Advertising strategies of the mid 20th century

“May I have an old-fashioned please?” says Don Draper, the Creative Director 

of Manhattan advertising firm Sterling Cooper. Meanwhile, he reaches into his pocket 

and takes out a pack of Lucky Strike, forming new strategies to razzle-dazzle his clients. 

You are probably familiar with this scene if you consider yourself a Netflix junkie. Mad Men is a new TV series about how 1960s advertising companies operated and how did advertisements affect people's everyday life 

At the end of the war, thousands of young men and women returned home and many of them got married. The direct outcome was increased demand for housing and its related products. Manufacturers quickly switched from producing weapons to producing consumer products. By using newspapers, magazines, radio and television as mediums, advertising companies were able to make advertisements prevalent in people's lives. 

http://www.breakingcopy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/volkswagen_ddb_lemon.jpg

This ad is one of the most famous Volkswagen ads during the 60s. Without these ads, Volkswagen was destined to fail because selling Hitler’s favorite car to American people after just a decade and a half was just as hard as winning the war. 

The ad featured a monochrome Volkswagen Beetle with the word “Lemon”. Different from the outrageous ads from other car companies, DDB adopted a minimalistic design for its ads. Those condensed words underneath did not go on to exaggerate Beetle’s performance. Instead, they focused on the laborious inspection process stating,  “Every shock absorber is tested (spot checking won’t do), every windshield is scanned. VW’s have been rejected for surface scratches barely visible to the eye.” and concluding with “We pluck the lemons; you get the plums,” to give consumers a feeling of security, therefore successfully selling the Beetle. 

Television advertising was also heavily exploited by the ad companies starting in 1950s. Moving images and sound effects replaced the frozen images and words of printed pages. Audiences were able to experience more directly because they could simply see more of the products. When you are annoyed by the pervasive ads that continuously cut through your TV shows, you are probably wishing that TV advertising was never adopted. However, during the postwar era, some of the advertisements looked like short clips from a movie and they were actually entertaining, often accompanied by humorous lines and a 1930s pitch, such as this classic Buick ad. 

There are thousands of ways to advertise a product, but they are all based on happiness. Just as Don Draper said, “Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you’re doing is okay. You are OK. “