Branding and Image-Building in the United States, c.1830-1910

This panel explores image-building in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including corporate efforts to generate goodwill, philanthropic endeavors undertaken by wealthy industrialists, and marketing schemes focused on bringing certain personalities to the public. Amy Sopcak-Joseph shows how Godey’s Lady’s Book popularized nationalism and idealized gender roles, while gaining the trust of American middle-class women. She traces how the magazine became a mid-nineteenth century engine of consumer culture—a trusted “brand” that shaped consumer preferences. Turning to the late-nineteenth century publishing industry, Travis Ross examines how A. L. Bancroft & Co. curated its own public image around the name, face, and personality of Mr. Bancroft himself. Through a case study of a subscription sales campaign, Ross shows that Bancroft’s global efforts to build his corporate image can be traced through his attempts to sell books on subscription. Jennifer Black and Nick Pozek pick up on these themes, carrying them into the early twentieth century. Black’s examination of early brand characters, such as the Franco-American Chef, demonstrates how the manufacturers of household commodities worked to build and maintain corporate brands around 1900. Brand characters became central components in the companies’ efforts to build a public goodwill, much in the same way that Godey, as a figurehead, had been central to his magazine’s success earlier in the century. Finally, Pozek turns to the global philanthropy of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, arguing that such efforts aimed to improve US diplomatic relations and “soft” power abroad. Carnegie and Rockefeller built recognizable personalities through their philanthropic activities, engaging in a different sort of branding that nevertheless resulted in the expansion of markets and an improved public image for their corporations. Together, the panelists hope to encourage a rich conversation about the historical development of public relations, branding, and corporate goodwill. These case studies point to the ways in which image-building has long been part of American commercial activity, both at home and abroad. In considering the ways that they could build a better future--for their companies, and themselves--the capitalists discussed in this panel demonstrate the centrality of one’s public image to ensuring financial and commercial longevity in the market.
Panel format: Pre-circulated / Workshop-style
We propose to pre-circulate full papers in advance of the meeting, and hold a conversation in a workshop-style format with the audience during the conference itself. Each presenter will provide a brief (i.e. 5-7min) overview of the arguments developed in the paper, and we will use the majority of the time allotted for discussion of the parallel themes among the papers. We would request that a dropbox or google drive folder be made available for registered conference attendees to view the papers in advance of the conference (Jennifer Black can coordinate this). To fit with the conference focus on enabling the work of junior scholars, our panel includes one first-year faculty member, one post-doc, one junior scholar working outside of the professoriate, and one recently-tenured associate professor. Teresa Da Silva Lopes, a leading scholar on branding, has generously agreed to serve as chair and comment.