Bernard Shaw and Modern Advertising Read online

  Similar to what they had famously done on behalf of Pond’s Cold Cream, the agency’s prior work for Simmons involved recruiting “such high-profile targets as Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mrs. Charles Tiffany, and Mrs. Morgan Belmont” and had been another triumph of testimonial promotion with their trademark approach of bestowing “otherwise commonplace goods with an aura of glamor and sophistication, appealing to the average consumer’s desire to read about other people and emulate their lifestyles and shopping habits.” 101

  Shaw’s appearances in product campaigns would fit into a larger tradition of endorsements that stretched back to patent medicine promotion in the nineteenth century but, via the Women’s Editorial Department at JWT, were a staple of modern marketing technique and layout employed in that notorious Pond’s campaign:Signed testimonials were displayed in the advertisements, and photographs of the women were reproduced. Interviews with the endorsers were reported in a narrative, with a careful style deemed appropriate to the particular woman being written up – gracious and dignified for one, vivacious for another. Detailed descriptions of their houses, their personality, their social activities were a prominent and important part of the interviews. More than simply product ads, these endorsements were miniature ventures into “lifestyles of the rich and famous” and presented the creams as just one element in a whole way of life that the everyday consumer could ostensibly share. 102

  Evidently, Shaw could see the opportunity via a testimonial to extend the readers’ vision far beyond the product; in this way, the contemporary form evolved from the utopic salubrious future broadly encouraged by patent medicine adverts to a specific lifestyle glimpsed through the lens of personality. The prophet sharing potential of such a platform is quite apparent.

  The company’s stated rationale for the “Celebrated Men on Sleep” campaign concentrated on expanding the demographic across the gender divide:Since 1927 the women’s magazines have carried the message that bedrooms should be beautiful as well as comfortable, and that, furnished with the luxury of Simmons Beds and Beautyrest Mattresses, they will be both! Simmons-equipped bedrooms of distinguished women have been shown to prove it. But in 1928 we felt we could, with profit, through the pages of The Saturday Evening Post and Time , also address the men of the country with “sermons on sleep” preached by men outstandingly successful. Our aim was to make modern American men, most of whom will tell you “they can sleep as well on a board as on a bed,” conscious that there is quality in sleep, that it’s the kind, as well as the quantity, that matters!

  And that quality has much to do with achievement in one’s chosen field of action. 103 Accordingly, each interview strives “to paint a vivid picture of the personality of the man by placing under or near his photograph a caption which plays up his individuality and accomplishments and stresses any of his habits which are unusual and interesting.” 104 The company newsletter goes on to say thatwidespread interest in the “Simmon’s men’s campaign on sleep” has been noted throughout the country, and it has been especially popular among Simmons’ dealers. The ads have been hung in offices and stores, the dealers taking great pride in the connection of “big” men with their product. 105

  Coinciding with the American advent of sleep research, the campaign puts forth another form of “near-testimonial” in which personalities advocate healthy sleep habits alongside information about the Simmons mattress. For instance, under the headline “H.G. Wells disagrees with Napoleon on sleep,” the Wells ad is divided into three columns, the first containing his interview answers to two questions on the importance of sleep alongside a center column photograph of the author. The right column is devoted to information about the company and the product. The Shaw Simmons ad also deliberately mimics a periodical feature by announcing itself in bold type as “A philosopher’s ideas about Sleep” via “An interview with Bernard Shaw.” The ostensible interlocutor, Irish nationalist writer and activist Eimar O’Duffy , 106 describes the playwright “at seventy, with that buoyant step and fresh complexion which men in their twenties might envy” and provides the platform for three paragraphs containing Shaw’s thoughts about the importance of slumber because he “obviously sleeps well o’nights.” O’Duffy opines that “perhaps it comes to us as something of a shock, or perhaps it is only natural, to find that Bernard Shaw needs his full portion of sleep like any ordinary man [because] his glorious evolutionary theory in ‘Back to Methuselah ’ of sleep as an infantile habit, still remains a dream.” Following the interview, in the lower right corner, are two italicized blurbs. The top serves as a caption to a picture of Shaw: “the sage of Adelphi Terrace, philosopher, novelist, essayist, scientist, playwright, vegetarian. Toppler of ideas, satirist, wit and speaker – his revolutionary teachings have astonished the world for two generations!” The bottom supplements two adjacent photographic images of a mattress and box spring and reframe the text, indicating that “the views on sleep expressed by a man with the rare intellectual capacity of Mr. Shaw are full of significance for all” and redirect the reader’s focus to their “sleep equipment which gives complete relaxation and induces healthful sleep” and “extraordinary comfort … within reach of every income.” 107

  Less direct than in their Harrods’ responses, Wells and Shaw never explicitly endorse the product, yet again the latter in particular uses the opportunity as a vehicle to promote subtly his own ideas and persona:Once in every thirty years or so I have a dream in which I am so extraordinarily happy and everything is so beautiful – as it is when one is in love – that it throws a light on what life may one day come to be. But for workaday purposes you may take it that I am an ordinary sleeper. Some day we shall grow out of it; but for the present we must take our eight hours and make the best of them.

  Here, Shaw is in “prophet” mode, modeling a present lifestyle with an eye on an evolved future. 108 The idea behind “Personality Advertising ,” according to Stanley Resor , was again what he called the “spirit of emulation” in which consumers “want to copy those whom we deem superior to us in taste, knowledge or experience.” A 1910 Printers’ Ink column pronounces that the “consumer nearly always purchases in unconscious obedience to what he or she believes to be the dictates of an authority which is anxiously consulted and respected.” 109 Generally speaking, Shaw’s participation in advertising follows the same line of thought, an outgrowth of what Spender refers to as his “faith [that he] will direct the powers of the surrounding world from evil into better courses through the exercise of the superior social or cultural intelligence of the creative genius, the writer prophet” (Fig. 4.2). 110

  Fig. 4.2 Simmons advertisement, Time 13:18 (May 6, 1929), p. 29

  Some responses to the Harrods campaign surfaced public hostility towards celebrity testimonials as a promotional practice; as one reader who wrote to Advertiser’s Weekly asked, “What on earth can any one of these writers know about Harrods stores which entitled them to force their views on the general public?” 111 The specter of fiscal compensation had also haunted the technique for decades. Advertising Copy, a manual for copywriters published in 1924, contains a caution:Testimony [that is bought and paid for] is intrinsically worthless. … Manufactured evidence of this kind is not only unethical but is valueless in convincing intelligent people. Unfortunately, the testimony of prize fighters for medicines and tonics and of moving picture actresses for cosmetics still has the power to convince a large percentage of the unintelligent and unsophisticated. 112

  The Simmons and Harrods “near-testimonial” campaigns were staged against the backdrop of industry disquiet in the mid-1920s over the efficacy of personality marketing, their atypical methodology a response to widespread concerns within the field over “insincere copy” and an apparent dwindling of public faith in advertising. In February 1929, the National Better Business Bureau, in response to repeatedly “receiving insistent demands for an expression of its attitude in the current controversy,” sent out a questionnaire to nearly five thousand American
advertisers and agencies in order to “ascertain the sentiment of the industry.” 113 Those surveyed felt “decisively” that tainted testimonials were “destroying the effectiveness of a valuable advertising appeal” and that “prostitution of the testimonial [was] bringing all advertising under the shadow of disrepute.” 114 In March, the Association of National Advertisers sent a statement to its membership and another to the members of the American Association of Advertising Agencies recognizing the “developing controversy” over testimonial techniques:No one would deny that testimonial copy is a time-honored and worthwhile form of advertising. The present discussion has arisen not because of objections to the use of testimonials, but rather because of the manner in which they have been used and because of the devices by which they have been obtained. 115

  In a 1929 Printer’s Ink article, Roy Dickinson assesses the “sad plight of that former respectable citizen of the advertising world, the testimonial, [who has] fallen from its former high estate since and sincere attempts have been made to lay down rules indicating how the tainted testimonial may be spotted after careful investigation.” 116 To balance the views of industry insiders, Dickinson interviewed consumers on the street, discovering they held “definite views” and needed no “length explanation” of the question. Their responses revealed that this “small cross-section of the general consuming public … likes to take its advertising as it takes its fiction” and that this “modern, cynical, what-of-it attitude” is “a bad thing for advertising” and “certainly hasn’t been helped by exaggerated copy, by pseudo-scientific copy, or by the tainted testimonial.” 117 The industry faced a formidable crisis with a consuming public wary and suspicious of the veracity of promotional claims. In 1911, the first order of business for the newly formed Associated Advertising Clubs of America had been to set in motion a truth-in-advertising movement that sought to criminalize promotional exaggeration and misrepresentation and (again, like Shaw in his Harrods letter) re-brand advertisers as public advocates rather than salesmen. As one convention speaker put it, “advertising is not to sell, but to help people buy. … We stand in the shoes of the customer. We are outside, not behind the counter. We are counselors for the public.” 118 Considering the skeptical attitudes expressed by consumers at the end of the 1920s, the initiative had not worked.

  Entitled “Who is Going to Clean Up This Testimonial Mess?” the main article in the same issue of Printers’ Ink that covered the Harrods campaign strongly advocates for measures to end “testimonial abuses.” 119 The article expresses the perspectives of O. C. Harn , Managing Director of the Audit Bureau of Circulations and former president of the A.N.A., who assesses various methods “through which the evil can be eradicated,” from intervention by the Better Business Bureau and the Advertising Commission to the creation of an International Advertising Association czar through which all ads would be vetted. (Incidentally, the latter idea, which Harn calls “preposterous,” anticipates a Shavian proposition outlined in the preface to Farfetched Fables for a Ministry of Statistics. 120 ) Harn levels the blame squarely upon the economic system, arguing that “misuse of testimonials comes primarily from the exigencies of competition and not at all because astute merchandisers have suddenly parted company with their brains.” 121 Again, Shaw in that 1889 Fabian lecture mentioned in chapter one also had decried commercial demagoguery as another by-product of capitalism and advertising’s leveraging of “shameless lies” to dupe uncritical consumers to purchase their products. 122 In the end, with great faith in the benevolence of advertisers and publishers, Harn proposes the remedy be “educational rather than generally coercive” and subsequent action to come from “voluntary undertakings rather than from legal pressure.” 123 He appeals to the A.A.A.A. and the A.N.A. create a “code covering the proper use of testimonials” that “would become the basis for agreements with specific industries which could operate the same as actual police power in routing out wrongful use of testimonial advertising as well as other reprehensible selling practices which are brought on by competition.” 124 Perhaps surprisingly, the Fabian qualities of Harn’s vision evoke Webb’s utopian manifesto.

  At the June 1929 convention of the A.N.A., a resolution was passed in which “the so-called paid testimonial” was formally viewed “with disapproval.” 125 However, the session took the form of a debate rather than a consensus. The opposition to testimonial copy, in the person of the president of the G. Lynn Sumner Company, maintained that the negative public perception of it had already triumphed, warning thatno matter how unquestioned the integrity of the advertiser may be, no matter how good his intentions, when he uses the personality element he thereby opens the way for skepticism. It is not sufficient that advertising merely be true; it must appear to be true. If it is true and not believed, then the effect on sales is just as bad as if it were untrue.

  A defense of the practice was mounted by George S. Fowler , vice president of the Simmons Company, American manufacturer of beds, box springs, and mattresses. Printers’ Ink found Fowler a fair choice since “the use of testimonials in connection with the merchandising of Simmons beds is familiar to all students of advertising” and recounted his remarks for its readership as: This is the age of autobiography. … And this same influence is what causes newspapers to run so much into personalities. People are interested in other people – what they are doing and what they think. … The advertiser who uses testimonials should place an absolute ban upon anything that is unfair, untruthful or in bad taste. … With this sort of standard, personalities can be used properly and profitably; and failure to use them … would be to ignore one of the most fruitful methods of creating increased consumer acceptance.

  That Fowler’s characterization of the zeitgeist should dovetail so closely with Stanley Resor’s fashioning of his advertising agency’s new ethos three months earlier, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, is not coincidental, considering that the Simmons account at the time was held by the J. Walter Thompson Company. Together, the two men had already launched a major personality-centered initiative, that would include Shaw and Wells on its roster of celebrity participants and provide another variation on the “near-testimonial.”

  The innovative merging of product testimonial with the names and lifestyles of cultural luminaries, a JWT specialty, was the brainchild of Helen Lansdowne , one of the industry’s first female executives: “Her first coup, in 1924, involved persuading Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, a New York socialite, to endorse Pond’s cold cream in exchange for a hefty donation to a charity of her choice.” 126 With tremendous “market insight as well as natural copywriting flair,” Lansdowne was essential to JWT’s success, especially since a lion’s share of the clients manufactured products for women. 127 Resor , who inherited the company from Thompson in 1916 and remained its president during much of the twentieth century’s first half, is credited with innovations in copy style that employed cinematic techniques (including the close-up) and with recognizing the promotional potential in linking products/brands with celebrities. An industry leader in the development of multimedia campaign design and market research, JWT “devoted considerable resources to attracting testimonials from reputable people for everything from mattresses and yeast to laundry detergent and face cream.” 128 According to Stephen Fox , their success with testimonials “pushed the agency’s total annual billings from $10.7 million in 1922 to $20.7 million in 1926 and $37.5 million by the end of the decade.” 129 A retrospective on the company’s “Personality Department” in a 1946 issue of the J.W. T. News , adorned with famous facsimile signatures, proclaimed thatFor 22 years, JWT has been the unquestioned leader in testimonial advertising. The agency pioneered in the first organized use of celebrated personalities for testimonials back in 1924. Through the advertising of Pond’s Creams, millions of readers learned the beauty secrets of such noted women as Queen Marie of Roumania, Mrs. Marshall Field, Sr., Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, the Queen of Spain, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. The JWT “Personality ” Department t
hat contacts these personalities and arranges for the use of their names reaches around the world. 130

  In the feature, Shaw and Wells are again the sole literary writers on “a full list of JWT’s ‘testimonial personalities’” that includes Thomas Edison, Joan Crawford, Lou Gehrig, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and “reads like a roll call of the world’s most famous people,” all “names that are by-words in their fields.” In May 1929, Corey Ford satirized this trend in a piece for the New Yorker entitled “A Meeting of the Endorsers’ Club,” in which one member remarks, “The advertising sections of our magazines practically amount to a Social Register. Everybody who is anybody has been photographed at least beside a jar of Pond’s Cold Cream, or a Simmons Mattress.” 131

  The testimonial technique though was not without its potential pitfalls and systemic criticisms (some of which Shaw had pointed out in his Harrods letter), and the formidable ongoing debate over the ethics of testimonial advertising ensured that both the Harrods and Simmons campaigns with which the authors were affiliated would be considered in its light for some time to come. For instance, a March 1929 Printer’s Ink article, entitled “When is the Testimonial Tainted?” already had the Simmons campaign in its sights (albeit indirectly) as a “troubling” example:Suppose that a writer like G.K. Chesterton is approached by a manufacturer of an exercising machine, and is asked for a short article on the importance of exercise, and is paid for the article. Mr. Chesterton does not say that he uses the exercising machine. He merely points out the importance of exercise. Is that a “testimonial,” and therefore something to be banned, if paid testimonials are to be banned? Or is it simply a piece of journalism by a journalist, and therefore something which can properly be paid for? 132