Overview

Drawing on both documentary and pictorial evidence, Pamela Walker Laird explores the modernization of American advertising to 1920. She links its rise and transformation to changes that affected American society and business alike, including the rise of professional specialization and the communications revolution that new technologies made possible. Laird finds a fundamental shift in the kinds of people who created advertisements and their relationships to the firms that advertised. Advertising evolved from the work of informing customers (telling people what manufacturers had to sell) to creating consumers (persuading people that they needed to buy). Through this story, Laird shows how and why - in the intense competitions for both markets and cultural authority - the creators of advertisements laid claim to ""progress"" and used it to legitimate their places in American business and culture.

Full Product Details

Author:   Pamela Walker Laird (Professor Emerita, University of Colorado at Denver)
Publisher:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint:   Johns Hopkins University Press
Edition:   New edition
Volume:   14
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.765kg
ISBN:  

9780801866456

ISBN 10:   0801866456
Pages:   506
Publication Date:   18 April 2001
Recommended Age:   From 17
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Contents: PT. I Production as Progress 1 Marketing Problems and Advertising Methods as America Industrialized 2 Owner-Manager Control of Advertising 3 Printers, Advertisers, and Their Products 4 Advertising Progress as a Measure of Worth PT. II Specialization as Progress 5 Early Advertising Specialists 6 Competition and Control: Business Conditions and Marketing Practices 7 The Competition to Modernize Advertising Services PT. III Consumption as Progress 8 Taking Advertisements Toward Modernity 9 Modernity and Success: Legitimatizing the Advertising Profession - I 10 The Appropriation of Progress: Legitimatizing the Advertising Profession - II Conclusion: Patrons, Agents, and the New Business of Progress

Reviews

<p> What gives the book its considerable depth and explanatory power is the nuanced and comprehensive way in which Laird discusses the shifting contexts of American advertising... A complex, sophisticated analysis of how entrepreneurs and professionals create messages designed to sell goods. -- Daniel Horowitz, Journal of American History

Author Information

Pamela Walker Laird teaches history at the University of Colorado at Denver.

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