Advertising and Consumption: Reconfiguring European Society in the 20th century (original) (raw)

A Gaze Through the Mirror: Advertising and History

Historians constantly struggle with the difficulties of decoding the signs of the times according to which certain segments of history are recognised, become specific and distinct from others. Driven by the desire to quench their intellectual curiosity and the need to find out the truth, they are forced to add, select, group, reject and doubt documents and facts, searching for fragments from which they will attempt to piece together the picture of a past time. This picture is always a more or less pale copy of the "original"-of a past reality, once consisting of an uncountable multitude of threads which linked the moments of each individual life, of a network which it is impossible to connect again in the same shape due to its unique complexity. The obsessive devotion to studying political, military or diplomatic history and the pyrotechnic effects which have always accompanied wrangles over land, power and riches still cause a sort of "night blindness" in members of the sect of worshippers of the muse Clio, preventing them from seeing all those "ordinary", transient phenomena which much less noticeably, but still persistently and strongly influence the forming of everyday human existence. The despised (past) "quotidian life" is much harder for the historian to get to, also because it appears in countless hard-to-grasp forms; to study it, a new heuristics, a new methodology and different thinking about the past are needed in order to "resuscitate" some slice of the erased quotidian life. Sources for this reconstruction and analysis cannot always be subjected to criticism in the way that the strict old rules made for reading and understanding classical sources demand. They are also more numerous and varied, they require adaptability in the researcher and count on the awakening of his inventiveness and imagination. Also, most "testimony" about past quotidian life is very flimsy: the nature of their function was not to last long and testify. Their short-lived utility, like some self-destructing "genetic code", determined in advance the fate of these sources chosen at the historian's will. All this certainly applies to advertising (of goods and services), too, as it can be seen as an interesting additional historical source for studying economic and social history. What made this "Champollionic" problem into the nightmare of researchers of the modern era is the selection and reading of these "codes" from the enormous quantity of new textual and visual material which multiplied daily at increasing speed. The explosion of media in this short century (whose fuse was carelessly lit by Guttenberg) brought down the dams which had held the flow of information at a perceptually more bearable level. Conversion of most of the world into consumers of goods and information was supported in an organised fashion since the beginning of the 19th century by the introduction of a discipline which would with its special language, iconography and rules of application influence the creation of a "sign system" according to which periods would be recognised. Advertising and advertisements would become a special kind of communication typical to modern societies. This universality and readability-put in the service of selling goods and ideas-influenced the shaping of quotidian life, but also the creation of a Utopian image, in our country, too, of the "wide world" from which all wonders come. Here, too, the establishing of advertising was connected to the creation of the modern bourgeoise as a sepsocial stratum capable of accepting (wether selectively or unselectively ia

Selling the crisis: British and German advertising industry during the 1970s

2013

Within Western Europe, the 1970s are usually perceived as a decade of uncertainty and decline, marking a turning point towards 'post-industrial' societies. Economic difficulties and political instability gave rise to a climate of constant crisis. However, this was not the case for the advertising industry. Although it also suffered from cuts in advertising expenditure, the amount of money spent on advertising actually increased throughout the decade. Indeed, it even doubled in Germany. This thesis seeks to show how advertising industries in Germany and Great Britain managed to overcome economic difficulties, changes in consumption patterns and criticism thanks to a burgeoning consumerist movement. By focusing on how advertisers perceived the commercial environment and attempted to influence consumption in the interests of their clients, it becomes clear that advertising is more than just business expenditure. Rather, advertising illustrates how attitudes towards consumption ...

Fears of Enchantment: Advertising Theory in Britain and the Making of a Modern Myth

Cultural History, 2023

This article examines the first emergence of theories of advertising in the psychological language of the nonrational mind in Britain. The theories appeared from the close of the nineteenth century in a new genre of advertising literature: books, essays, pamphlets, course offerings, and periodical publications dedicated to advertising. In dialogue with a forgotten 1911 novel by Oliver Onions, Good Boy Seldom: A Romance of Advertisement, the analysis considers the anxieties that attended the new theories, which attributed unusual power to advertising and therefore challenged perceptions of the capitalist economy as disenchanted and disenchanting. It also shows the efforts that professional advertisers made to reconcile their theories with views of consumers as rational, and of the advertising industry itself as a rationalizing force. Their efforts suggest a misinterpretation by Onions and critics of advertising that he foreshadowed, who portrayed advertising professionals as bold canvassers of the public psyche. In fact, they were insecure and uncomfortable with their terms of expertise, and developed them because mounting criticisms leveled at advertising left them little choice. Nonetheless, Onions captured the lasting power of this transformation. Despite their insecurity, early professionals created a myth still harbored today, that advertisers are masters of subliminal control in capitalism.

Advertising, the Media and Globalisation

The media industries are different from other industries because of their privileged place in social communication, and the extensive influence they are seen to wield upon public opinion, cultural norms and values, and the popular imaginary. This truism applies particularly to the advertising industry, for not only does advertising have a high visibility in the cultural environment, but it is the vital source of the revenue that supports and motivates all commercial media. It could even be said that advertising is the media industry which stands behind all the other media industries. However, research approaches of past decades have tended to concentrate upon the products of the advertising industry, that is, advertisements, and their cultural significance, rather than to penetrate beyond to the industry as such – its political and cultural economy; the relations between advertisers, advertising agencies and the media; and actual advertising practices. More contemporary research has focussed directly on these fundamentals, particularly in the context of globalisation and the complex transition from 'old' to 'new' media (Sinclair 2012). The very meaning of 'advertising' as we have known it is in flux, for the advent of the internet has transformed the character of advertising media as formerly understood. The comfortable relationship which has existed between advertisers, agencies and media throughout the golden age of mass media in decades past – in which the media would offer content that could attract audiences so as to sell access to those audiences to advertisers via the agencies – is a 'business model' which is now under severe pressure. The interactive properties of the internet, with the affordances of social networking and direct commercial transactions, have precipitated a shift in the balance of power between advertisers and consumers, just as they have caused the still-dominant advertising media of television and print to lose growth in advertising revenue in favour of the internet. Meanwhile, on the internet itself, emergent new business models compete for hegemony.