Previously on Relationship Marketing 101, we kicked off our new monthly series examining the evolution of marketing with a brief history of branding. While brands had already existed in some form for thousands of years, the rise of the Industrial Revolution and technological advances of the 20th century made marketing a full-blown industry, complete with creative ads, radio commercials, and mascots.
By the 1960s, however, the times were a-changin’. Television became more widely adopted, going from 20% household saturation at the start of the previous decade to 90% in 1960, with many of those sets broadcasting in glorious color. With that kind of rise in prominence, television became the preeminent destination for marketers, leaving brands to find new ways to compete for customer attention as they shifted from static ads to video.
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The rising popularity of TV ushered in the post-war ad boom
Picture this: It’s a lovely July afternoon in 1941. As one of the first owners of a television in your New York borough, you and your neighbors gather around the set to watch the Philadelphia Phillies play the Brooklyn Dodgers. And then, at 2:27 pm, the baseball game cuts away as a shaky image with a clock appears on your screen.
Ten seconds long and costing New York watch company, Bulova, a whopping $9 – this was the first TV commercial ever to hit the airwaves. It only consisted of a single image and a line of dialogue, but the messaging was consistent: America runs on Bulova time. It first aired on the same day the Federal Communications Commission authorized commercial television, ringing in a new era of marketing.
It took years for TV commercials to become widespread and influential. Americans had other problems in 1941, and the war in Europe would soon come to their shores. Perhaps that’s why Bulova chose to highlight the United States in its ten seconds of airtime: to appeal to Americans’ sense of patriotism. After World War II, however, TV adoption skyrocketed, and the TV advertising machine kicked in high gear. After years of rationing and fear, ads were more optimistic, making big promises for the future.
As marketers quickly learned, brands needed to forge emotional connections with their audiences to differentiate themselves from similar companies. Even though the marketing of the 1950s was mostly product-focused, companies found new ways to make things like kitchen appliances, cigarettes, and TV dinners more personal. Marketing companies began using celebrity endorsements to connect with customers, using familiar faces and personalities to forge that connection.
The ‘50s saw families increase their purchasing power for a decade of postwar prosperity. Advertising reflected those trends, setting the stage for the next few decades, starting with the 1960s “Age of the Ad Executive.”
Madison Avenue agencies led the way with glamour and excess
In a first-season episode of the AMC television series Mad Men, ad exec, Don Draper, is working with photo company, Kodak, to come up with new branding for the Carousel, a circular slide projector.
The problem: at a time when consumers were looking for increasingly flashy products, a wheel wasn’t a particularly exciting technology. Don’s solution is to pitch “a deeper bond with the product” driven by nostalgia as he used the Carousel to show old photos of his family.
“The device isn’t a spaceship,” Don finally says. “It’s a time machine.”
While Mad Men is a work of fiction, many ad industry vets have attested to the show’s accuracy. It was a time of flash, pizazz, and excess, and at the center of it all was the New York City ad executive. Over boozy working lunches and in smoke-filled boardrooms, advertisers came up with marketing campaigns that tugged at the heartstrings and evoked that sense of nostalgia, much like Don Draper did.
But while established brands were desperate to let older customers know that their old-fashioned family values were still alive and well, a culture war was brewing — in real life and advertising. The kids from the post-war baby boom grew into teenagers with more influence and purchasing power than ever, becoming increasingly attractive targets for marketers. Pepsi’s “For those who think young” campaign kicked off an obsession with youth-oriented advertising that’s still going strong today.
The ad executive’s increasingly important job wasn’t to choose a side in this battle; it was facilitating brand relationships on both sides. That’s why so many companies turned to marketing firms in droves starting in the early 1960s; “ad men” (and women) were seen as the people bold and creative enough to make these connections.
By the second half of the decade, marketing was trending towards daring, graphic designs that reflected younger consumers’ changing attitudes. The ‘60s were a coming of age for the industry, but everyone has to grow up eventually.
We didn’t start the fire
After a decade of indulgence, hope, and free love, the ’70s began on kind of a downer. The negative effects of all that excess were becoming evident. Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, the western world was heading towards a recession, and fans mourned the high-profile deaths of young stars like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison. Richard Nixon, a direct counterpoint to the Kennedy era of the ’60s, was in the White House, while young men were drafted into an unwinnable war in Vietnam.
So, where could people go to keep up with the news — or escape these bad vibes? Television. At the start of the ‘70s, the American Association of Advertising Agencies predicted that the average person would be subjected to around 1,600 ads per day. Many of these ads were television commercials, which had ditched the cerebral narratives of the previous decade to be much more literal.
This famous Life cereal commercial, which ran for over a decade, is a perfect example of how marketers pivoted to connect with customers once again. There’s no light bulb moment, no Don Draper wit, and nothing left to the imagination. All you need to know is that if Mikey likes this cereal, your family will like it too.
By the mid-70s, Nixon had resigned, and America pulled its troops from Vietnam. Meanwhile, the television industry was going through some disruptions of its own. With VHS beating out Betamax in the home video format war, VCRs became more affordable and commonplace.
This was a problem for marketers; people could now record their shows and fast-forward through commercials if they wanted to. But an even bigger shift was underway: the advent of cable TV. Suddenly, instead of dividing their time between the three existing channels, viewers had numerous options available — a number that grew steadily throughout the 1980s.
Interestingly, one of the earliest cable networks was actually saved by advertising. Some cable providers wouldn’t carry the music video network MTV because of its loud, rebellious, and sometimes suggestive content. The iconic “I want my MTV” campaign was born in response, and with it, a new kind of relationship marketing: the direct appeal.
Instead of proving itself to cable providers, MTV went straight to the Gen X crowd, with musicians like Joan Jett, Cyndi Lauper, and Billy Idol begging viewers to call their cable companies and say… well, you know the rest. Once again, young people held the consumer power, while their parents — those hip boomer kids from a couple of decades ago — were becoming less relevant.
Meanwhile, marketing agencies were rethinking their practices as they scrambled to keep consumers’ attention. Many advertisers started making 15-second commercials, which decreased the costs associated with longer runtimes while increasing ad frequency and profits. Never one to go with the crowd, Apple instead tapped into the viewership power of the Super Bowl with its famous 1984 ad, which only needed to run once to make a permanent impression.
These days, Wendy’s is known for its brilliant social media marketing, but the fast-food chain’s clapbacks didn’t start in the digital age. Back in 1984, the chain subtly burned its competitors with the “Where’s the Beef?” commercial, and the tagline took the world by storm. Like mascots and other branding initiatives, the catchphrase soon came to represent more than just the brand; in fact, 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale used “Where’s the beef” as a way of questioning his primary competitor’s lack of substance.
Unfortunately for Mondale, using a funny slogan wasn’t enough to win a presidential election. However, advertising did play a significant role in the 1984 reelection of Ronald Reagan. The “It’s morning again in America” commercial is often credited with helping him win a second term. Remember all those bad vibes from the ’70s? Well, according to Reagan’s ad, he had brought about a new dawn in America, and now people could “look forward with confidence.” It was a message that voters wanted to believe in, regardless of whether it was actually true.
Knowing Your Customers is Half the Battle
Throughout the free-loving ‘60s, reality-check ‘70s, and tubular ‘80s, one thing remained constant in advertising: the marketer’s relationship with their audience. Shifts in advertising trends directly paralleled real-life events, while marketing became more powerful and influential because of these consumer connections.
Though the phrase “relationship marketing” hadn’t been popularized yet, it’s clear that this concept was there all along, and only becoming more important as the decades passed. At the same time, a tectonic shift in technology, retail, communication, and advertising was on the horizon.
Check back next month for the third installment of Relationship Marketing 103!