Great Depression Advertising Analysis

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The Great Depression changed advertising in the way that it was done. The Great Depression effected the United States in a huge economically way. People did not have the extra money to food sometimes; therefore buying leisure things was not option. In an industry that relies on a selling of products, advertising took a major hit. Advertising continued to attempt to get people spend money, despite the fact that nobody had any. There had to be a way for advertisers to sell their products that made people feel like they would be getting a value. According to Marchand, “ Advertisers did not like to become the bearers of bad news; still they needed to make the messages about their products ‘newsworthy’. To do so often meant to show how the product-in …show more content…

It is an industry that depends on people buying not only things they need but also things they do not. When we look back on them and we read that you can save this much money so your kid can have new shoes, we are able to see the struggles they went through just to buy things that today we buy all the time. This decade of advertising helps strengthen the argument that advertising is like a time capsule because looking at it, you can tell that the entire country was at a low point. As soon as they got through it, World War II began. World War II changed the advertising industry because during it the entire country was focusing on the war. A lot of men enlisted and went to war, which meant women had to work outside the home. Advertisers had to justify their usefulness to the war effort, “Advertisers began to incorporate war-related messages into their product and institutional advertising. But the industry leaders were still searching for a better public relations strategy, one that could improve their relationship with Washington and help secure markets for postwar prosperity. Thus they were delighted when the government approached them with a request for promotional assistance. The result was the formation of the Advertising Council in early 1942. The council’s involvement in war-related information campaigns more than answered the industry’s need for a perfect public relations vehicle, and its first victory was helping to secure advertising as a tax-deductible expense for business” (Stole, 2012.

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