One thought on “1950s Commercials – Jonathon Baker”

1. I also chose to watch the commercials from the 1950s Post-War America, so I thought that reading another perspective on what others thought about these advertisements would be interesting. There are a few observations that we shared, but also a few that you had that I must have overlooked. You chose the stay at home wife as one of the key themes you saw through, and I agree that many of the advertisements were tailored to women and as you say, many times will blatantly say, “Ladies!” during the commercial. These companies back then knew their audience well, as the majority of women were accepting of the “traditional” roles they took after the war.
   The tobacco commercials stood out to me too. The commercials with a slick-looking man and a pretty woman—both smoking a cigarette—reminded me of the TV show Mad Men, which focused on the advertisement agencies of New York City in the 1960s, where a large part of their selling was done for “Lucky Strike”—a cigarette company. I thought your observation of the use of words like “friends” in the context of cigarettes was interesting; people see other people enjoying something and they want it too. The tobacco industry lived in the brains of Americans for many decades, and people in this generation often overlook how much of the TV advertising over the last century had to do with tobacco.
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   May 26, 2016 at 8:15 pm