Advertising 1880 -1900

Intro

 * Big Question: How did people learn to read ads?
 * Particularly the visual ads that mark the shift in ad strategies from 1880 - 1900.
 * 1) Ads used visual symbols from everyday life
 * 2) Ads implicated you in the ad message, as a particularized reader
 * 3) Neighbors were used to suggest friendliness and trust
 * 4) Ads suggested a class identification:
 * Some show individuals in athletic situations reserved for the elite
 * This gives a promise of higher quality of life which can be bought with the products.

Marshand

 * American Historian of Advertising
 * Developed idea of 'Parable' as a metaphor for the ways in which advertising works
 * Advertising to Marshand:
 * Offers comfortable rather than uncomfortable truths
 * It instructs through insinuatation rather than coercion
 * Parables were stories, little melodramas, that interested readers in not only the product, but the world of the product

Parable of the Democracy of Goods

 * Arrow Shirts Ad - 1931 - Suggests that all you need is an Arrow Shirt and then you have glamour
 * Goodyear - 1933 - "Anyhow, his tires are just like mine"
 * Offers satiation of class mobility desires
 * Suggests that you can take pride in products shared between classes, giving the lower class some (highly limited) equal footing with the wealthy.

Parable of the First Impression

 * Fear created by the idea that the first impression was the most important
 * First Impression as Truth
 * "And he wonders why she said no" -> Sagging Soxs
 * Only the Advertiser can redeem this man, by telling him what he missed
 * Gillette Ad (Redbook June 1935)
 * Man surrounding by disembodied eyes circling a single, apparently unshaved man
 * The "Ring of Eyes" suggest a world of visual judgement