Advertising in times of war: Themes in Argentine print advertising during the Malvinas/Falklands War

Abstract

In the plethora of literature that investigates how the advertising industry reacts to changes in society, very few studies are concerned with regions outside of North America and Europe. For this study, we were interested in testing whether the conclusions of North American research in marketing communications would transfer to an understudied market. The ever-changing Argentine economy is a fertile ground to analyze changes in advertising strategies and tactics during times of turmoil. Thus, this study considered changes in appeals and strategies in print advertisements across two eras for the Latin American country: prewar (1981) and war (1982). With the advancement of the war efforts, results indicated that there were changes in (1) the tactical intent of the ads, (2) the nature of the advertiser, and (3) the products advertised. Additionally, our study shows that discursive strategies employed by advertisers were consistent with those emphasized by other media, such as television and print journalism.

Keywords:

• Advertising themes
• war
• Argentina
• Latin America
• content analysis

Acknowledgements

The researchers want to thank the staff at Biblioteca Rivadavia (Bahía Blanca, Argentina) for their aid in locating the material needed for this project.