Pre 1970's Advertising

1930’s

(References--JSTOR pgs 137-139)
In Ben C. Duffy's A look at Advertising Media in The Journal of Marketing in 1938 we see what an early promoter and scholar of advertising was interested in. The television isn’t really looked at as a means of advertising despite already becoming commercially available. The author is actually trying to prove the usefulness of the radio as it emerges in more American homes. Newspapers and magazines are the main mediums of this primitive “mass media” and comically low costs of advertising are interesting in the chart.

Figure 1.2 shows us an example of a stereotypical print ad from the 30's. It stays true to the purely informative template: telling us amidst a picture of the product and some descriptions that you pay 1 penny for 100 sheets...good deal.

1940’s

Wendell Willkie’s 1940 presidential television advertisement is two minutes and forty five seconds of the candidate standing in front of a tree talking. Informational and boring to the max. Don't bother trying to sit through the speech-- he doesn't move, the images don't change, and


Figure 1.3 rings true to the spirit of advertising of the times--the advertisement from a newspaper literally just lists reasons how you can get a new Oldsmobile, along with a picture and a description. Doesn't exactly instill one with anyeart-pounding emotions.

1950's
(References--JSTOR pgs 209-211)
In Quality vs Quantity in Televised Political Ads we see that during the 1953 campaign the Eisenhower administration used “spot advertising” to show more direct, catchy and concise points, rather than a “long winded speech that people could tune out.” This was the beginning of the transition from information based “central route processing” (according to the Elaboration Likelihood Model) to the quick, conceptual, emotion provoking synonymous with the “peripheral route” --more closely tied with the present day advertisements.

1960’s


This 1960 presidential advertisement for Kennedy shows some development from the simple information via a speech and a face, however as you can see it’s two minutes long—over the next 48 years of development we’ll see a reduction in time as advertising costs go up. From 10 minutes for 100$ offered by AT&T in 1922 to the billions paid for by advertisers today as shown in this Timeline.




This video for president Johnson in 1964 political campaign ad is one minute long is getting towards the major transition which occurs in the 1970’s when really we see the majority of the advertisements looking like this one. Grabbing a single idea and framing it amidst an entertaining and “brief” clip about the candidate.

Post 1970’s most of us know how presidential campaigns are advertised; if you’re not en masse then the other blog posts should give insight as to how advertisements have evolved further. It’s now a combination that reverts back to the information based messages seen here and the conceptual advertisements of the post 70’s. There is also the presents day new media advertisements that incorporates a third category involving interactivity.