Brief lectures in

Media History

Chapter 6 Advertising & public

relations(9 of 15)

The image Ballyhoo: PT Barnum & Thomas Lipton

First ad agencies: JW Thompson, NW Ayer

Patent medicine scandals 1900sPR vs muckraking: Ivy Lee

WWI & the Creel Committee Scientific PR: Edward Bernais

Tobacco ads in print and on air Ad men (and women) New agencies for the digital age

This lecture is about …

Rise of the Image The rise of imagery in culture,

commerce and politics is the second of four media revolutions in our history

Along with photos and cinema, images have a central place in the history of advertising and public relations

Imagery, said historian Daniel Boorstin in the 1960s, had become so important that it led to pseudo-events replacing real events.

Sandwich men London early 1800s

“A piece of human flesh between two slices of paste board.” -- Charles Dickens

Advertising and the Penny Press

With the advent of industrial presses and greatly expanded circulation, penny press editors realized that they could sell their newspapers at one or two cents, actually losing money on circulation, but then regaining it with advertising revenue.

This business idea is one of the most important in media history.

P.T. Barnum

One of the most celebrated showmen and public relations agents of the 1800s was P. T. (Phineas Taylor) Barnum.

Founder of Barnum’s American Museum in New York and a popular traveling circus, Barnum understood the public’s taste for hokum and ballyhoo.

Barnum’s Museum 1841 - 1865

Philosophy of Advertising Men of business are hardly aware of the

immense change which a few years have wrought in the power of the public press . . . He who would build a business must be like the times . . . To neglect (advertising) is like resolving never to travel by steam nor communicate by telegraph. It is to close one’s eyes to the light and insist on living in perpetual darkness. . . . He who neglects the advantages of advertising not only robs himself of his fair advantages, but bestows the spoils on his wiser rivals. (Greeley, 1850)

First Ad Agencies London 1812 George Reynell

◦Legal ads New York 1841 Volney Palmer

◦Quickly branched out to other cities N.W. Ayer & Son 1869

◦Open book ad agency / ethical … but … ◦Placed patent medicine ads

J. Walter Thompson 1878 ◦Full Service ad agency – Copy writing,

design, placement

Four models of ad agencies 1. Newspaper agency (taking orders for

ads); 2. Brokers / space jobbing (selling space

to clients and then buying the ad space);3. Space wholesaling (buying large

amounts of advertising space at a discount and then reselling the space to clients at regular rates);

4. Advertising concession (contracting for advertising space and taking the risk of selling the space).

Uneeda Biscuit N. W. Ayer agency, for the firstpackaged ready-to-eat food from Nabisco

Thomas Lipton

"What's the matter with the pig, Pat?”

"Sure, Sirr, he's an orphan so, out of pity, I'm taking him to Lipton's!"

Once the joke was known, pigs with ribbons tied in their tails would be paraded through the streets with signs showing that they were “Lipton’s orphans.” This and other low stunts made Lipton very rich.

Advertising unregulated Anything could be advertised

without concern for the public until around 1906 – 1914 regulation in the US by: ◦ Federal Trade Commission ◦ Food and Drug Administration

For instance, Grape nuts cereal were advertised as a cure for appendicitis

Opium & cocaine dispensed ‘P

ate

nt’

medic

ine

‘Patent’ medicine

Until the 20th century, advertising was a lawless frontier.

Samuel H Adams was a muckraker who exposed patent medicines in magainzes.

Samuel Hopkins Adams

A “red clause” in the advertising contracts allowed the patent medicine makers to void the contract in case of adverse legislation. So newspaper publishers had an interest in ensuring that no laws regulating patent medicine were passed.‘P

ate

nt’

medic

ine And worst of all, the

media was blocking reform, Adams said.

Image shift: c. 1910

Ivy Lee – Standard Oil shill In 1914, a state militia killed 19 people, including two women and 11 children, during a coal miners’ strike in Ludlow, Colorado.

Ivy Lee was dispatched to the scene by the mine’s owner, Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. Lee blamed the victims for carelessness in starting a fire, and then circulated a bulletin, “How Colorado Editors View the Strike,” quoting 11 editors who supported the coal industry. All 11 worked for newspapers owned by the coal industry. The rest of the state’s 320 editors were not quoted.

In 1934, Lee fell into disrepute when ties between Standard Oil and the Nazi German government were exposed.

Protecting the monopoly

The campaign that helped American Telephone and Telegraph hold on to its monopoly in the antitrust era was designed by Ivy Lee and N. W. Ayer. It emphasized reliability and universal service.

Creel committee 1917

Washington Post view of WWI censorship group.

The Camels are coming! Most people smoked cigars, not

cigarettes, until this ad campaign started in 1913.

Ayer copied its Uneeda biscuitcampaign. Camels would be introduced into each market

with teaser ads.

First: “Camels” and then “The Camels are coming” and

then “Tomorrow there’ll be more

camels in this town than in all Asia and Africa combined!”

and finally “Camel Cigarettes are here.”

Edward Bernais - Scientific PR Bernays's efforts to inform the public about the dangers of smoking earn him praise from Action on Smoking & Health in the 1960s. He said if he had known in 1928 what he knew about smoking in the 1960s, he would have refused to work with the American Tobacco Company’s campaign to get women smoking.

Torchesof freedom

The “scientific” part of

scientific PR involved

consultation with

psychologists about why

people liked certain

products.

Mrs. Taylor-Scott Hardin parades down New York's Fifth Avenue with her husband while smoking "torches of freedom” a protest for equality with men.

Best ad copy

ever

Somewhere west of Laramie

there’s a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl

who knows what I’m talking

about…

Changing ad designs

1863 1917

Changing ad designs 2

C 1942 C 1972

War Advertising Council Organized in 1942

voluntary ad campaigns. But industry was under investigation

at the time. “The industry launched

a frontal campaign to protect

itself, promoting its importance to the war effort and construing

itself as ‘the information industry’

After the war it was renamed the Advertising

Council.

Ad guys: Leo Burnett

(1892–1971) believed in personalizing and sentimentalizing products, creating icons like the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Charlie the Tuna, Tony the Tiger, and most famously, the Marlboro Man.

Burnett’s Marlboro man First conceived in 1954

Market research showed men were worried about being seen with filter cigarettes, which were considered feminine.

Hence, the macho.

Ironically, the actor here (William Thourlby) did not smoke, and was not one of the four or five cowboys who died of lung cancer.

Barney Rubble, 1950s

TV tobacco ads banned 1971Tobacco advertising was banned

from broadcasting by Congress starting January 2, 1971. All printed advertising must now display a health warning from the US Surgeon General.

The 2010 - 15 controversy in the US involves highly graphic health warnings.

David Ogilvy

(1911–1999) said brand personality draws consumers to products. At the height of his career in 1962, Time magazine called him “the most sought after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”

1972 Campbell’s ad

More ad guys

Norman B. Norman (1914–1991), one of New York’s original ad men, tied advertising to theories of empathy for clients including Colgate-Palmolive, Revlon, Ronson, Chanel and Liggett & Myers.

Helen Lansdowne Resor (1886–1964), worked for J. Walter Thompson to help market products to women. Woodbury Soap’s ad, “The skin you love to touch,” was typical of her use of personal appeals to attract interest.

Ad guys: Rosser Reeves Rosser Reeves (1910–1984) was a pioneer

of broadcast advertising who saw repetition of a “Unique Selling Proposition” (USP) as the key theory. These were often translated into slogans (such as M&M’s candy that “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”) or dramatic demonstrations. Reeves was famous for annoying pain reliever commercials with cartoons that would depict anvils inside people’s heads being hit with hammers. In one commercial, a nerve-wracked daughter shouts “Mother Please! I’d rather do it myself.”

Reeves 2 Reeves was the

model for the protagonist (Don Draper) in the TV Mad Men

Reeves generated millions for his clients, especially Anacin

The world’s most annoying advertisement – Click for video link.

(1911—1982) developed off-beat, attention getting campaigns that made him a leader in the “creative revolution” of the 1960s and 70s. His “think small” campaign for Volkswagen was the top campaign of the 20th century, said Advertising Age.

Ad guys: William Bernbach

Ad guys: Leo Clow (1942– ) took Bernbach’s creative revolution of the 1970s into the next generation, crafting television ads like the famous Apple “1984” commercial. Also Energizer Bunny, Taco Bell chihuahua, and California Cooler campaigns.

Ad guys: Saatchi & Saatchi

Maurice and Charles Saatchi (1946– ) and (1943– ) were among the first to take a global approach to advertising when they founded Saatchi & Saatchi in 1970.

Through a series of mergers and acquisitions in the 1980s, the company became the world’s largest advertising super-agency by 1988. The Saatchi brothers split off from the main agency, now owned by Publicis Groupe, to run a smaller creative agency M&C Saatchi.

Adverts as free speech

New York Times v Sullivan, 1964

Important US libel case

Did civil rights groups have the freedom to criticize Alabama state government in advertising?

US Supreme court gave a very strong unanimous answer yes.

Adverts as free speech

If ads are “political” then they should be protected speech.

But what is political?

Is a pharmaceutical ad targeted towards senior citizens political?

Is a liquor ad aimed at college students political?

Declines in advertising