The Industrial Age
by
Charles Lamson
The Industrial Age started around the turn of the twentieth century and lasted well into the 1970s. It was a period marked by tremendous growth and maturation of the country's industrial base. As U.S. industry met the basic needs of most of the population, commodity markets became saturated. Fresh mass markets then developed for the new, inexpensive brands of consumer luxury and convenience goods also known as consumer packaged goods ( products that are sold quickly and at relatively low cost. Examples include non-durable goods such as packaged foods, beverages, toiletries, over-the-counter drugs and many other consumables.)
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During the industrialization age of the 19th century, wholesalers controlled the marketing process as they distributed the manufacturers' unbranded commodity products. When those markets became saturated, though, the wholesalers started playing one manufacturer off against another. This hurt manufacturers' profits dramatically, so they started looking for ways to wrest back control. The manufacturers changed their focus from a production orientation to sales orientation. They dedicated themselves to new product development, strengthened their own sales forces, packaged and branded their products and engaged in heavy national brand advertising. Early brands of this area included Wrigley's spearmint gum, Coca-Cola, Jell-O, Kellog's corn flakes, and Campbell's soup.
In the 1920s, the United States was rich and powerful. As the war machine returned to peacetime production, society became consumption driven. The era of salesmanship had arrived and its bible was Scientific Advertising, written by the legendary copywriter Claude Hopkins at Albert Lasker's agency, Lord & Thomas. Published in 1925, it became a classic and was republished in 1950 and 1980. "Advertising has reached the status of a science," Hopkins proclaimed. "It is based on fixed principles." His principles outlawed humor, style, literary flair and anything that might detract from his basic copy strategy of a preemptive product claim repeated loudly and often.
Radio was born at about the same time and rapidly became the nation's primary means of mass communication and a powerful new advertising medium with great immediacy. World and national news now arrived direct from the scene, and a whole new array of family entertainment---music, drama and sports---became possible. Suddenly national advertisers could quickly reach huge audiences. In fact, the first radio shows were produced by their sponsors' ad agencies.
On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed the Great Depression began and advertising expenditures plummeted. In the face of consumer sales resistance and corporate budget cutting, the advertising industry needed to improve its effectiveness. It turned to research, Daniel Stanch, A. C. Nielson and George Gallop had founded research groups to study consumer attitudes and preferences. By providing information on public opinion, the performance of ad messages, and sales of advertised products, these companies started a whole new business: the marketing research industry.
During this period, each brand sought to sell the product on its own special qualities. Wheaties became the "Breakfast of Champions" not because of its ingredients but because of its advertising. Manufacturers followed this strategy of product differentiation vigorously, seeking to portray their brands as different from and better than the competition by offering consumers quality, variety and convenience.
The greatest expansion of any medium up to that time occurred with the introduction of television in 1941. After World War II, TV advertising grew rapidly, and in time achieved its current state as the largest advertising medium in terms of advertising revenues.
During the post war prosperity of the late 1940s and the early 1950s, consumers tried to climb the social ladder by buying more and more modern products. Advertising entered its golden era. A creative revolution ensued in which ads focused on product features that implied social acceptance, style, luxury and success. Giants in the field emerged---people such as Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy and Bill Burnbach, who built their agencies from scratch and forever changed the way advertising was planned and created.
Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency introduced the idea that every ad must point out the product's USP (unique selling proposition)---features that differentiate it from competitive products. The USP was a logical extension of the Lasker and Hopkins "reason why" credo. But as the USP was used over and over, consumers started finding it difficult to see what was unique anymore.
Finally as more and more imitative products showed up in the marketplace, all offering quality, variety and convenience, the effectiveness of this strategy wore out. Companies turned to a new mantra: market segmentation, a process by which marketers search for unique groups of people whose needs could be addressed through more specialized products. The image era of the 1960s was thus the natural culmination of the creative revolution. Advertising's emphasis shifted from product features to brand image or personality as advertisers sought to align their brands with particularly profitable market segments. Cadillac, for example, became the worldwide image of luxury, the consumate symbol of success surpassed only by the aristocratic snootiness of Rolls-Royce.
But just as me-too product features killed the product differentiation era, me-too images eventually killed the market segmentation era. With increased competition, a new kind of advertising strategy evolved in the 1970s, where competition's strengths became just as important as the advertisers. Jack Trout and Al Ries trumpeted the arrival of the positioning era. They acknowledged the importance of product features and image, but they insisted that what really mattered was how the brand ranked against the competition in the consumer's mind---how it was positioned.
Positioning Strategy proved to be an effective way to separate a particular brand from its competitors by associating that brand with a particular set of customer needs that ranked high on the consumer's priority list. Thus, it became a more effective way to use product differentiation and market segmentation. The most famous American ads of the positioning era were Volkswagon ("Think Small"), Avis ("We're only no. 2"), and 7UP ("The uncola"). Product failures of the period such as Life Savers gum and RCA computers, were blamed on flawed positioning.
While this was all going on in the United States, across the Atlantic a new generation of 0advertising professionals had graduated from the training grounds of Procter and Gamble (P&G) and Colgate Palmolive and were now teaching their clients the secrets of mass marketing. Lagging somewhat behind their U.S. counterparts due to the economic ravages of World War II, European marketers discovered the USP and the one-page strategic brief, or summary statement, that P&G had popularized to bring focus to ad campaigns. immediately following the war, French advertising pioneer Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet waged a frustrating battle to introduce U.S. research tachniques to his country; a decade or two later, in-depth attitude and behavioral research was all the rage. Because commercial TV was not yet as big in the United States, European advertisers divided their media money between newspapers, and outdoor media, along with a healthy dose of cinema advertising. Germany, theNetherlands and Scananavia would not get commercial TV for another decade.
In the 1970s, though, the European Common Market already offered untapped opportunities. Following the American examples, agencies and clients began to think multinationally to gain economies of scale. But it was not easy. While physically close, the countries of Europe were still separated by a chasm of cultural diversity that made the use of single Europe-wide campaigns nearly impossible.
*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING, 25TH ANNIVERSARY ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD AND CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 42-45*
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