Last week our returning featured speaker (and RCFC member) Professor Bob Meroney did not (again) disappoint with his series of old and not so old images of shameless advertising in his talk entitled Old Ads: How did we survive?
(After the talk I wondered if perhaps many Americans did not survive if they followed the advice of some of these ads). The full impact of this talk (the members laughed and sighed throughout) cannot be reproduced in these Rotogear words because a “picture is (still) worth a thousand words”.
First up was an ad for Twitter (2006) to illustrate in the new millennia how rapidly a product can evolve and become a part of our (political) culture.
From 1888 we see a photo of a sign that hung in the Hotel Coronado in CA about something “new” - the electric light! Edison was said to have installed this product himself in the Coronado!
Many of the early ads reflected the values of our culture and politics at the time - sadly they used bigotry, racism and sexism to sell products or advance a political view. Many of them (we later learned) were promoting a product that was found to be really, really bad for your health. From old to newer the series of images reflects the evolution of American thought, social tolerance and the application of science to medicine (a 20th century innovation).
An ad for the “Magic Washer” (1880) seemed to say dirty meant Chinese immigrants and was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
Under the heading “bad for your health” we see Cocaine Toothache drops for pain; Arsenic Complexion Wafers (1916-1928) guaranteed absolutely safe; the Dutch Boys Lead Party - children’s books had actual lead paint samples; Radium enhanced everything (1930s) from plants to cooking utensils, guns as Christmas gifts, Black Flag DDT which should be used on crop, livestock, homes and gardens; and a Seagram ad suggesting alcohol might be safe during pregnancy.
Under “bad for your health” tobacco commercials deserve their own paragraph. If you look at these ads (which many of us still remember) you learn that Santa Claus smoked Camels as did most doctors. And blow smoke (Tipalet) in your lady’s face and she’ll follow you anywhere.
That’s a good transition to sexist ads. Pep vitamins will energize the housewife, and we all know that “the harder a wife works, the cuter she looks”. An ad for Van Husen ties (1951) shows a drawing of a wife kneeling as she brings her husband breakfast in bed. And women just will be happier on Christmas morning if you give them a Hoover. More recent (1970s) we surely remember “I’m Jo. Fly me”. Women were often the primary target of “shame ads” – the “Chin Reducer and Beautifier” and “Chubby-sized Clothes” at Lane Bryant. Baby and children’s pictures were used to sell Ranier Beer (1906), DDT (1946), cosmetics (Love’s Baby Soft cosmetics), 7UP (1955), Gilette Safety Razors (1908) and even cellophane (1950s). Even TV wasn’t bad for kids (Motorola 1950) and endorsed by the AMA.
The hardest ads to view were overtly racists - Bob showed a number of examples of soap ads and even Elliott’s White Veneer all portrayed as so effective they could whiten the skin of Afro-Americans.
Bob closed with a few fake ads showing the effects of photo-shopping and he didn’t even touch on what AI can do. The last image was a YouTube commercial (sometime after 2006). The hardware in the background looks “ancient” again showing how fast new products evolve.
The groans and laughter of our members and guests suggest to me a recognition of how far we have progressed in the 20th and 21st centuries. The lesson seems to me that unbridled capitalism needs to be counterbalanced by objective scientific inquiry and at times government oversight, intervention and regulation to ensure the protection of we citizens. The best recent example is the decrease in tobacco use in the US from 46% in 1950 to 12.5% today as a result of education and increased taxes on these products.