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“THIS IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR” MOTIVATIONAL WAR ADS The best of the wartime admen were smart, as first-rate admen always have to be—smart, savvy, and canny mass psychologists, if only by instinct or intuition. As already discussed in Chapter 1, from Pearl Harbor to the Japanese surrender, home front America didn’t need to be sold on patriotism even in its literal dictionary sense of simply “love for one’s country.” Knowing this, the advertising industry broke down large philosophical abstractions like “patriotism,” “liberty,” and “democracy” into their smaller components, some still quite lofty, others more tangible and even mundane, so that the average American could more easily relate to them not just intellectually but emotionally. To that end ads were crafted to appeal to emotions ranging from sentiment and nostalgia to fear and even selfish self-interest. The admen then used the various segments of these abstractions and ideals as the basis for ads whose aim was not so much a call for specific actions as it was a reminder to the home front of why we were at war, why we had to win, and what we’d stand to lose if we lost the war. That admen broke down the large abstractions into more easily digested parts is obvious in the copy and art of such motivational war advertising . One striking ad fairly early in the war makes it explicit that this was how such ads were conceptualized and crafted. Starting in early October 1942, the United States Rubber Company placed in such magazines as Time, Newsweek, and the Post a brief series of ads with the unvarying heading “WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?” In the Post on October 24, that question was answered with, “ . . . THE HOMELY FRAGMENTS OF DAILY LIFE . . . words like freedom or liberty draw close to us only when we break them down into the homely fragments of daily life” (49). The ad continued with concrete examples like “the strollers on Main Street who gossip to their hearts’ content, unaware of such a thing as a concentration camp.” Sometimes motivational copy appeared in ads (((((((( (((((((( (((((((( (((((((( 2 asking for the public’s support in the war effort, or even in ads selling a product, but there were also strictly motivational ads whose sole purpose was to help readers grasp the reasons that America was at war without asking for their direct participation. These ads are featured in this chapter. “The Blessings of Liberty” and “The Pursuit of Happiness” Motivational war ads all have to do with some aspect or aspects of “The American Way of Life,” or what I prefer to call American values, since there is little unanimity as to just what the American way of life is. Everyone who has ever discoursed on the concept has stopped short of offering any concise definition of “The American Way.” The closest they come is in maintaining that “The American Way of Life” has its roots in the Declaration of Independence’s “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ,” to which some people also attach the word “democracy” and Americans ’ privileges and liberties as established by the Bill of Rights. Other frequently mentioned components of “The American Way of Life” have been freedom, individual responsibility, individualism, freedom of choice, and even a high standard of living. Free enterprise gets into “The American Way” by a loose, fuzzy reading of “the pursuit of happiness” that embraces not just individual opportunity but also private businesses operating in a competitive, generally unregulated environment. Even “American values” doesn’t entirely describe what the United States was fighting for unless “values” as expressed in motivational ads is expanded beyond its usual meaning of a society’s accepted principles or standards. The “values” in many such ads embraced more tangible, down-to-earth traditions, social and cultural norms, and pastimes that Americans value—a Fourth of July parade and picnic, owning one’s home, Sunday dinner with the folks, baseball games, ice cream sodas, and those other qualities of life that make America, in today’s parlance, a “comfort zone” for its people. Yet motivational war ads didn’t wholly ignore the loftier ideals of American society, some ads even reaching back to both facts and myths about the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for their messages. Although numerous war ads cited the Constitution—mostly parts of the Bill of Rights—only a purely motivational ad placed by the Chesapeake and Ohio Lines in Business Week on November 27, 1943, invoked...

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