A thesis in American history
Why We Buy
Advertisement and Consumerism During the Roaring Twenties
Often a Bridesmaid but never a Bride
“Even your closest friends won't tell you.”
Listerine
The land of desire
The Roaring Twenties remade American cars, music, movies, and ideas of pleasure. Henry Ford's assembly line and the spread of buying on credit put automobiles, telephones, and appliances into ordinary homes. Americans, as one historian put it, turned inward.
Historian Lawrence Glickman writes that Americans began “enjoying the private pleasures” of the era and showed “indifference or cynicism to the well-being of the public sphere.” William Leach named what the country had become: the land of desire.
The land of desire
People wanted goods, and producers hurried to make them. But one force pushed consumer culture further than cheaper cars or easier credit could: advertising. During the decade it changed from announcing what a product did to suggesting who you might become.
The engines of consumption
First, the machinery had to fall into place
Henry Ford split car production into stations along a moving line. Each department built one part, and the whole car was assembled at the end. Output rose as prices fell, until working-class families were buying Fords by the thousand.
Installment credit did the rest. Families that once saved for years could now buy with a down payment. By the mid-1920s, buying on credit had stopped feeling sinful, and the money Americans used to save went into their driveways.
The age of thrift
Before desire, there was discipline
The change is easier to see against what came before it. In America before the 1920s, thrift was a civic virtue, taught in classrooms and printed on government posters.
Starting with Massachusetts in 1911, state after state made “thrift education” part of the curriculum. Schools opened savings banks, which one program described as “a developer of character.” Children used them in large numbers.
More than fourteenfold in 24 years
World War I strengthened the habit. The U.S. Food Administration printed posters telling citizens to “waste nothing.” A 1918 pamphlet, The Patriotism of Saving, called waste “the selfish destruction by one of things which many need.” Saving was patriotic, and spending looked suspect.
Advertisements from that period sold what you would expect: usefulness, meaning efficiency, simplicity, and cleanliness. The product's job was to work, and the ad's job was to prove it.
“Mr. Farmer, Time is Money.”
It separates cream faster. Efficiency is the whole pitch.
“Simple, easy, and understandable.”
Develop photographs in your own room, without a darkroom or any special skill.
“Woman's Hardest Task Is Sweeping with a Corn Broom.”
It saved labor and time, and it confined “dust and dangerous germs.”
Three ads, one argument: here is what it does for you
Then advertising discovered the mind
1 act of reason for every 20 acts of emotion
An advertising agency of the time, on how people decide
Advertisers in the 1920s saw what their predecessors had missed: people choose emotionally, and often irrationally. The trade dropped what historian Roland Marchand called the “factory viewpoint,” a list of what a product did, and turned toward “the mental processes of the consumer.”
They learned to produce feelings on purpose. An ad would warn you that not owning a product made you undesirable, or promise that owning it made you enviable. When the feeling is strong enough, it usually beats the arithmetic.
The fear: identities you could lose
Buy this, or become someone lesser
The first lever was dread. Advertisers tied three social humiliations to not owning their product, and told you that even your closest friends would not warn you in time.
01 Losing your romantic attraction
“Often a Bridesmaid but never a Bride.”
As she neared “the tragic thirty mark,” the problem was halitosis, and “even your closest friends won't tell you.”
“A Skin You Love to Touch.”
“At twenty — is a woman's skin always fresh and fair? At thirty — must it begin to fade?”
“Why Will so Many Married Women Consider Themselves so Safe?”
Even “safely married” women risked an odor that no single girl would dare ignore.
02 A socially unrecognized appearance
“She Looks Old Enough to Be His Mother.”
The “too old” wife was actually five years younger than her husband. Neglect, the ad implied, had cost her her charm.
“Conspicuous Nose Pores — How to Reduce Them.”
“Complexions otherwise flawless are often ruined,” the ad warned, by a single visible flaw.
“What's Become of the ‘Homely' Girl?”
Other women were “learning to make the most of their looks.” Fall behind, and you'd be left homely.
03 Lacking taste
“Would You Criticize a Friend behind Her Back?”
Cheap writing paper might “talk about you behind your back,” and your friends were too loyal to tell you.
“The Most Precious Perfume in the World.”
“For years the favorite of women of taste.” Going without meant leaving that set.
“Characteristics which appeal to public taste.”
Beyond “beauty and quality,” fabric had to signal taste. The wrong cloth marked you as tasteless.
One act of reason for every twenty of emotion. With impulse in charge, people bought more.
The promise: identities you could buy
Or buy this, and become someone more
If fear was one lever, aspiration was the other. Ads now offered a self worth envying, in three versions you could buy.
01 Being modern
“Modern ways for modern days.” To own the product was to belong to the present.
“The modern way of ‘making' soup.”
“I'm up to date.” Modern people no longer made soup. They opened it.
“Draw Your Way to Fame and Fortune.”
The “modern” artist “dresses well, lives in a fine home, drives his own car.”
“The Modern Style Idea — to be well dressed without trying.”
Beauty and modernity, tailored into one suit.
02 Among the elite
Status, sold by the bottle and the chassis to buyers “of the better classes.”
“America's Greatest Motoring Gift to the World.”
Written for the “substantial, luxury-loving Cadillac clientele,” which implied it was not for everyone.
“8 in every 10 women of the better classes already have adopted it.”
Hygiene recast as a sign of social class.
“Rendering just this service to Society women, famous for their beauty.”
The cream was pitched at Society women in particular.
03 Being masculine
Toughness without the cost of a battlefield, sold over the counter.
“Captain X in the Field.”
For the civilian, the cigarette offered “heroic individualism and lonesome manhood” without the dirt and fear.
“Be Well and Keep Well.”
“The vigorous man or woman is leader of all — don't be a dead one at 50.”
“A Man-size Razor for a Man-size Job.”
A strong man at the factory. Wherever the razor went, masculinity went with it.
You were no longer buying a product. You were buying a self.
The proof: it worked
The psychology showed up on the balance sheet
Revenue rose from $115,000 in 1922 to over $8 million by 1929, roughly $152 million today, on a campaign built around the fear of bad breath.
Held 70% of the sanitary-napkin market in the late 1920s while charging nearly twice its rivals' price.
Sales rose 112% in a single year, passing $417,000 in 1920, after psychology entered the pitch.
A national ethos
Soon, Americans defined themselves by what they owned
The change went deeper than any single sale. The pulpit, the parlor, and the President all recast consumption as part of who Americans were.
“All work is worship; all useful service prayer.”
“I'll go without food before I'll see us give up the car.”
“The chief business of the American people is business.”
The ledger
The nation's spending tells the rest
Across the decade, the figures moved in one direction. Identity, it turned out, sold well.
Highlighted: personal care, the category most of the ads above were selling. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
The inheritance
Before the Twenties, thrift was a virtue and an ad sold a product's use. During them, advertising learned to sell a self, and buying became the way Americans said who they were.
The decade ended in the Great Depression, but the way of selling it built never went away. A century later, ads still sell feelings, and purchases still say who we are.