers of Trade Journals exceeds that of [sic] the entire wealth of the balance of [the counU:y's] population" (1889) . He under-tood well the do llar value to advertisers of a class analysis: a circulation

s d . of a hundred tho usan m a

sensational, trashy weekly story paper is not worth, to a legitimate adver­tiser, one-tenth as much as an equal circulation in a journal of a high character, that has entrance into the better class of homes .... The great bulk of business, aside from the necessaries of life, comes from people of moderate or independent means associated with at least fair refinement and culture .... Hence,judicious advertisers seek to reach people having both TASTE for their goods and the MEANS to gratify it. (1887)

Could there be a clearer articulation of class consciousness right down to typographical emphasis, and precisely at the point where agents invited manufacturers to conceive and plan informed campaigns? 85

Others in the trade wrote similarly. Calkins and Holden made a far more elaborate analysis of class and buying habits ilian Thompson, argu­ing, among other things, that it was pointless to aim ads at the Morgans, Astors, and Goulds, because their servants decided which soap and cereal to buy (pp. 286-305 make fascinating reading). These authors, too, connected the analysis to specific magazine audiences. They set off the Ladies' Home j ournal against Comfort, for instance, as representing "two extreme types [of magazine] and their respective constituencies; the one, the highest type of an advertising medium, . , . reaching well­educated, well-to-do, intelligent American women; the other, poorly printed, ... and reaching an uneducated and credulous class." The lat­ter, nonetheless, was worth reaching: "Its readers buy only the most ~nexpensive things, but large numbers of them do buy, so that the space ~s worth what it costs the advertisers" (p. 73). Class was a matter of prof-Itable knowledge, not high theory. . .

For magazine publishers, too: they collaborated with agents m thts anatomy of the public along class lines. That Calkins ~nd Holde~ should contrast the two magazines thus, in 1905, was no acodent: Curus fought a relentless battle from the 1880s on, both to secure for the Journal a toney readership and (doubtless with a good deal of hyper­hole) to convince advertisers that he had it. He wrote to doubters that most Journal readers were suburbanites, churchgoers, professionals~ among them were to be found no poor people nor - a fine gesture 0

., ,,

--... Al'l(; c editorial omn is . tJ L T tJ R E r h Ctence · Is ers, some with .-.~ smgle epile . r~aderships in claS:~etnttJal advantag::: or tubercuJ htghest cultivation"· t{ms. The Atlantic c~~ Curtis, als~r.B£ Other ~.nd th.e means to g~tifye :~urn, readers o:t .. rned to reacbr~ftled ~u~ tntelhgent, cultivated etr many wants"· culture, ta.st Person/'r

took research to ba k , and Well-to-do fa~ ·~~e Illustrated~ enterpli of

~omes of a ll subscri~r~fn s:~h claims. Ladi:s~;~"s~ Later, s~~ M'»~th~· se.rs. McClure's listed al . ew towns, and sho or: Photo e Under:

the tr occupations to h I Its subscribers in CJWed the Pho~raPhed the m f ' s ow "ho eve) os toad any o the leisure c1 w many of th and and £ ver. ~agazine. ss Business~ss and how tnany of th~ prof~ssional c~Und out Identified their aud' en are marxists whe . Working class" ass, how b te nce as "th n It pa read th

ut not an did. Frank Le:slt' ' n e professional class , ~s. Most PUblish e mas " ~.~, e s rf>/M•lar ~~~ ' lOr obvj Cf3 ses ; n·ornen s Ar ~r... monthly said . ous reaso

po~~ely in saying it e~~?r~a;h:a~: been putting ~~:e:~~:d the "gr~; ere was of course some confi . mes of the people. "89 case lllore

talk. Thompson h eld in 1909 bot~ston, along with much Puffe . to the masses and th . " that the ten cent m . ry, Ill such Advert. . A at It was high class" (Bl agazme appealed

t:stng ge, 7 December 1964 p 20) B ue Book, as reprinted . not over-shown) that an en .' . . . utI hope to have sh J? right ~long with modern adve::fs7~Jc dtscours_e of social class dev~;: (: des wah titles like 'The Cia fgR Already m 1891, Printers'Inkranf:u. stated in an editorial that age~~ :ou:~ers Addressed" (15 April), and • I

or locality" (25 November) Th. h Jdcover alm~st any particular class · · · Is s ou not surpnse

tlon IS class specific, and advertisin had b anyone; consump-read what who b h g to e so, too. It had to know who included th . oug t w~at, and how class figured in desire. (Scott

I. . e destre to be ltke more privileged people in his 19031ist of

ru mg Interests and mo•~v 1 · h h on A u es, a ong Wit ealth, possessiveness, and so .) d men both took class as a given, and helped to construct it.90 A P~~ase crops up again and again in writing about this subject: "the

adverusmg co~Hroversy." The book that takes that phrase for its title in fact engages m a number of disputes: How does advertising affect ?eman~? total consumption? brand loyalty? prices? profits? product Innovation? economic con centration? 9 1 More controversies than these surroun? the practices of modern advertising. But three relat~d ones have clauned most attention: Is advertising wasteful or producu.v~ as a whole, in economic terms? Is it an effective strategy for indmdual companies, and if so, in what circumstances? And does it sell us things;~ would not o therwise have bought, and perhaps do not need? Though .1~ analysts like Simon &hudson and Albion and Farris tend toward m

1av

conclusions: advertising doesn :t affect business cycles much. mar ~r ;~ not increase total consumption affects market shares but does~1L1es an

· . ' · th alyst ill"" · maucally alter habits of consumption. Someumes e an f roduct. exception for advertising of new inventions or new genres 0 P

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ADVERTISING: NEW PRACTICES, NEW RELATIONS 115

Beyond noting that the exception covers many campaigns of the 1890s and 1900s, and repeating my earlier point that such campaigns definitely worked, I will not comment on these questions. They bear on advertising as an old institution, not a burgeoning new one. There is another con­troversy stirred by the assertion of many left wing cultural critics that advertising sells the existing social order as it sells products, and so works as a politically conservative force. Such thoughts as I have on the issue, I will save until I have examined the actual messages of 1890s ads. For now, I want to sum up the argument of this chapter by insisting that, apart from the ideological force of ads themselves, and in a way not captured by the debate over advertising's effects, the entrenchment of the new selling practices decisively changed the network of social relationships, changed the outlook for democracy, changed what it meant to be a person.

To start with what everyone then and now has observed, power rela­tions shifted in the marketplace. In 1887, Thompson could already urge, to manufacturers, national advertising for any commodity "that you wish to compel retail dealers to keep in stock by inciting a demand therefor" (Illustrated Catalogue, p. 13). This idea won out. Recall how Gustav A Berghoff, president of the Rub-No-More Co., described the change from a time (the 1880s) when the sales effort proceeded from manufacn1rer to jobber to retailer to consumer. Twenty-five years later,

The manufacturer goes first to the consumer. By advertising he burns it into the consumer's mind that he [sic] wan£S a certain brand. Through premiums, gifts or bribes if you please, he induces her to try his brand. At tremendous expense the manufacturer educates her to ask for Fels Naphtha, Ivory, Rub-No-More, Arrow collars, etc., as the case may be. The demand created, the retailer goes to the jobber asking him to furnish the articles called for. Then the jobber goes to the manufacturer.

Our company sells through the jobber, and we do the rest. We create the desire for our product through advertising.~

With his usual acuity, Thompson made clear the importance of this change for the manufacturer. The Industrial Revolution, he remarked, ha~ "solved the vast economic problem of production," but left distri­bution as a continuing challenge. The manufacturer "had to depend on ~e country storekeeper and the equally uninte rested proprietor of the City shop. His name did not reach the consumer: he was al\\rays in danger o: losing his entire trade in a single year; he Jived in the shadow of the nightmare of cut-throat competition" (Advertising as a Selli11g Forre. 1909) · ~e needed a way to revolutionize selling, and ease this crisis of com pet· Il.iv~ capitalism; Thompson understandably credits advertising ~ith haVIng supplied the remedy. Through it, indeed, manufacturers gamed ~ower over small shopkeepers, intervening from afar in face-to-face rela­tJons between the latter and the customer. They also gained power O\·er

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jobbers and wholesalers. Ad me change singlehanded, but the n ~~d agencies di new position of some stren thyi fac•htated it, and ~not accorn .

I have argued that the· g n the emerging .ernSelves Phsh thi. . Ir new rei t' SOc•al Occu . ..

mystenous. They gave th a •on to the p b . order. P•ed a . e corporatio . u he '"'"'· .

personalized voice They al n a disembod' ''Q.) •n so d

. · so repres . Ied tne w an Images that obscured its en ted It in pubr and confu. a)'s

established an inhere ntly m s~a;re a~d economic :~tpa~es Withs~~gly they seemed to bring comn?' d' . n~ discourse about e. Sullilar!ll thgns

k d. . . o Itles mto 1 produ '' ey

mar s, Istlnctlve packages a d c ear focus ",;th cts. Even . , n so on th ' .. , narn as non-matenal aura the "add d 1 • ey created es, trad . . ' e va ue" n arou d ~ Similar price and material featu ecessary to differenti n thelll a Raymond Williams says the "cru .r~s, ~nd thus build bran:t~ gOods of addition of "magic, "9~· even whCia ~u tura) quality" of adver,.; ~yal~. As P h

. . en It also pre uSJngiSth' er aps 1t IS worth troubling th d sents true int . lS

that at this level of analysis it d:esrea er one last time with a o:ern~tJon. . not matter m h h rnmder

men were or are m finding the right rna ·c to uc ow successful ad chas~s ~r transform their social outloofs. Ev aff~ct consu~.ers' pur. unscientific or random as Simon Sch d en If adverusmg is " . . I . , u son, and Ma h d ... Imp y, It makes a difference that very Jar e rc an sometimes · . g sums are sp t · h . tton of filhng our minds with magic and . h h en Wit the m/tn.

d. ' Wit t e unden· bl

crow mg the channels of public discourse and re ~~ e ~esult of messages. presentatmn With such

In carryi_ng out this ~~oject, naturally, advertising men undertook to conceptualize the cogmtlve and emotional make-up th lifi · · th · 1 · . , e e snuauons,

e soc1a aspirations, the capabilities, and the inadequacies of citizens, ~e better .to_ create needs among them. They carried on an increas­mgly sophisticated conversation about these matters, in professional and busmess venues to which citizens had no access not even at this ~ime, through legislative constraints on advertising cl;ims. The flourish· mg of that private discourse in the twentieth century, backed by billions of dollars, has itself encroached on democracy. It makes "us" unwitting objects of "their" talk and actions. Of course it is also true, as all apolo­gists for advertising and some nonpartisan commentators say, that advertising "made businesspeople interested in what the c~nsu.mer had to say" (Leiss, Kline, andjhally, p. 103). Putting it like that IS f;urer than

ak. f · h · ·cy of means or

spe mg o the sovereign consumer; stlll, t ere IS no pan h 5

intent between what we "say" to business people through our ~urc :Ut or as participants in market research, and what they say and thfmk acern

. . as o con ' us. Agency practices have he lped remove Important are . such as what our society will produce, from public discus~wn. have

I I. . thiS chapter n these ways, the developments I narrated ear Ier 10 another.

h I I . ns to one c anged the structure of our society, our rea re auo th terms of Those relations constitute us as agents define our scope. set eu·tote our . • · )fcons our daily conduct. Of course advertising does not by Itse

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ADVERTISING: NEW PRACTICES, NEW RELATIONS 117

rnanity. As both proponents and critics agree, "Advertising is part and h~rcel of a highly industrialized, m~rket-oriented society. "94 J. Walter ~hompson, who understood ~any thmgs early and well that others have labored to redisc~ver, _noted m 1909 that adver.tising was "part of the

. ting commercial umverse. It could not be abohshed or reduced to any eXIS . h h . th . ticeable degree Wit out c angmg e enure economic aspect of life" ~~he]. W~lter Thompson Book) .. The thought o.ffers lit~e consolation, though, hke most who share It, I have no w1sh to g1ve up washing

achines and cornflakes. The embedded ness of advertising in "the entire :Conomic aspect of life" has since 1909 made some bad social relations, as well as some good products, seem normal and inevitable.

To conclude on a main theme of this chapter: consolidation of the adv!,r_ti_~jn_g__!>~siness..!~~n_gi'.!~!!.~.~.::~n.d. hel_ped mnke- the corporate ':_?1-ifii d~ss, stabiltzmg lt.sJnas.tet:.y of producuon, extending its reach into the consumer market, pacifying the environment within which it accu­rilufateciC'ipluif. and i_nc~~<1:SJ!1g wJ:tile ob~uring its power to intervene in the daily'Jives 9f cit,izens. Some capitalists conscioilsly undertook parts of this-project, though on behalf of their own interests, not those of their whole class. Others stumbled into the new arrangements, or failed lO

adjust and so lost out. What I have stressed here is the role of ad men in ~_gq_~!§.A.!!d..fm:mulating strategiesJ!!.at~ryed the*pufJ>?se of the big . ..!?£l!.rge~~_!tg~!l.cr.~fagencies, if you will. The latter took

Oi1tlle management of consciousness to' advance their own interests. But the opportunity for doing so in this way was created largely by the inchoate interests and needs of capital. Thus does power often flow through indirect channels, and the mediated processes of hegemony.

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