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al-Bashir, had overseen the killing of 400,000 citizens in Darfur – double the 200,000 deaths estimated by other experts ( de Waal, 2007 ). The adverts were ultimately ruled misleading by the British Advertising Standards Authority; this was an embarrassing outcome that played directly into the hands of the Sudanese government and its allegations that Western groups were exaggerating the scale of the conflict ( Mamdani, 2007 ). In addition to their own campaign content, NGOs consistently and actively seek to influence journalists and their
We live in an age in which advertising is part of the fabric of our lives. Advertising in its modern form largely has its origins in the later nineteenth century. This book is the first to provide a historical survey of images of black people in advertising during the colonial period. It highlights the way in which racist representations continually developed and shifted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, depending on the particular political and economic interests of the producers of these images. The book analyses the various conflicting, and changing ideologies of colonialism and racism in British advertising, revealing reveal the purposes to which these images of dehumanisation and exploitation were employed. The first part deals with images of Africa, the second deals with images of black people in the West, and the third considers questions relating to issues about images and social representations in general. The Eurocentric image of the 'savage' and 'heathen', the period of slavery, European exploration and missionary activity, as well as the colonisation of Africa in the nineteenth century are explored. Representations of the servant, the entertainer, and the exotic man or woman with a rampant sexuality are also presented. The key strategy with which images of black people from the colonial period have been considered is that of stereotyping. The material interests of soap manufacturers, cocoa manufacturers, tea advertising, and tobacco advertising are discussed. The book explains the four particular types of imagery dominate corporate advertising during the 1950s and early 1960s.
Advertising agencies were important conduits through which the norms of American consumption travelled eastwards across the Atlantic. This book explores the institutional developments in British advertising and the wider shape of the market for advertising services in the 1950s and 1960s. It details the growing internationalism of the advertising industry in Britain, including the increased presence of US-owned agencies in London and deals with the concern with the apparent 'Americanization'of British commerce. Considering its relationship with its parent company, the book explores the dynamics of Anglo-American advertising relations within the J Walter Thompson (JWT) company. It looks at the uses and development of market research within JWT London and allied companies, and examines the techniques that were used to generate ways of understanding the 'mass housewife'. It was the legacy of British documentary film making which helped to give a distinctive British character and feel to many of the early TV commercials produced in the 1950s and 1960s. The book explores the ways in which TV advertising focused on commercials which promoted washing powders, washing machines and convenience foods. It considers the reception of advertising by cultural critics and by those concerned with the broader governance of commercial life and consumption. The advertising people offered a positive and spirited defence of the role they performed and the pleasures of mass consumption in the age of affluence. For critics, advertising was seen as a harbinger of American 'hard sell' techniques of salesmanship within British business.
influence of what Victoria de Grazia has termed America’s ‘market empire’ in their exploration of trans-Atlantic relations.14 This attention to US commercial hegemony has rightly emphasized the dominance of US advertising and commerce over countries like Britain in the post-war period. However, to acknowledge this is not to accept that British advertising and styles of consumption were transformed from top to bottom, or even all transformed in the same way, by the power of US advertising on British soil. Against the assertion of the ‘irresistible’ force of the US ‘market
American agency Ted Bates. At the time Bates was the fourth largest agency network in the world.2 These developments were part of the emergence of new global centres of advertising. They also included the rise of important multinational Japanese and French agencies, alongside the new global power of Nixon_HardSell_Final.indd 187 18/04/2013 18:40 188 Hard sell British advertising. As such, these developments represented a historic reversal of the international dominance of American advertising in the second half of the twentieth century and brought to an end a
to organise themselves in such a way as to facilitate ‘rational’ decisions. ‘Ignorance of our own Empire is not complimentary to us’, warned a businessman: ‘whilst in Mombassa I received two letters: one from one of the leading British advertising agencies, addressed to, “Mombassa, South Africa” and another from a British research association addressed to “Mombassa, India”’.34 Having identified a real business need for reliable information, Tallents increasingly used EMB funds to sponsor it. In the long term, the EMB hoped that funding a new post in Imperial
marketing strategies. This chapter studies the meanings of chocolate consumption created in British advertising campaigns. It focuses on the marketing of Rowntree brands developed – with the exception of cocoa – in the 1930s. This decade was a turning point for the company, marking the launch of products such as Black Magic, Dairy Box, Kit Kat and Aero, and the start of their successful, if sometimes
The earliest representations of Africans in British advertising were to be found on tobacco labels and signs. Crude representations of black men hoeing fields, rolling hogs heads of tobacco or smoking pipes were often used in tobacco advertising throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tobacco, along with sugar and cotton, relied upon slave economies for massive profit and those slaves were
This book recounts the little-known history of the mixed-race children born to black American servicemen and white British women during the Second World War. Of the three million American soldiers stationed in Britain from 1942 to 1945, about 8 per cent (240,000) were African-American; the latter’s relationships with British women resulted in the birth of an estimated 2,000 babies. The African-American press named these children ‘brown babies’; the British called them ‘half-castes’. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girlfriends. Up to half of the mothers of these babies, faced with the stigma of illegitimacy and a mixed-race child, gave their children up for adoption. The outcome for these children tended to be long-term residency in children’s homes, sometimes followed by fostering and occasionally adoption, but adoption societies frequently would not take on ‘coloured’ children, who were thought to be ‘too hard to place’. There has been minimal study of these children and the difficulties they faced, such as racism in a (then) very white Britain, lack of family or a clear identity. Accessibly written and illustrated with numerous photographs, this book presents the stories of over forty of these children. While some of the accounts of early childhood are heart-breaking, there are also many uplifting narratives of finding American fathers and gaining a sense of self and of heritage.
Madchester may have been born at the Haçienda in the summer of 1988, but the city had been in creative ferment for almost a decade prior to the rise of Acid House. The End-of-the-Century Party is the definitive account of a generational shift in popular music and youth culture, what it meant and what it led to. First published right after the Second Summer of Love, it tells the story of the transition from New Pop to the Political Pop of the mid-1980s and its deviant offspring, Post-Political Pop. Resisting contemporary proclamations about the end of youth culture and the rise of a new, right-leaning conformism, the book draws on interviews with DJs, record company bosses, musicians, producers and fans to outline a clear transition in pop thinking, a move from an obsession with style, packaging and synthetic sounds to content, socially conscious lyrics and a new authenticity.
This edition is framed by a prologue by Tara Brabazon, which asks how we can reclaim the spirit, energy and authenticity of Madchester for a post-youth, post-pop generation. It is illustrated with iconic photographs by Kevin Cummins.