A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio

5. The 1930s’ Turn to the Hard Sell: Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s Soap Opera Factory

5 The 1930s’ Turn to the Hard Sell Blackett-Sample-Hummert’s Soap Opera Factory The impact of the October 1929 stock market crash was not immediately felt or understood by many in the advertising industry. ‘‘Business itself is healthy,’’ argued advertising columnist Kenneth Goode in November 1929.1 The president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies asserted, ‘‘The main damage by the stock market situation may be psychological and that condition is one which advertising is best able to correct.’’2 If the economic crisis was a matter of perception, according to this rationale, the advertising industry ought to be able to help solve the crisis. Goode suggested that ‘‘While the bankers are busy on finances, let advertising men volunteer to take charge of public sentiment.’’3 However, the advertising industry itself soon suffered from the deepening crisis. The massive contraction in production and consumption in the 1930s not only led to a drop in advertising revenues but humiliatingly undermined its claim that it had been partly responsible for the boom. As advertisers cut back on advertising expenditures to preserve shrinking profit margins, agencies were forced into bankruptcy, consolidations, pay cuts, and layoffs. The advertising industry was on the defensive during the Depression —not only from disillusioned clients but also from negative public opinion that buoyed the consumers’ movement during the 1930s.4 To combat the spiral down in consumption, many advertisers turned to the hard sell. Top hard sell proponents, such as Frank Hummert, rose to greater prominence as advertisers hoped that the repetitive, reasonwhy , rational appeals of the hard sell would stimulate sales. The hard sell strategy became particularly prominent on radio, where Hummert’s agency, Blackett-Sample-Hummert (B-S-H), dominated 104 | Soap Opera Factory daytime programming, especially serial dramas aimed at housewives. Hummert’s thorough application of hard sell ‘‘reason-why’’ advertising strategies to serial dramas was an almost total integration of advertising theory with practice. While serials had appeared in nearly all media before radio (including books, films, newspapers, magazines, and comic strips), the radio serial, soon known as the ‘‘soap opera,’’ was more than a narrative strategy; it was also an advertising strategy. An analysis of B-S-H’s practices will illustrate their specific and deliberate application of advertising strategies to program texts. B-S-H’s production practices, such as its ‘‘assembly line’’ scriptwriting process, strongly influenced subsequent broadcasting production processes. Although Hummert-produced soap operas ended during the early television era, their impact was such that when the prototypical radio era program comes to mind, it is likely to be a Hummert serial. Advertising on the Defensive during the Depression Admen faced challenges from two fronts: external critics who demanded reforms and increased federal regulation, and their clients, the advertisers, who questioned advertising’s efficacy. On the first front, the level of public criticism was unprecedented in the 1930s. The advertising historian Ralph Hower noted in 1939 that the ‘‘public attitude toward advertising and private enterprise as a whole’’ had gone through a ‘‘profound change’’ at the advent of the Depression, when advertising ‘‘was an obvious field for attack.’’5 Having appeared blind to the severity of the downturn, admen were, according to Hower, ‘‘subjected to public ridicule and to sharp attacks by reformers,’’ forcing change and adjustment in ‘‘every phase of advertising.’’6 Strategies had to be revamped, reconsidered, and reconfigured. Perhaps admen had overreached as ‘‘missionaries of modernity’’; they seemed unable to explain the crisis and ill equipped to repair it. In a tell-all book, Our Master’s Voice (1934), former adman James Rorty exposed the corruptions of the advertising industry as he had experienced them at BBDO. He mockingly described Madison Avenue as a place where appearances were maintained even as the foundation was cut from underneath it: The ‘‘priests of the temple of advertising go about the streets Soap Opera Factory | 105 in snappy suits and tattered underwear.’’7 The magazine Ballyhoo (1931–39), a forerunner of the satiric Mad magazine, consisted primarily of advertising parodies and proved so popular that it attracted advertisers .8 Its success, as well as that of imitators, such as Hullabaloo, indicated a widening backlash against advertising. Who was attacking the advertising industry? ‘‘The vocal critics,’’ according to one adman, ‘‘are mainly: Women’s Clubs, the Home Economics Associations, some Government Officials, Consumers Research and the College Campus.’’9 If...