A “Great Power” Defended and Denounced: An Examination of Twentieth-Century Advertising and Advertising Criticism in the United States

ABSTRACT

Speaking in 1926, President Calvin Coolidge warned advertisers not to abuse “a great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world.” His message reflected the hopes and concerns of twentieth-century critics who defended advertisements for educating the public about transformative products and services but denounced the industry for exaggeration and deception. This article examines more than a dozen seminal books, published between 1906 and 1999, to identify dominant themes and variations in advertising criticism in the United States. The study also analyzes the archival papers of a leading trade association for advertising agencies as well as more than thirty other primary sources, including speeches, period advertisements, and articles from newspapers, magazines, and trade publications.

KEYWORDS:

• Advertising criticism
• advertising history
• Four A’s

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. “Coolidge Praises Advertising as Aid to Our Prosperity.” New York Times, Oct. 28, 1926, 1. For the popularity of the Four A’s reference at the time of Coolidge’s speech, see Robert J. Oberfohren, “Advertising in Europe: Our Methods Known but Not Followed, Although They Should Be.” New York Times, Feb. 12, 1928, 59.

2. Coolidge’s speech can be read at “Address … before the American Association of Advertising Agencies,” <memory.loc.gov>.

3. Stuart Ewen, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1976), 32.

4. Kathy M. Newman, Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935–1947 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), 30.

5. Alfred Dupont Chandler, Giant Enterprise: Ford, General Motors, and the Automobile Industry (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 26.

6. Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York, NY: Random House, 1973), 146.

7. Daniel M. Ladik and David W. Stewart, “The Contribution Continuum,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 36 no. 2 (2008): 157–65.

8. It should be noted that the persuasive character of advertising predates the founding of the United States, as Great Britain saw deceitful advertisements as early as the seventeenth century. See Williams, 171; Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, ed. E.W. Brayley (London, UK: George Routledge and Sons, 1882), 46; and Samuel Johnson, The Works of Samuel Johnson, ed. Francis Pearson Walesby, vol. 4 (London, UK: Oxford, 1825), 267.

9. C.A. Baumgart, “Meeting a Course in Preparing Ads, Baumgart States.” Des Moines Register, Sept. 19, 1920, 1.

10. “Great Day of Business Advertising Just Begun.” Boston Globe, Sept. 12, 1933, 13.

11. Loy J. Baxter, “100th Anniversary of Advertising,” April 19, 1965, box 3, J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches, American Association of Advertising Agencies Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (hereafter cited as J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches).

12. Ewen, 29.

13. McLuhan’s famous quote appeared in a Sept. 3, 1976, article in Advertising Age.

14. Stanley M. Ulanoff, Advertising in America: An Introduction to Persuasive Communication (New York, NY: Hastings House, 1977), 27.

15. Michael J. Phillips, Ethics and Manipulation in Advertising: Answering a Flawed Indictment (Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1997), vii, 77.

16. Gardiner Harris, “U.S. Backs Antismoking Ad Campaign.” New York Times, March 15, 2012, A21.

17. Phillips, 110.

18. Chris Reidy, “Super Bowl Ads Fumble It.” Boston Globe, Jan. 27, 1997, A14; and Chris Reidy, Sue Parenio, and John Carroll, “Silver Helmet Awards.” Boston Globe, Jan. 27, 1997, A14.

19. Newman, 30.

20. “Radio Advertising Advice.” Los Angeles Times, Feb. 17, 1924, Part II, 9.

21. “Is Advertising Waste? Editor Says It’s Not.” Ithaca (NY) Journal, Nov. 22, 1935, 11.

22. Rev. M. Lockhart, “Gospel Thoughts.” Centreville (AL) Press, Nov. 1, 1951, 7; and Bud Mills, “This Wonderful World of Cars.” Moline (IL) Dispatch, May 8, 1963, 50.

23. Ewen, 62.

24. Ewen, 55.

25. Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture (London, UK: Verso, 1980), 187.

26. Karen McNeill, “The Sexual Sell: Is the End in Sight?” Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 14, 1981, 1B.

27. T.J. Jackson Lears, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880–1930,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, eds. Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1983), 17.

28. Debbie M. Price, “Aware of Issues or Aware of Benetton?” Dayton (OH) Daily News, Feb. 22, 1992, 11A.

29. Boorstin, 147; and Stephen Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (New York, NY: William Morrow and Company, 1984), 39.

30. James D. Norris, Advertising and the Transformation of American Society, 1865–1920 (New York, NY: Greenwood Press, 1990), 44, 45.

31. George Presbury Rowell, Forty Years an Advertising Agent, 1865–1905 (New York, NY: Printers’ Ink Publishing, 1906), 30, 31.

32. Boorstin, 150-, 151.

33. Agnes Ash, “Market Research Mirrors Women.” Miami News, Nov. 26, 1961, 16A. The researcher, Charles Coolidge Parlin, put his observations about women’s shopping habits into a landmark report named Department Store Lines in 1912.

34. Daniel Delis Hill, Advertising to the American Woman, 1900–1999 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2002), 18, 67.

35. John McDonough, “First Radio Commercial Hit Airwaves 90 Years Ago.” NPR, Aug. 29, 2012, <npr.org/2012/08/29/160265990/first-radio-commercial-hit-airwaves-90-years-ago>.

36. Pamela Walker Laird, Advertising Progress: American Business and the Rise of Consumer Marketing (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 219.

37. Fox and Lears, xii.

38. Paul H. Nystrom, Economics of Fashion (New York, NY: The Ronald Press Company, 1928), 9.

39. Juliann Sivulka, Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of American Advertising, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2012), 129.

40. Ewen, 202, 203.

41. Edward F. McQuarrie and David Glen Mick, “Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language,” Journal of Consumer Research (1996), 425.

42. Charles E. Raymond, Excerpts from My Forty Years in the Advertising Business in the J. Walter Thompson company newsletter, May 28, 1925, and June 18, 1925, box 40, J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches.

43. Paul T. Cherington, “The Place of Advertising in Church Work.” June 20, 1926, box 5, J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches.

44. Walter L. Day, “How the Public Thinks.” Bus Transportation, November 1937, 544–47, box 9, J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches.

45. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 153.

46. “For the Modern American Girl: Lady Elgin Watches.” Saturday Evening Post, March 8, 1930, 84.

47. Marchand, 154.

48. Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (New York, NY: Vanguard Press, 1951), v–vi, 75.

49. George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (London, UK: Gollancz, 1936), 55.

50. Boorstin, 162–64.

51. Boorstin, 160, 161.

52. “Bulova: World’s First Television Advertisement,” YouTube video, 0:09, posted by “TheBdscraps,” March 3, 2012, <youtube.com/watch?v = 8JenAyMmZ68>; and Jane Dalzell, “Who’s on First?” Advertising Age, Feb. 28, 1995, 8.

53. Max Geller, Advertising at the Crossroads: Federal Regulation vs. Voluntary Controls (New York, NY: The Ronald Press Company, 1952), 39.

54. Geller, 49, 53.

55. Cynthia B. Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014), 109, 136; and Lawrence R. Samuel, Brought to You by: Postwar Television Advertising and the American Dream (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2001), 32, 33.

56. Geller, 37.

57. Boorstin, 137.

58. Michael L. Smith, “Selling the Moon: The U.S. Manned Space Program and the Triumph of Commodity Scientism,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980, eds. Richard Wightman Fox and T.J. Jackson Lears (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1983), 184.

59. Allen Ginsberg, “Howl,” in Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems, 1947–1980 (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1984), 129.

60. Ralph Ellison, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke,” Partisan Review 25 (1958), 212–222, in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, ed. John F. Callahan (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1995), 108.

61. Ellison, 109.

62. James D. Woolf, “The Fading Away of Good Taste in Advertising.” Ad Age, June 4, 1951, box 51, J. Walter Thompson Company Writings and Speeches.

63. Geller, 258–59.

64. Associated Press, “Signs False Ad Measure.” Lincoln (NE) Evening Journal, March 22, 1938, 4; Frederick J. Haskin, “Federal Trade Commission.” The South Bend (IN) Tribune, Nov. 5, 1914, 8; Sivulka, 85, 176; and United Press, “Broader Base Set for Food and Drug Act.” Jefferson City  (MO) Post-Tribune, Aug. 2, 1938, 8.

65. “A Check on Fake Advertising.” Wilmington (DE) Every Evening, Oct. 7, 1925, 6.

66. Associated Press, “‘Distillers’ Warned.” Asbury Park (NJ) Evening Press, July 3, 1936, 17.

67. United Press, “Ford Co. Ordered to Change Terms Describing Loans.” Corpus Christi (TX) Times, Dec. 11, 1939, 2; and United Press, “FTC Charges Harm to Fleischmann’s Yeast.” Austin (TX) American, Feb. 15, 1947, 6.

68. Ira M. Millstein, “The Federal Trade Commission and False Advertising,” Columbia Law Review 64, no. 3 (1964): 440.

69. C.B. Larrabee, Printers’ Ink, March 7, 1952, 86, 87.

70. Boorstin, 155.

71. Williams, 184.

72. Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant, The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2009), 4.

73. Kevin K. John, “The Volkswagen Lifestyle: Hitler, Hippies, and a Hint of Viral Marketing,” Americana 15 (2016).

74. O’Reilly and Tennant, xxiii.

75. Robert Goldsborough, “VW Beetle Tops List of Best Ad Campaigns.” San Francisco (CA) Examiner, Dec. 30, 1984, D3.

76. O’Reilly and Tennant, 8, 9.

77. Dolls modeled after Cookie Puss and another Carvel cake, Hug Me the Bear, can be seen in “Carvel Ice Cream Cakes ad,” YouTube video, 0:27, posted by “Toestubber,” Jan. 25, 2007, <youtube.com/watch?v = uzPiONed6Iw>.

78. Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials featuring Colonel Sanders include “1979 Col. Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken Commercial,” YouTube video, 0:29, posted by “Sean Mc,” Oct. 24, 2013, <youtube.com/watch?v = 8XARCADikfs>, and “1980 Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders Commercial,” YouTube video, 0:30, posted by “TheEntOnFire,” Feb. 25, 2012, <youtube.com/watch?v = nuwAMztxL1E>.

79. Naomi Klein, No Logo (New York, NY: Picador, 1999), 116.

80. Klein, 117.

81. Eduardo Porter, “Would You Buy a New Car from Eva Longoria?” New York Times, July 10, 2008, A20.

82. Jack Gould, “A State of Mind: Subliminal Advertising, Invisible to Viewer, Stirs Doubt and Debate.” New York Times, Dec. 8, 1957, D15.

83. Gay Talese, “Most Hidden Hidden Persuasion.” New York Times, Jan. 12, 1958, SM22, SM59, SM60.

84. For one example, see Harlow B. Brown, “Getting Results from Outdoor Advertising,” in Advertising: Selling Points and Copy Writing; How to Plan Campaigns and Judge Mediums, Tests, Layouts, Records and Systems (Chicago, IL: A.W. Shaw Company, 1914), 77.

85. “Billboard Curbs Backed in Senate.” New York Times, Sept. 4, 1965, 23.

86. “U.S. Allots Funds for Road Beauty.” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1965, 41.

87. O’Reilly and Tennant, 211.

88. “3 Flintstones Winston Cigarettes Commercials,” YouTube video, 2:56, posted by “VintageTVCommercials,” March 31, 2009, <youtube.com/watch?v = Bvt8skgm2l8>.

89. Samuel, 139, 174.

90. O’Reilly and Tennant, 88.

91. “1963 McDonalds Restaurant ‘First Ronald McDonald’ Commercial,” YouTube video, 1:02, posted by “ClassicTVtoday,” Sept. 1, 2012, <youtube.com/watch?v = MpxViiCSpkE>.

92. “Retro McDonalds Commercial—Hamburglar’s Stripes,” YouTube video, 0:32, posted by “alligatorjuice,” March 2, 2008, <youtube.com/watch?v = AU1iq9rqYJ0>.

93. Ulanoff, 32.

94. Phillips, 23.

95. “Part 13—Prohibited Trade Practices.” Federal Register, Oct. 9, 1974, 36,327, FTC, General Files, 1960–1975, American Association of Advertising Agencies Records, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

96. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978), 72.

97. Robert L. Heilbroner, “The Demand for the Supply Side.” New York Review of Books, June 11, 1981, 37–41.

98. Douglas Kellner, Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern (New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), 248.

99. Kellner, 249, 250.

100. O’Reilly and Tennant, 215.

101. Kellner, 251.

102. Bill Fripp, “Marlboro Man No Urban Cowboy; He’s Horse Trader into Rodeo Scene.” Minneapolis Tribune, Oct. 25, 1981, 3D; and Marilyn Goldstein, “Women’s Lib Ideas Now Sell Products.” Lansing (MI) State Journal, July 18, 1971, D4.

103. Craig Allen, Eisenhower and the Mass Media: Peace, Prosperity, and Prime-Time TV (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 21, 97.

104. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1984); Edwin Diamond and Stephen Bates, The Spot: The Rise of Political Advertising on Television (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984); and Darrell M. West, Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns, 1952–1992 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993).

105. Michael J. Petrick, “‘Equal Opportunities’ and ‘Fairness’ in Broadcast Coverage of Politics,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 427 (1976), 73–83.

106. “Original ‘Where’s the Beef!?’ Wendy’s Commercial, Jan. 10, 1984,” YouTube video, 0:29, posted by “Jack T,” Nov. 16, 2011, <youtube.com/watch?v = R6_eWWfNB54>.

107. “1984 Democratic debate: ‘Where’s the Beef?’” YouTube video, 2:15, posted by “lawford83,” Aug. 11, 2008, <youtube.com/watch?v = pjw8m7GmIa4>. The debate originally aired on March 11, 1984.

108. Schudson, 5.

109. Schudson, 15.

110. Schudson, 57.

111. Jack Neff, “The Biggest Threat to Creative Ads? Cannes.” Advertising Age, June 27, 2005, 8.

112. Kevin Lane Keller, “Managing Brands for the Long Run: Brand Reinforcement and Revitalization Strategies,” California Management Review 41 no. 3 (1999), 104.

113. Schudson, 85.

114. Richard W. Pollay, “The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended Consequences of Advertising,” Journal of Marketing 50 no. 2 (1986), 18–36.

115. James Rorty, Our Master’s Voice: Advertising (New York, NY: John Day, 1934), 181, 182.

116. “Lee Garfinkel’s Sprite Commercial with Grant Hill,” YouTube video, 0:30, posted by “LeeGarfinkel,” Dec. 17, 2009, <youtube.com/watch?v = OqEjnUkbB-Y>.

117. Frontline. “The Merchants of Cool,” first broadcast Feb. 27 2001 by PBS. Directed by Barak Goodman and written by Rachel Dretzin. This can be viewed at <pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/view>. Rushkoff’s qualification of Sprite’s “anti-marketing marketing campaign” begins at 11:20; the teenager’s quote from the focus group appears at 11:30; and Rushkoff claims that Sprite was the fastest-growing soft drink at 13:30.

118. Klein, 111, 112.

119. Patrick A. Gaughan, Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate Restructurings (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2015), 67, 68, 554, 555.

120. Lori Rotenberk, “Coffee in Church: Java and Jehovah,” The Lakeland (FL) Ledger, March 10, 2001, D3.

121. Ladik and Stewart, 157, 164.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Hirshon

Nicholas Hirshon is an assistant professor of communication at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He is the author of We Want Fish Sticks: The Bizarre and Infamous Rebranding of the New York Islanders, published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2018, and his research has appeared in American Journalism, Case Studies in Sport Management, Journalism History, and the International Journal of Sport Communication.