VICTORY THROUGH ADVERTISING
Coleman, Mcalister
Victory Through Advertising By McALISTER COLEMAN DEAR G. I. Joe: Honestly, you don't call yourself anything as corny as this, do you? I was in the Army for a year in the last unpleasantness, and I...
...Girdler's country doctors, straight from the advertising cubicles on Madison Avenue, New York City...
...Sincerely yours, Yardbird Mac...
...This is a pretty subtle one...
...Republic Steel...
...My favorite, however, is the full-page color ad of Republic Steel...
...And the answer is, your folks and I, boy, your folks and I. Of course it's worth every cent we have to kick in to make up for the loss in internal revenue, as we used to call it in the old days, to be told what a wow of a job the Thimberlig and Doodad Co...
...Mrs...
...Nothing new or different for you, Joe, my lad, if you listen to Mr...
...Boys," say the g. p., "I'll tell you what free enterprise really is...
...It is titled, "They're Getting Down to Earth," and you'd think that was a far cry from "Canada Dry—The Champagne of Ginger Ales" if you didn't know how versatile are our commandos of the advertising agencies...
...You don't want any "planned economy" or other "fancy political systems," do you...
...But when I was a student of rate cards in the old days when I too sat in cubicles writing lovely words, it was anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 a shot depending on position, color, etc...
...Doesn't that ring another bell, Joe...
...So you boys out there ought to be mighty thankful that right at the start of this brawl the powers that be decided that whatever might happen in the way of controls, restrictions, and regulations, advertising was to be let strictly alone...
...22, 1944...
...If you doubt it, take a look with me...
...Free enterprise —"it's our right to live our own lives, run our own jobs and our own businesses in our own way, without needless interference...
...Now You Know, Joe Furthermore, free enterprise is "pur right to criticize the government, bawl out the umpire, or make a speech on the public square...
...I expect, Joe, if you will still answer to that name, that you and the boys, having your own affairs to attend to in various parts of the world, haven't yet realized how advertising is winning this war...
...Now you know all about "the tremendous role played by advertising in winning this war...
...And speaking of advertising, that's what I want to do in this letter...
...If it hadn't been for advertising, the Gestapo would long since have goose-stepped up Fifth Avenue and Hirohito's men would be sitting pretty atop Telegraph Hill...
...of West Bridgeport, Conn., is doing to win this war...
...It has a picture of a woman's hand marking a plan for a Victory Garden at a place on the list reading "Bush lima beans...
...You may think that you are doing something about it, but, Joe, don't kid yourself...
...The snapper on this war-winning sockaroo is an admonition to tune in on "Broadway Matinee" starring Alfred Drake of "Oklahoma" who will tell you over the radio Mondays through Fridays how to win the war by using glass containers that give "a lift to living" and also presumably keep the Stouts that way, manufactured by the Owens-Illinois Glass Company, Toledo, 0. Glass containers ? In some remote crevice of my memory this seems to ring a bell...
...Rex Stout, the wife of the Great Hater Rex, who wants to wipe all the Germans, off the map, looking at a glass jar...
...It turns out that Canada Dry, "an old friend of the family," is bubbling to all Victory Gardeners, "Keep up the good work...
...That Republic Steel Ad Let's start with the inside front cover page which swings a smashing sock at the Axis called "Gardens in Glass...
...I was in the Army for a year in the last unpleasantness, and I never heard a soldier use the word "doughboy...
...Wasn't there something in the pre-war days about a Congressional investigation into monopolies and didn't glass containers figure largely in this monopoly, or am I just dreaming...
...But, you will say, who pays for all the pretty pictures and the lovely words that are really winning the war...
...Stout says the vegetables look so good in glass containers that she wants to take them right off her grocer's shelves with her own hands and her only difficulty is that her little girl Rebecca can spy her favorite jam on the pantry shelf so easily...
...No sir, you want the good old-fashioned unplanned economy of the Girdlers and Weirs and Harry Bennetts where all a man had to do was to "bawl out the umpire" or the boss, and some company dick or bootlick cop would kick his teeth down his throat...
...So the doc tells 'em...
...Free enterprise, the doc thinks, isn't the right word for it...
...at the Saturday Evening Post of Apr...
...Remember way back to Memorial Day in Chicago in 1937, what happened in the public square in front of Tom Girdler's Republic Steel Plant...
...We have not gone out and told the public the tremendous role played by advertising in the winning of this war...
...Being way out in the sticks as I am at this writing, I can't tell you exactly what a page advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post costs right now...
...Let us hurry on to the big ginger-ale offensive that is setting the enemy back on his heels...
...How Ads Win The War In fact, it was to be in a class by itself inasmuch as it could be put down under the heading of operating costs, which was just dandy for the big manufacturers who had the juicy war contracts, as they could deduct advertising from their income tax returns...
...It shows a farmer and a worker on a cracker-box beside the stove in the general store listening with rapt expressions while the dear, old, gray-haired country doctor delivers a little spiel on free enterprise...
...Remember how the cops, in defense of free enterprise (pardon me, American Enterprise), went berserk and with guns and clubs shot dead or maimed for life the unarmed CIO pickets...
...This is a colored strip commencing with a picture of a beautiful farm girl right out of a professional models' studio holding up a box of spinach and other vegetables, and ends with Mrs...
...Rebecca's picture is there, with Rebecca, her tongue sticking out, looking at the glass-enclosed jam, and she is quite a cute youngster...
...You can help the war effort if you return all empty bottles to your dealer promptly...
...It should be called American Enterprise "because it's the most American thing there is...
...That sort of stuff is thought up by advertising copywriters in the dim-lit corners of their cubicles after a good lunch at Longchamps...
...The ballyhoo boys have just had another convention and they have reached the conclusion that, as one speaker put it, "We have been too modest...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 20
