Research Paper

Ready Camera One: We’re Live – Research Report

The Creative Revolution: Advertising in the 1960s and Beyond

Kate McNamara

05.09.11

The first legal television advertisement ran on July 1, 1941 before a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies and cost only nine dollars. New York City’s WNBT aired a 10 second spot displaying a Bulova watch over a map of the U.S., with a voice over reading, “America runs on Bulova time!” This revolutionary moment in television history sparked a worldwide phenomenon that has since been used to promote a variety of goods, services, and ideas; however, the 1940s were cast almost solely by the American people’s disillusionment as a result of World War II. For the most part, men were overseas fighting the war, women took over the workplace, and rationing put a temporary hold on consumerism. Thus, it was not until the 1950s that television advertising really began to flourish. According to Sue Goodwin’s article for the Lone Star College-Kingwood Library, the 1950s are summed up appropriately as follows:

After the war, the men returned, having seen the rest of the world. No longer was the family farm an ideal; no longer would blacks accept lesser status. The GI Bill allowed more men than ever before to get a college education. Women had to give up their jobs to the returning men, but they had tasted independence… With an energy never before experienced, American industry expanded to meet peacetime needs. Americans began buying goods not available during the war, which created corporate expansion and jobs.

In addition, she states, “at the end of the war, only 5,000 television sets, with five inch black & white screens, were in American homes. By 1951, 17 million had been sold.” Now that a sizable percentage of the population had at least one television at home and, with the advent of the jukebox, 45 records and eventually albums diverting Americans from radio, advertising firms began focusing more intently on commercials for television.

According to Steven Chabotte’s article, A Brief History of Television Advertising, “broadcasting [in the context of marketing] was originally developed as a means for companies to sell radios. But once commercial entities realized that many households were listening to their radios a significant amount of time every day, they started to explore this medium as a way to get their message across to the masses.” When advertising reached television, it arrived in a form known as “single sponsorship” which meant that each program had one sponsor who’s brand appeared multiple times per show and was often very distracting. This made it difficult for shows to run smoothly and without interruption from abrupt ad placements. Erik Barnouw explains in Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television that programming [has been] controlled by advertising sponsors” since the dawn of television. In 1953, though, Sylvester L. Weaver became NBC president and began promoting a new form of television advertising called the “’magazine concept,’ under which advertisers bought insertions in programs produced and controlled by the network.” This way, “contracts with sponsors for television time were revised by Weaver to allow the network to ‘withhold’ occasional periods for special programs.” This new concept – advertising via a few short breaks during a program, i.e. commercials – quickly became the standard with which we are all familiar.

Television programming in the 1950s was dominated by shows such as “I Love Lucy,” “I Married Joan,” “Father Knows Best,” “Leave It To Beaver,” “Lassie,” and “Leave It To Daddy,” all of which featured white, middle-class families participating in wholesome activities and upholding the social standards and cultural values of that time. Of course, there were a number of other programs on air, but these were among the most popular. As one might imagine, advertisements that ran during those particular shows followed suit. Many companies marketed their products in commercials that featured women desperate to please their husbands, or men displaying their masculinity in hopes of catching the attention of an attractive woman. Television advertising and programming seem to follow the trends of the time in which they’re aired, and during the fifties, they demonstrated a great divide in gender roles, one which was very prevalent in society. Perhaps this is why, in the 1960s, when daily newscasts began to show up on television and many Americans were finally exposed to current events – most of which provoked negativity – programming and, more importantly, advertising was radically altered as a result of the change in attitude throughout the nation. An article from the American Hit Network expertly describes the 1960s:

It was an era where America shifted from optimism to disillusionment, from blind acceptance to distrust. In ten short years, “My country, right or wrong” morphed into “Question authority”. It was a time of violent confrontation, with the civil rights movement and youth culture demanding equity when the war in Southeast Asia put civil loyalty to the test.

By this time, television was “starting to really become an essential item in many households” so finally, reaching an audience via television became the best way to communicate to the masses. Thus, in stark contrast to the 1950s, America was suddenly plunged into social turmoil, with the Vietnam war underway and new information only a channel pr two away. This change served as an obvious catalyst for a cultural movement known as 1960s counterculture, which was also deeply influenced by the emergence of hippie culture in the United States. The country’s youth, for the most part, began to question the rights of themselves and others, and found themselves in a world that begged for change.

It was a time of social, physical, and psychological experimentation and although most argue that this movement had a negative affect on consumerism and advertising, as rebellious youth in America began to reject the 1950s materialism on which they were raised, Lynn Spigel, author of TV By Design, argues the opposite:

While most advertising firms of the 1950s were notoriously business minded and practical in orientation, [the 1960s] fostered a new, unconventional, anti-authoritarian attitude among advertisers that was expressed in less hierarchical workplaces; the embrace of young talent; and ever the sartorial choices of advertising artists who traded in their gray flannel suits for dashikis, love beads, and jeans. So, too, these younger, hipper advertisers extolled the virtues of rock ‘n’ roll music, smoked marijuana, and some even recommended LSD as a tonic for visual discovery.

To sum up, advertisers of the 1950s approached their public audience with little thought, and focused mainly on saturating the consumer’s consciousness with campaigns that were, in Thomas Frank’s words, “trite, repetitive, and literally unbelievable.” He continues: “the ‘Theory X’ values of science, efficiency, and management were at their zenith, and those of creativity and carnival noticeably in eclipse. . . Their idealized vision of consuming life had little to do with the actual experience of American consumers.” So, by allowing the 1960s counterculture into the workplace, advertising firms were able to break out the the old rules of repetition and cheap production, and experiment with different artistic methods and marketing techniques that changed the way advertising was both approached and received forever.

According to Lynn Spigel, “as television matured, sponsors realized that they were in an extremely competitive playing field, vying to get the attention of audiences inundated by ads.” In the same vein, Harry Wayne McMahan notes in The Television Commercial, a 1957 advertising handbook, that “the average family consumes 360 television commercials a week, [so] you should not assume you have a completely captive audience in front of the television set. You must gain their attention, then their interest.” Thus, the understanding of these ideas by a few men with high advertising status sparked the creative revolution of television marketing and compelled ad agencies to target audiences specific to the product they were selling, reject the old way of repetition and redundancy, and experiment with new techniques to capture the attention of viewers. Among these great men, there are two that stand out as real revolutionaries: Bill Bernbach, legendary founder of advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach and creator of many famous ad campaigns such as “We Try Harder” for Avis Rental Car , “It’s So Simple” for Polaroid, “You Don’t Have to be Jewish to Love Levy’s” for Levy’s Rye Bread and, perhaps the most revolutionary advertisement in the 1960s, “Think Small” and “The Bug” for Volkswagen, and Leo Burnett, of the Leo Burnett Company, known for such iconic figures as the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Tony the Tiger.

Bill Bernbach was among the first to realize that television advertising was in serious need of some change. He started his company in 1935 with a staff of eight and one client, the Minnesota Valley Canning Company. After careful thought and deliberation, he began to understand that if a product were backed by some constant that the public can become familiar with, whether it be a mascot or written phrase, it is more likely to succeed. With that in mind, he conjured up the Jolly Green Giant, a figure still well-known and used by the company today. His advertisement for Avis Car Rental, which was then the #2 rated car rental company in the nation, directly addressed the fact that it was not the highest rated and coined the phrase, “We Try Harder” as a result of that. Before this revolutionary ad, companies never addressed their products’ weaknesses and only maintained that it was the best around; the thought of using a company’s weakness as a part of the advertising strategy was unbelievably innovative. His greatest accomplishment of all, though, was the work he did for Volkwagen in 1959. An article from Thinkingouttabox: Thinking, Speaking Visually states the following:

At a time when the US consumers were being urged, cajoled and ‘persuaded’ to “think big” along comes this one ad suggesting the opposite. Looking back at the context of that time, it appeared ludicrous. Why? Simply because Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) essentially took a German car originally created for Adolph Hitler (the Volkswagen Beetle) and sold it to post-war Americans through radically styled advertisements.

The catch phrases from car advertisements of this time were “’New, Shiny, Big and Great Features!’

But Volkswagen’s “Think small” advertisement had lots of white space, the product advertised was miniscule, the headline lacked news value and worse of all… it was in black and white! The ad campaign however generated favourable publicity because the advertisements were brilliantly written, for instead of marketing it to consumers as a luxurious, spacious vehicle as all its competitors were doing, it focused on the benefits of its compact size and affordability.

What a concept! Although this seems like common sense to people in today’s society, this idea really was an incredible insight into how people thought and what it took to really sell a product to its intended audience. An article about Bill Bernbach from a series called The Advertising Century addresses his brilliance:

When DDB came along, the TV commercial landscape was filled with devices and lively gimmicks. There were brain-pounding hammers for Anacin, Speedy Alka-Seltzer doll antics and dancing cigarettes for Lucky Strike and Old Gold. Enter DDB and an era of creative energy unknown since Ray Rubicam’s Young & Rubicam explosive work of the 1920s. Bernbach insisted on first learning how his client’s products related to their users, what human qualities and emotions came into play. Then the challenge turned to deciding how best to communicate those elements, in TV and print, and capture the consumer’s understanding and support.

This is precisely why Bill Bernbach is credited with having created the most influential and successful television commercial even today. Due to his true understanding of a targeted consumer and willingness to think outside the box, he is remembered as one of the most important men in television history.

Leo Burnett, on the other hand, “[was a] jowly genius of the heartland subconscious, [and] is the man most responsible for the blizzard of visual imagery that assaults us today,” says Stuart Ewen, of Time Magazine‘s article “Leo Burnett – Sultan of Sell.” He goes on to explain that “Burnett’s creativity was in stark contrast to that of some of his contemporaries, who built advertising companies around research and marketing expertise. Burnett forged his reputation around the idea that “share of market” could only be built on “share of mind,” the capacity to stimulate consumers’ basic desires and beliefs. To achieve this goal, Burnett moved beyond standard industry practice.” While others of his time based their advertisements around narratives and phrases that were supposed to sell their product, “Burnett moved the image to center stage. Visual eloquence, he was convinced, was far more persuasive, more poignant, than labored narratives, verbose logic or empty promises.” According to him, “visuals appealed to the ‘basic emotions and primitive instincts’ of consumers.” This philosophy is what inspired iconic advertising mascots such as the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger, and the Marlboro Man which was, perhaps, his most successful ad campaign of all.

The extent to which Bill Bernbach and Leo Burnett’s presence is felt today is hard to describe, since television is flooded with new commercials every single day. But you can bet that if you’re watching a commercial that was made after 1970, it will have been directly influenced by one of these two advertising icons or at least one of the great visionaries involved in the creative revolution.