A Cultural History of Advertising

"It was a sound I hadn't heard for at least a decade, and there it was suddenly out of context bringing back all sorts of strange and odd feelings just as I was setting up my computer preparing to start my class. And appropriately so, the class was Soap, Sex, and Cigarettes: A Cultural History of Advertising. This truly was a cultural moment, for me anyhow.

Here this sound -so familiar, so distinct and so loaded with meaning and memory good and bad starts...flick, flick, flick flick. Where was it coming from?......

Eavesdrop at the heart of a man and you'll hear his pulse beat Zip-po...Zop-po...Zip-po

That's because he wants you to give hum something he'll keep, and use, for years and years. Even if he lives to be a hundred, he'll never stop using and treasuring a trusty Zippo.

Captain Midnight and the Secret Squadron. Classic fare from the 50's.

Vintage ads are often terrible, but these holiday ads take terrible to a new low. Whether it's Santa as a sex object or a cigarette carton for a sleigh, these ads are festive, fun, and totally inappropriate.

 

The fine art of Staying Lovely..oh it's because of Pepsi

Aren't today's People wonderful?

Such fun to be with

The Sociables prefer Pepsi

Picture of Poise

Modern refreshment is Lght Refreshment

 

oh the headlines!

 Fortune.com publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives.

 

selected quotes from 1956 article:

 

"And when one woman does a good job in a corporation that has been skeptical about women, promotion comes a little easier for the next woman.Some companies are beginning to allow women to take their management-training courses"

 

"But women's progress in the professions is mixed. While the total number of women in the professional group has risen substantially, the ratio of women professionals to men professionals, and to all women workers, actually has declined a little."

 

Equal but special

"The "special" qualities of female executives have been subjected to examination by Social Research, Inc., of Chicago. In a study of sixty successful women, it was found that their common attributes were day-to-day practicality ("somewhat greater than a random sampling of men"), organizational skill, sensitivity to people, and adaptability ("much more than a run of successful men, they show a flair for moving with the situation . . . for changing when they find a particular approach unrewarding"). They also had unusual energy and confidence, and they took pleasure in achievement."

 

Attiudes that women were up against:

 

Westinghouse, Pittsburgh: "We look for women to get more and more into everything, especially in consumers' specialties, where they could be really helpful."

 

National Steel Corp., Pittsburgh: "Women are found just where you'd expect to find them, as heads of stenographic departments and the like. Steel is traditionally a man's game. We never gave women much thought."

Ruth Fair, president of R. Fair Co., Dallas designer and manufacturer of women's sportswear: "Few women are in top executive jobs because it's too tough."

 

Annette Ducheon, vice president of Spartan Mills, Spartanburg, South Carolina: "I definitely think women can get top executive jobs if they want them, but comparatively few have made the decision in their own minds that they want to take on that kind of career."

 

An executive of a Detroit automobile company: "Women aren't able to stand up to the stress and strain of the business."

 

An executive of another Detroit automobile company : "Women are not top executives because they are not interested enough in the business to devote thirty years to working their way up through the ranks."

 

Mrs. Lee Worthington, secretary and advertising director of Tranter Manufacturing Co. (refrigeration and heating), Lansing, Michigan: "I run across many young women with the ability to get ahead, but they refuse the responsibility that is offered to them."

 

Lillian G. Madden, president of Falls City Brewing Co., Louisville: "I've found that men are very fair. In many cases women aren't willing to make the sacrifices necessary to work up. They just won't stick it out like a man."

 

Margaret Divver, advertising manager of John Hancock Mutual Life, Boston: "Progress depends largely on the initiative of the individual woman--with a willingness to make a sacrifice. Women just don't want to pay the price."

 

 Rock n Roll history.

Bad news, folks. THERE ARE NO Z-RAYS!...

It's amazing how Superman can fly thru the air as fast as he does with an open box of corn flakes and not spill/lose any!! Not only are the boxes open (without top flaps), but they also appear to have no inner-bag in the box!!??!! But that's why they call him Superman!!

 

This "integrated" commercial appeared at the end of several episodes of "THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN" during the 1955-'56 season.

Zippo has been an iconic American brand—but these days, it's lighting campfires

An interview with Gail Collins about the groundbreaking feminist book

"Later, women who devoted their lives to the domestic arts didn't get the respect that the farm wife had gotten because they had no economic role. That's when they came up with a vision of the "total" woman, the woman celebrated in women's magazines, the middle-class woman, the moral compass. Men were in the marketplace and no longer had time to be moral compasses. This job was elevated emotionally but didn't have any economic point, so there was a loss of power and respect in a country where the economic role is everything. Betty Friedan was born into this era, in which women still had all those issues, but being a housewife, which used to be exhausting, wasn't all that hard anymore. Raising children was hard but only lasted for a short chunk of a woman's life. Friedan wasn't only a housewife—she was a freelance writer and had other roles. But her complaints about that one role, the power of her own rage and dissatisfaction seemed to resonate amazingly....

 

"It is becoming unquestionably more and more common for the woman to attempt to combine both home and child care and an outside activity, which is either work or career. Increasing numbers train for professional careers. When these two spheres are combined it is inevitable that one or the other will become of secondary concern and, this being the case, it is certain that the home will take that position. This is true, if only for the practical reason that no one can find and hold remunerative employment where the job itself doesn't take precedence over all other concerns. All sorts of agencies and instrumentalities have therefore been established to make possible the playing of this dual role. These are all in the direction of substitutes for the attention of the mother in the home and they vary from ordinary, untrained domestic service through the more highly trained grades of such service, to the public and private agencies now designed for the care, supervision and emotional untanglement of the children. The day nursery and its more elegant counterpart, the nursery school, are outstanding as the major agencies which make it possible for women to relinquish the care of children still in their infancy.....

Work that entices women out of their homes and provides them with prestige only at the price of feminine relinquishment...

 

( I wonder if Dr Marynia Farnham missed it that she was a working woman?)