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Advertising in the 20th Century

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HISTORY 4990
Artifact Paper- 7UP and Early Advertising
Molly Marton
February 17, 2011

Advertising as it is known today finds its roots in the industrial expansion of the 1880s. The mass production and the lowering of prices on consumer goods meant that more items were available to more people than ever before. The construction of the transcontinental railroads provided a national market for a company's goods. Advertising a product changed from simply announcing the existence of a product in a dull, dry fashion to persuading the public they needed and deserved to own the product. By developing repeat customers, advertising also helped build brand loyalty for the company. Brand loyalty helps sell other existing and new products to …show more content…

As time went on the advertisements became more complex with lengthy paragraphs that tell you why you need the product, what the product can do for you, and the social and medical benefits the product offers. “They provided more objective information about the product than subjective information about the hopes and anxieties of the consumer”.

In the reading, “Apostles of Modernity” the author makes a claim that early advertisements were playing off of social anxieties the American public was experiencing at the time due to the shift in norms and values of the evolving American society. Lears explains, “by the early twentieth century that outlook had begun to give way to a new set of values sanctioning periodic leisure, compulsive spending, apolitical passivity, and an apparently permissive morality of individual fulfillment.” The older culture was suited to a production-oriented society of small entrepreneurs; the newer culture epitomized a consumption-oriented society dominated by bureaucratic corporations.”
Scare copy advertising became prominent as the decade progressed. "Negative appeal, scare copy sought to jolt the personal consumer into a new consciousness by enacting dramatic episodes of social failures and accusing judgments". Once the dramatic motion was made by the ad it stepped in to offer its help, like a friendly neighbor. T.J Jackson Lears goes on to

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