Why Advertising History Matters -- Patterns That Never Die

Welcome to brand strategy and advertising. I'm Bob Bacheler. That Instagram ad you saw this morning, the one that felt so cutting edge, so perfectly targeted to you, it's using persuasion tactics from 1895. The ad that ran before your YouTube video today, the one with the emotional story and the product reveal at the end, that structure was perfected in the 1930s. Here's what most people miss. Advertising doesn't really change. The medium changes. Newspapers, to radio, to television, to Instagram and social media. But the fundamental strategies for persuading people to buy things, those have been remarkably consistent for over a century. And that's exactly what we're gonna spend this semester and this podcast studying, advertising history and why it's so important for you today. Not because it's quaint, nostalgic, people love old ads, but because understanding these patterns gives you a superpower that most people don't have. The ability to see through the surface and recognize what's actually happening. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why a depression era so bad can teach you more about modern brand strategy than many marketing textbooks. You'll see why brands keep using the same playbook. That's easy because it works. And you'll start developing the pattern recognition that separates strategists from people who just react to whatever feels new. So let's dive in. Here's the first big idea. What looks revolutionary is usually evolutionary. Every few years someone declares that advertising has completely changed or this type of ad or that kind of thing is dead. In the 1950s it was television. In the 1990s it was the internet. In the 2010s it was social media and influencer marketing. And right now everyone's talking about AI generated content content and TikTok algorithms as if these things are going to kill off all other forms of advertising. But there are still ads on television. There are still ads on radio. It's ever evolving. The technology changes, the channels change, the speed changes, but the psychology, now human psychology doesn't really change. Think about influencer marketing. It's a hot topic. It's been a hot topic for years. It's supposedly this radical approach to selling products. An attractive, relatable person uses a product. They talk about how great it is in a TikTok or a YouTube video and then they encourage their followers to buy it. Well that's not new. That's exactly what companies were doing in the 1920s with celebrity endorsements. It's what cigarette companies did in the 1950s. They actually paid doctors to appear in ads and those ads said things like quote more doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette. Same strategy, different medium, or take storytelling and advertising, which is a really hot trend in marketing. Brands are told to stop selling and start trying to be more authentic by telling stories that connect emotionally with consumers. Again, not new. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, the amazing Cincinnati company Proctor and Gamble didn't just say buy our soap. They actually created radio soap operas. They used dramatic stories that were all sponsored by the soap company. Housewives tuned in every day to follow these ongoing storylines. And right in the middle of the drama, they'd cut in with a commercial. Something like how chip so detergent makes life easier. That storytelling is advertising. It worked then and it works now. Here's a challenge for you. What I'd like you to start doing whenever you see an ad that feels innovative or disruptive. Ask yourself, what's the historical precedent for this? Because I guarantee you there is one. This is an cynical look at advertising history. It's actually the opposite. It's pattern recognition. And pattern recognition is what makes you valuable as a strategic thinker. Anyone can describe what's happening. A strategy just can look at what's happening and say I've seen this pattern before and here's what typically happens next. Here's how we should act as a result of these impulses and these events and these topics that we're seeing converge. Now let's talk about how we got here. How did advertising become so central to American life that we literally can't escape it? Depending on the research that you look at, tens of thousands of potential advertisements coming at people each day of their waking life. Well, three major forces came together between the 1930s and the 1970s to make advertising the heart of consumer capitalism. Understanding these forces helps you see why advertising works the way it does today. And if you don't understand what the term consumer capitalism means, pump that into Google or check it out on AI and ask it to really dive deep into what consumer capitalism means for you as a future creator of culture and always in your life a consumer of culture. So let's get back to the forces. Force one, consumerism as identity. First consumption became identity. What you bought became who you were. This wasn't always true. In the early 20th century people bought things when they needed them. You needed a coat because the winter was coming you bought a coat. You needed flour, you bought flour. But by the 1930s and particularly after World War II, so we're talking the mid 1940s and on, advertising had successfully convinced Americans that what you buy defines your success, your status, and maybe most importantly, your self-worth. That thing that we call the American dream, that shifted from freedom to determine your place in the world to the freedom of acquiring the right goods and brands. Here's historian James Truzlow Adams coining the term American dream in 1931 right in the middle of the Great Depression. Some people think the American dream was coined during in 1925 when F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby. But Gatsby was pre-American dream. It was just a novel that represented a vision that nobody had yet named at that time. Adams, the historian, meant the American dream as an ideal about freedom and opportunity. However, two decades later by the 50s and then into the 60s, the American dream meant a house in the suburbs, a television set, a car, and other very specific consumer goods. And this is a global phenomenon. After World War II, the US government actually ran propaganda campaigns overseas. Yes, and we definitely mean to call them propaganda to sell the American way of life around the world. President Eisenhower launched a program he called the People's Capitalism campaign. The message, very simple. Communism gives you empty shelves and scarcity while capitalism gives you abundance and choice. And when your belly is empty, wouldn't that look good? Abundance and choice. It worked. The Soviet Union couldn't compete with American advertising and the image of prosperity that it created. And you can argue this yourself or look into the history, but in the 1950s and 1960s, there were plenty of people who were living at poverty level who did not have the prosperity that advertising promised. So, what role did advertising have then in delivering a false promise to potential consumers? But we're all consumers. That's the fact. We live in a consumer capitalism economy. You cannot escape being a consumer. Here's why this matters for you as a brand strategist. Consumers still equate purchasing with self-worth. Walk into any department store, go online and look at what the hot products are people still define themselves by the brands they choose. Are you an Apple person or an Android? Are you Nike or Adidas? Do you go to Whole Foods or do you go to Walmart? Every brand choice is an identity statement. When you analyze brands today you're not just looking at product features you're looking at how brands help people construct their identities. Very important point. Let's move on to Force 2, Technology as delivery system. Technology became advertising's most powerful weapon. Every new mass medium radio, television, the internet, smartphones was supposed to be about communication, entertainment, information. But what actually happened? Advertising took over every single one. Here's what media scholar James Twitchell says and I'm quoting here. The purpose of television is to keep you watching television at least long enough to see the advertisements. Programs are the scheduled interruptions of marketing bulletins. So if you've never thought about that before, turn television at least traditional ways people watch television on its ear. The main idea wasn't the program. It was something to give people to watch between ads. The show's not the point the commercial is. This is still true. YouTube videos exist to show you ads. Free apps exist to show you ads. Instagram exists to show you ads disguised as content from people you follow. The technology changes but the fundamental model. Your attention is the product being sold and this remains constant. Television transformed advertising in the 1950s and 1960s because suddenly you could see products in action. You could watch someone pour Alka Celtser into the water. Drop those tablets and see it fizz. You could see a happy family happy because they were eating breakfast cereal. You could see a housewife feeling relieved when her husband complimented her on the sparkling clean dishes or the clean floor or the clean clothes. Color television in the 1960s was another revolution. Now you could see vibrant colors of products, the richness of food, the way that advertising or packaging was used to appeal. Here's the pattern. Every technological advance gets immediately weaponized for selling. When the internet arrived people predicted it would be this democratic wild west commercial free space. That lasted literally about five minutes and I know because I was there at the birth of the internet. Now the entire internet is one big ad. So when you're analyzing contemporary brand strategy always ask how is this brand using current technology to reach consumers and is there a historical precedent that we can look at? Force 3. Artistry as persuasion. How advertising became art? Well, art or maybe you watch the Super Bowl ads then art as entertainment. In the 1960s something shifted. Advertising executives, people like Bill Burnbock, David Ogle V, Mary Wells Lawrence realized that if you made commercials entertaining enough, funny enough, beautiful enough striking enough people would actually want to watch them. Mary Wells Lawrence, one of the true giants of advertising history, though you don't see her really depicted in madmen the television show. She's a little bit like Peggy but was much more innovative and powerful. She understood something crucial. She saw television commercials as theater almost as spectacle. So her famous campaign was for an airline called Branuff in the 1960s. Before Wells came up with this, airlines were boring. Plains were gray or white. Stewardesses wore nurse-like uniforms because airlines wanted to throw off the idea that the airline was safe and air travel was just like driving a car. It was safe. You didn't need anything extra. Wells said, "What if we make it exciting?" She had Branuff's planes painted in bright rainbow colors like orange toy turquoise yellow. She had a fashion designer create modern colorful uniforms for the flight attendants and then she created a commercial called the Airstrip. The commercial showed a flight attendant removing layers of her uniform during flight, changing from cold weather to warm weather clothes. Sounds tame, right? But in the 1960s this was shocking. It was theater. It was entertaining. The end of the plane plane was the slogan and watching a airline stewardess strip even though it wasn't as risky as it seems and you can watch this on YouTube was risque. It worked too. Businessmen went out of their way to fly Branuff just to see the glamorous fashionable flight attendants. The campaign generated more publicity than Banuff had paid for advertising in the previous 10 years. Here's what Wells said explaining her philosophy. "Avertising is about telling stories that captivate readers or viewers and persuade them to buy products. Stories, not sales pitches, stories. This is the model that still dominates today. Brands don't just sell products. They create experiences, they tell stories, make art. Superbow commercials aren't interruptions anymore. People want to watch them. Some go viral, some are released weeks before and go viral and get millions upon millions and hundreds of millions of views on YouTube and elsewhere. When Coke launched its famous I'd like to buy the world a Coke advertisement the commercial in 1971 with that the young people singing that chorus represented by people from all over the world, singing about peace and harmony. This wasn't just a commercial. It became a pop song that pop song went to number one on the record charts. It captured the peace and love vibe of that era and attached it to a soft drink. That's artistry as persuasion and it's never stopped working. So what does all of this mean for you? Studying advertising history isn't about memorizing dates or campaigns. You want to be developing pattern recognition, the ability to look at what's happening and recognize the fundamental strategy behind it. Let me give you a practical framework. When you see any advertisement or brand campaign, ask yourself three questions. What's the underlying strategy? Strip away the technology, the aesthetics, the celebrity endorsement, look at it as a tactic. What's the core persuasion tactic? What's happening? Is it scarcity? Like when somebody says limited time offer, that's been working since the 1920s. Is it social proof? Like everyone's buying this. That's been working since the 1930s. And is it aspirational? Buy this product and you'll be like this successful or beautiful person? That's been working since celebrity endorsements first began. Sometimes it's fear. Solve this problem now where you're going to suffer. Patent Mendezson companies started doing this in the 1890s selling people drinks laced with cocaine and other drugs, you know, as a way of getting the more energetic, they were illegal and the government had to act against them, but we still have vitamin supplements and other things happening today that are along the same line. So it draws a straight line from the 1890s to 2026. What's the historical precedent? That's our second question. Influencer marketing that's celebrity endorsements. User generated content campaigns. That's the same as a world word of mouth advertising. Viral marketing? Well, the original Coca-Cola campaign that turned satisfy customers into brand of ad evangelist was basically the same thing. Finding the precedent does two things. First, it helps you understand why the strategy might work because if it's worked for 80 years there's probably a solid psychological reason that that's happened. Second, if it helps you predict what might go wrong, you can look at the historical failures to understand similar tactics. Here's our third question. How has this strategy adapted to current technology and culture? This is where it really gets interesting in my mind. The strategy might be old, but the execution has to be contemporary. Depression, error brands, emphasized value and durability because people had no money. If you don't have a lot of money to buy things, the things you buy have to last a long time. Modern recession advertising did the same thing, but now it's delivered via social media, email, streaming ads, not in print or radio like the Great Depression. Buy American campaigns in the 1910s and 1920s appealed to patriotism during the wartime. We have the same kind of buy American campaigns today that appealed to nationalism, but they also tie into our political belief systems, global supply chains, and environmental impact. The strategy adapts, but the psychology remains constant. Let me tell you why this matters for those of you who are thinking about this beyond this course at Coastal Carolina. We're living in an era where AI can write ad copy, generate images, and optimize campaigns. Technical skills are becoming commoditized, what you can learn from an AI tutorial, anyone, and everyone can learn. But here's what AI can't do. It can't develop judgment. It can't tell you whether a brand strategy will resonate based on cultural context and historical patterns. AI can't say, "I've seen this work in 1965 and fail in 1985, and here's why I think it'll fail again in the 2020s." That's human judgment, wisdom, and wisdom comes from studying patterns across time. So someday when you walk into a meeting and the person's pitching a "innovative influence" or campaign, and you calmly say, "Well, this is basically the same strategy as Mar Burles Cowboy campaign from the 1950s, which worked brilliantly until people changed their mind about smoking." You can tell people, "Are we looking at the potential cultural shifts here? Are we looking at different perspectives about the topic being pitched?" That's power. That's being a strategist, not just a tactician. Tecticians often do things that AI can mimic. Strategists are valuable. Here's the uncomfortable truth. A lot of advertising is manipulative. It creates problems you didn't know you had, so it can sell you solutions. Advertising frequently prays on the insecurity, fear, and desire for status. That's the manipulation. It turns people into consumers. Because in a consumer society, consumerism is what drives the economy. I'm not here to tell you this is evil or that you shouldn't pursue a career in advertising or communications, marketing, digital strategy, any of these things. But I am here to tell you that understanding how it works, really understanding the psychological mechanisms, the patterns, the history, it will make you a more critical thinker. Then you become harder to manipulate. You can see through surface messaging to the strategy underneath. And professionally, you can use your power to create more ethical, effective campaigns because you understand what you're actually doing. I've been telling students from almost two decades. If you are going to become a communicator, you have a ethical responsibility because you are going to be a creator of culture. That's what PR people do. That's what advertisers do. That's what marketers do. You are simultaneously a consumer of culture and you are probably a person who is going to influence others not only in your community, but in your own family. So you have an ethical duty here. Reading advertising history makes you a wiser person, not just a better marketer, wiser. Because you start to see how culture gets created. You see how desire gets manufactured and how social change gets commodified and sold back to us. That's the kind of thinking that makes you valuable in any career, not just marketing, public relations, strategic communications. So here's what we're doing this semester in this class and what we're trying to accomplish with this podcast. We're studying 125 years of advertising history to understand how brands actually work. Not how they say they work in a press release or how we read about them in a textbook, how they actually work based on what's succeeded and failed for over a century. I've asked the students in the class to pick a contemporary brand that they like or are interested in and follow that brand across 15 weeks. If they engage with this diligently and do the work for the course, they will be experts in that brand by the end of 15 weeks and that will make them valuable strategists. They'll be able to talk about that brand with anybody including interviewers who want to hire them for internships and entry-level jobs. So you're going to learn to recognize patterns. You'll develop strategic judgment over time. You'll understand why certain tactics keep working despite changing technology. And you'll build the critical thinking skills that make you valuable in a world where technical knowledge is becoming obsolete faster than ever because of AI. As we progress through the course, we will get progressively through the history and we will see how advertising transformed from simple product announcements into the persuasive desire creating machine that it later became. We'll examine how businesses built legitimacy when consumers didn't trust them and what that teaches us about modern brand trust issues. Until then, I want you to pay attention to the ads you see. Don't just let them wash over you. Look at them critically. Ask yourself, what's the underlying strategy, what's the historical precedent, and how has this adapted to current technology and culture. Start developing that muscle because once you start seeing the patterns, you can't unsee them. And that's when you stop being someone advertising happens too and becoming someone who understands exactly what's happening in society and why. This is Bob Bacheler. Thanks for listening to brand strategy and advertising. [Music] [Music]