20

Advertising and Consumer Culture

A Historical Review

Inger L. Stole

Introduction

Since the late nineteenth century, consumer culture has become a defining element of what the United States embodies. Central to this development has been the rise of national advertising. Since the end of the Civil War, advertising has morphed from relative obscurity into a $280 billion industry leaving few of our social, political, cultural, and even educational institutions unaffected.¹

During the past few decades, advertising and consumer issues have attracted an increased amount of scholarly interest, giving impetus to an interdisciplinary and rapidly expanding field of academic study. The task of capturing the complete history is complex, demanding a wide range of methodological and conceptual frameworks and approaches.

This chapter employs an institutional approach, locating the proliferation of advertising as the key component in the creation and expansion of a modern consumer society. Drawing upon published works in the field, I explore the growth of advertising with an emphasis on developments in the early part of the twentieth century, and discuss their impact on discourses surrounding the culture of consumption that emerged in tandem. This did not mean that these developments were automatically accepted. Throughout the twentieth century, advertising and the consumer society it commanded were challenged, even condemned, testing the political powers of marketing forces and their supporting institutions. Although commercial forces won most of these battles, a general uneasiness continued to linger throughout the twentieth century and occasionally flared up, although always in new ways that reflected the ongoing changes caused by commercialization.²

This chapter delineates how, periodically throughout the twentieth century, organized consumer complaints would emerge, leaving commercial forces in search of political defense. The first organized consumer protest emerged during the Progressive era when activists decried deplorable industry practices and pressed for legislative reform. The second occurred in response to the proliferation of advertising after World War I when a feisty 1930s consumer movement demanded corporate accountability and more reliable information about products. The 1960s witnessed the rise of yet another consumer movement. This time, advocates demanded better consumer protection laws, increased product safety, and increased government oversight of corporate conduct. I end my essay with a brief description of the fourth wave of consumer activism that emerged toward the end of the twentieth century. It encompassed concerns and unsolved issues from each of the three previous consumer movements but this time in a global context.

The Rise of National Advertising and a Modern Consumer Culture

Technological innovations combined with a massive influx of immigrant workers to the United States' burgeoning industrial centers contributed to a record production of goods in the years immediately following the Civil War. Companies grew larger, often dominating their field and producing far beyond what their local markets could absorb. Limited outlets hampered the distribution of goods and this, in turn, threatened capital investment in machinery, labor, and products. Recognizing the need to seek larger markets, manufacturers turned to national advertising.

Advertising must be understood, first and foremost, as a business expense. But this is far from sufficient; the United States has had a private-enterprise economy throughout its history but national advertising emerged as a dominant institution only in the twentieth century. Advertising was in use before, of course, but most ads were akin to what today is called classified advertising, that is, dry factual reports informing customers about products and their availability. A merchant might place a notice in the local paper informing customers about a new shipment of lace, calico, or French milled soaps, for example. Following the Civil War, advertising began its climb to prominence. (For a discussion of advertising's role in creating national markets, see Pope, 1983, Ch. 2; Strasser, 1989; Tedlow, 1990.) By the early 1900s firms such as the California Fruit Canners Association, Royal Baking Powder, National Biscuits, and National Candy dominated 40–70% of their individual industries, while American Can, Du Pont, and Eastman Kodak controlled over 70% of the markets in their categories (Lamoreaux, 1985, p. 3).

As industries became more concentrated, often with one firm dominating more than half of the output, it became increasingly difficult for new actors to enter the market. Each of the large firms in what is commonly referred to as oligopolistic markets was large enough to survive a price war. But to engage in price competition would only reduce the total revenue going into a given industry. Thus, they gravitated toward a pricing structure that maximized the total revenue going into the industry. Understood this way, advertising becomes a mandatory business expense for all firms in an oligopolistic market to protect their market shares from attack. To large corporations advertising represents a competitive weapon superior to cutthroat price competition in the battle to expand and protect market shares. Thus, in the early twentieth century advertising became not merely an adjunct to the “real business” of manufacturing; it became as vital as the steel, the workers, and the machinery because it created its own byproduct: the loyal consumer. Instead of representing a competitive selling of goods and services, advertising came to represent the competitive creation of consumer habits – and of consumers.

Because the products offered by these oligopolistic firms tended to vary little in terms of price and quality – one soap, shaving cream, or toothpaste was pretty much like another – they did not necessarily “sell themselves.” Merely stating a product's physical attributes and price did not provide a potential consumer with a reason to purchase a particular product over its competitors. Advertising copywriters, therefore, had to come up with ways to make consumers prefer one brand over another. This led to advertising strategies that attempted to capture and exploit consumers' emotions. (The classic statements remain Veblen, 1927, 1938, 1954; see also Baran & Sweezy 1966; Curti, 1967; Jhally, 1990.) The role of advertising, then, was twofold. First, it served to establish an aura of prestige or desirability around a given product or service, thereby making it less susceptible to price competition. Second, advertising permitted firms to increase their sales without cutting prices, thereby maintaining healthy profit margins.

Advertising as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) rose in direct proportion to the increase in giant corporations operating in oligopolistic markets. It went from less than .3% in 1865 to more than 3% of GDP by 1920 (Fox, 1997, p. 39). Between 1880 and 1900, for example, the annual amount spent on advertising ballooned from $200 million to $542 million and helped lay the foundation for the growth and success of well-known companies such as Coca-Cola, Campbell Soup, Carnation, Quaker Oats, Heinz, Pillsbury, Colgate-Palmolive, Libby, and Procter & Gamble (Fox, 1997, pp. 38–39; Sivulka, 1998, p. 47). Since the 1920s advertising expenditures as a percentage of GDP have remained in the range of 2–3%. By 1930, advertising expenditures rose to $2.6 billion annually (Pope, 1983, p. 23; Roa, 1998, p. 926; for a discussion of business expenditures on advertising between 1880 and 1942, see Olney, 1991, Ch. 5).

Contributing to, and profiting mightily from, the growth in national advertising was an increasingly commercial mass media. Fundamental changes within the newspaper and magazine industries at the turn of the twentieth century helped develop a media system that simultaneously served publishers' need for revenues and advertisers' desire to reach a broader public. In contrast to the pre-Civil War era when most newspapers functioned as partisan organs to gain support for a political viewpoint, many postwar owners ran their papers as business enterprises. As start-up costs and daily expenses increased, publishers no longer viewed their primary mission as that of rousing readers to support political causes. Their new objective was to offer advertisers a large audience at low cost and still turn huge profits. By the early twentieth century this had become the dominant model as an increasing number of newspapers accepted or actively sought advertising revenues to offset their production costs and came to view their readers as a commodity that could be exchanged for advertising patronage (Baldasty, 1992, pp. 59–60; see also McChesney, 1997, pp. 9–17). In 1880, for example, 44% of all newspaper revenue came from advertising. Ten years later the figure approached 50%, and by 1919 US newspapers depended on advertising for two-thirds of their income (Baldasty, 1992, p. 59; Pope, 1983, p. 30).

No medium was more affected by advertising than the magazine industry. In the late nineteenth century publishers produced a flood of national magazines for popular consumption. While differing in their editorial approach, McClure's, Ladies' Home Journal, Munsey's, Cosmopolitan, Century, Delineator, and Scribner's quickly gained favor with middle-class and mainly female readers, a group that advertisers were eager to reach. Unlike most newspapers, which tended to reach people in a limited geographical area, the new generation of magazines offered individual copies for sale at newsstands and therefore found a national market. (For a discussion of the rise of a national magazine industry, see Filler, 1993; Ohman, 1998, Ch. 2; Schneirov 1994.) Between 1882 and 1885 the average October issue of Harper's devoted seven pages to product advertising. Ten years later the average had climbed to an astonishing 85 pages. And whereas the November 1880 issue of Atlantic Monthly carried only 13 pages of advertising, the December 1904 issue boasted 121 advertising pages. Other magazines could point to similar changes. By the turn of the twentieth century magazine publishers were increasingly relying on brand-name advertising for their income (Ohman, 1998, pp. 83–85; Pope, 1983, pp. 43–45; Sivulka, 1998, pp. 82–83; Strasser, 1989, p. 91).

As the twentieth century progressed people relied increasingly on mass production to fill their product needs, and US citizens began to think of themselves as consumers. Although many products had become cheap and readily available, they represented a trade-off. Consumers, who only a generation earlier had been able to monitor the raw materials' quality and the conditions under which the final products were made, increasingly found themselves at the manufacturers' mercy. Household routines involved fewer homemade items and consumption, as opposed to production, took on a central role (Strasser, 1989, p. 255; see also Ewen, 1976, p. 115; Ewen & Ewen, 1982, pp. 57–63). While some mourned a rapidly diminishing way of life, others welcomed the changes. Mass production of products that previously had required hours of work by skilled artisans enabled many people, including the poor and recent immigrants, to dress nicely and buy objects that only a few decades earlier had been reserved for the well-to-do. Writing in the early twentieth century, economist Simon N. Patten (1968) celebrated the liberatory aspects of consumer culture; a theory supported by several modern-day scholars. Kathy Peiss (1986), for example, argues that participation in consumer culture provided a coveted ticket to social acceptance and freedom from patriarchal dominance for immigrant women. Andrew Heinze (1990) claims that turn-of-the century Jewish immigrants valued consumer products as a means for achieving social assimilation and acceptance.

Although new and better merchandise could improve the material aspect of people's lives, it was less suited to fulfill other functions. Consumer society, because it emphasized individual solutions to collective problems, helped articulate a new form of citizen sovereignty. A frequent theme in early twentieth-century advertisements was egalitarianism through consumption. Advertising historian Roland Marchand (1985, pp. 217–222) has described the ways in which advertisers stressed the notion that thanks to mass production, rich and poor alike were bathing with the same soaps, eating the same packaged cereals, and smoking the same brands of cigarettes. Consumer society, because it emphasized individual solutions to collective problems, helped articulate a new form of citizen sovereignty. Gradually winning acceptance was the view that it was in the marketplace, and not at the polls, where the public should cast its vote. Within this new society, argues Charles McGovern, consumption was becoming a cornerstone, and this new version of democracy equated, even replaced, participation in civic life with spending dollars in the marketplace: “Consumption was the foundation of a distinctly American way of life; this was the new order of the ages” (McGovern, 1998, p. 50; 2006). In this setup, advertising had become the dominant lingo.

Unlike earlier forms of advertising, the brand-name variety tended to avoid copy that provided consumers with information, statistics, and the ability to comparison shop. This trend became even more pronounced after World War I. Many advertising executives learned from the successful use of wartime propaganda that powerful images and slogans provided a key to controlling the public's actions, including their consumer choices (Ewen, 1996, p. 127). Trademarks or brand names helped serve this purpose, as did advertisements that stressed glossy illustrations over information. The emotional attributes associated with a trademark, and the corollary idea that the consumer could best be reached by an appeal to irrational thinking and unconscious desire, fit manufacturers' purpose perfectly. That scientific opinion buttressed this view legitimized, even justified, the intensified focus of business and industry on the “irrational” consumer (Curti, 1967, pp. 334–357). Marchand has shown how advertisers, playing a dual role as both coach and confidant, “guided” consumers through the task of choosing the “right” products and played on their fears and insecurities. Consumer citizenship might be easily obtained but consequences for opting out were severe. People were told that bad breath, old-fashioned furnishings, and the wrong cigarette brands could hinder professional and social success and that failure to use certain products for health, hygiene, or attire might prevent their ability to keep up with modern society, much less get ahead (Curti, 1967, p. 336).

Early Consumer Reactions

Even at its most ardent, corporate enthusiasm and a growing abundance of goods were not sufficient to mask some of the structural problems associated with a rapidly growing, and largely unregulated, consumer market. As early as the 1880s, a group of concerned citizens led by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley had begun a crusade to secure unadulterated foods. Much to their frustration, and in spite of several exposés showing the dangerous ingredients in patent medicines and the ills they could cause, Wiley and his supporters were unable to get legislation passed. The big change came with the publication of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair in 1906. Sinclair's bestseller exposed the unsafe and exploitative labor conditions that meat packing plants employed in order to maximize profit. The pressure put on workers combined with lax sanitary standards resulted in rotten and contaminated meat on (middle-class) consumers' tables. While much of Sinclair's call for labor reform fell on deaf ears, his plea for regulation of meat plants gained massive support. In the months following Sinclair's exposé, the sale of meat dropped drastically and President Roosevelt threw his support behind the passage of a meat inspection bill which was written into law in 1906. The momentum created by the meat inspection bill, in turn, helped the passage of a much needed Pure Food and Drugs law that same year (Nadel, 1997; Young, 1992).

The National Consumers' League (NCL) provides another example of consumer activism during this period. Formed in 1899, the NCL devoted itself to factory conditions and worked relentlessly to improve conditions for workers. Only garments produced in facilities that refused to employ children, paid its workers fair wages, and treated workers well were allowed to display the NCL's “white label.” Operating in many states, the group conducted regular factory inspections and worked diligently to pass local and federal laws to improve conditions. By presenting themselves as consumers and framing their demands accordingly, activists helped forefront the new and dynamic relationship between producers and consumers of goods (Sklar, 1998, 25; see also Sklar, 1995, pp. 309–311; Wolfe, 1975). As such, the 1906 passage of the Food and Drug Act was a great victory for the recognition of consumers, rights; a clear departure from the existing practice of viewing political issues solely from the standpoint of producers. It showed that the public, and consequently Congress, had become more conscious of the need for consumer protection. The momentum that was created inspired the creation of numerous committees, clubs, and leagues, and organizations working to further consumers' causes (Gaedeke, 1972, p. 58).

In 1927, Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink published Your Money's Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumer's Dollars, a book that became the start of an active consumer movement in the decade that followed (Morse, 1993, p. 19). The authors exposed frauds and manipulations by US manufacturers and argued that advertising failed to provide consumers with sufficient product information. This, in turn, led people to waste money. Inefficiency in buying, the authors contended, thrived in inverse proportion to consumers' knowledge. Whereas industrial and government buyers bought efficiently because they possessed the necessary knowledge to deflate and disregard advertising, consumers were forced to rely on advertising propaganda that provided them with almost no factual information. Urging consumers to educate themselves against the perils of such marketing devices, the authors called for structural reform. Soon after the book was published, Schlink started a small newsletter called Consumers' Club Commodity List which rated various brand products based on laboratory tastings. By 1929, a massive public interest in the book and newsletter had spurred an organization called Consumers Research (CR). CR employed technical experts and had its own laboratory for testing consumer products. By 1932, Schlink's newsletter was renamed Consumers' Research General Bulletin (and later yet simply the Consumers' Research Bulletin) and boasted an impressive 42,000 subscribers (Mayer, 1989, p. 21; Silber, 1983, p. 18; see also Ayres, 1934, pp. 158–165). CR attracted a group of prolific authors who wrote articles and bestselling books on consumer-related issues and received support from a range of professional organizations, including the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Home Economics Association, and the National League of Women Voters. Also very important were the many politically connected individuals who shared the organizations' call for federal regulation of advertising.

The Struggle Over Federal Regulation of Advertising in the 1930s

The Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 had given the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jurisdiction over advertising. This power, however, was limited to cases where one business used advertising to gain unfair advantage over another. Thus, the FTC lacked the jurisdiction to intervene on consumers' behalf when they were wronged, even harmed, by false and misleading advertising (Tedlow, 1981). Thus, considerable momentum for stricter advertising regulation existed by the time of Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. In June of that year, a bill to amend the 1906 Food and Drug Act was introduced in Congress. The measure, which had been truly whetted by CR, proposed new labeling laws and mandatory grading of goods as a means to guiding consumers in the marketplace. It also sought to empower the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prohibit false advertising of any food, drug, or cosmetic. Catching advertisers' immediate attention was a stipulation in the bill that defined an advertisement as false if it used “ambiguity or inference” to create a misleading impression (Pease, 1958; Young, 1992). Few, if any, major manufacturers objected to a ban on false advertising but their reaction to the proposed ban on “ambiguity and inference” was strong and adverse. It was exactly the use of clever advertising to create enough ambiguity for consumers to infer the desirability of one product over another, even if none existed, that drove most of the consumer industry and, thus, much of capitalism at large. But business was fully aware that this rationale for advertising might sound hollow, especially to consumers affected by a severe economic depression, so they tried their best to avert direct discussions of this issue. If anything, the industry argued, consumers should be grateful because advertising had brought them conveniences and cheap mass produced products. The same business interests also objected to the bill's demand for grading of consumer goods, arguing not only that it was impossible to establish uniform quality standards but that they were unnecessary because they already provided consumers with sufficient product information. Consumer activists were just as unhappy with the bill. Their complaint, however, was that the bill did not go far enough in terms of providing consumer protection (Stole, 2006).

This set the stage for a five-year legislative battle with congressional hearings over several revised versions of the bill. Helping the advertising industry's cause was a set of well-developed public relations and lobbying strategies and considerable influence over the commercial mass media. Few among the general public were fully informed of the issues at stake. With each new version of the bill, industry concerns took the front seat and the issue of consumer protection, which had first spurred the bill, gradually faded from the agenda. Despite demands from consumer groups, New Dealers, and government regulatory agencies, advertisers survived the battle with surprising ease. When the Wheeler–Lea Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act was passed in 1938, it reflected five years of legal wrangling and extensive public relations efforts to render such protection painless for business interests.

The practical application of the new law proved that consumer advocates had been right in fearing that the new law would fail to provide consumers with any substantial protection. The major shortcoming was the law's failure to encourage advertisers to provide more factual information in their ads. The immediate and somewhat ironic effect of the Wheeler–Lea Amendment to the Federal Trade Commission Act was a tendency toward increasing glamour and indirect assertion. Because it was relatively easy to check the truthfulness of explicit written claims, advertisements increasingly relied on the use of pictures and illustrations to get around the law. Most advertising agencies were inspired to design copy that complied with the law yet served the purpose of techniques that the amended version of the Federal Trade Commission Act rendered illegal (Pease, 1958).

In sum, the Wheeler–Lea Amendment and the regulation it spawned were crowning achievements for the advertising industry. Nevertheless, the industry knew it could never take the lax regulation by the FTC for granted. As an industry it was always susceptible to public criticism for its sometimes controversial operations, which might lead to increased FTC regulation, or even to Congress reopening the matter of advertising regulation for further consideration. Recognizing that further advertising regulation was favored by a substantial segment of the population, the industry keeps a close ear to the ground, hoping to protect the status quo and nip new challenges in the bud (Stole, 2006).

Advertising in World War II

As important as the 1930s were, the battle over the role of advertising in the nation's political economy that began in the 1920s ended not in 1938, but during World War II. The war elevated the seeming contradictions of advertising and allowed the consumer movement one final opportunity to corral and regulate this institution. Thus, it was the war experience, even more than the legislative battles of the 1930s, that defined the role of advertising in the postwar political economy and cultural firmament.

During the two-year period leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, war-related production required an increasing and disproportionate share of the nation's labor and raw materials. Production for the consumer market was constrained as a result, and concerns about inflation led the government to consider price controls. Advertisers worried that encouraging people to consume during a period when raw materials and consumer products were scarce and almost no new products were being launched might lend credence to the argument that advertising was wasteful, if not downright unpatriotic (Stole, 2001a). Adding to the industry's concerns were the government's proposals to eliminate advertising's tax-deductible status (a system that had been on the books since right after World War I) in order to pay for defense-related expenses.

Getting on the good side of government was a high priority among advertisers, and industry leaders were quite excited when within days of the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, the director of priorities in the government's Office of Price Administration (OPA) approached the advertising community to request promotional assistance. The result was the creation of the (War) Advertising Council, an industry-wide effort that urged, coached, and assisted individual advertisers in incorporating the government's home-front messages into their regular product advertising.

Madison Avenue was particularly fortunate to have a strong supporter in Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, who was one of the first government officials to seek help from the Advertising Council. By 1942, the Treasury Department relied almost entirely on the council's help in promoting war bonds and stamps to the US public. The sale of these securities allowed the government to borrow money for the war effort from its citizens, and this relieved some of the pressure for new tax revenues. The importance of this connection was not lost on the Advertising Council, which addressed the task with great urgency. It designed an elaborate campaign plan and instructed individual advertisers to incorporate the war bond pleas into their product advertising. Much to the advertising industry's relief, the Treasury quickly acknowledged that a pending law to prohibit, or severely restrict, advertisers' ability to deduct advertising expenses from their income taxes would translate into less publicity for the Treasury's own campaigns. Consequently, it ruled in the advertising industry's favor, allowing “reasonable and normal advertising” as a deductible business expense for the war's duration. Encouraged manufacturers utilized their advertising to tell the US people about their “patriotic” contributions to the war effort while the real winner was the advertising industry itself (Fox, 1975; Stole, 2001b).

Consumers Union (CU), which by the 1940s had replaced Consumers Research as the major consumer advocacy group, responded to the war emergency with the addition of a new publication to its existing Consumers Union Reports (which changed its name to Consumer Reports in 1942). First published in February 1941, Bread and Butter was designed to “help consumers protect their living standards by providing them with up-to-date reliable information about what is happening to the prices and quality of consumer goods” (Consumers Union, 1941). While most advertisers showed only a modicum of interest in the task of informing war consumers about pricing and product attributes in their advertising, the CU publications explained the practical changes brought about by the war emergency. It discussed issues such as how to plan and grow victory gardens, how to care for products and make them last, and how to save money on home canning of fruits and vegetables. Now more than ever, CU considered advertisers' established practice of stressing emotional satisfaction over product information as an obstacle, rather than constructive assistance, for consumers. It urged consumers to organize and put pressure on the government to make sure their interests were represented while promising to exert its own “united pressure towards the job of maintaining a healthy, strong, alert America to win the war – building a greater, more prosperous America after the war has been won” (Consumers Union, 1941). And while advertising might instill in consumers a certain desire for goods that were no longer readily available, Bread and Butter and Consumer Reports stressed the unpatriotic aspects of buying products on the black market.

The activist cause was further complicated by the interdependent relationship between advertisers and the commercial mass media. At the same time as the industry's contributions were elevated to patriotic levels, critics were allowed few chances to be heard. Journalists and editors were hardly encouraged to pursue stories critical of an industry of which the news media were, in effect, a key part. Whatever benefits the newly emerging professional journalism may have offered with respect to protecting editorial content from the influence of media owners and advertisers, they did not extend to providing for ample and balanced coverage of advertising policy debates in this period.

While the industry's contribution was elevated to patriotic levels, those with critical views on the advertising industry's prerogatives were give few chances at a large audience. It should hardly come as a surprise, then, that an industry sponsored survey in the summer of 1943 found a full 84% of the respondents believing that advertising contributed to the US war effort (Advertising at work, 1943; ANA finds public appreciates war advertising, 1943). Even allowing for a survey designed to flatter the industry and ignore or distort criticism of the consumer movement, the results suggest that the battle for public opinion may have swung to the advertisers. Most citizens, it seems safe to say, did not know that there was any alternative.

The end of World War II found the advertising industry in an enviable position. Through its wartime services to the government, the Advertising Council had fulfilled an important public relations function. Its immediate objective had been to protect advertisers' right to advertise throughout the war, despite major shortages that logically suggested that advertising might stimulate demand, spur inflation, and prove counterproductive to the war effort. An important secondary goal had been to secure the status of advertising as a tax-deductible business expense by defending its privileged wartime position, by claiming that it was playing an indispensable patriotic role. The unstated but overarching goal was to have the US public internalize a view of the advertising industry as a democratic institution that had been instrumental in winning the fight against the Axis Powers. The purpose of the Advertising Council, as Frank W. Fox (1975, Ch. 5) argues, was to promote “the ad behind the ad,” that is, to use advertising to sell not only products but also the institution of advertising itself, as well as the corporate system behind the products.

The Postwar Era

By the end of the war in 1945 the advertising industry found itself in a quite favorable position and faced the postwar era with renewed enthusiasm. Due in part to the Advertising Council's work, the industry enjoyed an increasingly congenial working relationship with government leaders, something that sociologist C. Wright Mills (1956) and others so aptly identify. Upon recognizing the Advertising Council's PR value, the industry decided to make it a permanent postwar fixture. No longer affiliated with the government, the postwar Advertising Council was free to chart its own course. Whereas the council's wartime campaigns had asked people to plant vegetables and buy war bonds to express their patriotism, its postwar campaigns commercialized this noble sentiment. Patriotism was now tied to the unconditional acceptance of free enterprise, which some now termed “People's Capitalism.”³ The Advertising Council's new intent, observes the historian Robert Griffith (1983), was to “promote an image of advertising as a responsible and civic-spirited industry, of the US economy as a uniquely productive system of free enterprise, and of America as a dynamic, classless, and benignly consensual society” (p. 388).⁴ Its postwar campaigns and unconditional declaration of “true Americanism” helped to stifle and mute advertising criticism (Grabner, 1987, Lipsitz, 1990, May, 1990, Miller & Novak, 1977, Pells, 1989; Whitfeld, 1992). If in the 1930s advertising had been a controversial, even scorned, undertaking in the minds of many US citizens, it was now, 20 years later, presented as a fixture of the “good life” and the “American Dream.”

The impact and proliferation of advertising were evident in other contexts as well. In 1942, the Supreme Court had ruled unanimously against First Amendment protection for advertisers. But gradually, and as many social institutions became increasingly beholden to advertisers, commercial speech won a series of important judicial victories. At the same time, and as shopping malls replaced Main Street as the central site for commerce and congregation, mall owners fought several successful legal battles to prevent political opinions and politically controversial ideas from entering the new public spheres. Such ideas, it was believed, might interfere with the mall visitors' shopping experience and ability to express their freedom (of choice) as consumers (Cohen, 2003, pp. 274–278).⁵

The sudden popularity of television put people in even closer proximity to advertising, and, as Lawrence R. Samuel and other scholars argue, the seamless merging of entertainment and commercial values in this new medium helped fan the flames of consumerism and spending in the postwar United States (Lipsitz, 1990, Ch. 1; Samuel, 2001, Intro.).⁶ In sharp contrast to the discourse surrounding the introduction of radio a couple of decades earlier, television faced no serious challenges to its purely commercial nature.⁷ Convinced that increased levels of advertising would boost consumption, combat economic sluggishness, and raise the standard of living, the federal government supported television's commercialization (Lipsitz, 1990, pp. 44–46).

Television was only one example of government policies that directly and indirectly supported the growth and proliferation of postwar consumer society. In addition, and as historian Lizabeth Cohen (2003, pp. 274–278) has shown, postwar laws, regulations, and zoning practices helped foster this culture by providing the infrastructure for a large (white) middle-class exodus to the many suburban areas of large cities.⁸ Pressures to consume and conform were part of the suburban experience, where “Keeping up with the Joneses” was considered essential in order to be accepted in the community (Chafe, 1972; Ewen & Ewen, 1982; Hartman, 1982; May, 1990, Miller & Nowak, 1977, Nowak, 1975). Between 1946 and 1950, US citizens purchased 21.4 million automobiles, more than 20 million refrigerators, 5.5 million electric stoves, and 11.6 million television sets (Hartman, 1982, p. 8).

The emphasis on private consumption represented a perfect merger of two political objectives: the need for corporate profits and the use of private consumption as an anti-communist definer. In 1959 when Vice-President Richard Nixon visited Moscow, Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev got entangled, not in discussion over disarmament or nuclear power, but over which country could produce the best home appliances. According to Nixon, what made the United States so great was the nuclear family. Nixon insisted that US superiority in the Cold War rested not on weapons, but on the secure, abundant family life of modern suburban homes. Consumerism was not an end in itself; it was the means for achieving individuality, leisure, and upward mobility. At the very center of success was the nuclear family with its working-class, happy kids and a full-time homemaker who cooked, cleaned, and shopped for the family (May, 1990).

This does not mean that advertising as a cultural phenomenon was no longer controversial. The postwar decades were rife with satire and criticism of the asininity of advertising, ranging from novels and films like The Hucksters and satire such as Mad Magazine to exposés like Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (1958). What had changed was that while advertising could be lampooned, and specific ads or advertising practices criticized, its institutional role had become off-limits for fundamental debate. The caliber of criticism that had been routine in the 1930s and early 1940s was pushed to the far margins of acceptable commentary. It seemed implausible that there could be a good society without advertising as we had come to know it.

Decreased consumer militancy coupled with new consumption patterns also affected CU. Many consumers became interested in learning as much as possible about products before they purchased them, and the circulation of Consumer Reports skyrocketed. In March 1944 the magazine had a circulation of only 55,000, but by June 1949 the number had increased to 275,000. Despite the fivefold increase in circulation, the magazine's leaders were frustrated in their efforts to reach a socioeconomic cross-section of US consumers and continued to appeal primarily to professional middle- and upper-middle-income individuals. By the mid-1950s, largely due to a series of unsubstantiated accusations of communist activity, CU downplayed its activism component (Katz, 1977).

The general absence of public objection to commercialism during this period did not necessarily mean that such sentiments did not exist or that everyone welcomed the changes. An increasing number of scholars contend that most histories of the postwar United States fail to account for the psychological complexity of those years, including the vitality and variety of subordinate cultures that flourished. “If consensus did indeed characterize America's national culture in the 1950s,” Robert Griffith (1983) remarks, “it was perhaps to a degree we have not fully appreciated, a consensus manufactured by America's corporate leaders, packaged by the advertising industry, and merchandized through the channels of mass communication” (p. 412; see also Jackson Lears, 1989; Koontz, 1992; Susman, 1989).

It was not until the 1960s that the United States would experience yet another intense wave of politically organized consumers. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s consumer organizations witnessed steady support for their demands, and a variety of national consumer groups, each with specialized interests and some with charismatic leaders, emerged.

Consumer Resistance in the 1960s, 1970s, and Beyond

The postwar consumer momentum continued into the 1960s but it did not take long before the illusion of consensus about advertising and the corporate culture it supported came under severe criticism. Back in the early 1950s, critics like David Riesman (1953) had received attention but little support for the opinion that the US obsession with consumption and material abundance had led people away from a tradition of self-reliance and toward a habit of defining themselves as a function of other people's lives and (consumer) habits. Neither did works by C. Wright Mills (1956) and David Potter (1962) cause people to reject the consumer ethos, and John Kenneth Galbraith (1958) gained little public traction for his claim that advertising artificially created high rates of consumption to support high rates of production and that it artificially created high rates of production to support high rates of consumption.

By the early part of the 1960s, however, an increasing number of people started to question aspects of consumer society and some even rejected it altogether. Issues such as advertising's power to define female beauty and its tendency to depict women in stereotypical ways became a great concern during this period, which also witnessed an intense but largely unsuccessful effort to regulate children's exposure to advertising. In his book on the 1960s advertising industry, historian Thomas Frank (1997) discusses ways in which advertising copywriters co-opted this criticism, using it to create new market segments in order to sell products to the increasingly cynical consumer.

The most influential person in what would be known as the third wave of consumer activism in the 1960s and 1970s was without doubt Ralph Nader. In 1963 the young lawyer published Unsafe at Any Speed, a highly acclaimed and widely discussed exposé of the auto industry and its utter disregard for consumer safety (Nader, 1973). Later, Nader transformed his interest in consumer issues into a movement that could effectively counter the power held by business in the marketplace. With the help of associates he uncovered abuses against individual consumers, and in 1968 he recruited a task force of students to investigate the FTC, an agency so manipulated by business that it was unable to fulfill its mandate. Hoping to invigorate the citizenry to fight corporate power and make businesses accountable to the people, Nader experimented with new strategies for action. His efforts had a strong impact, and in the period between 1967 and 1973 Congress enacted more than 25 laws to regulate corporate conduct in consumer and environmental fields (Pertschuk, 1982).

A watershed in the third era of consumer activity was the 1978 defeat of legislation to create a consumer advocacy agency. The idea of a Department of the Consumer to parallel the Departments of Commerce and Labor had first been introduced back in the early 1930s. In the 1970s and under the leadership of Nader, however, attention shifted from the creation of an agency without regulatory powers to one entrusted with monitoring the activities of other government agencies and, if necessary, the authority to intervene in their regulatory decision-making on consumers' behalf. In spite of massive support from consumer advocates including the Consumer Federation of America and a newly invigorated CU, the plans were thwarted by commercial interests. Arguing that the proposed agency would create a new bureaucracy, increase the complexity of regulatory hearings, and force the disclosure of trade secrets, business interests used their powerful lobbying arms to help defeat the plan (Herrman & Mayer, 1997). Organized consumer efforts to expand the FTC's regulatory powers and regulate the commercial targeting of children faced a similar fate. By the late 1970s, most of the gains that had been made in the early part of the decade were lost (Pertschuk, 1982).

Some of the activist momentum survived into the 1980s but quickly lost ground amid the neoliberal policies that came into full force during the Reagan presidency. Deregulation of the telecom industries provided advertisers with new and expanded venues. In the competitive environment that followed, mass media became increasingly reluctant to discuss issues that might put their commercial benefactors in a negative light (McChesney, 1999, 2004).

It was not until the 1990s that consumers again rose in unison and this time on a global scale. Consumer activism had been part of the European landscape since the 1930s and by the 1970s and 1980s concerns about increased commercialism had spread to Asian countries. Due to different degrees of commercialization and variations in each country's consumer protection laws, consumer protest took different forms although international cooperation on issues of common interest did happen. Although important in its own right, this work was rarely grassroots driven. (See entries for individual countries in Brobeck, 1997; Chadwick, 1997; Frith, 1996; Gao, 2005; Samiee & Ryans, 1982.)

This changed in the late 1990s with the rise of a new wave of consumer activism, this time with a global scope. The frequent reference to this as the “anti-globalization movement” did not mean that its proponents were xenophobic or nationalistic; they simply found a common ground in opposing globalization that serves investors and corporate interests, not globalization per se (Klein, 2000; Korten, 2001).

Sweatshop conditions, child labor, environmental regulation, food safety (genetically engineered foods), corporate power (the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank), and over-commercialization were among its major focuses. Its heterogeneity hearkened back to the first wave of consumer activists in the Progressive Era and its emphasis on labor conditions and public health across all classes, but now from a global perspective. Likewise, in comparison to their 1930s US counterpart, the globally oriented activists questioned the impact of commercialism, but now in a broader context. Not only were workers in poor countries being exploited, the fruit of their labor was destroying the social and cultural fabric across the globe (Barber, 2008).⁹ The call, as in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, was for increased corporate accountability. But ironically enough, given that we live in the so-called information age, corporate conduct, including its commercial strategies, is more difficult to monitor than ever. Because commercial values have become entrenched in our everyday life and commercial speech is gaining increased First Amendment protection, consumer advocates and citizens face a harder challenge in gaining a critical perspective on commercialism.¹⁰

Conclusion

At this time there are strong indications that the most recent wave of consumer activism has lost ground or is, at best, refocusing. Capitalist culture, on the other hand, is not showing any signs of slowing down, leaving consumer activists to fight an uphill battle.

During the last two decades, advertising and consumer culture have been subjected to a great deal of scholarly interest both in the United States and abroad. Still, in order to map the economic forces that dictate the increasing levels of commercialization across the globe, we need more scholarship to focus on these issues. Not only is it mandatory to keep track of contemporary developments and how they shape the changing concept of consumer culture, it is also important to trace these events to the past. Although far from answering all questions, historical inquiries into advertising and the shaping of consumer culture may provide some explanation for our present-day situation. Knowledge of the political decisions that form the basis of our present-day consumer society would not only fill a gap in our understanding of twentieth-century history, it might also inspire consumer activists, providing them with a better foundation for the fight against corporate hegemony.

NOTES

1 The total amount spent on advertising in the United States during 2007 was $279,612 million, which represented 2% of total GDP. Retrieved January, 25, 2011, from http://www.galbithink.org/ad-spending.htm.

2 Space limitations prevent me from covering all aspects of twentieth-century consumer resistance, including the use of consumer boycotts. For a discussion of the topic, see Cohen (2003), Frank (1994), Friedman (1999), Glickman (2009), and Jacobs (2005).

3 Eric Johnston (1944, Ch. 8), the president of the US Chamber of Commerce, coined the term “people's capitalism” in the 1940s.

4 For an interesting discussion of the Advertising Council's agenda in the postwar era, see Ziegler (2003).

5 Valentine v. Chrestensen 316 US 52 (1942).

6 For an excellent treatment of television's early years, see Baughman (1992, Ch. 3); see also Boddy (1990); Spigel (1992).

7 For the public's reaction to commercial radio, see Boddy (1990, p. 22); Marchand (1985, pp. 88–94).

8 Cohen also discusses how various forms of discrimination prevented African Americans from partaking in the postwar consumer society.

9 For a discussion of advertisers' influence on the educational system, see Molnar (1996).

10 The recent US Supreme Court ruling to let corporations and unions sponsor political campaign ads has opened the floodgates for those with the most money to influence federal elections and government decisions. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 US 08-205 (2010).

REFERENCES

Advertising at work. (1943, June 19). Business Week, p. 96.

ANA finds public appreciates war advertising. (1943, June 11). Printers' Ink, p. 24.

Ayres, E. (1934). Private organizations working for the consumer. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 173, 158–165.

Baldasty, G. J. (1992). The commercialization of news in the nineteenth century. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Baran, P. A., & Sweezy, P. M. (1966). Monopoly capital. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Barber, B. R. (2008). Consumed: How markets corrupt children, infantilize adults, and swallow citizens whole. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Baughman, J. L. (1992). The republic of mass culture: Journalism, filmmaking, and broadcasting in America since 1941. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Boddy, W. (1990). Fifties television: The industry and its critics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Brobeck, S. (Ed.). (1997). Encyclopedia of the consumer movement. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Chadwick, J. (1997). Navigating through China's new advertising law: The role of marketing research. International Journal of Advertising, 16, 284–294.

Chafe, W. H. (1972). The American woman: Her changing social, economic and political roles, 1920–1960. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cohen, L. (2003). A consumers republic: The politics of mass consumption in postwar society. New York, NY: Knopf.

Consumers Union (1941). Bread and butter: Facts you need before you buy. Consumers Union Reports, March, p. 80.

Curti, M. (1967). The changing concept of human nature in the literature of American advertising. Business History Review, 41(4), 235–257.

Ewen, S. (1976). Captains of consciousness: Advertising and the social roots of consumer culture. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Ewen, S. (1996). PR! The social history of spin. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Ewen, S., & Ewen, E. (1982). Channels of desire: Mass images and the shaping of American consciousness. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Filler, L. (1993). The muckrakers. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fox, F. W. (1975). Madison Avenue goes to war. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

Fox, S. (1997). The mirror makers: A history of American advertising and its creators. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Frank, D. (1994). Purchasing power: Consumer organizing, gender, and the Seattle labor movement, 1919–1929. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Frank, T. (1997). Conquest of cool. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Friedman, M. (1999). Consumer boycotts: Effecting change through the marketplace and media. New York, NY: Routledge.

Frith, K. T. (Ed.). (1996). Advertising in Asia: Communication, cultureand consumption. Ames, IA: University of Iowa Press.

Gaedeke, R. M. (1972). The muckraking era. In R. M. Gaedeke & W. W. Etcheson (Eds.), Consumerism: Viewpoints from business, government, and the public interest. San Francisco, CA: Canfield Press.

Galbraith, J. K. (1958). The affluent society. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Gao, Z. (2005). Harmonious regional advertising regulation: A comparative examination of government advertising regulation in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Journal of Advertising, 34(3), 75–87.

Glickman, L. B. (2009). Buying power: A history of consumer activism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Grabner, W. (1987). The engineering of consent: Democracy and authority in twentieth-century America. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Griffith, R. (1983). The selling of America: The Advertising Council and American politics, 1942–1960. Business History Review, 58(1), 388–412.

Hartman, S. M. (1982). The homefront and beyond: American women in the 1940s. Boston, MA: Twayne.

Heinze, A. R. (1990). Adapting to abundance: Jewish immigrants, mass consumption, and the search for American identity. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Herrman, R. O., & Mayer, R. N. (1997). US consumer movement: History and dynamics. In S. Brobeck (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the consumer movement (pp. 589–593). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Jackson Lears, T. J. (1989). A matter of taste: Corporate cultural hegemony in mass-consumption society. In L. May (Ed.), Recasting America (pp. 38–57). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Jacobs, M. (2005). Pocket politics: Economic citizenship in twentieth century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Jhally, S. (1990). The codes of advertising: Fetishism and thepolitical economy of meaning in the consumer society. New York, NY: Routledge.

Johnston, E. (1944). America unlimited. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran.

Katz, N. D. (1977). Consumers Union: The movement and the magazine. (Unpublished PhD dissertation.) Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.

Klein, N. (2000). No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies. New York, NY: Picador.

Koontz, S. (1992). The way we never were: American families and the nostalgia trap. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Korten, D. (2001). When corporations rule the world. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Lamoreaux, N. (1985). The great merger movement in American business, 1885–1904. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lipsitz, G. (1990). Time passages: Collective memory and American popular culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Marchand, R. (1985). Advertising the American Dream: Making way for modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

May, E. T. (1990). Homeward Bound: American families in the Cold War era. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Mayer, R. N. (1989). The consumer movement. Boston, MA: Twayne.

McChesney, R. W. (1997). Corporate media and the threat to democracy. New York, NY: Seven Stories Press.

McChesney, R. W. (1999). Rich media, poor democracy: Communication politics in dubious times. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

McChesney, R. W. (2004). The problem of the media: US communication politics in the twenty-first century. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

McGovern, C. F. (1998). Consumption and citizenship in the United States, 1900–1940. In S. Strasser, C. McGovern, & M. Judt (Eds.), Getting and spending: European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

McGovern, C. F. (2006). Sold American: Consumption and citizenship, 1890–1945. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Miller, D., & Nowak, M. (1977). The fifties: The way we really were. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.

Molnar, A. (1996). Giving kids the business. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Morse, R. L. D. (1993). The consumer movement: Lectures by Colston E. Warne. Manhattan, KS: Family Economics Trust.

Nadel, M. V. (1997). Congress and consumer protection. In S. Brobeck (Ed.), Encyclopedia of the consumer movement (pp. 126–127). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Nader, R. (1973). Unsafe at any speed. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.

Nowak, M. (1975). How to be a woman: Theories on female education in the 1950s. Journal of Popular Culture, 9, 10–19.

Ohman, R. (1998). Selling culture: Magazines, markets, and class at the turn of the twentieth century. London, UK: Verso.

Olney, M. L. (1991). Buy now, pay later: Advertising, credit, and consumer durables in the 1920s. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Packard, V. (1958). The hidden persuaders. New York, NY: David McKay.

Patten, S. N. (1968). The new basis of civilization (D. M. Fox, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Pease, O. (1958). The responsibilities of American advertising: Private control and public influence, 1920–1940. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Peiss, K. (1986). Cheap amusements: Working women and leisure in turn-of-the-century New York. Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press.

Pells, R. H. (1989) The liberal mind in a conservative age: American intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Pertschuk, M. (1982). Revolt against regulation: The rise and fall of the consumer movement. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Pope, D. (1983). The making of modern advertising. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Potter, D. M. (1962). People of plenty: Economic abundance and the American character. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Riesman, D. (1953). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Roa, H. (1998). Caveat emptor: The construction of nonprofit consumer watchdog organizations. American Journal of Sociology, 103(4), 912–961.

Samiee, S., & Ryans, J. K., Jr. (1982). Advertising and the consumerism movement in Europe: The case of West Germany and Switzerland. Journal of International Business Studies, 13(1), 109–114.

Samuel, L. R. (2001). Brought to you by: Postwar television advertising and the American Dream. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Schneirov, M. (1994). The dream of a new social order: Popular magazines in America, 1893–1914. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

Silber, N. I. (1983). Test and protest: The influence of consumers union. New York, NY: Holmes & Meier.

Sivulka, J. (1998). Soap, sex, and cigarettes: A cultural history of American advertising. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Sklar, K. K. (1995). Florence Kelly and the nation's work: The rise of women's political culture, 1830–1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Sklar, K. K. (1998). The consumers' white label campaign and the National Consumers' League, 1898–1918. In S. Strasser, C. McGovern, & M. Judt (Eds.), Getting and spending: European and American consumer societies in the twentieth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Spigel, L. (1992). Make room for TV: Television and the family ideal in postwar America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Stole, I. L. (2001a). The advertising industry goes to war with America: Critics and the fight over the excess profits tax during the Second World War. In C. R. Taylor (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2001 Conference of the American Academy of Advertising (pp. 90–97). Richmond, VA: American Academy of Advertising.

Stole, I. L. (2001b). The salesmanship of sacrifice: The advertising industry's use of public relations during the Second World War. Advertising and Society Review, 2(2). Retrieved from http:/muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v002/2.2stole.htlm

Stole, I. L. (2006). Advertising on trial: Consumer activism and corporate public relations in the 1930s. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Strasser, S. (1989). Satisfaction guaranteed: The making of the American mass market. New York, NY: Pantheon.

Susman, W., with the assistance of E. Griffin (1989). Did success spoil the United States? Dual representation in postwar America. In L. May (Ed.), Recasting America (pp. 19–37). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Tedlow, R. S. (1981). From competitor to consumer: The changing focus of federal regulation of advertising, 1914–1938. Business History Review, 55(1), 35–58.

Tedlow, R. S. (1990). New and improved: The story of mass marketing in America. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Veblen, T. (1927). The theory of the leisure class: An economic study of institutions. New York, NY: Vanguard Press.

Veblen, T. (1938). The engineers and the price system. New York, NY: Viking.

Veblen, T. (1954). Absentee ownership and business enterprise in recent times: The case of America. New York, NY: Viking.

Whitfeld, S. J. (1992). The culture of the Cold War. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Wolfe, A. R. (1975). Women, consumerism, and the National Consumers' League in the Progressive Era, 1900–1923. Labor History, 16(5), 378–392.

Wright Mills, C. (1956). The power elite. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Young, J. H. (1992). The medical messiahs: A social history of health quackery in twentieth-century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ziegler, R. (2003). The paradox of plenty: The Advertising Council and the post-Sputnik crisis. Advertising and Society Review, 4(1). Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/asr/v004/4.1zieger.htlm