America’s Baby Boomers are those individuals who were born between 1946 and 1964. Seventy eight million babies were born in the Unites States alone during this time period. This population of consumers has had a huge impact on the way goods are marketed in America. The Baby Boom created huge demand for housing, which helped create the many new suburban communities that sprung up after 1945. Regina Lee Blaszczyk addresses what she calls the Boom America period, 1945-2005, by explaining that the Boomers were a new type of consumer altogether. She elaborates that they are affluent, born of shared generational experiences of postwar prosperity, Reagnomics and the dawn of the electronic age. However, it is their mass numbers that played an integral role in confounding marketers. This was the first time that marketers had to deal with a variable other than gender, income, geography, race and social time. The Boomers redefined middle class and therefore redefined the consumer culture (Blaszczyk 180-181).
In the 1950s, America was fascinated with the accoutrements of better living such as single-family homes, kitchen appliances and shiny new cars. Colorful kitchen appliances were coveted by the women of the time and men indulged in buying cars. This is reflected in the statistics for car purchases. Yearly automobile purchases increased from 70,000 cars in 1945 to 10 million cars in 1973 (Blaszczyk 204-205). H.F. Moorhouse states, “In short, the years and the war were that period of affluence when most Americans became comfortable and well-off compared to their parents or to pre-war standards”. The automobile was the symbol of this change and came to a new peak as a commodity and as a cultural symbol (282). The link below shows a car commercial from 1956 which appeals to the standard of better living of the time period.
Thomas Walsh 01
You asked the question if the Ford Company should have pulled the advertisement. My answer to that is hell no. The commercial is not scripted and is a man giving his honest answer about why he chose Ford. All of the things said in this commercial are true facts that you can find anywhere on the internet. Now if the government decided to interject with the Ford commercials advertisement I would see that as a interference with the first amendment. Freedom of speech! This commercial is showing the loyalty of customers to an American company and his appreciation to them for not taking the bailout. Plain and simple.
ReplyDelete-Jennifer LaPlaca
I find it fascinating the different advertisement methods that manufacturers capitalize on in order to get their product to sell. The commercial posted here is a great example of how the American mentality of convenience is and always will be so prevalent in our society and therefore be a focal point for advertisers to focus on. It is interesting that the commercial refers to her a prisoner in her household when she is out of a car when her husband is away on business. What ever happened to her two legs and maybe walking somewhere or even hopping on a bicycle to get somewhere? Maybe this has something to do with drastically rising obesity rates in the United States!
ReplyDeleteRobert McLarney
Section 01
I agree, poor little ol' housewife can't go for a walk to see her friends at her local PTA event. I guess the only thing different here is that things are not nearly as condensed as things are today so what may have seemed to be a short walk for us may have been a few miles and probably in the dark if she had to make it back after dark. Anyways other then that it was interesting commercial to see because the whole pitch is about convenience. Everything was centered towards productivity, efficiency, and convenience in that spectrum during the fifties. Much has not changed since then as those are still staples for household appliances but durability is an afterthought. I won't predict seeing many Toyota Prius's on the road after their ten year mark once their lithium batteries fail. In any case, the whole aspect of the baby boomers really sending the American economy through the roof is interesting because it is a result of War time economy and abundance returning after WWII end.
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