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The show itself is fun to watch for us Boomers (it was our childhood era) , and an eye-opener for the young'uns, but the real-life "ad men" (especially of that era) are largely to blame for our current troubles.
Immediately after WWII, when we were the manufacturing giant of the world, everyone wanted our stuff, and since most of the rest of the world was in re-build mode for at least a decade, to clean up the mess the war left in its wake, we would have prospered with or without the expansion of advertising.
The 50's were a time of mind-expansion and of "experts". Those early ads often relied on "9-out-of 10 <insert your favorite expert here>s say that "Product X" is healthier, shinier, stronger, better-tasting, etc".
Experts told us that it was fun and safe to take a picnic lunch & go watch nuclear testing. Movies were filmed on the radioactive dusty soil because it was perfectly safe. Shoe stores x-rayed kids' feet for a "perfect fit". Sore throats were often treated with x-rays. Paint was leaded...so was gasoline. Science teachers encouraged us kids to play with mercury on our desktops.
"Better Living Through Chemistry" was the theme of the day. Redi-Kilowatt was our little buddy. Everything old/pre-war was just the thing that no one wanted to identify with anymore.
Most people in the US back then were still relatively uneducated. Millions of young men had had their educations truncated due to the war, and it was a time when women largely had a home-ec education.
As all those young men came home from war, eligible for government money, it was inevitable that big-business would notice, and advertising was right there waiting to pounce on the new plan.
The war was a pivotal point in advertising history too, because pre-war, people were too broke to care what was advertised...no money..no buy. During the war, advertising was haphazard, since so much was rationed. It made little sense to waste money on advertising, when supplies were so limited, and so much of people's time, energy & money was going to "their boys" at war. People may have wanted things, but given a choice, they could wait...and wait they did.
The old people who have run Social Security for all its years may have not "noticed" that the Boomers were among us (except for the fact that they noticed all the money we paid in for 50 years), but ad men noticed....in a big way.
They recognized that a two-decade long time of deprivation had come to an end, and that a pent-up demand had been created, and they were ready to take full advantage.
People were used to re-purposing old things, repairing broken things, and doing without many things. This had to change, for ad men to prosper (and to keep the job-engine for all those returning servicemen humming along). Millions of men left for war as common laborers, farm-hands & unemployed, and returned as prospective college men, factory workers with skills picked up the the military, and most of them planned on being much more prosperous than their parents had been. We were all ripe-for-the-picking, and the stage was set for major expansion.
Advertising knows the "seven deadly sins" inside out and had psychologists on retainer, to teach them how better to appeal to all the demons locked inside us.. ...Hungry demons who wanted "stuff".
They knew all the buttons to push. They knew how to make a housewife feel humiliated about her yellow floor wax...How to make a puny young man feel shame about his slight build. How to make us all feel fear about odors, hair, breath, tooth color, hair textures. They knew how to approach our children & trained those kids how to wheedle, beg, cry & even shame us into buying them stuff.
People associate greed with Gordon Gecko, but before Gordon Gecko, there were millions of others (on a smaller scale, though) who coveted "new" and "more". The people who were in the job-force in the 50's had had-it-up-to-here with old hand-me-down stuff, and ad men were happy to oblige us all with a daily field trip through the World of New.
Politicians took notice of the successes of advertising, and the old lapel buttons & placards were no longer enough. TV was an ad man/politician's dream-come-true. TV was new & shiny & everyone HAD to have one, and by advertising on tv, politicians were able to reach more people than ever before.
It was not long before the deal between advertising/corporate money/politicians was signed, sealed & delivered.
We have evolved into watchers, believers, supporters of what we are told to watch, to believe and to support. Who tells us? Advertisers, politicians & TV.
The consumer society we became , was no accident. If we remained content with what we had and were willing to do without the next new shiny, advertisers would make less, corporations would sell less, and politicians would have less campaign donation money. Those three entities are a complete circle around us all. We are hopelessly trapped in the middle. The money they have, comes largely from us, but once it's in their hands, it circulates only between the three of them, and what we get from the money is the trinket we buy with that money we worked for. The real action is in the line between the three entities...not where we are, inside the circle.
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