Advertising a Product Changed from Simply Announcing the Existence of a Product in a Dull

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Advertising as it is known today finds its roots in the booming economy of the 1920s. The mass production and the lowering of prices on consumer goods meant that more items were available to more people than ever before. The construction of the transcontinental railroads provided a national market for a company's goods.

Advertising a product changed from simply announcing the existence of a product in a dull, dry fashion to persuading the public they needed and deserved to own the product. Advertisements focused on appealing to people’s self-worth by claiming their products would improve people’s lives and personal appearances. By developing repeat customers, advertising also helped build brand loyalty for the company. Brand loyalty helps sell other existing and new products to these same customers.

After World War I ended, general circulation magazines dropped picked up on the culture of consumerism. Ladies' Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post, featuring Norman Rockwell's paintings on its cover, became fixtures in middle-class homes around the country. Hoping to attract serious newsreaders, Henry Luce began publishing Time in 1923. New tabloid newspapers launched after the war, like the New York Daily News,achieved large circulation by covering crime, sports and scandals.

Advertisers, now reaching millions of consumers on a daily or weekly basis, hired movie stars and sports figures to persuade Americans to buy all types of products, from coffee to tobacco products. Business had become America's secular religion, thanks to advertising. Bruce Barton's 1925 book comparing religion and business, The Man Nobody Knows, declared Jesus Christ's parables as "the most powerful advertisements of all time.... He would be a national advertiser today."

Coca-Cola serves as a good example of how product advertising changed over this forty-year period. When first introduced in the 1880s, the product was marketed as a medicine, with claims that it cured headaches, and that it "revived and sustained" a person. Seeking to build repeat business and brand loyalty, by the 1920s the company emphasized it as a refreshment and a "fun food". Consumers demanding the cola at soda fountains could pressure storeowners to stock it, or risk losing their business. Today Coca-Cola is one of the largest and most visible companies in the world thanks to its successful advertisement campaigns.

Examples of 1920s advertising