1920's Media | Advertising and Public Relations

Buy! Buy!

The 1920s brought a boom in advertising as postwar consumerism and the cult of salesmanship coincided. Existing ad agencies expanded, and new agencies (Young 6c Rubicam, Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample, and Benton & Bowles) were founded. J. Walter Thompson's agency's billings went from $10.7 million in 1922 to $37.5 million in 1929. Albert Lasker, the head of Lord & Thomas, worked with George Washington Hill of the American Tobacco Company (Lucky Strike) to increase that company's earnings from $12 million in 1926 to $40 million in 1930.

Slogans.

Most advertising still appeared in print during the 1920s, and ad revenue promoted the growth of the mass-circulation magazines, called slicks because they were printed on paper that would reproduce quality ad art. Cigarette advertising produced a war among Lucky Strike, Camel, and Chesterfield. The untapped market was women; before the 1920s no respectable woman smoked...