Drawing on both documentary and pictorial evidence, Pamela Walker Laird explores the modernization of American advertising to 1920. She links its rise and transformation to changes that affected American society and business alike, including the rise of professional specialization and the communications revolution that new technologies made possible. Laird finds a fundamental shift in the kinds of people who created advertisements and their relationships to the firms that advertised. Advertising evolved from the work of informing customers (telling people what manufacturers had to sell) tocreating consumers (persuading people that they needed to buy). Through this story, Laird shows how and why—in the intense competitions for both markets and cultural authority—the creators of advertisements laid claim to "progress" and used it to legitimate their places in American business and culture.
Arvustused
Well-researched, tightly argued, and lavishly illustrated... Laird's treatment is destined to become the standard one on the history of advertising between the Civil War and the beginning of the 'New Era.'. -- Ferdinando Fasce Reviews in American History What gives the book its considerable depth and explanatory power is the nuanced and comprehensive way in which Laird discusses the shifting contexts of American advertising... A complex, sophisticated analysis of how entrepreneurs and professionals create messages designed to sell goods. -- Daniel Horowitz Journal of American History The strength of this book lies in the depth of evidence Laird offers... [ Advertising agents,] Laird argues, deliberately set out to 'create consumers' rather than 'inform customers.'. -- Matthew Hilton Business History
Contents: PT. I Production as Progress 1 Marketing Problems and
Advertising Methods as America Industrialized 2 Owner-Manager Control of
Advertising 3 Printers, Advertisers, and Their Products 4 Advertising
Progress as a Measure of Worth PT. II Specialization as Progress 5
Early Advertising Specialists 6 Competition and Control: Business Conditions
and Marketing Practices 7 The Competition to Modernize Advertising Services
PT. III Consumption as Progress 8 Taking Advertisements Toward
Modernity 9 Modernity and Success: Legitimatizing the Advertising Profession
- I 10 The Appropriation of Progress: Legitimatizing the Advertising
Profession - II Conclusion: Patrons, Agents, and the New Business of
Progress
Pamela Walker Laird teaches history at the University of Colorado at Denver.
