Earlier this year the giant of local retailing and politics, Gerry Frank, passed away.
100 years ago, a retailing giant even larger passed away. John Wanamaker died on December 12th, 1922.
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| December 12th, 1922 |
An editorial focused on standard, public pricing; on advertising; on supply chain and in-house manufacturing; and on merchandising display.
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| December 12th, 1922 |
He revolutionized the department store and consumer capitalism.
Here, it has been interesting to see in the papers a relentless focus on training readers to read and trust the ads.
If you wanted an example of a propaganda machine, the professionalization of and media blitz for advertising circa 1920 is perfect.
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| January 8th, 1919 |
I first noticed the ads here in 1919. There are tens of them every year, and well over 100 between 1919 and 1922. With repetition, there might be over 100 each year printed. By 1922, they are clearly coop ads produced by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, founded in 1917.
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| October 17th, 1922 |
Earlier instances focused on ads as a source of objectively true news. Advertisers wouldn't advertise if they weren't trustworthy, and so you can trust anything you read in an ad.
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| March 7th, 1921 |
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| April 7th, 1899 |
By 1922 they moved away from truth claims and focused on advertising's place in the churn of consumerism, creating desire for a thing - which may or may not actually satisfy the desire.
"It is the function of advertising to create desire."
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| November 5th, 1922 |
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| November 22nd, 1922 |
"Fifty-fifty for Progress":
Demand is largely a created thing. The actual needs of humanity are only a fraction of the general demand....Advertising is a prime mover in creating business. It rouses people out of lethargy, makes them want to live more fully, and to possess the means of living more comfortably and more enjoyably.
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| December 5th, 1922 |
Maybe we'll come back for a closer reading some time. The relentlessness of the campaign, week after week, year after year, is really striking. It, and not any socialistic or communist politics, was a real work of propaganda! It also knit together moralistic takes on buying and selling, a kind of public religion in consumer capitalism and the economy.
At the same time, advertising was big revenue for the papers, and the collapse of newspaper advertising revenue and the rise of online advertising separate from newspapering is a great ingredient in - besides the hedge fund corporate looting, of course - our shrinking Statesman Register Journal Guard Today.
For more. At the Smithsonian magazine, "What a Hundred-Year-Old Department Store Can Tell Us About the Overlap of Retail, Religion and Politics: The legacy left behind by the Philadelphia-based retail chain Wanamaker’s is still felt by shoppers today"
And a couple of books.
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| Wanamaker's Temple |
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| Land of Desire |
1 comment:
I thought of Land of Desire immediately on seeing your headline- really an interesting book about a real pivotal transition.
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