Advertising in the 1920’s
U.S. History II
Adobe® Acrobat™ for Web Research
Mr. Andrew O’Connor
Northern Valley Regional High School
Old Tappan, New Jersey
Adapted by Patricia Johnson, Education Consultant
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/cccap.html
Contents Page
1. Teacher Statement
2. Course Overview
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•
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•
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•
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Course Introduction
Objectives
Task list
Reading and On-line resources
Technical Resources
Handouts
Handout I. University of Arizona Listerine Advertisement
Handout II. Medicine and Madison Avenue
Handout III. Advertisement Analysis Form
Other Materials
New Jersey State Standards
Hardware specifications
Adobe software list
3. Lesson Plan Table
4. Detailed Lesson Plans
6. Forms and Handouts
7. Tutorials
The California History Social Science Project
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD$Minor=T&Slide Num=206.00
Teacher’s Statement
Mr. Andrew O’Connor
United States History II
Advertising in the 1920’s
The Studying American History through the use of the Library
of Congress on-line American Memories resource is an excellent
way to stimulate an interest in the subject, provide unique source
material for studying the subject and for incorporating technology
into classroom activities.
This workbook offers guidelines for using Adobe Acrobat
software to research, record and report on web research done for
this lesson in Advertising in American History.
This course module covers the American economy experienced
an unprecedented period of growth during the 1920s. With new
consumer goods flooding the market, American businesses relied
increasingly on advertising to sell their products. Advertisers no
longer limited themselves to informing the public about products
and prices. They now attempted to create a need and desire
among the American public for products. Manufacturers used
advertisements in newspapers, on billboards, and over the radio to
appeal to America’s worship of youth, beauty, wealth, luxury, and
convenience in the 1920s. The results were impressive, indeed.
Examples on the American Memories site as well as other web
resources illustrating of how advertising evolved and formed the
basis for what we take for granted today, offer students a unique
perspective on the study of the American economy. The purpose
of this course of study is to provide a snapshot of the early part
of the 20th Century that provides a unique frame of reference for
understanding the history of the United States.
Course Overview
Introduction
Tasks in Brief
During the 1920’s the nation’s industrial capacity expanded
quickly and the position of the United States in world trade became
unrivaled. At home, a new consumption ethic began to replace the
production ethic of the nineteenth century, as dramatic increases in
productive efficiency flooded the marketplace with new consumer
goods. Goods once available only to the affluent were now made
accessible to the working classes: hand cameras, wristwatches,
vacuum cleaners, washing machines, electric refrigerators, radios,
and automobiles to name just a few. Higher American incomes and
the growth of installment plans or buying on credit enabled the
masses to more easily purchase these new consumer goods.
In this lesson, students will:
Objectives
•
The lesson will begin with a visual advertisement for a 1920s product,
Listerine Mouthwash, projected on an overhead to immediately focus
students for the lesson
•
Students will be asked to read and interpret the advertisement, and
write down their thoughts about its message(s)
•
A brief discussion will lead to important lecture items about
advertising: definition, methods, and objectives-goals of advertising.
Connections to modern day advertising will be discussed with the
class.
•
Pairs of students transition to computer stations to perform Internet
searches for products and advertisements from the 1920s utilizing the
American Memories Collections from the Library of Congress:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
At the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
•
Gain a greater understanding of what advertising is, how it
works, and why it is effective
•
Recognize and gain a better understanding of the new
consumerism and development of advertising in the 1920s
•
Understand how the consumer economy and advertising of the
1920s shaped the U.S. economy and culture
•
Begin to practice becoming critical viewers of advertisements
by more fully comprehending how advertisements can influence
their purchasing choices and the economy as a whole
•
Gain experience in Internet searches, primary source analysis
and evaluation, cooperative work, and develop their creative
skills and public speaking skills
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy,
1921-1929.
• Groups will be responsible for downloading three actual 1920s
advertisements from this site, to include: product information, pictures,
and actual source. These advertisements will serve to reinforce student
understanding of period advertising techniques, themes, and consumer
products
•
Students will use these ads to create their own unique 1920s product
and advertisements (as might appear in a newspaper or on a billboard)
for the product using makers and poster board. Advertisements should
include slogans and language appealing to 1920s themes of youth,
beauty, wealth, luxury, and convenience
• A summary of activities and important findings will complete the
lesson
• For homework – groups will complete posters and provide a full
text version of their advertisement for a 1920 radio “sales pitch”
of their product (to be performed before the class and critiqued)
during the next lesson
Resources
American Memory Collection:
“Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer
Economy, 1921-1929”
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
Ad Up, Ad Terms and Definitions
http://www.ad-up.com/new/adup_ad_defs.html
Advertising Analysis
http://www.42explore.com/advertis.htm
Medicine and Madison Avenue, Ad Analysis Guide
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/section3.html#one
Medicine and Madison Avenue
Analyzing advertisements: basic skills
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/section3.html#one
The California History Social Science Project
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD&Minor=T
Adobe Classroom in a Book, Adobe Press
Visual Quickstart Guides, Peachpit Press
Adobe on-line training:
www.adobe.com/education/training
Handouts:
•
Handout 1. Arizona State University
•
•
Advertising Campaign Analysis: Listerine
Ηandout ΙΙ. Μedicine and Madison Avenue Ad Analysis Guide
Ηandout ΙΙΙ. Ad Analyses Form
Other Materials:
•
Poster board
•
Colored markers, pencils, and pens
•
Overhead transparencies
New Jersey Core Content Curriculum Standards
Addressed (2002 Revision):
•
Standards 6.1 through 6.3
(Social Studies Skills, Civics, Humanities)
•
Standard 6.5 (United States History)
Additional Reading:
Chapter 8 of Jib Fowles, Advertising and Popular Culture, presents a good short
introduction to “deciphering advertisements.”
Green, Harvey. Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New
York, 1986).
Hoy, Suellen M. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York, 1995).
Hardware Specifications
Standard Desktop computers
Internet Access
Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat (New
York, 1986).
Vinikas, Vincent. Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement
(Ames,1992).
Technical Resources:
Adobe Software List
Adobe Acrobat
One Page Lesson Plan Table
Lesson
1.
Lesson Summary
Study advertisements to gain an understanding of why they are
effective. Using Listerine Mouthwash ads focus students for the lesson. Students will be asked to read and interpret the advertisement, and write down their
thoughts about its message(s) Then they will read the University of AZ handout to
review historical perspective on Listerine ads.
Handouts and URL’s
Handout I. Listerine Ad Campaign analysis
Tutorials
2.
Conduct classroom discussion to highlight the issues. Pair students into teams
of two to conduct internet research. Start with the American Memories website.
Download 3 1920’s ads.
“Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the
Consumer Economy, 1921-1929
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/
coolhome.html
American Memories from the Library of Congress,
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/
coolhome.html
Tutorial I
Discuss the economy of the times and how the changing economy was represented through advertisements.
Revue Medicine and Madison Avenue Handout to understand the basics of analyzing an advertisement.
Tutorial II
Handout II. Medicine and Madison Avenue
Analyzing advertisements: basic skills
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/
section3.html#one
3.
Discuss each ad and your response to the products and ad itself.
Use Handout III to recrd responses to each Ad.
Research additional sites and select one additional ad from a later period for analysis. Discuss the ways early advertising may have influenced ads in later decades.
4.
Invent a new product and accomanying ad for a poster or magazine layout. Advertisements should include slogans and language appealing to 1920s themes of
youth, beauty, wealth, luxury, and convenience. Hand draw the ad or create it on
the computer. Prepare a full text version of the advertising pitch.
5.
Class presentations from each team, presenting their product and presenting their
ad pitch. Class discussion will follow each presentation.
6.
Complete a one page essay on the effect of advertising on the American consumer
and the American economy.
The California History Social Science Project
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?
Major=AD&Minor=T
Handout III. Ad Analysis Form
Handout III. Ad Analysis Form
Tutorial III
Detailed Lesson Plans
Lesson 1. Listerine Advertising
Lesson 2. Analyzing an Advertisement
History of Joseph Lister and Surgical Practices
“Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer
Economy, 1921-1929”
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/b.gardner/Lister.html
Born on the 5 April 1827 in Upton, Essex, Joseph Lister was the son of
the British physicist Joseph Jackson Lister.
“By the middle of the nineteenth century, post-operative sepsis infection
accounted for the death of almost half of the patients undergoing major
surgery. A common report by surgeons was: operation successfully but
the patient died.
In 1839 the chemist Justin Von Liebig had asserted that sepsis was a kind
of combustion caused by exposing moist body tissue to oxygen. It was
therefore considered that the best prevention was to keep air away from
wounds by means of plasters, collodion or resins.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
Medicine and Madison Avenue
Ad Analysis Guide, Parts I and II
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/ section3.html#one
Analyzing advertisements: basic skills
Individual ad analysis exercise
Ads can be analyzed on many different levels: as works of art, as
inducements to buy, as symbolic statements of basic cultural values.
The different elements of the ad - the text, the images, the design - work
together to convey information about the product as well as to suggest its
Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, doubted this explanation. For many years symbolic appeal. Reading an ad closely requires learning to appreciate
he had explored the inflammation of wounds, at the Glasgow infirmary.
these different components and levels of meaning in an ad. The texts
These observations had led him to considered that infection was not due on advertising and culture listed in the bibliography provide excellent
to bad air alone, and that ‘wound sepsis’ was a form of decomposition.“ overviews of the different methodologies involved in ad analysis.
Assignment:
Assignment:
Review rest of Lister Web Article:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/b.gardner/Lister.html
Review Tutorials and Complete Internet Research
Research Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy,
Review Handout I: University of Arizona, Listerine Advertising and Discuss the use of
1921-1929 http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/coolhome.html
Lister’s work to influence an entire market for a new product.
Additional Reading:
Review Handout II: See
Green, Harvey. Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New
York, 1986).
Tutorials:
Hoy, Suellen M. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York, 1995).
Tutorial I, Internet Research using Adobe Acrobat
Tutorial II, Bookmarking using Adobe Acrobat
Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat (New
York, 1986).
Additional Reading:
Vinikas, Vincent. Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement
(Ames,1992).
Handout, Medicine and Madison Avenue
Chapter 8 of Jib Fowles, Advertising and Popular Culture, presents a good short
introduction to “deciphering advertisements.”
Lesson 3. Additional Research
Lesson 4. Invent a Product
The California History Social Science Project
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD&Minor=T
Invent a new product and accompanying ad for a poster or magazine
layout. Advertisements should include slogans and language appealing
to 1920s themes of youth, beauty, wealth, luxury, and convenience. Hand
draw the ad or create it on the computer. Prepare a full text version of the
advertising pitch.
Background of the Project
Part of the California Subject Matter Projects and one of 11 History/
Social Science sites, the History and Cultures Project (HCP) at UC Davis
serves more than 350 teachers in more than 100 separate events each year Assignment:
in the greater Sacramento Valley.
Tutorial 3
Use the techniques from Tutorial 3, working with images in Adobe AcroFounded by Kathy Medina and Prof. Roland Marchand in 1991, the
bat, to organize a library of ads to use as guides for inventing your own
Project enjoys active support of the History Department on campus. Our product and creating an ad and copy for the product.
Marchand Collection was donated to the Project by the Marchand family.
How We Can Help You
There are many doors into the Project home. Teachers can begin their
work with the History Project by attending academic year or summer
programs. We offer teachers of history and the social sciences the “stuff”
of teaching: we are a conduit to university resources (faculty, collections,
texts, and artifacts), and we have collected many lessons and units
designed by teachers in the Project for the use of all. Many teachers join
us from schools in our two partner districts, Sacramento City Unified
School District and Grant Joint Union High School District. If you are
from one of these districts and want more information about how we can
tailor a program to meet your school’s needs, please contact us at
Lesson 5. Invent a Product and Pitch it
Class presentations from each team, presenting their product and presenting their ad pitch. Class discussion will follow each presentation.
Assignment:
Use the Ad Analysis Form to analyze the ads designed in class.
[email protected]
Assignment:
Lesson 6. Invent a Product
Use Handout III to analyze the ads pictured on http://historyproject.ucdav
is.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD&Minor=T
Write a one page essay on the influence of advertising on the history of
the United States.
Handout 1.
Arizona State University
Advertising Campaign Analysis: Listerine
Yesterday Paper.com
http://www.yesterdaypaper.com/ad_pages/3629.html
The California History Social Science Project
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD&Minor=T
Arizona State University
Advertising Campaign Analysis: Listerine
By Fallon Snider, Hanna Mack, Lee Anne Shaffer
Ad Proposal
The Listerine ads:
http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=AD&Minor=T&SlideNum=206
“If you want the truth—go to a child.” This full-page ad depicts a young
.00
woman with a little girl on her lap. The child is looking up at the woman
with a curious look and a slightly wrinkled brow, while the woman’s face
is turned away, with a look of chagrin and perhaps dismay. The ad then
goes on to say that “Here was the case of a young woman who, in spite
of her personal charm and beauty, never seemed to hold men friends. For
a long, long time she searched her mind for the reason. It was a tragic
puzzle in her life. The one day her little niece told her.” The ad makes
the woman’s case sound so serious and embarrassing that it would make
any woman think twice about her breath. The ad then follows with, “You,
yourself, rarely know when you have halitosis (unpleasant breath). That’s
the insidious thing about it. And even your closest friends won’t tell you.”
There it is—the problem. Halitosis: bad breath. Then afterwards the ad
presents the solution, which is Listerine, to be used multiple times daily.
There is only a small picture of the product—most of the ad is taken up
by the picture of the woman and the child. INCLUDEPICTURE “http:
//scriptorium.lib.duke.edu:80/mma/ad-images/MM06/MM0654-01sml.jpeg” \* MERGEFORMATINET
“Often a bridesmaid but never a bride” Here, “Edna’s case was really
a pathetic one. Like every woman, her primary ambition was to marry.
Most of the girls of her set were married—or about to be. Yet not one
possessed more grace or loveliness than she. And as her birthday’s crept
gradually toward that tragic thirty-mark, marriage seemed farther from
her life than ever. She was often a bridesmaid but never a bride.” The
ad shows a young woman looking hopeless and clutching her unused
wedding garments to her chest, and follows Edna’s pathetic story with the
identification of the problem—halitosis, and the solution—Listerine, as
mentioned in the previous ad.
“Halitosis makes you unpopular.” “DON’T FOOL YOURSELF—since
halitosis never announces itself to the victim, you simply cannot know
when you have it.” In this particular ad, though it is still mainly directed
towards women, as evident by the depiction of a dejected, “unpopular”
young woman and also the “facts” in the lower right hand corner which
state that hairdressers report one-third of all their predominantly wealthy
female customers to have halitosis. Again, the ad pounds the idea that
halitosis is detrimental to your social life and that it is hard for you to
know whether you have it or not—hence, it is better safe than sorry—use
Listerine! The ad has the same description of halitosis and the same
solution as the ads mentioned above.
INCLUDEPICTURE “http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu:80/mma/ad-images/
MM01/MM0185-01-sml.jpeg” \* MERGEFORMATINET
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/dynaweb/mma/toothpaste/?DwebQuery=
mm0185+in+%3Cunitid%3E
“Could I be happy with him in spite of that?” This ad is directed
more towards men—a girl is looking at her engagement ring, and in a
background picture behind hers, there is a sketch of a bride and groom
walking down the aisle. “She had announced her engagement to him. Her
friends were beginning to be quite curious as to when the wedding would
occur. And he, more insistent than any of them, was pleading with her
to set a definite time. One thing seemed to stand in the way—something
she didn’t have the courage to talk to him about—something, she feared,
might interfere with her happiness. She simply didn’t know what to
do.” This is then followed by the halitosis explanation and the Listerine
solution.
Thesis: Through the Listerine ad campaign and by practically inventing
the problem of halitosis, Lambert, the creator of Listerine, made
consumers painfully aware of the effects of bad breath and created a
market for his product.
Some of the things we will be analyzing: Each of the ads is pretty meaty.
They are each directed to a certain age group and a certain social problem
that the ads then blame on halitosis.
Also, there is the history of Listerine and the original “Lister,” which,
ironically, had nothing to do with oral hygiene.
Lambert’s “creation” was of halitosis—basically putting halitosis into
every American mouth.
History of Joseph Lister and Surgical Practices
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/b.gardner/Lister.html
Born on the 5 April 1827 in Upton, Essex, Joseph Lister was the son of the
British physicist Joseph Jackson Lister.
“By the middle of the nineteenth century, post-operative sepsis infection
accounted for the death of almost half of the patients undergoing major surgery.
A common report by surgeons was: operation successfully but the patient died.
In 1839 the chemist Justin Von Liebig had asserted that sepsis was a kind of
combustion caused by exposing moist body tissue to Oxygen. It was therefore
considered that the best prevention was to keep air away from wounds by
means of plasters, collodion or resins.
Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, doubted this explanation. For many years
he had explored the inflammation of wounds, at the Glasgow infirmary. These
observations had led him to considered that infection was not due to bad air
alone, and that ‘wound sepsis’ was a form of decomposition.“
Additional Reading:
Green, Harvey. Fit for America: Health, Fitness, Sport, and American Society (New
York, 1986).
Hoy, Suellen M. Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (New York, 1995).
Schwartz, Hillel. Never Satisfied: A Cultural History of Diets, Fantasies, and Fat (New
York, 1986).
Vinikas,Vincent. Soft Soap, Hard Sell: American Hygiene in an Age of Advertisement
(Ames,1992).
HANDOUT II
Medicine and Madison Avenue
Ad Analysis Guide, Parts I and II
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/mma/ section3.html#one
I. Analyzing advertisements: basic skills
1. Individual ad analysis exercise
Ads can be analyzed on many different levels: as works of art, as
inducements to buy, as symbolic statements of basic cultural values.
The different elements of the ad - the text, the images, the design - work
together to convey information about the product as well as to suggest its
symbolic appeal. Reading an ad closely requires learning to appreciate
these different components and levels of meaning in an ad. The texts
on advertising and culture listed in the bibliography provide excellent
overviews of the different methodologies involved in ad analysis. Chapter
8 of Jib Fowles, Advertising and Popular Culture, presents a good short
introduction to “deciphering advertisements.”
This exercise is designed to introduce you to some of the basic skills of
reading an ad.
Pick an ad that interests you from the database and answer the following
questions (loosely adapted from Jib Fowles, Advertising and Popular
Culture, pp. 171-174):
Exploring the ad’s context
1. What product category does the advertised commodity fall into?
2. Which medium - magazine, newspaper, radio - did this ad appear in?
What month, day, and year did it appear?
Looking at the ad
4. Consider the ad in aesthetic terms. Describe the layout: what are the
different design elements and how are they placed. Why do you think
these particular elements were chosen? What does the image and the
typeface say to you? Do they help establish an overall mood for the ad?
5. Look at the artwork in the ad. Is it a line drawing, a painting, or a
photograph? What is the lighting like? What is the angle taken on the
subject? Is it a close up or a long shot? Is the focus sharp or blurred? Why
do you think the agency art directors chose this particular image?
6. In the imagery, what appears in the foreground versus the background?
Why do you think these choices were made?
7. Precisely what is the product being offered for sale? What do you learn
about its objective qualities? (Try to distinguish here between factual
versus symbolic appeal.)
8. Make a list of all the various elements in the ad that suggest its
symbolic appeal; that is, what positive attributes its purchase will
supposedly bring the consumer? Think of the ad as a play: what are the
props and characters it employs? How is that symbolic value conveyed?
9. Go over the list from question 8 and consider each item in terms of the
intended audience: what signal might that item convey regarding class
status, leisure time activities, gender roles, sexual attractiveness, health
and vitality, family responsibilities, and the like. Ask, “What might this
item, this feature, mean to the targeted consumer?” Start with the most
prominently featured items first.
10. Look at the human figures pictured in the ad. What might you infer
about their states of mind from the ways they are presented? How might
3. Judging from where the ad appeared (the kind of magazine and
newspaper), what might you infer about its intended audience? (Example: the intended audience have responded to those representations?
ads appearing in the Ladies’ Home Journal are likely aimed at women
readers.) Describe this audience: who they are, what they are likely to be 11. Look carefully at the locale of the scene. Where does it take place?
What symbolic significance is the locale likely to have for the intended
attracted by.
audience?
12. Locate the scene in time: is it in the past, the present, or the future?
What does the temporal location suggest?
13. Consider the ad as a narrative, a story, or scene from a play. Can
you supply the overall story? What has happened, is happening, or
will happen soon? What is this narrative likely to mean to the intended
audience?
22. What kinds of cultural beliefs are promoted in this ad? Try to imagine
yourself as an outsider to this society, viewing this ad. What seem to be
the values of the ad’s creators and its receivers?
23. Advertising is often linked with the process of commodification:
that is, taking a human value or need and equating it with the process
of buying and using a product. From that standpoint, ask yourself: what
human needs and values is this ad attempting to commodify?
14. Sometimes it is not what is in the ad that pulls the viewer in, but what
is missing. Is there anything missing in this imagery that the intended
2. Context/sampling exercise
audience might supply?
The ads in this database have been selected out of millions of possible ads
printed in American magazines and newspapers. To get a better sense of
15. Is the symbolic message of this ad idealizing some aspect of life? If
how consumers actually saw them, it is useful to look at ads in magazines
so, what is it and how is it presented?
and newspapers. The following sampling exercise helps students
appreciate ads in context; it also helps them see how common the health
16. To sum up: imagine a group of people totally engaged with this ad.
appeal was in relation to other kinds of advertising themes.
What state of mind would they take away from it?
I. Pick a general interest magazine (the Saturday Evening Post or Collier’s
17. Are there any references to previous ads or other forms of popular
are good choices). Choose a year to sample, and pick two months (January
culture in the ad - what scholars refer to as “intertexuality”?
and July). Count all the ads that appear in those two months, categorizing
them by product type and dominant theme (health related or not). Then
18. Ads succeed by framing some things in and excluding the rest. What repeat the exercise using a woman’s magazine (Good Housekeeping or
are some associations to the product and the symbolic themes suggested Ladies’ Home Journal are good choices). Write a brief summary of what
for it that have to be framed out by the persons making the ad? Why?
you found: what kinds of ads did you find? What were the most common
themes? Did one type of magazine tend to have more health related ads?
Implications of the ad
Repeat the exercise using a daily newspaper from the same year. Sample
19. What might this ad be inferring about the nature of human
ads for one or two days rather than a month. Compare the results with
relationships? What kind of nonverbal communication appears with the
your magazine survey.
ad? Which figures dominate?
Finally, repeat the above exercise with items from two decades later. How
20. What messages does this ad say about what it means to be a man
do the results differ? What themes remain constant?
or a woman? About self-identity? About personal happiness, sexual
attractiveness, or other forms of self-fulfilment?
II. Using gender, race, and class as categories of analysis
3. Read the article by Frances Maule on The “Woman Appeal.” Find
21. What does the ad convey about markers of social status or class?
examples in the database of the selling strategies she recommends.
About racial or ethnic identity?
4. Many advertisements used selling appeals targeted at mothers. Choose The job hunter with two strikes against him
a sample of ads from the database that picture mothers and children: one
New Vicks double-buffered cold tablets
group from before World War II, one group from after. You may use this
list of suggested ads:
New Vicks double-buffered cold tablets. (not same as above)
Child’s cold may be flu
Mother! Your child’s cough
To puzzled fathers of rather young children
Ask your doctor, your grocer, your husband
If your baby catches cold
How you can eliminate the washroom “double standard”
Neglected. Protected
He’d look and feel better if.
Compare the “mommy sell” over time: what elements remain the same,
which ones change?
Now it’s so easy to choose your favorite Soft-Weve color
Street car colds!.
5. In an influential book published in 1979 titled Gender Advertisements, For cuts, bruises, wounds, stings - all infections - Listerine..
the sociologist Erving Goffman showed that advertisements usually
pictured men and women in certain stereotyped positions: men’s bodies
were always positioned higher than women; women’s bodies were often Analyze advertisements using the Form Provided in Handout III.
posed at angles rather than standing straight; men’s hands grasped objects
while women’s hands only touched or grazed them. Goffman noted that
women were often posed in child-like ways, snuggling against a man
or pictured with a finger in their mouth. Choose a sample of ads from
the MMA database and examine the relative positions and gestures of
men’s and women’s bodies. Do Goffman’s observations about the relative
positioning of men and women’s bodies hold true for the historic ads?
6. Ads from the time period covered in this database contain very few
representations of African Americans. What does this absence tell you
about health, race, and advertising in this time period? Look at the few
ads that do feature African Americans. Compare how blacks and whites
are pictured in these ads. You may use this list of suggested ads:
Got a cold at your house?.
One cold after another?.
New Vicks double-buffered cold tablets
and
New Vicks double-buffered cold tablet (not same as above)
7. Pick a sample of ads that interest you, or use this list:
Handout III
Advertisement Analyses Form
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Source:
1. Where did the ad appeared (the kind of magazine and newspaper)
Design Elements:
2. Is it a line drawing, a painting, or a photograph?
3. What is the lighting like?
4. What is the angle taken on the subject? Is it a close up or a long shot? Is the focus sharp or blurred?
5. What does the image and the typeface say to you?
6. In the imagery, what appears in the foreground versus the background?
7. Do the design elements help establish an overall mood for the ad?
8. Why do you think the agency art directors chose this particular image?
Socioeconomic Class
9. How are class differences represented in the ad?
10. Is the symbolic message of this ad idealizing some aspect of life?
11. If so, what is it and how is it presented?
12. Are there any people from working class backgrounds featured?
13. What markers of class and racial identity do you see in the ads?
14. How representative of Americans as a whole do you think people featured in ads were during this time?
Summary:
15. Make a list of all the various elements in the ad that suggest its symbolic appeal;
- What positive attributes its purchase will supposedly bring the consumer?
- Think of the ad as a play: what are the props and characters it employs?
- How is that symbolic value conveyed?
- To sum up: imagine a group of people totally engaged with this ad. What state of mind would they take away from it?
Tutorials
See Separate Acrobat Tutorial Files
Tutorial 1, Working with the Web, Online Lesson 8
Tutorial 2, Making Acrobat Bookmarks, Online Lesson 3
Tutorial 3, Working with Images, Online Lesson 7
Or Go To
http://www.adobe.com/education/curriculum/acrobat_curriculum.html
Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/coolhtml/cccap.html
Captions for Cartoon
1) Vacuum cleaners on display at the J.C. Harding & Co. store, probably in Washington, D.C.
2) Calvin Coolidge, half-length portrait, standing, facing left, tipping his hat
3) The Country Gentleman, February 1926 p. 68