In the early 20th century, advertising had a huge change in how it was made and the impact it had on its viewers. It went from being someone selling their cow in a local town to Ford selling one of its most iconic cars, the Model-T. At this time when industrialization and urbanization were occurring people spent more time on leisure and engaged in consumerism leading to these sudden changes in advertising. These changes were the leading to propaganda, advertising within politics, cultural targeting within advertising, and the start of false advertising.
During this time frame of urbanization in America, one of the world’s most devastating wars occurred, WWI. And due to its start being within this huge change in advertising, something new was brought into play, propaganda. Propaganda as we know today came about due to WWI, and due to its use then changed the definition entirely.
 |
| WWI Propaganda iconically remembered to this day |
Propaganda used to be used when describing a religious group trying to draw in followers, but due to the sheer impact it had on WWI it changed to being known as a form of advertising and persuasion to change someone’s political views. Propaganda also led to the United States join the fight in WWI. Some of the allied forces would target America as a neutral country within their propaganda to try and get them to join the fight, and it actually ended up working and was one of the reasons America joined WWI.
Political advertising was also something that started to happen when politicians were campaigning for office in the early 1900’s. It became such a big thing that some states started cracking down on what was accepted as a campaign ad or illegal voter persuasion. In Oregon for instance, electioneering, advertising for a politician, is acceptable all days except for election day, however any sort of physical interaction with voters was illegal and so was any uncited press about the election.
 |
| Political ad for Mckinney |
I think it’s interesting though how nowadays we aren’t so worried about this sort of interaction as it has been around for a while and we’ve all gotten used to it. However, when it was first put into use during all of this urbanization states started to worry about whether it was morally okay for people to campaign and try to persuade voters to vote for them, or whether it was wrong and should be treated as a bribe even though there was nothing to be gained by the voter.
However, one of the main issues in this new form of marketing was cultural targeting and stereotyping within advertising. To appeal to some markets advertisers would target certain ethnic or religious groups to try and appeal to a larger populace to make more profit. One of the main groups targeted were African-Americans and they were often depicted performing lower wage jobs, or having some association with watermelons or bandana’s. 
Watermelon ad using cultural appropriation
Watermelon ad using cultural appropriation
Often this was done to appeal to purchasers in the south that had a racist mindset that thought purchasing a certain product would put them above blacks, or for instance in watermelon ads, by having an african american in it it would show that the product being sold was approved by the stereotype. This even came up recently during the superbowl ad’s. Audi released a commercial about a father’s thoughts about his daughter and discussing the wage gap between female and male workers, and while Audi tried to convey a good message they received a lot of backlash from consumers due to its discussing its attempts to fix the issue when they actually partially cause part of the problem.
 |
| Audi Superbowl advertisement |
And finally one of the new Advertising styles that started to appear was false-advertising. While this is kind of a joke today when discussing cheap products that don't work, it used to be a real issue back then. Door to door salesmen were probably one of the main users of this advertising, due to their constantly being on the move they were very elusive and often didn't stick around long enough to deal with people's complaints. false advertising is when someone would advertise a product with certain qualities that were entirely falsified. One of the most famous versions of this ad is Snake oil.
 |
| The original Snake oil advertisement by Mack Mahon |
Snake oil was advertised as having magical healing properties, steroid like abilities, something that was constantly changed to appeal to a consumer in particular, hence why it was very popular with door to door salesmen. This false ad got so popular even, that today there is a card game based off it where one player chooses a consumer at random, and the other players have to use the cards in their hand to appeal to the consumer to win the round.
At this boom in urbanization many new advertising styles started to appear, and as urbanization continues into today constantly changes advertising and makes some older ad's iconic. Urbanization's cause of leisure time and consumerism led to these advertising productions and often caused them to be very successful. while some of these advertising styles have now become outdated or illegal, they shaped the advertising of today, and left their imprints on new advertising being made today.
Works Cited
"Ad for Mack Mahon Rattlesnake Oil." American History, ABC-CLIO, 2017,
americanhistory.abc-clio.com. Accessed 6 Feb. 2017.
Aylsworth, Leon E. "Corrupt Practices." The American Political Science Review 3.1 (1909): 50-56. JSTOR. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1945910?ref=search-gateway:092a41dab26c6738fdd23249a45caa78>.
Duke Library. "Welcome to the Duke Digital Repository." Duke Digital Repository. Duke University, n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2017.
Lapp, John A. "Liquor." The American Political Science Review 3.3 (1909): 406-09. JSTOR. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1945692?ref=search-gateway:fe73917819ea9ce9dac6d62ca85c3006>.
Library of Congress. "Chronicling America « Library of Congress." News about Chronicling America RSS. Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2017.
Nicholas Cull. "World War I Propaganda." World History: The Modern Era, ABC-CLIO, 2017,
https://worldhistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/598011?terms=american+advertising&sType=quick. Accessed 6 Feb. 2017.
O'Barr, William M. Culture and the Ad: Exploring Otherness in the World of Advertising. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994. Print.
A. I did not know people questioned advertising from the start like we do today. I also did not know watermelons and bandanas were stereotypes of black people.
ReplyDeleteB) I want to know if any salesmen ever got in legal trouble if a customer was especially upset about a bad product.
C) It was analytical, but maybe relate it back to urbanization/industrialization more and how advertisement affected urbanization of cities.
A. I was unaware that people used to have issues with certain ads or propaganda trying to sway voters opinions. Especially considering how commonplace and normal that is today
ReplyDeleteB. I would definitely like to know more about how they targeted ads towards certain races or demographics. Obviously that still happens today, but I think the science behind it would be really interesting
C. I think the post was fairly analytical as it did a good job of explaining how advertisements played into urbanization. It didn't merely state facts it also provided the context for why ads were important.
A)I didn't know that the real start of advertising came from propaganda I thought I was the other way around.
ReplyDeleteB) I want know more about the racism in marketing.
C) Your post was very analytical it stated that facts and how everything tied back into your main topic.
A. I did not know that propaganda was originally used to describe a religious group trying to gain followers, I originally thought that it was mainly used for political reasons.
ReplyDeleteB. I wanted to know that to know what propaganda at the time was like, and I learned that the U.S population did not approve of political propaganda because they believed it was not "morally okay for people to campaign and try to persuade voters to vote for them, or whether it was wrong and should be treated as a bribe even though there was nothing to be gained by the voter"
C. This was very analytical, he stayed with his topic and had very good examples of forms of advertising. I also liked that he used a modern day commercial(Audi commercial) as an example.