1. ADVERTISING
MOMENTS:
A mini-exhibit for the NMAH’s
American Enterprise Exhibit
SARAH FRIEDLAND

2. Harper’s Weekly, Advertising Page, 1876
This advertising page from a weekly magazine , free of logos and dynamic imagery, is representative of advertising before 1880.
Prior to this year, considered to be the birth of modern advertising, ads appeared as announcements on a page, much like modern
classified sections of newspapers and magazines. Before changes in communication and transportation allowed for the distribution
of products and periodicals nationally, advertisements were mainly local.

3. NABISCO-Board of Education, N.W. Ayer and Son, 1905
The NABISCO “Board of Education” advertisement is an example of how advertisements served as “product education.” Three
major changes—industrialization, urbanization, and technological advancements in communication and transportation—
prompted the beginning of a mass-produced, national market for goods. This new market was the catalyst for modern and
national advertising. Americans, who were familiar with being local customers, had to be converted into consumers of
standardized, advertised and branded goods. The importance given to packaging not only introduces Americans to the notion of
the brand, of which packaging is a key part, but emphasizes what consumer behavior is: purchasing packaged products.

4. Ivory Soap-“It Floats,” Agency Unknown,1908
The image of the Ivory soap bar not only floats, but dominates. In the new mass market, advertisements served as a method to
differentiate market goods from competing products. The advertising technique used to distinguish products is called branding.
Brands give a specific image to a product through naming, labeling, packaging and the repetition of such visual cues in advertising.
This advertisement differentiates Ivory Soap from other soaps by emphasizing that it floats. By depicting many identical bars of Ivory
soap, Ivory is branded with a specific product look, allowing consumers to connect how it appears to its unique attribute, floating.

5. Kellogg’s-Old Fashioned Advertisement, N.W. Ayer and Son, 1934
The girl in this Kellogg’s corn flakes advertisement, considering whether to inform her mother of her old-fashioned ways, is
supported by the advertisement’s narration, presenting the product as a means of becoming modern. Certain repeated parables,
tropes and techniques emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, shaping and reflecting American social values. Advertisers asserted
themselves as “apostles of modernity,” helping consumers of the new century to be modern through consumption of products, like
Kellogg’s.

6. Lux Soap-Frederick Advertisement, Agency Unknown, 1935
Not only does the stage and screen star sell Lux soap by implying it prevents aging, but also by her mere presence in the
advertisement. The testimonial or endorsement is an advertising technique that originated in the 1920s, using celebrities such as
Pauline Frederick to vouch for products. This method remains today as an effective way to imbue adds with authority.

7. General Electric Advertisement, N.W. Ayer and Son, 1950
Televisions are not only a “window on the world,” but a window for advertising. The advent of radio in the early 1920s and
television in the late 1940s provided the advertising industry with new mediums and technology for product promotion.
These mediums also saw the beginning of “indirect advertising,” in which advertising messages were integrated with
entertainment programming, such as the circus elephants the girl is watching.

8. Pepsi Generation Advertisement, Batton, Barton, Durstine & Osborn January 1965
The freeing words “come alive!” not only refer to the counterculture Hippie movement of the 1960’s but another simultaneous
revolution, “The Creative Revolution.” Frontrunners in the ad industry, namely the agency BBDO led by Bill Bernbach, created ads
that put forth a notion of “hip consumerism” in which consumer culture did not need to be antithetical to the values of youth culture.
Advertisers did not “co-opt” youth culture for the sake of advertising; rather they rebelled, on their own right, against business
culture. The Pepsi Generation campaign by BBDO is emblematic of the Creative Revolution.

9. Nike-Air Jordan “What’s Up Jock” Advertisement, Weiden-Kennedy,January 1992
Through its use of Bugs Bunny, a Looney Tunes character popular with children, a clever play on his catch phrase “what’s up doc?,”
and the famous basketball player Michael Jordan, this Nike ad targets children interested in sports. Television, with its array of
different channels, allows for market segmentation, creating ads that are tailored to more specifically appeal to a smaller, or niche,
market. Michael Jordan’s wearing of branded shoes as a professional athlete also prefigures the use of product placement in the
digital age.

10. Notes
1. Haddon Sundblom, �Coca-Cola Yes Girl,� National Museum of American History Flickr Site, accessed December
13, 2011, http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmuseumofamericanhistory/6418777361/in/set-72157628030091162.
2. Professor Susan Smulyan, �Changes Over Advertising’s History� (lecture, American Advertising: History and
Consequences, Brown University, Providence, RI, September 12, 2011).
3. Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington: Smithsonian
Books, 1989), xi; 6; 7; 34-35; 37-42;.
4. Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986), xx; 1; 96.
5. Professor Susan Smulyan, �Commercial Radio I� (lecture, American Advertising: History and Consequences, Brown
University, Providence, RI, September 28, 2011).
6. Professor Susan Smulyan, �Commercial Radio II� (lecture, American Advertising: History and Consequences,
Brown University, Providence, RI, October 3, 2011).
7. William M. O’Barr, �What is Advertising?,� Advertising and Society Review Supplement Unit 1 (2008), accessed
September 9, 2011, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v006/6.3unit01.html.
8. Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1997), 9, 68, 174-177.
9. Professor Susan Smulyan, �Television Advertising to Kids� (lecture, American Advertising: History and
Consequences, Brown University, Providence, RI, October 23, 2011).
10. Joseph Turow, Niche Envy: Market Discrimination in the Digital Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 52-57.

11. Advertising Moments by Sarah Friedland is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
Unported License