Exploring American History, Culture and Identity through Advertising

Richard CollierTechnical Services ArchivistHartman Center, Rubenstein LibraryDuke University

• 1987: J. Walter Thompson Company, one of the oldest and largest U.S. advertising agencies, donated its corporate archives to Duke University.

• 1992: John W. Hartman, a Duke alum (class of 1944) and former CEO of Bill Communications, donates funds to set up the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising and Marketing History at Duke.

• 1991 D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles agency records

• 1995 J. Walter Thompson Frankfurt Office records• 1996 Outdoor Advertising Association of America

Archives; R.C. Maxwell Company records• 1998 Wells, Rich, Greene agency records• 2000 Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company

advertising collection• 2001 Warwick Baker O’Neill agency records• 2003-2005 Bates Worldwide agency records• 2009 J. Walter Thompson London Office records• 2010-2011 Lester Wunderman papers;

Wunderman agency archives

Print advertisements Television and radio commercials and

scripts Documentation:

Design layouts, sketches, brainstorming notes Advertising campaign strategies and analyses Case studies and market surveys Correspondence Corporate, trade and legal publications Salesmen kits, training materials Papers of advertising executives and business

academics

• Professional, amateur, and academic historians• Writers, journalists, publishers• Advertising professionals• Radio program buffs, theater clubs, movie production

companies• Genealogists (“My grandfather worked at X agency”)• Nostalgia seekers (“I was a baby in a Pampers

commercial”)• Educators and students:

– History– Social sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology,

political science)– Gender, race studies– Business administration– Language studies– Graphic design and visual arts

• Advertising developed alongside the industrial development and expansion of the United States. Advertising was the catalyst that linked manufacture, transportation and distribution systems, and media to form the American market system. The history of advertising in America in and of itself is thus an important component of America’s own history.

• Advertising helped manufactured goods develop distinct identities as brands. Brands in turn reflected values and aspirations of various groups of users/consumers, the sum total of which reflected at any given time all of the aims, hopes, and fears that comprised America’s national tenor of the time. We can learn who we are, were, and strove to become by viewing history through the lens of advertising.

Comparisons of the present with the past. A regular feature of the Hartman Center

newsletter Front and Center is a column called “Looking Back” where current events are compared with analogous situations in the past, reflected in the advertisement in our collections.

Here’s an example from our Fall 2007 issue:

Sexuality in historic contexts

1916: Andrew Jergens Co. Woodbury soap

1930s: Jantzen swimsuits

1971 National Airlines

1925: Cream of Wheat

1957: Dairy Queen

1977: Burger King

1995: Oscar Mayer Lunchables

In 2005, the Hartman Center was contacted by a member of the production company preparing digital renderings of New York’s Times Square for Peter Jackson’s remake of the film King Kong. Among the items of interest was an electric spectacular for Pepsodent toothpaste, featuring the moving image of a woman on a swing. The original 1933 version had a brief night scene of Times Square centering on the Pepsodent sign: