"State-socialist TV Commercials: Between Consumer Engineering and Capitalist Realism"

In the 2010s in Hungary, television commercials from the 1970s state-socialist period became widely-shared on social media as forms of a distinctly Hungarian Retro aesthetic. These advertisements, broadcast on state television, featured modern, bright colors, catchy jingles and joyful people selling brand-name sodas, blue jeans and shopping venues, closely resembling commercials in the capitalist west of the time -- and could even be seen as a kind of “capitalist realism” (Schudson). This paper will argue, however, that they are the product of a marketing profession emerging in a distinct political economy and historical moment in the wake of the 1968 liberalizing reforms of the centrally-planned economy. Indeed, just as the marketing profession in the West was moving away from the “consumer engineering” paradigm, in state-socialist Hungary, marketing and advertising professionals were using its rhetoric to promote the legitimacy of their nascent field. In the 1970s, in articles in trade journals and debates at conferences and meetings, these professionals advocated for the importance of thinking of advertising and marketing as a scientifically-informed kind of social engineering, one that would foster predictability and “harmonize” the state socialist economy. In terms quite similar to discourses in western Europe, they saw their role as guiding and educating the consumer about new product developments, offering information on their availability and use, as well as cultivating civilized “tastes” and showcasing the abundance of goods produced by the socialist state. At the same time, the budgets for market research never became a priority and marketing professionals constantly bemoaned their lack of prestige and credibility, and worried about the “quality” advertising and marketing in comparison to their western peers. Ironically, these circumstances allowed upcoming directors of television commercials freer rein to follow the lead of the “aesthetics” of western advertising as well as creative license to create entertaining and even slyly subversive content.