Advertising and Public Relations

ADVERTISING AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Buy! Buy!

The 1920s brought a boom in advertising as postwar consumerism and the cult of salesmanship coincided. Existing ad agencies expanded, and new agencies (Young 6c Rubicam, Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, and Benton & Bowles) were founded. J. Walter Thompson's agency's billings went from $10.7 million in 1922 to $37.5 million in 1929. Albert Lasker, the head of Lord & Thomas, worked with George Washington Hill of the American Tobacco Company (Lucky Strike) to increase that company's earnings from $12 million in 1926 to $40 million in 1930.

Slogans

Most advertising still appeared in print during the 1920s, and ad revenue promoted the growth of the mass-circulation magazines, called slicks because they were printed on paper that would reproduce quality ad art. Cigarette advertising produced a war among Lucky Strike, Camel, and Chesterfield. The untapped market was women; before the 1920s no respectable woman smoked in public. Lucky Strike urged women to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet," and the young woman in the famous 1926 Chesterfield ad asked her male companion to "Blow some my way." It was an era of slogans and heretofore-unsuspected maladies: Woodbury Facial Soap "For the skin you love to touch"; Palmolive to "Keep that schoolgirl complexion"; Lifebuoy to prevent "B.O."; Listerine to cure halitosis because "Even Your Best Friend Won't Tell You"; and Absorbine jr. "Kills Athlete's Foot Fungi on contact."

"Somewhere West of Laramie."

Edward S. Jordan's prose-poem for the Jordan Playboy first appeared in the 23 June 1923 Saturday Evening Post. The Jordan was an assembled car—put together from chassis and engine supplied by other manufacturers—but Jordan's effusion did not mention his car's mechanical qualities. He sold youth, sex appeal, and the spirit of adventure: "Somewhere West of Laramie there's a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl.…"

Bernays

The prodigious propaganda efforts during World War I elevated the shady press agent, or publicity agent, into the respectable opinion maker and the public-relations counsel. The leader of this new field was Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995), who coined the term "public relations counsel" and dignified it in his books and pronouncements.

The public relations counsel supervises and directs the contacts of business and other organizations with the public. He ascertains the state of public opinion toward a given company, product, or idea, and directs his efforts to strengthen favorable impressions or dispel ungrounded prejudices. His function is to crystallize public opinion and to make articulate ideas and events that are already in existence and that are favorable to company policy. It is also an essential part of his services to create the circumstances or the news which will themselves eventuate in the desired expression from the public.

—"The Business of Propaganda," 1928

Bernays was his own best client. Ivy Lee, another celebrated PR figure, represented the Rockefeller family and endeavored to make old John D. likable—or less detestable—by having the robber baron give dimes to children. These manipulators relied primarily on the print media to convey their messages. When a public event was staged, it had to be covered in the newspapers in order to make it effective. They were still press agents.

Sources:

Edward L. Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923);

Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Liveright, 1928);

Roy S. Durstine, This Advertising Business (New York: Scribners, 1928);

Ivy Lee, Publicity: Some of the Things It Is and Is Not (New York: Industries Publishing Co., 1925).