Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s

Chapter 7. Peace and the Reconversion of the Advertising Council

7 Peace and the reconversion of the Advertising Council The War Advertising Council had been created with the understanding that it would be a temporary organization, to be terminated at the end of the war. Its success at improving the advertising industry’s standing had far exceeded expectations. In just a few years, the formerly hostile relationship between the industry and Washington had changed to one of mutual respect and cooperation, leading the organization’s officers to agree that continuing its activities would be a wise strategy.1 In contrast to the war years, when the WAC’s main role was to communicate the government’s home-front instructions, the postwar council selected campaigns from proposals submitted by both government agencies and private interest groups, using them strategically for its own political ends while staying safely within the parameters set by the federal government. This chapter traces the history of the War Advertising Council as it evolved back into the Advertising Council. The chapter explores the trend toward politically explicit postwar campaigns and shows how the council’s projects helped the advertising and business communities take on an important role in the fight against communism and in building a postwar economic system based on business dominance. the War Advertising Council looks Ahead The Allies’ invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, signaled the end of the war. By September the WAC had established a Post-War Planning Committee, with Chester LaRoche in charge. Warning that reconversion would be a tumultuous period, and that “the white light of information and persuasion” would be needed “as perhaps never before,” the council began to seriously consider its postwar options.2 Soon the discussion about the possibilities for a formal postwar advertising organization spread to the business community at large, prompting Tide to sponsor a debate on advertising ’s social responsibilities. A powerhouse panel was convened in early 1945, headed by public relations and management counsel to the American Home Product Corporation Leo Nejelski. It also included clergyman and professor of applied Christianity at Union Theological Seminary Reinhold Niebuhr, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission James L. Fly, Yale University professor Harold D. Lasswell, Columbia University sociologist Bernhard J. Stern, and the president of the WAC, James Webb Young.3 Niebuhr, who would later become a member of the postwar council’s Public Policy Committee, joined Lasswell and Stern in expressing concern that public service advertising would now be more attuned to the needs ofbusiness propaganda than to the public’s need for useful information. As one of the country’s experts on propaganda, Lasswell was particularly worried that advertising’s special relationship with the commercial mass media would give it an unfair advantage over its political opponents in getting its views before the public. In response, Young said simply that it was up to the opponents of any issue to take care of themselves.4 Concerns such as these reinforced the importance of crafting a postwar council that would studiously avoid controversy and emphasize public service above all else. Although the purpose of the postwar organization—to facilitate a business-friendly environment—was implicitly political, its legitimacy would collapse if the new group came to be viewed as a partisan entity producing self-interested propaganda.5 Pointing to the “many critical national problems” that would require the understanding and cooperation of each and every citizen, President Roosevelt considered it“vitally importantthatthe working partnershipbetweenbusiness and government, which so successfully brought information to the people in wartime, continue into the post-war period.”6 And in a move that calmed an always jittery advertising community, Harry S. Truman, who during his tenure as head of the Senate Committee to Investigate the War Program had caused advertisers a great many worries, emerged as a full-fledged supporter of the council after his presidential inauguration in 1945.7 Creating the Postwar Council As the postwar plans came together, there was an important new twist: a Public Policy Committee (initially called the Public Advisory Committee) and an Industrial Advisory Committee were added to the council to assist with 154 . chapter 7 selecting campaigns. The former was chaired by Evans Clark, the executive director of the Twentieth Century Fund, and consisted of “leaders of public opinion” drawn from diverse fields of American society, who would serve the council in a capacity similar to that of the trustees of a large foundation.8 This did...