Television commercials have been existing since the year of 1941, and that was only two years after the Television was introduced to the public. Technically, televisions could have been made a common item in people’s house in the 30s, but due to The Great Depression and The Second World War, the popularization of television was delayed. Also, it is generally believed that the first TV commercial was aired at 2:29 PM on July 1, 1941, and Bulova watches made that announcement. The company paid approximately 9 dollars for that 20-second commercial. Since then, the TV advertising industry has started to thrive, and commercials were gradually changing due to the concepts of race, feminism and targeted audience are changing.
The contents in the commercials were related to the culture in the 50s, 60s and the 70s. In the Coca-Cola commercials from the 50s to the 70s, there were no African-Americans in the commercial because the social inequalities were not eliminated until the 70s. In the commercials from the 80s, we can notice that African-Americans started to make some appearances in some scenes, and we need to give credit to the people who started the whole Civil Rights Movement.
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Before the 70s, the roles for women in the commercials are either a housewife or an employee as a secretary at most of the time. However, starting at the early 60s, the second- wave feminism took place in America. In the meantime, more and more women had begun their career in the advertising industry. In the 80s, the second-wave feminism reached its peak. Many Marketers seized this opportunity and put some ideas into their commercials to reflect the feminism. For example, in the Coca-Cola commercial from the 80s, there was a scene that a woman slap a man in the face. Also, a woman was in a space suit and walking in the middle between the other two