Advertising: The Mammoth Mirror

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Nothing except the Mint can make money without advertising.

—Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Madison Avenue," the all-purpose handle for the advertising business, is a street named Desire that starts in Manhattan and wends into every household in the land. Americans are seeing more advertisements now—an average of 1,600 per person per day—and whether they are enjoying them less is a matter of argument. But the inescapable fact is that the pleas and promises of Madison Avenue dance before the eyes of the ordinary American whenever he reads, rides, watches television, strolls down the street or strikes a match. The $12 billion that U.S. business will spend on advertising this year exceeds the gross national products of Austria and Norway combined.

Behind this vast expenditure lies one truth that both critics and practitioners of advertising agree upon: advertising is an aggressively creative force that makes music at the cash registers by stimulating the public's desire to acquire goods. This is an overriding consideration for the nation's businessmen at a time when the U.S. is geared to produce more than it consumes and when nothing would help the economy more than a surge in consumer spending. As the U.S. economy grows in size and complexity and the cost of labor increases, advertising is an indispensable substitute for the personal salesmanship of times past. The genial clerk who used to sell undecided customers with the assurance that "my own family uses it" is steadily giving way to the self-service shopping cart. Today, advertising is the magnet that draws customers into the nation's supermarkets and department stores, and the prime mover of human inventiveness. Emerson notwithstanding, a man has small inspiration to build a better mousetrap unless he can mass-produce it and shout to the world about it.

The use of advertising as the strongest force in moving goods is a uniquely American contribution to economic life—and like most things American, constantly in flux. Born as a big business with the rise of national magazines around the turn of the century, advertising has changed bewilderingly since then, and today is changing faster than ever, with far-reaching implications for all of U.S. society. It is destined to become even more omnipresent: in dollar volume, advertising in the U.S. has doubled since 1950, is expected to double again in the decade to come. And as it grows bigger and more complicated, it is also becoming costlier. The average U.S. business now spends $1 on advertising for every $70 in sales, v. $1 for every $100 in 1947.

As advertising becomes more pervasive, so does debate about it. Never before have admen been so concerned about the future of their business or so nervous over charges that Madison Avenue is somehow corrupting the standards of Main Street.