The Image (31 page)

When Claude C. Hopkins, one of the pioneers of American advertising, took on the Schlitz Beer account some years ago, he prepared himself by learning all he could about
brewing. On his tour through the Schlitz brewery Hopkins noticed that bottles were purified by live steam before being filled. This caught his fancy. He developed an advertising program around the notion that Schlitz beer was pure because the bottles were steam-sterilized. Schlitz quickly rose from fifth place in national sales to near first place. What he said was, of course, gospel truth. Consumers simply did not know enough about beer making to realize that the beer of every respectable brand was bottled in this way. The use of live steam by Schlitz became a more vivid fact than its use by any of the competitors. Hopkins had concocted the pseudo-event he was looking for. He had made news. This pseudo-event was then given a nationally advertised dignity making it predominate over the same prosaic fact which was equally “true” about all reputable beers. Competitors dared not match the boast for fear they might seem to be imitating Schlitz. Schlitz continued to sell as
the
beer in sterilized bottles. This was a “fact” if there ever was one. Yet by being touted as a pseudo-event it became only a quasi-truth. This itself made it overshadow the simple facts.

Lucky Strike cigarettes sold well by pre-empting the slogan “It’s Toasted.” They
were
toasted! So was every other American cigarette. Soon the sales of Lucky Strike reached nearly six billion cigarettes a year.

The growing field of packaged foods, drugs, and cosmetics is a world of just such quasi-information. Toothpastes are “ammoniated.” Hair tonics contain “lanolin”—one even contains “cholesterol, the heart of lanolin.” Of course they really do contain what they say. Advertisers are so honest they will even concoct a chemical in order to be able truthfully to advertise it.

Statements are given a peculiar, specious kind of truth—and an overshadowing vividness—in the process of being made into pseudo-events. What is called for in these advertising situations is less a verifiable fact than a credible statement. The credibility cannot exist without the “truth”; the seduction cannot exist without the “falsehood.” As pseudo-events,
of course, they are all quite reputable.

(2)
The appeal of the self-fulfilling prophecy
. The Graphic Revolution has given advertisers—like news makers, celebrity makers, tour agents, movie directors, do-it-yourself photographers, and each of us in a thousand new ways—an unprecedented power to make things “true.” Much of our befuddlement, I have suggested, comes from the fact that advertisers insist on offering only statements that are “true.” They go to the most devious lengths, employing the most ingenious devices, to procure a persuasive credibility which passes for truth in our everyday life. The successful advertiser is the master of a new art: the art of making things true by saying they are so. He is a devotee of the technique of the self-fulfilling prophecy.

An elementary example is testimonial-endorsement advertising, which has been elaborated in this century. Even at common law, statements employed to promote sale were called “puffs” and were allowed wide latitude. A puff, even if not literally true, was not necessarily legally actionable. Much of the ingenuity of modern advertising derives from the refusal to accept this traditional latitude; and the effort, instead, to force other facts into being in order to make an improbable fact seem true.

So straightforward a statement as one that someone approves or uses a product has become one of the most interesting of pseudo-events. From a most simple declaration of fact, it has become a formula of compounding ambiguity. What could have been a more unambiguous statement, once upon a time, than to say about any product that a particular person, say Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, used it? Nowadays the commercial value of such statements, plus the insistence of reputable advertising agencies on being truthful, has loaded just such simple declaratory sentences with all kinds of innuendo. We can read about this in William M. Freeman’s
Big Name
(1957), a practical handbook on how to secure credible testimonials and how to use them in advertising. Endorsements have
become a specialized and profitable enterprise. Dealers in big names have made them big business.

According to Jules Alberti, president of Endorsements, Inc., a firm specializing in bringing together advertiser and endorser, the endorsement business has prospered. Between 1945 and 1957, he observed:

Rarely does anyone become a celebrity solely by selling his name or his picture for endorsements. But even this phenomenon (no paradox in the world of celebrities, where a celebrity is a person known for his well-knownness) occasionally does occur: for example, the Hathaway Shirt man with the patch on his eye; the bearded Commander Whitehead, Schweppes tonic endorser; the attractive “Fire and Ice” model for Revlon nail polish and lipstick; and Miss Rheingold. The endorsement business usually deals in personalities who have already become celebrities in some way (namely, movie stars, sports figures, and beauty queens).

Planning an endorsement requires as much finesse as planning a newsworthy interview, or any other successful pseudo-event. It is partly, as Freeman says, a matter of “good casting”—of matching the right product to the right name. “The celebrity, of course, need not be always the actual user of a product,” Freeman explains. “On a household item such as an air refresher, the testimonials are wanted from the domestic staffs of well-known persons. The resulting advertising then would say, ‘This is the product used in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood Star.’ Presumably the
celebrities would not know what products are used in their establishments, and the endorsement is all the more believable when it comes from an employee.”

The dangers of “miscasting” are considerable, observed Edward Carroll, sales promotion manager of Hess Brothers Department Store in Allentown, Pennsylvania, a store noted for its progressive merchandising methods. He notes the mistake of using pretty girls indiscriminately to sell all kinds of products. “Sleepy, seductive models shouldn’t be shown in advertising holding pots and pans. The Marjorie Main photo-type of model belongs with the pots and pan ads, while the mannequin who looks like Marilyn Monroe is just fine in bathing suits. No sincere advertiser would think of advertising a roasting pan for $1.95 and then marking it up to $2.95 when the customer came into the store.… That would be outright misrepresentation. And so is a beautiful, enticing Marilyn Monroe type pictured in an ad holding a mop in a typical family kitchen scene. The same goes for a Marlene Dietrich shown struggling over the kitchen range or the Ava Gardner counterpart wielding a vacuum cleaner. The latter role should cast the Spring Byington type.” The sense of appropriateness must often be delicate. Mr. Carroll advised that Marilyn Monroe herself, although an eminently appropriate endorser for bathing suits, strapless and backless evening gowns, negligees, diamonds, and furs, should not be “cast” in underwear advertising. Here credibility would be sacrificed, since as he says, Miss Monroe has actually stated publicly that she does not wear such garments.

Experience and know-how are useful in securing endorsements. Certain celebrities are unobtainable, or will endorse only certain kinds of products. For example, Clyde Beatty, the lion trainer, will not endorse anything linked to alcohol; Buster Crabbe, starred on television as Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion, will not endorse any product he does not think good and healthy; Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and some other celebrities who appeal primarily to a juvenile audience, are reluctant to endorse a cigarette or any other
product not for young people.

Endorsement agencies maintain lists of the most-wanted names, arranged both by the fields in which each name is a celebrity and by the kind of product for which each would be appropriate. Almost any celebrity has a well-knownness which can be attached to some product, service, or institution. In the decline of American “Society,” as Cleveland Amory notes, an epoch was marked when the first member of authentic Society signed her first commercial testimonial. Mrs. James Brown Potter, under a Tuxedo Park address, endorsed Harriet Hubbard Ayer’s cold cream. Soon thereafter, in 1923, two agencies, William Esty and J. Walter Thompson, made heavy use of Society names: Mrs. Oliver Harriman and the Duchess de Richelieu of Baltimore for Hardman pianos; Mrs. Oliver Harriman, Mrs. August Belmont, and the formidable Mrs. Longworth of Washington for Pond’s cold cream. Amory remarks that by 1960, whether because some persons of Society (for example the Duke and Duchess of Windsor) had worn out their names by commercialism or simply because fewer celebrities were real Society, not a single authentic Society name was on the “most-wanted” list.

A more attenuated form of endorsement does not even make any statement about a person’s use or approval of the advertised product. This is the so-called “implied” endorsement. In this technique, the big name does not say in so many words that he uses the product. Instead his name is associated with the product in such a way as to give it the aura of his name. A series of advertisements was run by the Cyma Watch Company, announcing, under a large portrait of J. Edgar Hoover, that he had been given the “Cyma Honor Award Watch.”

In the fabricating of endorsements, the planning and casting are all-important. The least troublesome problem of all is how to make the statement true. In many cases (the implied endorsement, for example) the project is accomplished, the pseudo-event is created, merely by public association of
the celebrity’s name or photograph with the product. A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services. For an endorsement the use of a name is frequently all that is wanted. A legend, true as fable if not as fact, tells that at the end of the Civil War an insurance company offered its presidency to General Robert E. Lee with the salary of $50,000 a year. General Lee was puzzled by the large salary, saying he did not think his services worth so much. “We don’t want your services,” he was told, “but only your name.” “My name,” Lee is reported to have said, “is not for sale.” There are, of course, a few literal-minded celebrities who are hard to get. Some will actually refuse to say they use a product which they are not already in the habit of using. General Douglas MacArthur, for example, before 1957, had endorsed only the Cyma watch; Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt had endorsed only the Cyma watch and the Zenith hearing aid.

Sometimes the endorsement itself makes the endorser into a user; he is given a large supply of the product as payment for the endorsement.

By the law of pseudo-events, the staging of the event inevitably becomes more interesting than the event itself. Everybody knows that big names are usually paid for their endorsements. A clever advertiser can actually increase interest by describing the process by which the endorsement was secured—even if it was paid for. The advertising agency working for Thom McAn’s low-priced men’s shoes published an ingenious series which attracted more than the usual attention simply by having the endorsers purport to explain how their endorsements were paid for. In each case, a photograph of the endorser, wearing Thom McAn shoes, appeared with a facsimile of his signature alongside the statement. Admiral J. J. (“Jocko”) Clark, U.S.N. (Ret.), for example, included the following in his endorsement:

In America today—where popularity and well-knownness are themselves such valuable qualities of a product—the consumer himself is given an enticing opportunity to make advertising prophecies come true. The nationally advertised product is a celebrity of the consumption world. It is well known for its well-knownness, which is one of its most attractive ingredients. Just as each of us likes a movie star or television celebrity more when we think we have had a hand in making him a celebrity, the same is true with commercial products. We know that by buying a product we increase its popularity; we thus make it more valuable. Each of us has a power to help transform it into the leader in its field. This itself makes it more attractive to us and nearly everyone else. Each of us has the power to help make true the assertion that Chevrolet is the most popular car in the low-price field.

One of the most effective efforts to increase beer consumption among women (and incidentally among men, too) was the ingenious campaign by Liebmann Breweries, aided by Foote, Cone & Belding, Chicago advertising agency, and by Paul Hesse, the well-known photographer, to promote Rheingold beer. Their simple device was to let the consumers themselves vote for Miss Rheingold. This attractive model would then declare that Rheingold was her favorite beer and help entice those who had chosen her to entice them. The first national election for Miss Rheingold took place in 1941, when Ruth Ownby won. (Jinx Falkenburg, who was the first Miss Rheingold, was undemocratically appointed, not elected.) By 1957 the 20,000,000 ballots cast in the election of Miss Rheingold made it the largest election in the United
States outside of that for President. The fact that customers were allowed to vote more than once simply added to the tantalizing verisimilitude.