Consumer Habits and Advertisement in the 1920s, A List

The 1920s are described as “roaring” because major social developments occurred during the 20s, as shown by the creation of a consumer culture. The Great Gatsby depicts the consumer society when Fitzgerald’s fictional character Daisy Buchanan bawls, “‘They're such beautiful shirts,’ she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. ‘It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such-such beautiful shirts before,’” (Fitzgerald 99). Fitzgerald’s portrayal of the fictional character Daisy represents the consumer culture of the 1920s; Americans were obsessed with materialistic wealth. Also, during the 1920s, the economic wealth of America increased by twofold, granting many American families with a newfound disposable income.

The rise in advertisement played a key role in the rise of consumption. Thanks to well-developed advertisement campaigns, America redefined what a necessity is. Advertisers encouraged Americans to actively work towards maintaining a high social standing. “Advertisers made no secret of their intention to promote novelty for its own sake, in the hope that consumers would exchange perfectly serviceable goods for goods that conformed to the latest fashions” (Lasch, 2000). Consumers devoured this advertisement scheme and began to rapidly increase their spending. Many advertisements for common, household products made claim that they could make the normal appear comparable to the high end. For example, Lux, a soap company, ran an ad in 1920 that depicted two women talking - one of the women complemented on the other on the quantity of sweaters she owned, only to find out that it is not a new sweater, but rather her old sweater that Lux soap made it look brand new (Lux)! Men and women alike began to believe

Due to advances in technology, significant changes in advertising appeared in the 1920’s. In the latter half of the 1900’s ads were illustrated in color for the first time and the layout of most magazines changed. Advertisements, in the 1910 Ladies’ Home Journal, were mostly located in the back of the magazine. Though due to the popularization of name brands, ads moved to the front as competition between products produced more revenue.

Throughout history, advertising has played a significant role in consumerism, politics, and much more. By the 1920’s it had developed into a major aspect of daily life for Americans, determining everything from their hygiene habits to their meals. Despite this having been almost one-hundred years ago, there are many similarities, but also many differences in the advertising industry today.

The 1920s became known as an era memorable for being a time when new products, new ways of marketing and advertising, and standardization gave the country new ways to interact, enjoy themselves, and introduce them to new products. Although very common today, standardization of mass culture like magazines, radio, movies, music, and sports were exciting new innovations to the people of this time. Not only did they distract from the monotony and stresses of work but they created celebrities that people aspired to be like.

Mass production during the 1920s fed the mass consumerism that had emerged among the American

B. The 1920’s was a spark of wealth and opritunity in America. After just finishing WW1, the economy and social life began to change. The stock market was at record highs and wall street was the real land of oppritunity. A backfire in liquior laws allowed people to obtain alcohol even easier and at a lesser cost. You can now see why people named this decade “the roaring 20’s”

Without question, the 1920s “new era” was one of the eras in American history that made the most progress, especially from immense business and industry contributions. These business and industry contributions to America included the creation of automobiles, radios, house appliances, and much more. Not only did these product contributions change America, but also efficiency improved within the “new era” increasing the production of goods. Overall in this time period, the consumer culture had a significant change with the development of mass production industries, welfare capitalism, and government efforts to enforce prosperity abroad.

The “Roaring Twenties” saw a rise in consumerism for many reasons. Besides people desiring to shed the thriftiness of past

The 1920s was a time in which society changed dramatically. During this rich decade, many exciting social and political changes took form. More citizens started moving to the cities, which was different than the farm life that they have been so accustomed to. Due to the emerging consumer age, many Americans started having extra money for leisure activities, clothes, and products for the home. People also started having extra time and money for activities.

Hard-selling advertising was popular during the 1930’s, however three creative philosophies also emerged. J. Stirling Getchell developed and refined a distinctive photojournalistic style in advertising (Sivulka, 2012). Raymond Rubicam would use research to determine the proper layout designs, and ways to improve advertising. Bernice Fitz-Gibbon would use simple folksy style advertising to relate to the consumer (Sivulka, 2012).

The author of this book Bruce Barton was a partner in a successful advertising firm during the 1920's. This was a time when the industry of advertising was under going some major changes. These changes had a lot to do with a number of factors the first of which being the post war prosperity this meant people had more money than they ever had before. Another one of these factors had to do with the high number of teens who were now attending high school, this proved to be important because it created a whole other market which hadn't existed before. One more factor was the advances made in transportation and communication, these advances allowed goods, people, and information to travel long distances

After World War II and getting through the Great Depression, America was finally ready to stabilize itself again. In the 1940’s, the television was created , but did not get popular until after the war in the 1950’s. This invention alone helped bring America back into stabilization with the help of advertising. Through the process of popularizing the television, the boom of the economy, and the growing change into a consuming nation , advertising affected the lifestyle of America.The emergence of the 1950’s advertising in the newly created medium of television represents Americas growing post war market for consumerism.

"Advertising has developed and supported great industries, bulwarked-"or increased- "entire economies, and changed a sufficient number of human habits" (Wood 3). Like that paragraph says, advertising affects people in what they do and how they do it. It has affected the Kleenex company, the Nylon manufacturers and a company of a new type of car, the Tucker Corporation, from the 1940’s. Advertising has changed due to these people by their ways of making people notice their product. Preston Tucker advertised his new car early, and received many replies on what the car was about; the Nylon company advertised a day in which their product would start selling and the country ran out of stockings to sell; and

But first, we should give a useful definition of advertising. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (2015), advertising are ‘‘the techniques and practices used to bring products, services, opinions, or causes to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way toward what is advertised’’. Meanwhile, Belch and Belch (2009, p.18) describe advertising as ‘‘any paid form of impersonal communication about an organization, product, service or idea by an identified sponsor’’.