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The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Robert Griffith
Robert Griffith
Affiliation:
Professor of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Abstract

From its inception in the 1940s the Advertising Council was part of a broad, loosely coordinated campaign by American business leaders to contain the anticorporate liberalism of the 1930s and to refashion the character of the New Deal State. In this campaign the Council generally aligned itself with the more liberal wing of the business community, usually identified with the newly organized Committee for Economic Development (CED), rather than with the older and more conservative National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Like the CED, the Advertising Council often espoused a “corporatist” ideology which emphasized cooperation between business and government; and like the Business Advisory Council, the National Petroleum Council, and other quasi-public corporatist bodies, it sought to establish close, reciprocal relationships with the executive branch. The Council enthusiastically supported the new foreign and national security policies of the Truman Administration, but strongly opposed its domestic programs. By contrast, the Council supported both the foreign and domestic policies of the Eisenhower Administration, and helped promote the administration's economic programs in a series of major advertising campaigns. Through its millions of “public service” advertisements, the Council sought to promote an image of advertising as a responsible and civic-spirited industry, of the U.S. economy as a uniquely productive system of free enterprise, and of America as a dynamic, classless, and benignly consensual society.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1983 , pp. 388 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1983

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References

1 On lobbying, see Schriftgiesser, Karl, The Lobbyists (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; on campaign financing see Heard, Alexander, The Costs of Democracy (Chapel Hill, 1960)Google Scholar; on public relations see especially Pimlott, J.A.R., Public Relations and American Democracy (Princeton, 1951)Google Scholar and Bernays, Edward L., Public Relations (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952)Google Scholar; on institutional advertising see Flanagan, George A., Modern institutional Advertising (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; on philanthropy see Heald, Morrell, The Social Responsibilities of Business (Cleveland, 1970)Google Scholar; on sponsorship of research, see Eakins, David W., “The Development of Corporate Liberal Policy Research in the United States, 1885–1965,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1966)Google Scholar; on industrial and community relations see Hodges, Wayne, Company and Community (New York, 1959)Google Scholar and Form, William H. and Miller, Delbert C., Industry, Labor and Community (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

2 Heard, Costs of Democracy, p. 96n.

3 Whyte, William H. Jr, Is Anybody Listening? (New York, 1952), 7.Google Scholar See also McKee, C. W. and Moulton, H. G., A Survey of Economie Education (Washington, 1951).Google Scholar

4 On advertising before the war see especially Ewen, Stuart, Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Pease, Otis, The Responsibilities of American Advertising: Private Control and Public Influence, 1920–1940 (New Haven, 1958)Google Scholar; and Hower, Ralph M., The History of an Advertising Agency: N. W. Ayer and Son at Work, 1929–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 New York Times, November 14, 1941, pp. 35, 42; November 15, 1941, p. 25; November 16, 1941, III, p. I. Larrabee, C. B., “If You Looked for a Miracle—,” Printer's Ink (November 21, 1941), 13–15, 79–80.Google Scholar “Business at War/The Advertising Front,” Fortune 26 (November, 1942), 60, 64. On advertising during the war, see Fox, Frank W., Madison Avenue Goes to War: The Strange Military Career of American Advertising, 1941–45 (Provo, Utah, 1975).Google Scholar

6 Fox, Madison Avenue Goes to War, 22, 49–55. Business Week (February 7, 1941), 58–59; (February 21, 1942), 48–49. On the early history of the Council, see especially Thomas, Harold B., “The Background and Beginning of the Advertising Council,” in Sandage, C. H. (ed.), The Promise of Advertising (Homewood, Ill., 1961), 15–58.Google Scholar

7 War Advertising Council, “From War to Peace: The New Challenge to Business and Advertising” (New York, 1945), 3–7. James W. Young, “The Advertising Council at Work,” September 18, 1946, and Theodore S. Repplier, “How the American Enterprise System is Being Re-sold to the American People,” October 1, 1946, both speeches in box 1, Dallas C. Halverstadt Files, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library. Stuart Peabody, “Advertising and Total Diplomacy,” April I, 1950, speech in box 16, Charles W. Jackson Files, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library.

8 War Advertising Council, “From War to Peace,” 8; Repplier, “How the American Enterprise System is Being Re-sold.”

9 Advertising Council, “In the Wake of the War: The Fourth Year of the Advertising Council” (New York, 1946), 7–16; Advertising Council, Manual for Council Executives (1948), in box 13, Jackson Files. Memorandum by Charles W. Jackson, January 13, 1948, box 1, John T. Gibson Files, Harry S. Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library. The Council was not unwilling to exploit this relationship to lobby the President on behalf of the tax breaks which made the Council's programs possible. See Repplier to Charles W. Jackson, October 11, 1950, and Jackson to Repplier, November 29, 1950, both in box 20, Jackson Files.

10 Advertising Council, “In the Wake of War,” 15; Manual for Executives, 13–15; Advertising Council, “What Helps People Helps Business: The Sixth Year of the Advertising Council” (New York, 1948), 9. “In the old days the advertisers agreed to take any message which we prepared for them,” wrote Charles W. Jackson, White House liaison to the Council. “Under this new arrangement they reserve the right to accept or reject messages as they see fit.” The Council allocated the O.P.R. two weeks of radio time. Jackson to Douglas Bennet, December 19, 1945, box 2, Jackson Files.

11 The resources thus assembled were enormous. In 1946, for example, Council radio spots generated over 300 million “listener impressions” (one message heard by one person) each week; 900 magazines with a combined circulation of 120 million carried Council ads; the outdoor advertising industry contributed 2,000 highway billboard spaces and the car card industry 100,000 spaces on buses and streetcars; newspapers frequently ran as many as 7,000 individual advertisements on a single Council campaign. By 1951, as the Council's activities increased, national radio produced an estimated four billion “listener impressions,” while television, still in its infancy, added over a billion more. One thousand one hundred magazines contributed an estimated 16 million dollars worth of space annually, and the outdoor advertising industry displayed more than 50,000 Council-prepared billboard ads. Newspapers contributed over 110 million lines while the car card industry increased its contribution to over one million spaces, the equivalent of one card in every public vehicle in the country every month. By 1956 it was estimated that industry contributed over 149 million dollars annually to Council campaigns, and in 1958 it was estimated that television spots alone produced more than 16 billion “home impressions.” Young, “The Advertising Council at Work.” Advertising Council, “10th Annual Report of the Advertising Council” (New York, 1952), 14–21. Sew York Times, February 23, 1959, 22.

12 Repplier to Sumner Slichter, July 10, 1956, box 31, James M. Lambie, Jr., Records, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. Chester J. LaRoche to Harry S. Truman, July 11, 1947, in PPF 2151, Truman Papers. Young, “The Advertising Council at Work.” For a discussion of corporatism, see Hawley, Ellis W., “The Discovery and Study of a ‘Corporate Liberalism,’” Business History Review, 52 (1978), 309–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the Committee for Economic Development, see especially Collins, Robert M., The Business Response to Keynes, 1929–1964 (New York, 1981).Google Scholar On business ideology in the 1950s also see especially Sutton, Frances K. et al., The American Business Creed (Cambridge, Mass., 1956).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 “From War to Peace,” 4–10; Explanatory Notes on Public Service Campaigns, September 12–18, 1948, in box 13, Jackson Files. Mortimer is quoted in “What Helps People Helps Business,” 10. Trester Speech, February 7, 1950, in box 16, Jackson Files.

14 Young, “The Advertising Council at Work.” Peabody, speech to the Association of National Advertisers, November 10, 1954, box 11, Lambie Records.

15 Peabody, ibid.

16 Advertising Council News (October, 1949). Advertising Council, “Business Steps up its Candle Power: The 5th Year of the Advertising Council” (New York, 1947), 6. Advertising Council, “How you can help check inflation, avoid depression, give free enterprise a boost, defeat the isms, and make more and better customers for your business all at once!” (Washington, 1946).

17 “Advertising and Total Diplomacy,” April 1, 1950, box 16, Jackson Files. “What Helps People Helps Business,” 2–3, 7, 14–16. “Tenth Annual Report,” 23–31. Advertising Council, “Advertising: A New Weapon in the World-Wide Fight for Freedom” (New York, 1948), copy in box 13, Jackson Files. In August 1947, Council President Repplier wrote Assistant to the President John R. Steelman to emphasize his concern over “the grave situation which confronts the country” and to promise the Council's support for the Marshall Plan. While there was “a general vague realization that we are involved in an ideological war,” he warned, few people realized how serious things really were. “In my opinion, the concern will need to penetrate very deep if we are to have the radical measures that would seem to be called for.” Repplier to Steelman, August 5, 1947, box 9, Jackson Files.

18 “Our American Heritage Campaign,” January 8, 1947, box 9, Jackson Files.

19 Ibid. Memorandum, Annabelle Price to Charles W. Jackson, December 11, 1948, box 9, Jackson Files.

20 Conference at the White House, May 22, 1947, box 1, Jackson Files. “What Helps People Helps Business,” 3.

21 “What Helps People Helps Business,” 3, 13. “What Helps People Helps Business: The Seventh Year of the Advertising Council” (New York, 1949), 15 (hereafter cited as “What Helps People Helps Business… Seventh Year”). “How Business Helps Solve Public Problems,” 17. Progress Report, December, 1949, in box 13, Jackson Files.

22 “Our American Heritage–Campaign Policy,” May 28, 1947, box 9, Jackson Files. Charles C. Mortimer to Advertisers, Advertising Agencies and Media, July 1, 1947, box 1, Jackson Files. For analagous efforts by the more conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, see Irons, Peter H., “American Business and the Origins of McCarthyism: The Cold War Crusade of the United States Chamber of Commerce,” in Griffith, Robert and Theoharis, Athan (eds.), The Specter (New York, 1974), 72–89.Google Scholar In subsequent years the American Heritage campaign was tied to the celebration of national holidays, including the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1951. By 1952 it had evolved into a campaign to encourage registration and voting, and as such would continue throughout the next decade. See Conference Report – Our American Heritage, March 18, 1949, box 14, and Allen Wilson to Staff, May 2, 1951, box 18, Jackson Files. “Tenth Annual Report,” 22.

23 New York Times, October 17, 1948, III, 1. Robert M. Gray, Report to the Board of Directors on the Economic Education Campaign, November 8, 1950, box 20, Jackson Files. Draft of Possible Revised AAAA-ANA Presentation, January 20, 1947, in box 69, Paul G. Hoffman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library. New York Times, April 24, 1947, 37; New York Herald Tribune, April 24, 1947; P.M. (New York City), April 24, 1947.

24 Draft of Possible Revised AAAA-ANA Presentation, January 20, 1947, in box 69, Hoffman Papers. New York Herald Tribune, April 24, 1947. P.M. (New York City), April 24, 1947. “What Helps People Helps Business,” 11. Advertising Council News (October, 1949).

25 Summary of the Advertising Council's Activities, September, 1948, box 13, Jackson Files.

26 Summary of the Advertising Council's Activities, September, 1948; Summary of the Advertising Council's Activities, October, 1948, box 13, Jackson Files. Advertising Council News (October, 1948). New York Times, October 17, 1948, III, 1. “What Helps People Helps Business–Seventh Year,” 14. For sample advertisement, see Saturday Evening Post 221 (November 6, 1948), 115.

27 Gray, Report on Economic Education Campaign. “The Miracle of America” (New York, 1948). Summary of Advertising Council Activities, November, 1949, box 13, Jackson Files. Ordinary citizens were, unfortunately from the Council's point of view, highly resistant to the blandishments of the campaign and initial requests for the “Miracle” proved “discouraging.” In the end, more than half of all copies sent out were requested by corporations for distribution to their employees and stockholders.

28 Whyte, Is Anybody Listening, 7. New York Times, February 10, 1952, III. 1. Fortune (July, 1951), 84–86. McKee and Moulton, A Survey of Economic Education, p. 24. While some campaigns were subtly understated, many others bordered on the ridiculous. For example, the National Association of Manufacturers offered a comic book entitled The Fight for Freedom which showed how in 1776 American patriots had rebelled against “government planners” in London, as well as a series of films such as “The Price of Freedom,” “Joe Turner, American,” and “The Quarterback,” all of which stressed “concepts of freedom, security and the advantages enjoyed by the worker under free enterprise.” In a slide film produced by a Detroit firm, “Tom Smith” discovered that mankind had for centuries faced problems “surprisingly similar” to our own, and that, for example, while the ancient Spartans waited behind their Iron Curtain, the foolish Athenians indulged themselves with expensive public works and “soak the rich” taxes until at last they fell prey to their sinister neighbors. RKO Pathé made a short film entitled “Letter to a Rebel” for the Motion Picture Association, in which a small town newspaper editor defended capitalism and the American way from the attacks of his son, a radical college student. MCM and Harding College collaborated on an educational cartoon entitled “Meet King Joe,” which closely followed the themes of the “Miracle of America” pamphlet, while Teamwork Publications, Inc., put out a 32-page comic book containing “an economic adventure story built around a character called Steve Merritt.” Junior Achievement, a national organization founded in 1919, was extremely active in the economic “education” of young people. Financed by corporate contributions it was “frankly intended to get across the principle of free enterprise to youngsters in the 15-to-21 age bracket.” Barclay, Dorothy, “Teen Age Business Lessons,” New York Times Magazine, November 26, 1950, 44.Google Scholar On Junior Achievement, see especially Gabler, Edwin, “The Way That Good Folks Do: Junior Achievement and Corporate Culture,” (M.A. thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1981).Google Scholar

29 Griffith, Robert, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review, 87 (February, 1982), 87–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 New York Times, October 28, 1948, 45. Leo Burnett, “Cherry Blossom Time in Washington: An Informal Report on ‘The Ninth White House Conference’,” March 23–24, 1953, box 1, Lambie Records.

31 On Operation Candor see C. D. Jackson log. April 2. 14, June 3. July 20. 1953. box 56. Jackson Papers. Eisenhower Library. On voting see Memorandum. Tom Hall Miller to Publie Relations Advisory Council, National Citizens for Eisenhower Congressional Committee, April 3. 1954, box 5. William E. Robinson Papers. Eisenhower Library. On People's Capitalism see especially Memorandum of the Conversation between the President and T.S. Repplier, August 3. 1955, box 23; Advertising Council. “People's Capitalism: The Background—How and Why This Project Was Developed” (n.d‥ but c. 1956); “People's Capitalism in the USA” Test Preview, February 14–22, 1956; Notes on People's Capitalism Program. (July. 19561); Repplier to Evans Clark, June 12, 1956; Repplier to Andrew H. Berding, June 19, 1956; Lambie to Claude Robinson. July 25. 1956. all in box 31, Lambie Records.

32 New York Times, January 5. 1954, 1. “I know.” the President told his audience, “that you have unbounded confidence in the future of America.” House Speaker Joseph Martin (R.-Mass.) was blunter, charging that left-wing “eggheads” were trying “to promote us into hard times for political reasons.” New York Times. January 24. 1954, 61.

33 Press Release, Joint ANA-AAAA Committee (n.d., but early 1954); Robert M. Gray, “The Future of America Campaign,” March 19, 1954, box 12, Lambie Records. Press Release, the Advertising Council, January 12, 1954, box 62, O.F. 127-A-1, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers. Boris Shiskin, the A. F. L. representative on the Public Policy Committee, had some reservations about the campaign but agreed to go along with the majority. Shiskin to Paul G. Hoffman, February 16, 1954; Hoffman to Shiskin, February 25, 1954, box 69, Hoffman Papers.

34 Lambie to Sherman Adams, December 9, 1953, box 3; Max Fox to Theodore S. Repplier, April 5, 1954; Paul West to Sherman Adams, March 5, 1954, box 12, Lambie Records. The week before the campaign officially began, former President Truman accused the Administration of “creeping McKinleyism,” possibly prompting campaign coordinator Robert Gray's declaration that “this is not a political campaign in any sense” but rather represents “the forces of advertising against the forces of depression.” New York Times, May 14, 1954, 1; May 21, 1954, 30.

35 Plan for the “Future of America” Campaign, box 12, Lambie Records. Advertising Council, “The Future of America” (New York, 1954). Business Week (March 13, 1954), 58.

36 Press Release, Advertising Council, August 17, 1954; Theodore S. Repplier to Lambie, September 11, 1954; Repplier to Arthur Burns, July 30, 1943; Press Release, Advertising Council, December 27, 1954; Richard E. Deems, “Who Killed Cock Robin,” speech, August 16, 1954, all in box 12, Lambie Records. Advertising Council, Annual Report (New York, 1955), 4–19. Advertising Council, Annual Report (New York, 1956), 19. New York Times, January 21, 1955, 8.

37 Mortimer to Lambie, April 2, 1958; List of Conferees at Advertising Council Anti-Recession Meeting, April 11, 1958, box 44, Lambie Records. New York Times, April 15, 1958, 1; April 20, 1958, 1; April 24, 1958, 1.

38 Progress Report, Confidence in a Growing America, c. August, 1958, box 44, Lambie Records. The Council also established what it called a “Good News Bureau” to distribute “positive” information about the economy supplied by the Administration. Advertising Council News (May-June, 1958). Maxwell Fox to Lambie, March 27, 1958; Lambie to Fox, April 2, 1958, box 44, Lambie Records. New York Times, April 24, 1958, 1, 26; May 7, 1958, 21; May 27, 1958, 43; July 9, 1958, 43; September 18, 1958, 30.

39 Anderson to Repplier, August 18, 1958; Mortimer speech, September 17, 1958; Progress Report, Confidence in a Growing America (c. August, 1958), box 44, Lambie Records; New York Times, September 18, 1958, 44.

40 Maurice Stans to Lambie, November 28, 1958; Lambie to Stans, December 10, 1958, box 49; Minutes of Meeting, Roard of Directors, Advertising Council, January 15, 1959, box 46, Lambie Records.

41 Suggested Copy Policy, The Problem of Inflation, March, 1958; Lambie to Humphrey, May 4, 1959, box 46, Lambie Records.

42 Report of Public Policy Committee Meeting, June 29, 1959, box 49; Report of Public Policy Committee Meeting, November 20, 1959, box 46, Lambie Records.

43 Wallich to Lambie, August 24, 1959, box 46, Lambie Records. Also see Raymond J. Saulnier to Lambie, September 4, 1959; Maurice H. Stans to Lambie, August 28, 1959; and Allen Wallis to Lambie, August 22, 1959, box 22, Lambie records.

44 Minutes of Meeting, Board of Directors, Advertising Council, October 20, 1960, box 53, Lambie Records. The Advertising Council continued its public service campaigns, including those emphasizing “economic education,” throughout the 1960s and 1970s. See, for example, Paletz, David L. et al., Politics in Public Service Advertising (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Hirsch, Glenn K., “Only You Can Prevent Ideological Hegemony: The Advertising Council and Its Place in the American Power Structure,” The Insurgent Sociologist (Spring, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Howard, Bruce, “Selling Lies,” Ramparts 13 (December, 1974), 25–32.Google Scholar On the controversy surrounding a recent economic education campaign, see Newsweek 88 (September 20, 1976), 74.

45 Hamilton, Richard F., Class and Politics in the United States (New York, 1972), 89–112.Google Scholar See, for example, Minutes of Meeting, Committee on the Prestige of Advertising, October 1, 1958, in box 46, Lambie Records. C. W. McKee and H. G. Moulton, who surveyed early economic education programs for the Brookings Institution, concluded that “While ‘audience research’ on some campaigns shows that economic advertising has been noticed and remembered, there is no evidence to indicate how it affected the people who read it.” Survey of Economic Education, 57–58. William Whyte, whose breezily impressionistic essay on business propaganda asked “Is Anybody Listening?”, concluded that no, nobody was. Whyte, Is Anybody Listening, 1–20.

46 Whyte, Is Anybody Listening, 8. The most recent study of public service advertising concludes that while such communications may be limited in their ability to actually change behavior, they nevertheless serve to “canalize viewers’ predispositions and reinforce existing behavior.” Paletz et al., Politics in Public Service Advertising, 58–59, 73–76, et passim.