Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy

""Advertising is the handmaiden of the mass consumer economy,"" claim the authors of this insightful, witty and challenging examination of the art of selling. But the increasingly sophisticated techniques of marketing--evident in Tang's huge promotional campaign involving a national march by the Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's antitobacco campaign--have so infiltrated our consciousness that they have become deeply integral to our everyday lives. Jackall, a professor at Williams College, and Hirota, an urban anthropologist, have mapped a contemporary history of how the selling of images--whether they are commercial, political, health-oriented, moral or spiritual--has created the ""carnival-like world... besieged by symbols and images we find ourselves in today."" Mindful that advertising techniques are always connected to politics, they begin their study with Woodrow Wilson's establishment of the Committee on Public Information, a consortium of commercial advertisers brought together to promote U.S. involvement in WWI, and the successful effort of the commercial advertising industry, under attack in the 1930s and early '40s, to create the Advertising Council to ""advertise advertising"" by producing public service ads and pro bono campaigns. Filled with intriguing facts--about the genesis of McGruff the anti-crime dog, how ad executives came up with the idea to promote products by emphasizing unflattering facts about them (""when you are second best you have to try harder), and how and why ""stigma removal"" has become a major part of advertising and public advocacy--Jackall and Hirota's study is engaging and eye-opening. (June)