The business of government is advertising

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to analyze the increasingly congenial relationship between business and government that developed in the immediate post Second World War period. This study explores the subtle, but systematic, uses of advertising for propaganda purposes to secure American political and commercial world dominance. It locates the relationship between the US Government and the Advertising Council as key components in a strategy to blur the lines between political and commercial messages. In addition to study the relationship between the two stakeholders, the study identifies some of the implications for both. Design/methodology/approachScholarship on the government’s postwar relationships with other organizations is relatively scant and few other scholars have focused on the advertising industry’s role in this transformation. This paper draws on trade periodicals and newspaper accounts, and relies on archival material from the Arthur W Page and the Thomas D’Arcy Brophy collections at the Wisconsin State Historical Society and the Advertising Council’s papers at the University of Illinois. Charles W. Jackson papers, located at the Harry S. Truman Library, and the papers of Office of War Mobilization and Re-conversion, deposited at the National Archives, have also been consulted. FindingsThe Advertising Council’s “Peace” and “World Trade and Travel” demonstrate an acceleration of collaboration between business and government that continued into the postwar era. It shows the government’s willingness to trade on the Advertising Council’s goodwill and to blur the lines between political and commercial messages, in what can accurately be characterized as a duplicitous manner. Key conclusion includes a willingness among Washington’s policymakers to propagandize its own citizens, a strategy that it commonly, and disparagingly, ascribed to the Soviet Union, and a Council so willing to appease Washington, that it was putting its own reputation at considerable risk. Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is based on a study of two campaigns (“Peace” and “World Trade and Travel”) that the Advertising Council conducted in collaboration with the US State Department. While these were the first campaigns of this nature, they were not the only ones. Additional studies of similar campaigns may add new insights. Social implicationsRecent political events have brought propaganda and government collusion back on the public agenda. In an era of declining journalism credibility, rising social media and unprecedented government and commercial surveillance, it is argued that propaganda demands scholarly attention more than ever and that a historical study of how the US Government collaborated with private industry and used advertising as a propaganda smokescreen is particularly timely. Originality/valueThis study adds to the scholarship on advertising, PR and propaganda in several ways. First, it contributes to the understanding of the advertising industry’s important role in the planning of US international policy after the Second World War. Second, it demonstrates the increasingly congenial relationship between business and the US Government that emerged as a result. Third, it provides excellent insights into the Adverting Council’s transition from war to peacetime. The heavy reliance on archival material also brings originality and value to the study.

“Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?”: Richard Nixon’s National Mass Media Campaign Against Drug Abuse

This monograph explores how corporate, political, and public health concerns shaped the Nixon administration’s public service advertising campaign against drug abuse. Between 1970 and 1973, the Nixon administration worked with the nonprofit Advertising Council to orchestrate a national, “one-voice” mass media campaign to change Americans’ attitudes toward the use of drugs. Papers preserved in the archives of the Advertising Council and by Nixon administration officials expose behind-the-scenes conflicts over the government’s drug-abuse message among the White House, federal agency staff, and private partners in the campaign, including drug companies and the advertising and broadcasting industries. Controversies included whether to include alcohol, marijuana, legally marketed prescription drugs such as amphetamines, and dangerous retail drugs such as headache medicines and caffeine, and whether the campaign should promote safe drug use or only discourage “abuse.” Archival records reveal the president’s power to set the government’s message, despite bureaucratic and expert resistance. However, government control over the propaganda campaign was limited by reliance on the Ad Council and the voluntary participation of networks and broadcasters to distribute public service announcements (PSAs). Through the Ad Council’s process of reviewing and obtaining broadcast network clearances for individual PSAs, advertisements that disparaged alcohol and other legally advertised products were weeded from the national campaign. Ultimately, the White House’s vision of a mass media offensive against drug abuse in all its forms was implemented primarily as a campaign against the use of illegal drugs, particularly by youth. Although successful with broadcasters, the campaign was terminated in 1973 amid concerns it was actually stimulating illegal drug use.

“Your Grandchildren Will Grow Up Under Communism!”

A potent weapon in the Cold War, advertising relied on the notion of childhood innocence to promote Cold War containment at home and to advance a crucial pillar of US Cold War ideology abroad—the superiority of free market capitalism over communism. This chapter analyzes how images of children and ideas about childhood informed several major Advertising Council public service campaigns as well as consumer advertising during the 1950s. The distinction between domestic advertising and foreign propaganda during the Cold War was often a fine one, as both routinely used images of children to represent the nation to Americans and to potential allies around the world. In the hands of government propagandists and corporate advertisers, children simultaneously functioned as symbols of the happiness and security that could be achieved through a commitment to democratic capitalism and as symbols illustrating the nation’s vulnerability to the spread of Soviet communism.

Advertising Navigates the Defense Economy

This chapter analyzes industry strategies for “educating the public” to a view of advertising as socially and economically useful. More specifically, it shows the use of institutional advertising for this purpose and discusses how industry leaders worked behind the scenes to prepare a solid defense of advertising. The chapter explores the challenges faced by the advertising community in the period leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor and immediately thereafter, including how the industry dealt with new forms of criticism and how it viewed its role in the war economy. The chapter concludes with the establishment of the Advertising Council, Inc., an organization that would come to define the advertising industry’s public relations efforts during World War II and beyond.

Peace and the Reconversion of the Advertising Council

This chapter follows the Council through the last months of the war and into the reconversion period, when it worked diligently with leaders of the advertising industry, business, and government to determine its role in postwar America. It discusses the nature of these deliberations and analyzes the newly elevated role of advertising as a public relations tool for the business community at large. No longer satisfied with taking directives from the government, the postwar council—once again called the Advertising Council—assumed a more independent role in regard to campaign selections. Its campaigns over the next few years included programs that were more explicitly designed to educate the public about the superiority of the American system of free enterprise and the virtues of corporate capitalism.

The Increasing Role of the War Advertising Council

This chapter details the Council’s activities throughout 1944. It studies how individual advertisers were coached to stay on course, sacrificing money, resources, and some of their creative independence to streamline the government’s campaigns and make the Council a success. Most of the government’s requests were for help with noncontroversial campaigns, which meant there was little chance that participating advertisers might arouse public resentment. But this was not always easy, especially when commercial concerns clashed with patriotic goals—a fact driven home by a highly controversial anti-venereal disease campaign. With this campaign, the Council found itself awkwardly in the middle of its obligations to the Office of War Information and the need to protect individual advertisers’ self-interest.

The Initial Year of the Advertising Council

This chapter looks at the strategizing and planning efforts that went into the Advertising Council. It outlines the Council’s organizational setup and its working relationship with the government’s Office of War Information (OWI) during its first year of existence. It also presents the Council’s criteria for accepting the government’s domestic information campaigns and how individual campaigns were prepared and implemented in actual advertisements. By providing their services to the government through the Council at no charge, advertisers hoped to impress upon the American people that theirs was a patriotic institution helping the war effort. The chapter concludes with a discourse regarding the advertisers’ victory in the battle to keep advertising a tax-deductible expense for business.

Advertising, Washington, and the Renamed War Advertising Council

This chapter considers the debate over payment for the government’s home front promotions, which pitted the media’s desire for increased advertising revenues against concerns about government intrusion on the First Amendment. The government’s decision to rely on the advertising industry’s volunteer contributions through the Advertising Council was clearly a vote of approval for the organization, but it also imposed a huge responsibility on the business community, demanding a large and well-orchestrated effort. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how internal struggles within the Office of War Information helped to further solidify the advertising industry’s role in the war effort, which led the Council to change its name to the War Advertising Council.