Papers presented by Cynthia Meyers since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

" “Razzmatazz Is Okay, But Hocus-Pocus Is OUT!”: The Advertising Industry and Deceptive Television Commercials, 1959-62"

Abstract:

In late 1959, the Federal Trade Commission, the federal agency empowered to investigate false, fraudulent, or deceptive advertising, turned its attention to television commercials. FTC officials claimed that viewers’ letters of complaint about deceptive advertising on television had increased from about 20 to about 1,000 per month after news broke in 1958 that many quiz shows had been rigged. Although the FTC had no jurisdiction over program content, it did have jurisdiction over deceptive advertising. The FTC investigated several commercials produced by the Ted Bates agency. In one, the efficacy of Colgate-Palmolive shaving cream was demonstrated by shaving “sand paper” that proved to be a sheet of glass covered in sand. In another, the protective power of Colgate toothpaste’s “Gardol” ingredient was demonstrated by the blocking of thrown objects by a clear “invisible” shield. My purpose here is not to explore the intricacies of advertising regulation but to examine 1) the challenges faced by advertisers in representing products truthfully on what was then a low-resolution visual medium; 2) the ad industry’s responses to accusations of deception, including their debates over the distinctions between “cosmetic glorification” and fraud; 3) the efforts of ad and broadcast industry trade organizations to institute more self-regulation in order to rebuild public trust; and 4) how FTC investigations may have been a factor in changing television advertising strategies. By the end of the 1960s, the so-called Creative Revolution in advertising was evident in the number of commercials centered on emotional appeals, eliding specific product claims altogether and so avoiding making any product claims that the FTC could investigate.

2024 Providence, Rhode Island

"The 1960s Creative Revolution in Advertising: Resistance from Traditionalist Ad Agencies"

Abstract:

The so-called Creative Revolution looms large in the lore of the American advertising industry. Beginning in the late 1950s, many national brands shifted from the long dominant “hard sell” advertising strategy, which explained various product attributes in visually busy ad layouts, to the “soft sell” strategy, which focused on appealing to consumers’ emotions or sense of humor in aesthetically minimalist ad layouts (most famously, in a Doyle Dane Bernbach Volkswagen ad headlined “Lemon”). Thomas Frank (Conquest of Cool) and Samuel W. Franklin (The Cult of Creativity) argue the Creative Revolution served to manage consumer cynicism in an era of saturated markets. However, there was significant contemporaneous resistance to the Creative Revolution within the ad industry. Relying on archival material from the Hagley Museum & Library, I analyze how the leadership of the traditionalist ad agencies criticized the new creative agencies for their concerns with aesthetics, cleverness, and irony. Such “creative” advertising attracted attention but did not sell products, critics such as Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn president Tom Dillon argued, in part because it relied on entertaining consumers rather than enumerating product attributes. Dillon dismissed what he called “the triumph of creativity over communication.” Underlying these debates over advertising strategies was a more basic question. Was advertising’s purpose to educate consumers about products—the longtime belief of practitioners such as Dillon? Or, in an era of market segmentation, brand extensions, and issues around product parity, was its purpose to engage consumers’ emotions in order to build brand images? The new creatives claimed their sophisticated ads served to elevate advertising into an art form. Traditionalists, on the other hand, deplored them for undermining advertising’s more important public purpose: to increase sales, expand the economy, and help build wealth for the American people. [SAM note: potential chairs/comments suggested by Cynthia: Michael Stamm, Jennifer Black, Richard John, Shannan Clark, Pam Laird, Joseph Turow]

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

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

Abstract:

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.”

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