Abstract

"Television and Reinvention in American Advertising Agencies, 1950s-60s"

Cynthia Meyers, College of Mount Saint Vincent (cynmey@gmail.com)

Advertising histories usually characterize the 1960s as a time of “Creative Revolution,” during which ad strategies shifted away from product information and toward humor and emotional appeals. However, during this time agencies also radically redesigned their approach to broadcast advertising. After having overseen single-sponsored radio programs for clients in the 1930s-40s, assuring clients that sponsorship built good will among audiences, in the 1950s the expense of television production forced ad agencies out of program production. However, despite agencies' loss of program control, television turned out to be agencies’ most profitable medium yet. For example, in 1952 the agency BBDO counted “billings” (amount of media time and space bought by clients) of $118M, of which radio/TV together accounted for $40M or 34% (mostly radio). By 1963, BBDO’s total billings were $248M, over twice as high, and radio/TV billings of $116M accounted for 47% (mostly television). As agencies shifted airtime buying from 30-60 minute blocks for sponsored programs to interstitial minutes during a variety of network-controlled programs, the subsequent increase in cost per thousand viewers also increased agency commissions. As it became clear that television would account for roughly half of agency revenues, many agencies dramatically reorganized their broadcasting and media departments, and the center of power within agencies often shifted to television department executives.
Relying on archival documentation from agencies such as J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, and Foote Cone Belding, this paper analyzes the ways in which television’s rapid growth in the 1950s and 1960s led to a transformation of American advertising agencies that was at least as consequential as the celebrated campaigns of the “Creative Revolution.”