Workers Go Shopping in Argentina: The Rise of Popular Consumer Culture

3. Commercial Culture Becomes Popular: Advertising and the Challenges of a Changing Market

83 chApter 3 Commercial Culture Becomes Popular Advertising and the Challenges of a Changing Market In the mid-1930s, advertising experts believed that there were only a few qualified agencies in Argentina and high-quality advertising in the country was still exceptional. In its evolution, leaders in the field contended, Argentine advertising followed the same trends as the country’s productive sectors. In 1945, an article in the advertising yearbook Síntesis Publicitaria argued that until the early 1940s, there had been no real national advertising because of the lack of a national industry. An economy dependent on industrial imports was contingent on foreign advertising, especially on the adaptation of imported ads and the reproduction of advertising formulas from abroad, mainly from the United States. Although foreign admen acknowledged that “the Argentine is a very proud national and reacts 84 Chapter 3 more favorably to ads written in his own language, with local colloquialisms and local place-names,” they also agreed that early twentieth-century advertising was characterized by deficient translations, inappropriate sales arguments, and a profound lack of information on Argentine traditions and culture.1 Still, due to business and personal contacts and to the comparatively undeveloped state of the field in the country, advertisers and particularly foreign companies preferred to employ international advertising agencies. In turn, some of these agencies contributed to this preference by disseminating a truly biased view of local admen that stressed their racial and cultural inferiority. In 1929, the managing director of one of the largest U.S. advertising companies in South America spoke to an audience of admen in the United States, stating that “the little I could say about advertising agency methods in Argentina would be similar to someone talking to a group of leading doctors here in New York about witch doctors in Africa.”2 Partly because of these prejudices, up until the late 1930s, agencies in Argentina were inclined to bring their top executives and staff members from abroad, further inhibiting the growth of national advertising and the training of local specialists. In fact, to gain new clients, national advertising companies often masked their origins by adopting foreign names. In 1931, the Argentine founder of Best Agency explained that he and his partner “were familiar with the Buenos Aires market and knew from experience that a new agency with a North American name would be taken more seriously than one with an Argentine name.”3 Less than two decades later, assessments of advertising in Argentina had become highly optimistic. In celebration of advertising day, advertising agencies declared that advertising is the flower of contemporary life: it is the affirmation of optimism and happiness, attracting the eye and the mind. It is the greatest manifestation today of the vitality and power of our society, of its gift for invention and its imagination. Advertising is the most outstanding result of the social efforts to modernize the world and its needs.4 Advertising experts concurred that the dynamic and expansive postwar industrial economy had fostered national advertising and this, in turn, had played a major role in consolidating a national mass consumer market. As concrete proof of this process, funds devoted to advertising went from 85 Commercial Culture Becomes Popular an estimated 50 million pesos in 1945 to 2.5 billion in 1954. These growing investments ensured record-high volumes of advertisements in a variety of channels. Confirming this development, by the early 1950s, the number of advertising agencies across the country had increased and the level of professionalization and specialization of admen had improved markedly. Changes were so deep that they reached the very makeup of the profession . Although agencies still employed predominantly middle- and upperclass male executives and staff, these employees were, in contrast to the recent past, born in Argentina. The nationalization of the advertising industry is further manifest in mid-twentieth-century agency names taken from autochthonous animal and plant species like Albatros, Condor, and Irupé, which proves that there was no longer a need to conceal the national origins of the majority of the advertising companies. The growth and strength of the field was also evident in the rising professional organization within the trade. In addition to the Asociación Argentina de Agencias de Publicidad (Argentine Association of Advertising Agencies) and the Asociación Argentina de la Propaganda (Argentine Advertising Association) founded in the 1930s, a number of solid professional associations emerged in this period. These...