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‘Salesmen of the Will to Want’: Advertising and its Critics in Britain 1951–1967

2010; Routledge; Volume: 24; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13619461003768306

1743-7997

Sean Nixon,

European history and politics

Abstract Through the 1950s and 1960s, a sustained public debate about advertising's economic and social role occurred. This was a debate dominated by the critics of advertising. Across a swathe of educated opinion, an almost obsessive fascination with and scrutiny of advertising flourished. The arrival of commercial television in 1955 and with it television advertising stirred new popular, as well as elite, anxieties. For its critics amongst the viewing public, 'commercials' spoilt their enjoyment of television: there were too many adverts, they interrupted programmes and they were repetitive. These negative feelings towards their practice were the cause of considerable concern for the representatives of the advertising industry. They had good grounds to be concerned. In a period in which advertising was subject to criticism from both an increasingly influential consumer's movement and with politicians prepared to use the law to tax and regulate commercial practices, the representatives of advertising saw themselves in a constant struggle to resist and limit the effects of government intervention in the operation of their business. How they did this and the nature of both the charges made against them and their defence of advertising form the focus of this article. Keywords: AdvertisingAffluenceTelevisionCommercialsMoralismPilkington Report Acknowledgements I am grateful to Bill Schwarz, Mike Roper, Peter Gurney and students on the MA Consumer Culture course at the University of Essex for their comments and support. Staff at the History of Advertising Trust, the John W. Hartman Center at Duke University and the Public Records Office, Kew, were also generous with their assistance. Notes [1] See Mort, 'The Commercial Domain' and Savage, 'Affluence and Social Change' for good summaries of post-war sociology and history of the 'affluent society'. See also Obelkevich, 'Consumption'. [2] Black, Political Culture of the Left, 27. See also Fielding, 'Activists against Affluence'. [3] Zweiniger-Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain; Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good; Jarvis, Conservative Governments. [4] Jarvis, Conservative Governments, 4. See Macmillan's speech to Conservative women at the Albert Hall in April 1961 which combined support for affluence with a cautioning against excessive materialism. Having asserted how he preferred the 'affluent fifties' to the 'hungry thirties', Macmillan claimed that 'It was easy to sneer at washing machines, refrigerators and vacuum cleaners—especially if you yourself do not have to do the washing, or the cooking or the sweeping. But of course none of these things are an end in itself. They are merely the means to an end. And that is a more useful and varied life', Times, 21 April 1964, 6. [5] Black, 'Whose Finger on the Button?', 550. [6] Offer, The Challenge of Affluence, 1–4 and 103. [7] Ibid., 103–6. [8] Mort, 'The Commercial Domain; Nixon, 'In Pursuit' and 'Apostles'. [9] Schwarzkopf, 'They Do it With Mirrors'. [10] Gurney, 'Battle for the Consumer'; Hilton, Consumerism. [11] The phrase is adapted from Bourdieu. See Bourdieu, Distinction, 365–8. [12] See Leavis, Mass Civilization and Minority Culture; Orwell Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Priestley's post-war critique of 'ad-mass' had its roots in his earlier, pre-war writings, Priestley and Hawkes, Journey Down a Rainbow. Economists of the inter-war period also offered a sustained criticism of advertising. The most important was Marshall's Industry and Trade. On these economic arguments against advertising see Harris and Seldon, Advertising. [13] Perhaps the most notable consequence of the Report was the introduction of BBC2 at the expense of a second commercial channel. [14] The number of television licenses had grown from 3M in 1954 to 13M by 1965. By the end of the 1960s there were 15M. See, Nevett, History; Corner, Popular Television. For a sceptical account of ITV's role in the growth of TV, see Turnock, Television and Consumer Culture. [15] Advertising Expenditure 1952, Advertising Association, 1953, 9. [16] Advertising Expenditure 1960–1973, Advertising Association, 1974, 6. [17] Tunstall, 1964, 27. [18] 'Organized Advertising in Britain', Journal of the Advertising Association (JAA), February 1956, 3–9. [19] Journal of the Advertising Association (JAA), September 1952, 2. [20] On US commercial and cultural influence see De Grazia, Irresistable. For contemporary accounts see Hoggart, The Uses; Williams The American Invasion; Potter, The Glittering Coffin. [21] Quoted in Wilson Pressure Group, 1966, 125. [22] Quoted in Wilson, 1966, 56. [23] Institute Information, August 1953, 4; see also Advertiser's Weekly 6 August 1954, 238. [24] Institute Information, September 1953, 5. [25] Institute Information, September 1953, 4. [26] Times, 24 September 1953. [27] See, Times, 31 August 1953, 6; see also letters to Times, 3 August 1953, 7. On US sponsored television in the late 1940s and early 1950s see Samuel, Brought to You By. [28] Times, 2 May 1953, 3. [29] Ibid. [30] Advertiser's Weekly, 7 May 1953, 236. [31] See below, but also, inter alia, Advertiser's Weekly 20 April 1956, 18; 7 December 1956, 7; 4 December 1959, 50. [32] Times, 23 September 1955, 5. [33] Ibid. [34] Henry British Television Advertising; Corner, Popular Television; Mort, 'The Commercial Domain'. [35] The Halle Orchestra, which had played on the opening night and was booked to give regular concerts, was replaced within three months. Milland, 'Courting Malvolio', 81. [36] Ibid., 82. [37] Institute Information, September 1955, 1. [38] Ibid. [39] Institute Information, September 1955, 1. [40] See its editorial on the 'abuse' of natural breaks by the contractors, 'Doing What Comes Naturally', 12 March 1959, 13; See also Times 'Television's Endless Belt of Trivialities', 7 November 1964, 5; 'Plenty of Good Television if You Know Where to Look', 30 January 1965, 5; 'A Voracious Medium of Entertainment', 28 August 1957, xix. [41] Cited in Milland, 78. [42] This included the celebrated critique of advertising developed in Vance Packard's best-selling The Hidden Persuaders, a book which literally provided many of the terms with which advertising and ad men came to be described in the wider public debate. See Packard, The Hidden Persuaders; Hoggart, 'The Case Against Advertising'; Potter, The Glittering Coffin; Thompson, Discrimination and Popular Culture. [43] The Royal Commission on the Press, 1962, also addressed the advertising industry and its influence upon the press, including trends towards greater press concentration. See, Report of the Royal Commission on the Press, 1961–1962, Cmnd. 1811 [44] Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960, 1961–1962 Cmnd 1753. [45] Milland, 78. [46] Report of the Committee on Broadcasting, 1961–1962, Para 42, 15. [47] Report 1962, Para 149, 46. The report focused on the depictions of violence in particular. See Para 166–6. The Report was also troubled by the size of cash prizes in quiz programmes and the humiliation of members of the public in 'party game' items, Para 178–3. [48] Report 1962, Para 244. The Advertising Inquiry Committee was founded in 1959 with the aim of highlighting any advertising that broke the code of practice established under the 1954 Television Act. The AIC claimed that between 5 and 8% of all advertising on television was false or misleading and thus in breach of the Principles of Television Advertising. [49] Report 1962, Para 244–5. [50] Ibid., Para 252. [51] Ibid., 252–4. [52] Ibid., 5. [53] Ibid., 6. [54] Ibid., 6. [55] Ibid., 8. [56] Ibid., 9. [57] Notes from Mr Hoggart to Draft Chapter VII of the Pilkington Report, p4, PRO HO 244/269. [58] Notes from Mr Hoggart to Draft Chapter VII, 1, PRO HO 244/269. [59] ITCA Evidence to the Committee on Broadcasting, 25 July 1961, PRO HO 244/585, 7–9. [60] Hoggart, ITCA Evidence to the Committee on Broadcasting, 25 July 1961, PRO HO 244/585, 18–9. Another member of the committee, the actress Joyce Grenfell, was troubled by an advert for Bluinite Tide. Ibid., 9. [61] Report of the Committee on Broadcasting, 1960, 1961–1962, Cmd 1753, Para 253, 80. [62] Commenting in the 1990s on the reception of the Pilkington Report, Hoggart argued that it had helped to improve ITV. As he suggested, people tend to remember ITV as 'behaving well from its inception…but in its first eight or nine years it [ITV] behaved like an Oxford Street barrow boy', Hoggart, An Imagined life, 71. Hoggart was also influential in the final recommendation of the Pilkington Report to ban 'advertising magazines'. [63] Final Report of the Committee on Consumer Protection 1961–1962, Cmnd 1781. [64] IPA Memorandum to the BT Committee on Consumer Protection, 18 Novenber 1959PRO BT 258/900. [65] Reply to Letter from the Secretary of the Committee, 31 May 1961, PRO BT 258/900. The IPA established a committee which eventually banned its members from using subliminal advertising. See Times 7 October 1957, 5. [66] Letter from Mitchlemore to J. P O'Connor, Director of IPA, 31 May 1961, PRO BT 258/900. [67] Ibid. [68] Ibid. [69] Reply to Letter from the Secretary of the Committee, 31 May 1961, PRO BT 258/900. [70] Hilton, Consumerism, 2003, 224–8. [71] Final Report of the Committee on Consumer Protection, 1961–1962, Cmmd 1781, 230. [72] Ibid., 239–41. [73] Ibid., 535. [74] Ibid., 258. [75] Sir Arnold Plant, Professor of Commerce at LSE, was its first chair 1962–1965. On the composition of the authority see, Advertiser's Weekly 27 July 1962, 5. [76] Report of a Commission of Enquiry into Advertising, The Labour Party, 1966. [77] Williams, Hugh Gaitskell, A Political Biography, 389. [78] Ibid., 391. [79] Report of the Labour Party Commission on Advertising, Para 374. [80] Ibid., Para 373. [81] Ibid., Para 379. [82] Ibid., 397–8. [83] Advertising Commission Replies to Questionnaire Ref.RD 282/June 1962, J. Walter Thompson Company Ltd., JWT/HAT Box 255, 57. See also the essay by Tom Corlett of J. Walter Thompson in IPA Forum, May 1968, 11, for a similar argument. [84] Ibid., 58. [85] Ibid., 58. [86] Report of the Labour Party Commission on Advertising, 1966, Para 412. [87] Report of the Labour Party Commission on Advertising, 1966, Para 415. See Reservations by Abrams et al. [88] Ibid., 480. [89] Advertising Association Statement on The Reith Commission Report, 21 June 1966, Released midnight 23 June 1966, The Labour Party Advertising Committee Records, 1 July 1966, University of Essex. [90] The study was delegated to the Economic Research Unit (ERU). See, inter alia, 'The Selection of the Research Team for Advertising Study', 21 July 1967, ERU, PRO BT 213/492; Research Proposal for a Study of the Economic Effects of Advertising, 4 September 1967, BT 213/497; Letter to J. B Heath, notes by Mitchelmore, 3 January 1968, BT 213/492. [91] Times, 13 June 1967, 67. [92] On advertising's cultural rise in the 1980s and 1990s, see Nixon Advertising Cultures. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSean NixonDr Sean Nixon is author of Hard Looks, Masculinities, Spectatorship and Contemporary Consumption (UCL Press & St Martin's Press, NY, 1996) and Advertising Cultures: Gender, Commerce, Creativity (Sage, 2003). He is currently working on a book titled Ad Men: Advertising, Affluence and Social Change.