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

Introduction

introduction The past two decades have witnessed an increased interest in advertising and consumer issues across scholarly disciplines. Fields ranging from business and advertising to sociology, American studies, history, mass communication ,arthistory,anthropology,andpsychologyarerecognizingthecentrality of consumption and consumer-related issues to their scholarly pursuits. Most scholars explore these issues from contemporary perspectives, although the recent appearance of historical accounts suggests the emergence of additional approaches.1 To date, however, the historical approach has favored the decades flanking World War II, leaving advertising and consumer issues that emerged in connection with war conditions largely undocumented.2 Thus, scholars have yet to provide a comprehensive account of the advertising industry’s behavior in the larger social, economic, and political context of the war or to explore the significance of these events for helping advertising to become an inviolable American institution in the postwar era. Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s therefore casts a wider net, mapping the ongoing tensions between advertisers, regulators, and consumer activists during the war and chronicling how advertisers turned a situation that by all rational accounts should have worked to their disadvantage into a priceless opportunity to cement their place in a postwar society defined by advertising and the consumer products it promoted. Advertising achieved this status between 1942 and 1945, economically at first, and then politically and culturally. A successful campaign to achieve favorable laws and regulations eliminated any realistic threat to the institution’s role in the economic system. This campaign included a significant public relations component, which was aimed at defining advertising as quintessentially democratic and American. The process had the crucial and enthusiastic support of the commercial media, especially the news media, and was complete by the middle of the twentieth century. The focus of this book, then, is on the political maneuverings of the American advertising industry during World War II. While the specific images produced by the industry during this period played an important role, they are not my main focus. My goal is to uncover the significant political and economic forces that shaped the industry, or what Frank W. Fox has so aptly termed “the ad behind the ad,” the use of advertising to bolster the corporate system behind the products.3 sources and terms The scarcity of existing scholarship has forced me to rely rather heavily on archival sources, newspaper accounts, and trade publications. The latter have both advantages and limitations. Trade magazines tend to be extremely sensitive , even alarmist, at times; their editors are prone to overstatement and exaggeration. They do, however, provide us with an opportunity to learn what industry leaders and the publications themselves wanted their less influential colleagues to know and think. Because trade publications frequently quote influential industry leaders, giving us glimpses into their concerns and strategies, they are an invaluable source for reconstructing an industry’s past. Issues surrounding World War II advertising involved a range of groups and organizations, which often had conflicting agendas. Thus it has been necessary for me to use several different archival collections to reconstruct individual and collective narratives. The Ad Council Papers, housed at the University of Illinois, have yielded excellent material, as have the papers of Advertising Council member Thomas D’Arcy Brophy, located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison. The Records of the Office of War Information at the National Archives II have been invaluable in the task of mapping government perspectives on wartime advertising, as have the records of several other government agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of the Treasury. The Consumers Union Archives in Yonkers, New York, has offered great insights into the organized critique of wartime advertising, and several collections at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, have aided my understanding of the relationship between advertisers and the government in the immediate postwar era. 2 . introduction Throughout the book, the terms advertisers, advertising, manufacturers, business, and advertising industry are frequently used. By advertising I mean the practice of promoting brand-name goods or services that are being offered for sale. Advertisements are typically prepared by creative talent at advertising agencies and placed in select mass media by strategic planners. Advertisers are the manufacturers that approve and pay for advertisements and advertising campaigns prepared by said advertising agencies. They also keep a close eye on political developments that might affect their business. I use advertising industry, business...