Why was it "the golden age of advertising"?

Factual Questions
1

In reviews and discussions of the TV series ‘Mad Men’, I’ve frequently heard the early 1960’s (the time when the series is set) referred to as the “golden age” of advertising.

Assuming this was true, why was it?

Advertising still seems very influential, and from what little I know about it, a lucrative business.

I know there were memorable ads from that era. But that seems to be true in most eras.

Were the agencies more financially independent? I know lots of industries have changed in that regard.

Did the creative end have more input?

I posted here on the assumption that there’s an objective answer. If not, mods feel free to move as you see fit.

2

A few WAGs here to get the ball rolling.

  1. Until about a century ago, demand for the essentials of life (i.e., food, clothing and shelter) matched or surpassed supply. Advertising was mainly about announcing that something was available. It was the 20th Century before the focus turned to creating demand for a good or service.

  2. The first half of the 20th Century was marked by hardship. The 1920s may have been a time of relative wealth (I honestly do not know how the average family fared), but there were two world wars, and the Great Depression lasted for over a decade. By the end of WWII (and the recession that followed it) there was a quarter century of pent-up demand. People bought because they never could do it before.

  3. Somewhere in the Fifties and Sixties, the United States converted from a mainly rural population to a mainly urban one. With the move to the cities, there was more available to buy.

3

By the '60’s, about 90% of USA households had at least one television set, so people were watching. However, in most markets there were few if any alternatives to the "Big Three " networks. So the audience was large without being fragmented by cable, satellite, or even many UHF alternatives.

Similarly, such magazines as Life and Look were popular, and read (or at least glanced at) by people of just about every age and income level. More than ever before, Americans were taking to the city streets as well as cross-country highways, and billboards were ubiquitous until Lady Bird Johnson championed the Highway Beautification Act, which was passed in 1965.

Combine all these factors, and the chance for a well-designed ad for any medium had the opportunity of seeping into the national consciousness in a way it never had before – and has not since.

4

There was another factor: before the subculture growth of the 60s, the American (or Western) public was not very skeptical. The public had a great deal of confidence in institutions like government, religion and the media. If people saw a famous person selling a product on TV, most people would receive that message fairly positively. It wasn’t until the late 60s, closely followed by Watergate, that the public became more skeptical and jaded, and less receptive toward advertising.

5

It was the transition from ads selling a product to ads selling a lifestyle or image. The ads became more abstract, more creative and more artistic.

6

There were also fewer regulations on what could be advertised and what could be said in advertising. Kind of like the wide open frontier before those sour-puss law men moved in. (But then again, as the series opens the firm is dealing with early regulations on cigarette ads.)

7

The people that lived through the Depression would be flabbergasted to read this. So would all the people, organizations, and governments that started battling misleading and actively false advertising starting in the 19th century. And if people are skeptical of television today, please explain Head-On.

Several things happened in the quarter-century or so after WWII that are important to advertising history.

The usual ones mentioned start with television appearing with amazing suddenness in living rooms across America almost simultaneously. Well, not to the people living through the 50s, but culturally it was amazingly quick. There are many, many stories of products being advertised on a television show and having to stop the ads because their entire stocks simply sold out overnight. Just being on television did this. Famous faces, who had been appearing in ads since forever, weren’t necessary. And products owned the shows themselves, forced mentions inside episodes, controlled who acted in them, and didn’t allow in competitors. (So-called magazine-style advertising, the norm today, in which each short slot is a different company, didn’t take over until around the late 50s.) Advertisers had tremendous power over television. So much so that they destroyed themselves with the quiz show scandals of the 50s, when they gave answers to the most telegenic contestants.

Advertising styles also changed starting in the 50s. Boutique firms started then, not in the 60s. It’s true that most of the major changes took place in the 60s. Something like Volkswagon’s “lemon” ad could never have appeared then. Most of the advertising in the early 60s wasn’t all that different from the 50s. The real hip ads didn’t come until the late 60s. Mad Men hasn’t entered that era yet.

But the reason I think is most powerful is one that doesn’t get talked about much. Until the war, advertising was a backwater for the best and brightest. The really good people went into banking, or government, or writing, or universities. You couldn’t make much money in advertising, either, unless you owned a company.

After WWII, a strange thing happened. Wall Street stayed flat for almost 20 years. The Dow didn’t break 1000 until the late 60s. Government work wasn’t as enticing as it was under Roosevelt. There was a huge pool of newly educated men using the GI Bill to go to college. People had money to spend for the first time in 20 years and the consumer society began. Advertising could suddenly get really good people, who could start their owns firms and get in on the profits. It was like dot-coms in a later generation. Suddenly those in the field seemed hip and got talked about. Playboy magazine was the home of the ad man lifestyle. If the 60s were the Golden Age, it was because all the stars aligned and for a short period, advertising was the place for the top people to be.

And then it all crashed. By the end of the 70s, television was no longer the hip new thing. Everybody took shots at it. Creative people moved to California and got involved in movies, where the new money was. Bright people rediscovered Wall Street and the first of several eras of Greed is Good began. Small firms couldn’t compete against the giants, who used money to go international. All the boutiques were bought up and the creative mavericks had no place to go. Playboy lost ground to sexier and raunchier magazines and the ad man lifestyle was suddenly a parody rather than hip. It’s never really recovered. Advertising was featured in dozens of books and movies in the 50s and early 60s, and hasn’t been a topic since.

Advertising itself has been through many golden ages. Advertising as a profession had just one. But it started in the 50s and was dying by the mid-60s, just as Don Draper is losing all his cool in 1965.

8

I have a DVD set of television ads from the '50s and '60s. The ones from the early '50s, especially, were awful. They would have a set of celebrities giving exactly the same pitch. They would have clearly uncomfortable sports stars giving the same pitch. Ones with the cast of I Love Lucy pitching were slightly better.

the ones from the '60s had color, of course, but fewer words and were far less spoken text ads and more ads that could only appear on TV. There began to be stories - like Mrs. Olsen and Folgers. And they were far more subtle than just restating the one or two line product pitch the admen had come up with. So I agree, more creative and artistic.

9

The advertising industry may not have had any one “Golden Age,” but the period from the late Fifties through the mid-Sixties probably FELT like a Golden Age to people working at major ad agencies.

Books like Vance Packard’s “The Hidden Persuaders” (1957) and John Kenneth Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society” (1958) has popularized the notion that advertising was an omnipotent , irresistible force, and that Americans were stupid sheep being manipulated by Madison Avenue. Packard and Galbraith were horrified by this idea, but a guy like “Don Draper” was probably THRILLED by the possibility that he had the power and influence to bend the entire country to his will. In 1950, an ambitious Ivy Leaguer wouldn’t have thought of advertising as a desirable career. A decade later, it seemed like THE place to be.

That was an era where a top advertising exec could FEEL like the Master of the Universe, and could tell himself smugly, “America does and buys what I tell it to.” Was that really true? No- but it felt that way, and that feeling was intoxicating.

Advertising remains a big business, but today even the best ad coordinator knows how limited his influence is. Don Draper didn’t.

10

You had this cool new medium of television. Like Expano said, television was powerful. You could see the results overnight. There wasn’t a big bank of people who had TV experience, so there were a lot of openings for people who had some idea of how to use the medium, and people who could think in terms of 30 and 60 second messages.

Plus, the “big book” magazines like Life and Look were still going to millions of homes every week. They were the platform for gorgeous photography and illustration.

Radio was beginning to break into different stations for different audiences, so a department store could advertise fancy dresses to one group and “mod” miniskirts to another. Newspapers were still the primary medium for reaching a local mass audience.

And there wasn’t as much market research back then. The audiences were defined as “men” or “housewives” – not “18-34 year old suburban working women with an income of $20,000 - $50,000.” A good creative director had a lot more freedom to “go with the gut” without having to submit to the dreaded test audience than today.

The 1960s were a brief period where there was an explosion of different media that didn’t have any rules, or where the rules could be challenged. It was like the Internet of the 1990s.

11

What kunilou said. Bright people converging on an entirely new medium without much oversight and second-guessing. But there’s change in the rest of society, too, so new ideas about social stratification, sexuality, writing, and even graphic design are coming to the fore.

12

I’ve read that when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show, 40% of Americans were watching. Not 40% of adults or 40% of people who had TVs or whatever, 40% of everybody. Can you even imagine having that kind of reach? The whole idea blows my mind, that one ad placed in that show could have reached close to half the country.

13

We have a show like that every year. It’s called the Super Bowl.

And the final episode of MASH reached 60% of households, an estimated 100+ million viewers.

14

My point was, that wasn’t uncommon at the time. Nothing these days can put itself in front of as many eyeballs as the big media of the 60’s did on a regular basis.

15

It should be pointed out that the 1950’s-60’s were flush times for America…American manufactureres had 99% of the markets, and everybody was making money. Foreign competition was not a factor, and people were happy to pay “sticker prices”. Becuase margins were so good, companies had lots of money to spend on advertising-and Madison Avenue was on a roll-that’s why the guys in “Madmen” had new cars every year and big houses in Westchester County-and the three/four martini lunch was possible.
Contrast the situation today-the low end Chinese goods have eaten up the profit margins, and profits are slim-where they exist.
This is why I think the USA ought to consider returning to tariffs-our domestic industries are facing collapse.
What good is that cheap pair of Chinese-madeshoes at Walmart?Course, if all you have is an $8/hour job, that is all you can afford.