American corporations were rich and powerful at the end of WWI, but they were worried about the danger of overproduction. What if there people acquired enough goods and simply stopped buying?
Everything from shoes to cars was promoted in functional terms, meant to appeal to a rational consumer.
Banker Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers saw the way forward: "We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man's desires must overshadow his needs."
A new kind of advertising was key to this possible, and the pioneer in this field was Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who showed corporations how to make people want things they didn't need by linking mass-produced goods to unconscious desires.
Bernays claims he was the first to tell car companies they could sell cars as a symbol of male sexuality.
Bernays shattered the taboo against women smoking by persuading a group of debutantes to light up at a parade — an event he leaked to the media ahead of time with the phrase "Torches Of Freedom" — thereby linking smoking with challenging male authority.
He pioneered techniques like product placement and celebrity endorsement, relentlessly repeating the pro-consumption message.
I wonder why you all want to dress always the same, with the same hats and the same coats," said celebrity aviator Mrs Stillman in one promotional video. "I'm sure all of you are interesting and have wonderful things about you, but looking at you in the street you all look so much the same. And that's why I'm talking to you about the psychology of dress.
In 1927 an American journalist wrote: "A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer.
The rise of consumerism helped to create a stock market boom—which Bernays encouraged by promoting the idea that ordinary people should buy shares.
Elected in 1928, President Herbert Hoover was the first politician to embrace the central role of consumerism.
Hoover told a group of advertisers and public relations men: "You have taken over the job of creating desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines. Machines which have become the key to economic progress."
But the rise of American consumerism would not be without an opposite effect. In late October 1929, while Hoover and the leaders of the business world were at a party to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the lightbulb and the legacy of capitalism, stocks began to plunge — and within days would crash.
You all know what happened next.
But consumerism wasn't done. The National Association of Manufacturers and other groups launched PR campaigns to promote the benefits of capitalism.
World War II jump-started American industry, and when it was all over the consumer movement was stronger than ever.
And the rest is history. Now check out ...
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