‘We have a prodigious amount in common’. Reappraising Americanisation and circulation of knowledge in the interwar Nordic advertising industry

Abstract

This article discusses the interwar collaboration in the Nordic advertising industry in relation to the literature on ‘Americanisation’ in advertising and business history. We argue that the focus on Americanisation has caused research to overlook other important arenas for sharing knowledge in the development of advertising and commercial practices in twentieth-century Europe. We show the importance of the systematic collaboration between advertising communities in the Nordic countries through which Anglo-Saxon ideas, as well as domestic experiences, were shared. The collaboration was a crucial platform for the advertising industry to achieve increased societal clout. We also find that the Nordic advertising industry, as a collective, clearly distanced themselves from continental Europe based on a perception that Anglo-Saxon and Nordic advertising shared the same foundations. The results raise questions concerning assumptions about Americanisation and the role of alternative sources of inspiration and transnational collaboration in advertising history.

Keywords:

• Americanisation
• advertising history
• circulation of knowledge
• Nordic countries
• interwar period

Introduction

In twentieth-century business history, and particularly in the history of advertising, media, and consumer society, ideas and practices connected to the United States and American corporations have been studied extensively. We argue that this focus on Americanisation has dwarfed discussion on other important forms of international exchange of ideas and collaborative networks that have shaped practices and professionalisation of the advertising and media sectors. We present the Nordic cooperation in the advertising industry in the interwar period as a case whereby we wish to show the importance of transnational circulation of ideas and experiences on a completely different level, as a parallel and equally crucial development as that of Americanisation.¹ Advertising is understood in the article as an empirical phenomenon. It involves attempts to reach out to people through different media and persuade them to purchase goods and services or adopt certain ideas, but in the 1930s it was a broad concept without clear boundaries to adjacent terms such as propaganda and information.² With advertising industry, we refer to the heterogeneous group of professionals and companies that all shared an interest in advertising, ranging from advertisers and advertising agencies, to academics and journalists. Hence, a broader notion compared to defining the advertising industry as a conglomeration of organisations that work together in a regularised way towards certain ends.³

Previous research has analysed and tracked the alleged Americanisation of European advertising, both in terms of European firms and professionals actively seeking knowledge about American advertising techniques, market research, and forms of organisation, as well as through the impact of U.S. companies on European markets.⁴ There is a vast literature on the history of advertising industries in Europe focussing on national actors and markets, often in relation to the role of and connection with American companies and commercial practices.⁵ One example of this tendency is the surprisingly extensive literature that concerns the large American advertising agencies’ activities in several European countries, particularly that of J. Walter Thompson, in the interwar and post-1945 period.⁶ More recently, research has increasingly questioned and nuanced the idea about a one-dimensional flow of ideas and practices from the U.S. to Europe and highlighted the diversity of how and why different countries and sectors developed their own path of advertising.⁷

The literature on advertising history in the Nordics does not make an exception to the general pattern; in terms of international connections, it has been preoccupied exploring Americanisation in relation to the Nordic countries, even though Germany is also discussed to some extent as a role model.⁸ The lack of research on the intensive exchange between the advertising industries in the Nordic countries in the interwar period can be attributed to mainly two factors. Much research has had, either explicitly or implicitly, the concept of Americanisation as a starting point, which tends to lead the analysis along a certain path. Another is the relatively frequent reference to American methods and ideas in the historical sources, which in combination with Americanisation as an analytical assumption, reinforces this perspective. The fact that the historical actors often made references to American innovations in advertising is of course important and indicates that the advertising world in the Nordic countries was affected by America. On the other hand, we show that the story is much more complex than what has often been told. This study adds a previously unexplored and important dimension to the historiography of advertising in the Nordic region as well as opening a new analytical perspective to the development of the sector. We do not seek to overlook or disregard the significance of American ideas and methods for the advertising industries in the Nordics, but rather to adjust and widen the perspective by exploring the exchange that took place between organisations and key persons in the advertising sector in the Nordic countries that has hitherto been overlooked by research.

The research questions that we pose include: how did the collaboration between the Nordic advertising industries develop in the interwar period? What was the aim of the collaboration? And lastly, how can we evaluate the role played by ‘Americanisation’ on the one hand, and the exchange on the Nordic level on the other, for the development of advertising in the Nordic countries? The answer to the last question in particular is of more general interest for the historiography of advertising and commercial culture⁹ in Europe in the twentieth century.

Analytical framework and material

Americanisation has been understood in various ways in research. In this article, we follow Mary Nolan’s broad definition of Americanisation as ideas, values, methods, practices, and techniques that spread from the U.S. to Europe and other parts of the world.¹⁰ However, this was not a straightforward process, but European countries were selective in adapting and resisting American ideas and techniques, and furthermore modified and recontextualized them to fit European values, institutions and practices.

Volker Berghahn has identified that Americanisation in economic and cultural history is often described through three metaphors. One describes the movement of ideas and practices through essentially a one-way lane from West to East, even though most research, according to Berghahn, recognises that reality was complex and what happened was often a ‘blending of indigenous ideas, values and practices’ with the American ones.¹¹ Stefan Schwarzkopf has continued challenging the ‘one-way lane’ metaphor by showing that many allegedly U.S.-originated advertising techniques, such as innovative poster and retail advertising, had in fact European roots.¹² The two other metaphors that Berghahn identifies are a two-lane highway across the Atlantic, where people and ideas go both ways, and a transatlantic ‘turn-table’, in which ideas flow in a more circular fashion between the U.S. and the rest of the world. ‘Turn-table’ is not very well defined, but in this model the U.S. is considered also as a recipient, and not only the creator, of innovations.¹³ Another concept that seeks to go beyond, or escape from, the Americanisation paradigm is ‘decentering’, which attempts to decentre the United States particularly in the history of culture and international relations.¹⁴ Such a concept shifts the perspective of analysis, but also ironically reaffirms the position of America as a centre of study or point of reference. A preoccupation with the notion of ‘America’, can lead to important developments and factors of influence being overlooked simply because the searchlight is already set at a certain place.

While the overarching aim of this article is to explore the active process of selecting, adopting, rejecting, and recontextualizing international ideas and practices within the Nordic advertising industry, we do not rely on concepts that describe the exchange of information in the West-East direction suggested by much of the Americanisation research. Instead, we use circulation of knowledge as the key concept, which does not fix the movement of knowledge to any geographical axis, such as transatlantic or Eurocentric exchange. Historical research has used this concept, particularly in history of science, to address how and why knowledge circulates, by whom, and how knowledge is transformed from being a concern of a few individuals to something taken for granted in society, as well as how knowledge is being ignored, reshaped, and recreated in different contexts.¹⁵ Circulation of knowledge as a concept allow us to reach the reality that the Nordic advertising professionals created to add more value and growth to the industry; they organised Nordic advertising conferences, lectures, study trips, and printed publications to systematically share knowledge about business successes and failures, public and private regulation of the advertising industry, and lobbying activities, among other things. By knowledge, we mean all information contributing to the advertising business that was exchanged in the Nordic network ranging from more abstract ideas, general practices, and experiences to specific techniques and methods concerning, for example, market research, advertising photography, and packaging.

Previous research has suggested that the concept of circulation should be used to study knowledge and ideas that reach a certain societal significance.¹⁶ We argue that the knowledge and ideas of the Nordic advertising professionals in the interwar period represent knowledge that was in a process to reach such significance. As we will show, the advertising industry of all Nordic countries made significant progress, particularly in the 1930s, towards establishing advertising as a practice and profession that increasingly permeated business and society. The collaboration on the Nordic level gave the national advertising industries more leverage and clout in their respective countries.

It is important to distinguish between knowledge and its interpretations on the one hand, and where and how it circulated, on the other. Our intention is not to analyse in detail the exact roots of one specific idea or practice, but rather the main avenues in which knowledge circulated in the Nordics. We treat circulation of knowledge as a whole since we are interested in its compound effect rather than to disentangle the history of thought and practice from each other, as is common in the marketing history literature.¹⁷ It is also important to point out that even though we in this article speak of ‘the Nordics’ as one geographical and cultural space, we recognise that there are many differences between the countries; economic as well as cultural and social.¹⁸

The historical sources that we have studied consist primarily of printed material from the four Nordic countries, but also some archival material from Sweden and Finland. Internationally, previous research has recognised the lack of archives from advertising companies of the interwar period, such as advertising agencies and business interest organisations in the field of advertising.¹⁹ Luckily, a few of the business interest organisations in the advertising sector in the Nordics have coherent and accessible archives and we have used records from three of these: the Finnish and Swedish newspaper publishers and the Swedish association of advertising agencies. We have used a wide variety of printed material, such as trade journals, newspaper articles, printed reports, collections of lectures and discussions, year books, memoirs and ephemera from different advertising organisations. Material emanating from, or discussing the activities of, the Northern Advertising Association (Nordiska Reklamförbundet), which was founded in 1931, is at the core of the study, but we also include material published by the different national advertising associations, advertising clubs and individuals.²⁰ The sources allow us to identify when and how knowledge was circulated in the Nordics and we can get a good estimate of the scope of the Nordic network.

This article focuses on the 1930s since we want to capture the formal start and expansion of the Nordic collaboration. By studying this part of the interwar period, on which there is already much international research, we can best show the benefits from shifting focus from Americanisation alone to transnational collaboration between neighbouring countries. That being said, collaboration in the Nordic advertising industry continued after the Second World War, so the 1930s was the first decade of a much longer development.

The interwar Nordic advertising collaboration

In the midst of the great political and economic upheaval and pessimism of the 1930s, the advertising community in the Nordic countries showed a remarkably positive outlook. Early detachment of all four Nordic countries in 1931 from the gold standard led to faster recovery from the depression compared with those staying in the gold bloc, and as a result, the austerity period affecting companies’ spending in advertising lasted only for a couple of years.²¹ Optimistic advertising professionals saw their expertise and knowledge not only as a powerful tool for business and of vital importance for economic growth, but also as compatible with the social-democratic political agenda.²²

Similar to other sectors of the economy, the advertising community in the Nordic countries started to develop their local and national coordination in the 1910s and 1920s.²³ Advertising professionals in Trondheim, Norway, established an association in 1914 as the first in the Nordic countries. Oslo followed in 1915 and Bergen in 1924, and three years later the three associations merged into one national organisation. The Swedish advertising association was established in Stockholm in 1919 and expanded with several local branches later in the 1920s and the Danish association was set up in 1925. Finland followed in 1928. The other Nordic associations were models for establishing the Finnish association, but they also consulted American and British professional journals and the Regent advertising club in Britain.²⁴ The Nordic associations were open to all members who were involved in or took an interest in advertising, and consequently, they became nodes to unite people from media, advertising agencies, large businesses, art, book publishing, and engineering. At the turn of the 1930s, the Norwegian association had over 400 members and the Swedish and Danish had around 200 members each. The Finnish equivalent was minuscule; it had been founded by only eight men, and it took until the end of the 1930s to grow to over 200 members. All organisations grew throughout the 1930s; the Swedish association reached around 1400 members towards the end of the decade.²⁵

Advertising professionals from Sweden and Norway had discussed organised collaboration across borders already in the early 1920s, but the idea was more practically addressed in 1930 at the large Stockholm Exhibition. A theme day on advertising was organised at the exhibition, which gathered interested participants from all four Nordic countries and they all agreed that systematic cooperation to exchange knowledge would benefit all.²⁶

The advertising associations of the Nordic countries were members of the European advertising association, l’Union Continental de la Publicité, that had been founded in 1928 with 14 member countries.²⁷ By 1930 the Nordic countries had however decided that a separate, Nordic collaboration better served their mutual interests. European collaboration was ‘too broad and rigid’ and furthermore the many languages used in the conferences, according to the Finns, created a barrier to collaboration.²⁸ The Danes were disappointed in the European association since most other represented nations were more ‘backward-looking than Denmark’ and believed that Danish advertising had outgrown the others. In fact, both the Danes and Swedes believed that the continental association was ‘useless’ and ‘cost more than it gave back’.²⁹ The Norwegians also found that the Nordic countries had reached a higher stage of development compared to the other European countries.³⁰ However, the Nordic advertising community did not completely turn its back on international collaboration, but rather chose to deepen the multilateral cooperation between neighbouring countries that shared many conditiony.³¹

The different Nordic advertising associations decided to organise a joint advertising congress in Copenhagen in 1931. At that congress, they established the Northern advertising association, which would organise congresses biannually from 1931 onwards. By this time, all the Nordic advertising organisations had withdrawn from the continental advertising association. The primary orientation of international collaboration now being Nordic, the biannual congresses became a pivotal arena to circulate knowledge on problems and solutions concerning advertising and to invite speakers from the other countries to educate Nordic advertising people on the latest trends.³²

The participants of the Copenhagen congress decided on three key areas which the Nordic advertising industry should focus on. The first was education and research. A leading Danish advertising scholar, Max Kjæer-Hansen, encouraged the national advertising associations to ‘demand’ the state to institute professor chairs and research centres on advertising. It was an important factor of the economy and to be taken seriously and even scientifically. Second, the congress also agreed on the overall goal that the official statistics in each country should be collected so that the data benefitted also the advertising industry. Lastly, the participants were in a common understanding that the industry needed rational regulations on uniform grounds in the area of sales and advertising in all four countries and decided to turn to the Nordic governments in this matter. Concerning the internal work of the Northern advertising association, to increase the control and reliability of the circulation figures of the mass media was the most important task in the respective countries.³³

The encouragement of the Northern advertising association and inspiration from the Anglo-Saxon world both contributed to the development of higher education and research in advertising in the Nordics in the 1930s. Previous research has shown that advertising education in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark was created along American, and to some extent German, lines.³⁴ In addition, it is important to consider the goal of the Northern advertising association to create higher education and chairs in advertising. As a result, newspapers reported about fundraising for professorships in the fields of sales and advertising in the different Nordic countries and advertising experts visited other Nordic countries and gave lectures on the role of education and how educational issues were dealt with in different countries.³⁵

The first academic advertising institute in the Nordics opened in 1933 at Copenhagen business school in Denmark.³⁶ By 1936 the Norwegian advertising association had raised funds for a professorship in psychology, advertising, and sales and it was about to inaugurate an advertising institute in collaboration with the Norwegian business school in Bergen.³⁷ In Sweden, Gerhard Törnqvist became the first professor of business administration who specialised in ‘distribution economics’, the term used for the academic discipline of marketing at the time, at the Stockholm school of economics in 1934 and in 1936 Kjær-Hansen was appointed professor in Denmark.³⁸ In Finland, advertising entered higher education for the first time in 1934 when H. J. Viherjuuri was appointed lecturer of advertisement at the Helsinki school of economics. The Swedish-speaking Hanken school of economics followed the next year by appointing Benedikt Wolontis.³⁹ These educational institutions might have been created with American and British examples as blueprints, but the Nordic network was an important catalyst to make this happen.

Another example that shows the combined role of Anglo-Saxon ideas and the Nordic network is the attempt to bring more order to the market for advertisements, often by creating cartel-like agreements between newspapers publishers and advertising agencies to would regulate prices. In fact, all Nordic newspaper publishers’ associations exchanged information on cartel agreements.⁴⁰ Danish research has concluded that the inspiration for a cartel agreement between the newspaper publishers and advertising agencies in Denmark in the early 1920s came from England.⁴¹ However, at that time, both the Swedish and Norwegian advertising industries had several years of cartel experience, which makes it unlikely that the Danes were inspired by England alone.⁴² In Finland, the newspaper publishers’ association more or less copied the Swedish agreement from 1925 when they sought to implement similar regulations in 1930.⁴³ These examples show how easy it can be to jump to conclusions about Americanisation, while the sources clearly indicate that besides making necessary national adjustments (to any foreign blueprint), the advertising sectors also consulted organisations in the neighbouring countries for best practice, which affected the outcome.

Once the Nordic association had been founded, it gained membership in the International advertising association together with two other European member organisations: the British advertising association and the one for continental Europe.⁴⁴ The International advertising association was dominated by the U.S. and at the large advertising congress in Berlin in 1929 the Danish participants had noticed the confidence and vivid spirit of the Americans. It stood in stark contrast to the much more rigid German mindset, which seemed tired and lacking in life in comparison.⁴⁵ It seems clear that by establishing a Nordic association, as one of three international advertising associations in Europe, the Nordic advertising representatives wanted to position themselves as equal partners to the British and Americans. In an interview in 1936, Tom Björklund, at the time the president of both the Nordic and Swedish advertising associations and a leading advertising professional, stated that: ‘we [Sweden and England] have a prodigious amount in common, as we build on a common foundation, Anglo-Saxon advertising technique, which is widely separated from the European-Continental’.⁴⁶

Previous research has acknowledged that in the interwar period the U.S. was a crucial role model for the rest of the world in showing how far advertising could reach in terms of status and general influence in business and society. American companies and professionals also provided very concrete methods for advertising such as layout of advertisements and market research techniques. Our sources confirm this in the case of the Nordic countries; the eyes of the advertising professionals were primarily set on America and Britain. ‘What is new in the USA and West Europe, will soon be new in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and soon after that in Finland’, wrote Artturi Raula at the turn of the 1930s, one of the key figures of early Finnish advertising education.⁴⁷ However, the story of the omnipresence of Americanisation misses taking into account the important exchange on the Nordic level, both as an arena to share and discuss the American and British ideas and practices, and as a source of inspiration in its own right. In advertising, Sweden particularly served as an important source of inspiration for Finland. ‘Sweden is the third most important country where advertising is taken seriously after the U.S. and Britain’, wrote the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat.⁴⁸

Knowledge and ideas were continuously and systematically circulated through the Nordic network. The leadership of the Northern advertising association held regular meetings, twice per year, and these were often referred to in the newspapers and the trade press. In general, there were frequent visits across borders and information about activities was shared widely. One of the local branches of the Swedish advertising association, for instance, published activities of the advertising associations in all Nordic countries in its bi-monthly newsletter in the mid-1930s.⁴⁹ Particularly interesting lectures gaining recognition were often published in another country.⁵⁰ Other concrete evidence of circulating knowledge in the Nordic countries were journal articles about advertising-related material such as titles of advertising books, regulations that concerned sales and advertising in the Nordic countries, and lists of libraries that held advertising material.⁵¹

The bilateral visits and exchange of ideas were as important as multilateral Nordic connections. In 1935, Swedish advertising association invited a group of 35 Norwegian advertising men (and one woman) to Stockholm for a study trip. They visited leading printing houses and advertising agencies and the new and modern premises of Swedish Film (Svensk Film). The Norwegian-Swedish event celebrated the Nordic connections at a festive dinner, joined by the praesidium of the Northern advertising association.⁵² In the spring of 1936, the Norwegians hosted a similar visit for the Swedes, and the bilateral connections continued to develop similarly.⁵³

From 1937 onwards, the Northern advertising association pushed ahead with intensified cooperation. A joint Nordic advertising exhibition was organised in London in 1937, a result of the contacts that had been initiated with the British advertising association. The exhibition was described as a success and contained useful information for British businesses that were interested in selling in the Nordic countries.⁵⁴ In 1937, several organisational changes were also initiated in order to strengthen the cooperation even further. The praesidium of the Northern advertising association was enlarged and the work with systematic information sharing was to be intensified. The leadership also expressed its wish for a joint Nordic representation at future world exhibitions; it would be more cost-efficient and a way to compete with much larger countries for attention.⁵⁵

The Nordic advertising congresses

The most publicly visible activities of the Northern advertising association were the congresses that were arranged every other year starting in 1931 and ending in 1937. The plan was to arrange a congress in Bergen, Norway in 1940, but due to the outbreak of war these plans were abandoned. However, as soon as the war was over the collaboration continued and the first post-war congress was arranged in 1947 in Copenhagen. The 1930s was a grand decade for fairs and exhibitions. From a Nordic perspective it started with the Stockholm Exhibition in 1930 and ended with the New York World’s Fair in 1939, where all the Nordic countries were represented.

The Nordic advertising congresses provided an arena for practical exchange of experiences and ideas; they were the foremost proof that the Nordic advertising cooperation was not only fine talk, but it had a very concrete value.⁵⁶ They contained a mix of professional components, such as lectures and negotiations on relevant topics, with more informal networking and glamorous festivities. The congresses evolved during the 1930s and became increasingly ambitious with broader programs and several parallel sessions.

The first congress in Copenhagen in May 1931 gathered more than 500 participants under the motto ‘Good advertising, better times!’ (God reklame, bedre tider!). The Danish Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning opened the congress and told the audience that it was his impression that advertising people were optimists, which was an attitude that was needed at that time.⁵⁷ The second congress was organised in Oslo in April 1933 and carried the jaunty motto, ‘Full speed ahead’ (Full fart forover) and was inaugurated by the Norwegian minister of trade. As in Copenhagen, the congress particularly wanted to instil a feeling of optimism and energy into the depressed-ridden business world at the time; advertising could be a key solution to turn the economy around. The official program of the Oslo congress consisted of only seven presentations. Emphasis was clearly on the free networking and informal circulation of knowledge and one of the highlights of the program was a skiing competition. The Oslo congress reached a few pivotal conclusions, however; the Nordic advertising professionals should seek to broaden the customer base of advertising from trade and industry to state; the state should financially support industry’s advertising; and the state should invest more in advertising of its own, for instance, to promote tourism.⁵⁸ The third congress followed in Helsinki in 1935 with the motto ‘Advertising is a force’ (Mainos on voima) and the fourth in Stockholm in 1937 with the slogan ‘Advertising serves society’ (Reklamen tjänar samhället).⁵⁹

In line with the outcome of the Oslo congress, one of the specific goals in Helsinki in 1935 was to promote state advertising.⁶⁰ There were discussions on how the state could use advertising for various purposes as well as how to expand modern advertising education by establishing chairs in the universities in line with the goals of the Northern advertising association.⁶¹ Besides these, the Helsinki congress was a forum to overall reinforce the broader economic and security political orientation around Nordic alliance, which had been developing since the early 1930s in trade policies, business associations, and in the League of Nations.⁶² State representatives had a strong presence in the Helsinki congress; the Finnish Prime Minister T. M. Kivimäki and the ministers of trade and foreign affairs as well as officials from these ministries gave speeches and were present in many events of the congress.⁶³

The congress in Stockholm in June 1937 with 700 participants was the last and most ambitious congress of the decade. It ran for three days and the topics covered almost all the contemporary issues in Nordic advertising, such as newspaper advertising, window displays, packaging, the cost structure of advertising, colour picture technique, and posters. One of the days was dedicated to a ‘public day’ where the lectures addressed broader social topics such as traffic safety and nutrition. It was primarily directed towards actors in state and municipalities, like libraries, public health organisations, but also a broader public. ⁶⁴ A part of the congress was broadcast on radio in all the Nordic countries. The Swedish crown prince, Gustaf Adolf, was the patron of the congress and the Swedish Prime Minister, the social democrat, Per Albin Hansson, held the opening speech.

All congresses were major events in the hosting cities and included ambitious advertising campaigns with posters on the streets, in public transportation, and department stores.⁶⁵ The campaigns were all a sort of goodwill advertising; advertising for advertising itself. The intensive work for publicity for the congresses was successful; they received extensive and positive attention in the newspapers in all Nordic countries. Only a few specialty magazines wrote more critically about the lofty claims of the advertising professionals.⁶⁶

In 1967, Tom Björklund denoted the 1937 Stockholm congress as a breakthrough; the time when advertising and the power it had in shaping economy and society was recognised among a larger public.⁶⁷ Just after the congress, the Swedish trade press noticed that the work in the Northern advertising association and particularly the four congresses showed that advertising and its organisations had won the attention and respect in each country that would otherwise have taken a long time to achieve.⁶⁸ The Danish advertising magazine Dansk Reklame added that the work in the association was not only about making Nordic advertising more familiar to the potential clientele and the state; the almost daily work with sharing information with the advertising associations in the Nordic countries, and conducting praesidium meetings, were equally important.⁶⁹

Aspects of American and Nordic advertising

The orientation towards the Anglo-Saxon world in advertising was emphasised in professional journals all over the Nordic countries. An article titled ‘Thank you U.S.A’ in the Swedish advertising association’s yearbook 1939 described advertising in the modern twentieth-­century mass consumer market as an American invention and blessing: ‘Future generations might perhaps consider the development of advertising as one of America’s great gifts to mankind’.⁷⁰ Considering the general admiration for U.S. commercial practices in the interwar period, the article is not surprising, but the relationship to American advertising was more complicated than what the ingratiating article suggested.

Americanisation in advertising, which also was referred to as ‘internationalism’, was not the only major trend in Europe in the 1930s; it met a counter-force in nationalism. Pamela Swett has written about the emergence of the idea of ‘national characters’ in the form and content of German advertising in the interwar period. The German style developed as a distinctive poster design before the First World War, but the advertising practitioners in the 1920s and particularly in the National Socialist era expanded the idea. The idea of national characters was that while America was the forerunner in all important innovations in advertising—such as advertisement layout, market research techniques, etc.—each country nevertheless ‘needed to determine what worked best among its own population’.⁷¹

Unique national characters was not a trend exclusively for fascist countries, but also prevalent in the Nordics. Advertising psychology was, according to a Swedish advertising professional, caught in an ‘Anglo-Saxon grip’, and that was a problem.⁷² The idea of national character in the Nordic countries grew in the Nordic advertising congresses during the 1930s. Several observers noted that technically, advertising in the Nordics had developed along American lines, but the difference in mentality was vast; the Nordic style was more discreet and sedate.⁷³ The Finns saw a difference in mentality also between the Nordic countries. Danish advertising was ‘happy’ and ‘cheerful’, the Norwegian style was affected by the majesty of nature, and the Swedish style radiated quality, wealth, prestige, and serenity. The American style, on the other hand, was categorised as exaggerated and full of unrealistic promises, which was the exact opposite to the Finnish style that rested upon honesty and reliability.⁷⁴ These views regularly appeared in the newspapers and advertising journals throughout the late 1930s.

The clash between Americanisation and national style in Sweden was so serious that it led to a conflict in the Swedish association of advertising agencies in 1938, splitting it in two. The trigger was an advertisement published by an agency in one of the largest Swedish newspapers that criticised advertising that used unsound and American methods and referred to one such example; an advertisement that depicted a woman who did not become married until she started to use a certain soap. The soap ad appealed to negative emotions, and such ‘fear-appeal’ advertising had gained in popularity in the U.S. at the time.⁷⁵ According to a Norwegian advertising representative, this style that played on the lowest human instincts, ‘was spreading like a plague’ in the Nordic countries.⁷⁶ The Swedish agency that had been involved in the creation of the soap ad was outraged over the criticism.⁷⁷

The ethic of sound advertising was also a matter of legal regulation. Laws against dishonest competition were enacted in the Nordic countries in the 1920s and 1930s. These laws prohibited certain forms of advertising that could be misleading, for example, those that defamed competitors or involved plagiarism.⁷⁸ Thor Bjørn Schyberg, one of the leading professionals in Norway, noted in 1930 that many of the successful campaigns in America described in My life in advertising—an autobiography by a famous American ad man, Claude Hopkins—would have been prohibited according to Norwegian law. Schyberg concluded that Nordic business ethics were at a higher level compared to the American.⁷⁹

At the root of the conflict about the soap ad was the accusation of defaming a competitor; an advertisement that put the competitor in a bad light was perhaps acceptable in America, but not in the Nordic countries. In addition, the soap ad was exaggerated in a way that connected it with the style of dubious patent-medicine and snake-oil ads from the dawn of advertising history. Modern Swedish advertising professionals did not want to be associated with the past when the advertising industry lacked all standards.

Germany affected to some extent the shaping of Nordic advertising, although its importance was most likely dwarfed by national, Nordic, and American elements through the course of the interwar period. Max Kjæer-Hansen, trained in Germany, believed that the most advanced understanding of sales and markets was undoubtedly in America and that dismissing foreign impulses would be a mistake. He did not believe in a ‘purely Danish’ advertising style, nor in adopting the American style blindly either. Instead, he supported the idea that international sales and advertising methods were nationally adapted to reach the consumers in different countries.⁸⁰

International connections: an Anglo-Saxon orientation with variations

The Nordic collaboration served as a platform to create and reinforce national, Nordic, and international contacts and exchange. Through the Northern advertising association contacts could be made with all the Nordic countries at the same time. Furthermore, the Nordic countries could strengthen their position as a region when they could send a joint representative to international congresses and other events.

The arguably most important event for the interwar Nordic advertising community in terms of international connections was a large-scale visit, ‘the floating congress’, of the British Advertising Association in July 1936. A ship called Voltaire, carrying 300 British advertising people, made a tour from Copenhagen to Stockholm, Helsinki, and Oslo. The purpose of the congress at sea and touring the capitals of the Nordic countries was to network with Nordic advertising people and learn how advertising could promote British-Nordic trade.

The announcement of the tour caused a feverish activity in the respective Nordic countries and the visit was hosted by, not only the national advertising associations, but also by the state and the cities. In Stockholm, the Swedish advertising association organised a banquet in the City Hall where the patron of the meeting, the Swedish crown prince Gustaf Adolf, welcomed the British visitors.⁸¹ In Finland, the minister of foreign affairs hosted a lunch for 500 guests and the funding was gathered from tens of business organisations.⁸² The visit caused much publicity both in the trade press as well as in the daily newspapers in Nordic countries. One of the large Stockholm-based newspapers, Aftonbladet, printed a long article, across several pages entitled: ‘What we have learned from British advertisers. What they can learn from us’.⁸³ The article is one proof of the eagerness with which the advertising community in Sweden sought to make contact with their Anglo-Saxon colleagues, but also that they viewed the relationship as one between equals; there was actually something that the British could learn from Swedish advertising.

Two years later in 1938, when a large advertising congress was held in Glasgow, the Swedish trade magazine Reklamnyheterna announced, somewhat proudly, that it would primarily be Scandinavians, British, and Americans that would participate since the British Advertising Association believed that these nations had the same interest in the field of advertising.⁸⁴ On that note, the leading Norwegian advertising magazine, Propaganda, wrote the following:

There is no point in tormenting ourselves with more languages than two, English and Scandinavian. To put it bluntly, it is not correct to say that the French, German, Italian or Japanese have advertising interests in common with us or with each other. There cannot be anything useful in bringing together these representatives of these countries that have such widely disparate interests. Then it is much better to limit the ‘internationalism’ to England, the Empire, USA, and Scandinavia that all look at advertising in the same way.⁸⁵

This statement can be viewed against the background where representatives of the Nordic advertising community had participated in different international congresses almost every year since the late 1920s. The congresses had been disappointing to some extent, while the Nordic congresses were described as highly stimulating, well-organised, and useful events. Even the large British advertising congress in London in 1933 had not lived up to the expectations of Thor Bjørn Schyberg who was there as the representative of the Northern advertising association. The congress was poorly organised and the lectures often presented ‘completely obvious facts without any new ideas’.⁸⁶

Still, there was anticipation before the Glasgow congress and quite a few Nordic advertising professionals participated. At this fateful moment in European history, the congress adopted the motto ‘peace by advertising’, but again the reporting afterward was unenthusiastic. The Swedish participants observed indignantly that the British hosts seemed uninterested in getting to know their guests who had travelled there. The Norwegian trade magazine Propaganda wrote that most of the presentations were rather uninteresting, at least by a Nordic benchmark.⁸⁷ The continental advertising association held its own congress in Vienna in summer 1938 after the Glasgow congress (shortly after Anschluss) with the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels as protector and speakers talking from a podium decorated with the swastika. A few Danes who participated called it a success compared to Glasgow.⁸⁸

There were in fact many connections between the advertising industries in the Nordic countries and Germany throughout the 1930s. For instance, when the German advertising association arranged a study trip to America in 1937, the Norwegian advertising association was invited to participate. As late as March 1939, a German-Danish advertising congress was arranged in Hamburg, where Kjær-Hansen held a lecture about advertising education in Denmark.⁸⁹

The head of Nazi Germany’s new advertising council, Deutsche Werberat, Ernst Reichard, visited Sweden in 1936 and held three lectures on the topic of the ‘regeneration’ of German advertising.⁹⁰ The trade press reported that a record high audience had attended the lectures, indicating a great interest in the Swedish advertising sector towards these ideas. According to Reichard, Germany was interested in creating a more sound and well-organised advertising industry, and in this respect, sought inspiration from Sweden. He invited the Swedes to cooperate more closely in the fields of education and research of advertising.⁹¹ There was considerable work carried out throughout the 1930s in Sweden to improve self-regulation in advertising in alignment with the law against disloyal competition and also as part of a new international ‘Code of standards of advertising practice’ ratified by the International chamber of commerce in 1937, in which creation the Swedish advertising association played an important role.⁹²

The German interest in the Nordic countries was reinforced at the advertising congress in Helsinki in 1935 where a German representative invited two persons from each Nordic country to visit Berlin and learn about modern propaganda methods. The invitation was accepted and a small group travelled to Germany, among them Thor Bjørn Schyberg and Tom Björklund. The visit in September 1935 was described by Schyberg as containing ‘a great deal of professional interest’, but Tom Björklund, in a much later account described it as odd.⁹³ According to Björklund, the Nordic visitors realised that the hosts wanted the group to become Nazi Germany’s spokespersons in their countries.

Conclusions

As the 1930s was coming to an end, the advertising industries of the Nordic countries could look back at a decade of great progress. Research institutes and advertising chairs at the business schools were founded in all the Nordic countries and the professional organisations had matured and collaborated intensively across borders. The industry had initiated contacts with the state, often through the organisation of the Nordic congresses. In this article, we argue that one important catalyst for these developments was the increased contacts and exchange that took place on a multilateral and bilateral level between the Nordic countries. The Nordic cooperation, including congresses and regular meetings, provided a significant forum of circulating knowledge on how to formulate and pursue both national and Nordic goals in the advertising industries.

Our findings shed new light on the development of advertising in the Nordic countries in the interwar period. Indeed, the Nordic advertising industry professionals were greatly inspired by American ideas and practices, however, the Anglo-Saxon world was not the only significant source of inspiration. We show that the Nordic cooperation was a crucial arena to debate and discuss Anglo-Saxon trends and to evaluate which of these were applicable for Nordic consumers and business culture. Information circulated through many routes; locally between branches of the advertising associations in the four countries, bilaterally between the national organisations, and multilaterally in the congresses between the Nordic countries.

Key advertising professionals considered the Nordic advertising standard and quality as superior compared to those of continental Europe and at the same level with the Anglo-Saxon industry. The intensity of interest towards Britain and the U.S. was not as mutual as the Nordics hoped for, however. The notion by Tom Björklund about the ‘prodigious amount that Swedish and British advertising had in common’ was only unilaterally true, as it did not lead to a reciprocal exchange of information. The story here is thus not one of transatlantic circulation, but of selective reception and further circulation in the Nordic context. The pattern we can discern is one of embracing Anglo-Saxon ideas and methods on a general level, but also rejecting certain characteristics of the American style as inferior to the Nordic. De Iulio and Vinti drew similar conclusions about resistance and adaptations of American styles in Italian advertising, even though their study concerned the post-war world, which formed a very different political and economic context compared to the interwar period.⁹⁴ On a methodological level, our study and findings follow the direction mapped out by Stefan Schwarzkopf and others about the merits of trying to escape the ‘Americanisation paradigm’, by studying other forms of transnational exchange and not taking the West-East one way street as the default starting point to explore twentieth century global consumer capitalism.⁹⁵

Our research partly confirms, and partly alters the historiography of advertising in the Nordics in the interwar period. We argue that while previous research has been preoccupied with Americanisation, it has overlooked other significant forms of multilateral collaboration, such as between the Nordic countries. Collaborating on the Nordic level was clearly an effective way for the advertising industries of these small nations to widen their horizons, learn from each other, and exchange knowledge about best practices and modern methods used in domestic industries and in the Anglo-Saxon world. In fact, even though examples of American ideas and methods were regularly discussed, much of the practical case studies presented in the Nordic network concerned domestic issues, which were deemed to be of common interest for all Nordic countries. It is difficult to assess the actual impact of American ideas vs. domestic ones, but judging from the sources, American ideas were perhaps less influential in practice than what previous research has suggested.

Furthermore, the Nordic congresses were arenas to share knowledge and ideas in wider circles; first between advertising professionals in the four countries, then between the advertising industry and other sectors of the economy, and lastly between business, state, and the broader consumer society. Through these events the advertising industry could suggest to surrounding society what constituted proper and valuable knowledge about advertising. From a source critical point of view it is evident that the historical actors themselves had an interest in portraying the Nordic network as important and successful, but at the same time the sheer number of meetings, the scope of systematic interaction, and the extensive press coverage suggests that the collaboration had a real impact in the development of the advertising industry in the four countries.

The collaboration in the 1930s had long-lasting impact. The hey-day of advertising dawned in the post-war decades with the rise of mass consumer society. Without laying the groundwork for success in the 1930s in, for instance, promoting higher education in advertising, making international connections, reinforcing national and bilateral collaboration, and developing formal and informal regulations and standards, the Nordic advertising industry could not have benefitted from the post-war boom as much as it did. As far as we know, Nordic advertising congresses were regularly organised from 1947 onwards at least until the mid-1960s.⁹⁶

The intensity and frequency of the Nordic exchange through which both national and transnational goals and ambitions were pursued has been overlooked by previous research. Our results—that the circulation of ideas and people in other routes, compared to the ones traditionally invoked by the Americanisation concept, contributed significantly to the development of European advertising industries—encourage other advertising historians to look for similar collaborative patterns in other parts of Europe. Research has been preoccupied with the concept of Americanisation in different ways, thus other systematic multilateral cooperation between advertising communities in Europe (or in other parts of the world for that matter) seems to have gone unnoticed. Exploring other forms of international collaboration as thoroughly as research has treated Americanisation in relation to the European advertising industry could be a task for further advertising historical research.

Notes

Acknowledgements

The research for this article was partly conducted at the Institute for Economic and Business History Research/EHFF at Stockholm School of Economics.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elin Åström Rudberg

Elin Åström Rudberg is a postdoctoral researcher in economic history at the Department of economic history and international relations at Stockholm University. Her research is focused on advertising and marketing history, entrepreneurship, and Swedish and Nordic business in relation to the post-war European common market.

Elina Kuorelahti

Elina Kuorelahti is a postdoctoral researcher at University of Helsinki who has published on a range of topics in twentieth century business history such as media history, labour market history and international commodity cartels. She is currently doing research on the League of Nations, commodities and the economic history of war.

Notes

1 In the paper, we include Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark in the term ‘Nordic’. Formally, Iceland would also need to be included, but to our knowledge the interwar advertising industry in Iceland was very small and the country was never a member of the Northern advertising association, which is at the center of our analysis, thus it is not included in our study.

2 Gardeström, Reklam och propaganda, 10.

3 Turow, “The development of the modern advertising industry”, 4.

4 Key works include De Grazia, Irresistible empire; Schröter, Americanization of the European economy; Kipping & Bjarnar, The Americanisation of European business. Americanization in relation to other spheres of modern mass consumption society has also been discussed, see for example Scott & Fridenson, “New perspectives on 20th-century European retailing” (retail); Grünbacher, “The Americanisation that never was?” (professional management education).

5 See for example: Schwarzkopf, Respectable Persuaders (U.K.); Swett et al., Selling modernity (Germany); Martin, Histoire de la publicité en France; Beale, The modernist enterprise, chapter 1 (France).

6 See for example: Pouillard, “American Advertising Agencies in Europe”; Hultquist, “Americans in Paris”; Bini & Fasce, “Irresistible empire or innocents abroad?”. In Ross, “Visions of prosperity”, there is also a discussion on J. Walter Thompson’s German business.

7 Schwarzkopf, “The subsiding sizzle of advertising history”; Idem, “From Fordist to creative economies: the de-Americanisation of European advertising cultures since the 1960s”; De Iulio & Vinti, “The Americanization of Italian advertising during the 1950s and the 1960s”; Howard, “The advertising industry and alcohol in interwar France”; Tadajewski & Jones, “Historical research in marketing theory and practice”. For a broader business historical discussion see also Zeitlin & Herrigel, Americanization and Its Limits.

8 See for example, on Denmark: Bendix Andersen, Sælgere for ett Amerikansk Forbrugsimperium?; Kloppenborg Madsen,“A history of Danish advertising, market research, and retailing institutions; on Norway: Myrvang, Forbruksagentene (particularly chapter 4); on Finland: Heinonen & Konttinen, Nyt uutta Suomessa! and Heinonen & Pantzar ‘Little America’; on Sweden: Nilsson Färger, former, ljus, 101–107; Gardeström, Reklam och propaganda (chapter 3) and Arnberg, “Beyond Mrs. consumer”.

9 Mediating between production and consumption, commercial culture is created by reciprocal interactions of economic and cultural capital. See Swett, Selling under the Swastika, 5; Confino and Koshar, “Regimes of consumer culture”, 135–161.

10 Nolan, The transatlantic century, 4–5.

11 Berghahn, “The debate on ‘Americanization’ among economic and cultural historians”.

12 Schwarzkopf, “Who Said “Americanization?”, 31–32. For the role of European emigrés as American marketing and consumer experts, see Logemann, Engineered to sell.

13 Berghahn, “The debate on ‘Americanization’ among economic and cultural historians”, 110. For more on the concept of circulation of ideas and practices in relation to Americanization, see Tournès, “La philanthropie Américaine et l’Europe”. For the role of transatlantic exchange see Nolan, The transatlantic century.

14 Gienow-Hecht, Decentering America, 2.

15 Sandmo et al. (eds.), Circulation of knowledge, 17–23. See also Secord, “Knowledge in transit.”

16 Östling & Larsson Heidenblad, “Cirkulation - ett kunskapshistoriskt nyckelbegrepp”, 279–280.

17 See Tadajewski & Jones, “Historical research in marketing theory and practice”. See also, for example, Witkowski, “The marketing discipline comes of age, 1934-1936”, as an example of research on marketing thought and Moore & Reid, “The birth of brand: 4000 years of branding” as an example of more practice-oriented research.

18 For an account of other aspects of “Nordic” economic and business history see for example Fellman et. al (eds.) Creating Nordic capitalism.

19 See Bendix Andersen Saelgere for ett Amerikansk Forbrugsimperium? 18–19 for the situation in Denmark; Johnston, Selling Themselves, 15 for Canada; Swett et.al., Selling modernity, 8, comments on the lack of records from advertising agencies in Germany from the 1930s. In Finland, the records of the advertising association are in the National Archive, but the material starts from the post-war period. Similarly, the corporate material of Finnish advertising companies, held at the Central Archives for Finnish Business Records (ELKA), start from the post-war period and therefore do not contribute to this research.

20 The name Northern Advertising Association was the English name of the organization as given by the historical actors themselves, hence we have chosen to keep that name in the article.

21 Fellman, ”Growth and investment”, 157; Rathke et al., ”Overvalued: Sweden’s Monetary Policy in the 1930s”, 3; Olsson, “Nordic trade cooperation in the 1930s”, 19; Eichengreen, Golden Fetters, 21.

22 See Gardeström, Reklam och propaganda, 57-92 for advertising’s relationship to social democracy. For the more general development of advertising in the interwar period Marchand, Advertising the American dream is a classic, but only looks at the U.S. The historical development is described in Leiss et al. (eds.), Social Communication in advertising, Part I, but it also relies on Anglo-Saxon empirical examples. For the development of advertising techniques in Sweden 1900–1930, see Nilsson, Färger, former, ljus. For the 1930s, see Gardeström “Propaganda as marketing”.

23 Gardeström, Reklam och propaganda; Myrvang, Forbruks-agentene; Kloppenborg Madsen,“A history of Danish advertising, market research, and retailing institutions”; Heinonen & Konttinen, Nyt uutta Suomessa!.

24 Törmä, Reklaamia ei voi välttää, 20.

25 Törmä, Reklaamia ei voi välttää, 20–24, 62; Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 845; Kjæer-Hansen, “Traek af reklamens vilkår”, 268; Gardeström, Reklam och Propaganda, 60.

26 Reklamens dag 1930, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar, no. 1, 1930. See also Myrvang, Forbruks-agentene, 79-80 and Gardeström, Reklam och Propaganda, 27-56 about advertising at the Stockholm Exhibition.

27 “Reklamens män på Pariskongress”Svenska Dagbladet, 29 May 1928; “Fjorton nationer i kontinentalt reklamförbund”, Dagens Nyheter, 2 June 1928.

28 “Pohjoismaiden reklaamimiehet olleet koolla Tukholmassa”, Helsingin Sanomat, 29 August 1930.

29 Kjæer-Hansen, “Traek af reklamens vilkår”, 293; 297; ”Nordiskt reklamförbund”, Svenska Dagbladet, 30 October 1931. See also “Skandinavisk reklamearbejde”, Dansk Reklame, no. 7, 1930 and “Det nordiske reklame-samarbejde styrkes”, Dansk Reklame, no. 9, 1930. In Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 778, the author describes the membership in the continental organization as useless.

30 ”Reklamekongress i Berlin”, Arbeiderbladet, 25 July 1936.

31 “Reklamen binder Norden sammen”, Dansk Reklame, no. 9, 1937.

32 Nordisk Reklamekongres i København 1931, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar, no. 3, 1931.

33 Ibid. The importance of uniform and rational regulations was also brought up by the Norwegian minister of trade at a later congress, see Åpningstale, 2 Nordiske reklamekongress i Oslo 1933, Norges Reklameforbund og 2 Nordiske Reklamekongress, 1933; “Mainoskongressi”, Helsingin Sanomat 1 June 1931.

34 Myrvang, Forbruksagentene, 92; “Pohjoismainen mainoskongressi alkoi eilen Helsingissä”, Helsingin Sanomat, 1 June 1935; Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 1014–1018.

35 See for example “Reklameinstitutt skal oprettes ved Handelshøiskolen”, Bergens Arbeiderblad, 26 October 1936; “Provföreläsning i Köpenhamn”, Reklamnyheterna, 13 November 1936; the lectures in 1934 by Max Kjær-Hansen in Kjær-Hansen, “Et forsøk på en bibliografi”, Det Danske Marked, Max Kjær-Hansens 25-års professorjubilaeum, januar 1962; the different speeches in 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar : Stockholm 3-5 juni 1937, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1937, 325–340; “Korkeimman suomenkielisen mainosopetuksen järjestely maassamme”, Mainostaja, 1 May 1935; “Mainosmieskoulutus maassamme”, Mainostaja, 1 December 1936.

36 “Den handelsvidenskabelige laereanstalt i Køpenhavn har aabnet det første nordiske reklameinstitut”, Propaganda, no. 6, 1933.

37 “Reklameinstitutt skal oprettes ved Handelshøiskolen”, Bergens Arbeiderblad, 26 October 1936; see also 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar : Stockholm 3-5 juni 1937, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1937, 336–340.

38 Östlund, ”Gerhard Törnqvist”. The Swedish term is “distributionsekonomi”; Svend A. Holbaek, “Reklamearbejdet i Danmark siden 3 Nordiske reklame-kongres”, 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar, 1937; “Professor Max Kjær-Hansen”, Propaganda, no. 1, 1937; Max Kjær-Hansen, Portraits 1917–2017, Copenhagen Business School, http://100.cbs.dk/portrait/max-Kjær-hansen/, accessed 21 August, 2020.

39 Heinonen, Nyt uutta Suomessa!, 77; Kähkönen, Mainonnan historia Suomessa, 51.

40 Jensen-Eriksen & Kuorelahti, “Suuri Affääri”, 139.

41 Bendix Andersen, Saelgere for ett Amerikansk Forbrugsimperium?, 62.

42 The first Swedish agreements were reached in 1915, see Tariffcentralens Protokoll 1915-1916, Box 2, Archive of Swedish association of advertising agencies; see also Bihang I:1-3, Archive of the Swedish Newspaper publishers’ association, Swedish National Archive. For Norway see Dalseg, Fra adressecontoir til reklamebyrå, chapter 3.

43 Collection of Finnish Newspaper Owners’ Association I; Ca 3; Board meeting 17 November 1930, Finnish National Archive.

44 Kjæer-Hansen “Træk af reklamens vilkår 1920–1949”, 294.

45 “Nu ikke flere fraser, bitte”, Dansk Reklame, no. 6, 1929. See also “Reklamens etik inför Berlin”, Dagens Nyheter, 14 August 1929; “Reklamekongressen i Berlin blev åpnet søndag med 5000 deltagare, Bergens Arbeiderblad, 13 August 1929.

46 “What we have learned from British advertisers. What they can learn from us”, Aftonbladet, 9 July, 1936. The quote is in English in original.

47 Tiitta, Elämä mainosmiehenä. Artturi Raulan tie mainonnan ja mielipidetutkimuksen uranuurtajaksi, 10

48 “Pohjoismaiden reklaamimiehet”, Helsingin Sanomat, 29 August 1930.

49 Vår Reklam. Meddelanden från Hälsingborgs Reklamförening, 1934 & 1935.

50 See for example: Meddelanden från Svenska Reklamförbundet, no. 8, 1930 & no. 2, 1932; “Skandinaviskt reklammöte”, Dagens Nyheter, 11 November 1933; “Från Reklamfronterna”, Vår Reklam, Meddelanden från Hälsingborgs Reklamförening, December 1934 & February 1935.

51 “Norges reklameforbund og det internasjonale samarbeide”, Propaganda, no. 1, 1935; “Det nordiske samarbejde udbygges”, Dansk Reklame, no. 9, 1937.

52 Dalseg & Eidem, Stockholm turen Bededagshelgen 1935.

53 “Från Reklamfronterna”, Vår Reklam, Meddelanden från Hälsingborgs Reklamförening, February 1936. Other examples see: “Skaaneturen”, Dansk Reklame, no. 6, 1935; “Aalborg-Göteborg”, Dansk Reklame, no. 8, 1937.

54 “Nordisk Reklameutstilling i London 1937”, Propaganda, no. 2, 1937.

55 “Det nordiske samarbejde udbygges”, Dansk Reklame, no. 9, 1937; “Nästa nordiska reklamkongress i Bergen 1940”, Reklamnyheterna, 19 November 1937; “Enig nordisk expofront i framtiden?”, Reklamnyheterna, 21 October 1938.

56 “Reelt nordiskt samarbete”, Propaganda, no. 6, 1937.

57 Nordisk Reklamekongres i København 1931, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar, no. 3, 1931; ”En god reklam för god reklam i Köpenhamn”, Dagens Nyheter, 29 May 1931.

58 2. nordiske reklamekongress i Oslo 27-28 april 1933, Norges Reklameforbund og 2. Nordiske Reklamekongress, 1933, 5–14; "Oslon mainoskongressi", Kauppalehti, 4 May 1933; “Pohjoismaitten mainoskongressi Oslossa”, Suomen konttoristilehti, 1 May 1933.

59 Reklam är en kraft, Malmö, 1935; 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar : Stockholm 3-5 juni 1937, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1937.

60 “Mainoskongressi voitto mainonnalle”, Helsingin Sanomat, 2 June 1935; “Pohjoismaiset mainosmiehet Aulangolla”, Helsingin Sanomat, 3 June 1935.

61 “Suomalainen vaatii rehellistä mainontaa”, Helsingin Sanomat, 1 June 1935.

62 Olsson, “Nordic trade cooperation in the 1930s”; “Mainoskongressin jälkikaikuja”, Helsingin Sanomat, 13 June 1935; “Liten interjvu om reklamkongressen”, Dagens Nyheter, 5 June 1935; “Reklamkongress i Helsingfors”, Dagens Nyheter, 3 June 1935.

63 “Pohjoismainen mainoskongressi alkoi eilen Helsingissä”, Helsingin Sanomat, 1 June 1935; “Reklame-kongressen i Finland”, Dansk Reklame, no. 4, 1935.

64 See the program in: 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar : Stockholm 3-5 juni 1937, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1937. See also “Neljäs pohjoismainen mainoskongressi Tukholmassa”, Liiketaito, 1 June 1937.

65 See for example: the images in Reklamnyheterna, 4 June 1937, 12 and Reklamen for reklamen. 2. nordiske reklamekongress i Oslo 27-28 April 1933, Norges Reklameforbund og 2. Nordiske Reklamekongress.

66 Frederik Zeuthen, “Reklame eller videnskab”, Nationaløkonomisk Tidsskrift, no. 3, 1937; “Reklamkongressens facit”, Svensk Tidskrift, 1937.

67 Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 794–799.

68 Inför presidieskiftet i Nordiska Reklamförbundet, Reklamnyheterna, 19 November 1937.

69 “Reklamen binder Norden sammen”, Dansk Reklame, no. 9, 1937.

70 “Thank you U.S.A”, Svensk Reklam, 1939, 8.

71 Swett, Selling under the Swastika, Part I (quote on page 27). For American methods as role model in the Nordic context see for example Andersen, Køb og Salg i Danmark / udgivet af Berlingske Tidende i Anledning af Den 1. Nordiske Reklamekongres i København, 1931; Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 1014–1016.

72 V. Törnblom, “Är svensk reklampsykologi alltjämt fången i anglosachiska band?”, Reklamnyheterna, 26 February 1937.

73 “Pohjoismaitten mainoskongressi Oslossa”, Suomen konttoristilehti, 1 May 1933; “Vad är svensk reklam?” Svenska Dagbladet, 7 June 1937; In Myrvang, Forbruks-agentene, 95–97 there is a similar discussion about the “soul”(folkesjela) of Norwegian consumers.

74 “Pohjoismainen Kirja- ja mainostöiden näyttely”, Helsingin Sanomat, 1 June 1935; ”Suomalainen vaatii rehellistä mainontaa”, Helsingin Sanomat, 1 June 1935.

75 Pollay, “The Subsiding Sizzle”.

76 Trygve Dalseg, “Argument contra slagord i reklamen”, 4:e nordiska reklamkongressens handlingar : Stockholm 3-5 juni 1937, Stockholm: Norstedt, 1937; Dalseg made a similar point in an address to the advertising association in Oslo in 1937, “Formannsbytte i Reklameforeningen i Oslo”, Propaganda, no. 4, 1937.

77 Letter to the Association of Swedish advertising agencies 19 January 1938, appendix to the meeting protocol of the Association of Swedish advertising agencies 25 January 1938, Folder 8, Box 1, Archive of the Association of the Swedish advertising agencies, The Swedish Association of Communication Agencies; “Annonsbyråstrid’” Pressens Tidning, 1 February 1938.

78 See for example: “Plagiater og lov om otilbørlig konkurranse”, Propaganda, no. 9, 1933; see also Åström Rudberg, Sound and loyal business, 119–121.

79 Reklamens dag 1930, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar no. 1, 1930, Stockholm, 13. See also, Hopkins, My life in advertising.

80 Max Kjæer-Hansen, “Udenlandsk reklame og Dansk”, Dansk Reklame, no. 2, 1929. A similar debate about American advertising methods took place in the Danish advertising association in 1935, see “Vi har endnu meget at loere i Amerika”, Dansk Reklame, no. 7, 1935. For references to the importance of German advertising in Sweden see for example “Svensk reklam av idag”, Aftonbladet, 1 November 1935.

81 Styrelseberättelse för svenska reklamförbundet 1936, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar; “Brittiske reklamefolk på nordisk turne”, Arbeiderbladet, 11 February 1936; “Engelska reklammän besöker Stockholm”, Svenska Dagbladet, 11 July 1936.

82 “Purjehtiva kongressi istui eilen Helsingissä”, Helsingin Sanomat, 12 July 1936.

83 “What we have learned from British advertisers. What they can learn from us”, Aftonbladet, 9 July 1936. The original title and the whole article were in English.

84 Till Glasgowkongressen via Bergen, Reklamnyheterna, 8 April 1938; see also: “International reklamekongres i Glasgow”, Dansk Reklame, no. 8, 1937.

85 “Reklamekongressen i Paris får sitt pass påskrevet”, Propaganda, no. 8, 1937.

86 Thor Bjørn Schyberg, “Den Britiske reklamekongress”, Propaganda, no. 10, 1933.

87 “Fred genom reklam Glasgow motto”, Reklamnyheterna, 1 July 1938; “Glasgowkonkgressens eftermäle”, Reklamnyheterna, 12 August 1938.

88 “Wienkongressen får gott betyg”, Reklamnyheterna, 26 August 1938.

89 Kjær-Hansen, “Et forsøk på en bibliografi”, Det Danske Marked, Max Kjær-Hansens 25-års professorjubilaeum, January 1962; “Studiereise till Amerika”, Propaganda, no. 1, 1937.

90 Svenska Reklamförbundets styrelseberättelse för 1936, Svenska Reklamförbundets handlingar; “Tyskt råd leder reklamväsendet”, Dagens Nyheter, 14 October 1936; for a discussion on Reichard and the Werberat see Swett, Selling under the swastika, particularly part I.

91 “Rekordpublik på Reichards föredrag” and “Tyska reklamrådet vill med näringarna för näringarna stödja reklamen”, Reklamnyheterna, 16 October 1936.

92 See Funke, Regulating a Controversy, 99-–100 on the implementation of the code of standard; see also “Inför presidieskiftet i Nordiska Reklamförbundet”, Reklamnyheterna, 19 November 1937.

93 “Reklammännen i god sämja”, Dagens Nyheter, 2 November 1935; Björklund, Reklamen i svensk marknad, 791–792.

94 De Iulio & Vinti, “The Americanization of Italian advertising during the 1950s and the 1960s”, 289–290.

95 Schwarzkopf, “The subsiding sizzle of advertising history”; Idem, “From Fordist to creative economies: the de-Americanisation of European advertising cultures since the 1960s; Howard, ”The advertising industry and alcohol in interwar France”.

96 We find some of the last newspaper coverage about Nordic advertising congresses in Suomen Kuvalehti, 16 June 1962 and 12 June 1965; “Fortsatt expansion av öst-väst-handeln”, Svenska Dagbladet, 15 June, 1965.