A Sign is a Fine Investment - ACE136.3

The woman unpacking her shopping. Commentary says advertisements are "directed at the home". Caption: "When can work be shown in advertising?" Commentary suggests (with supporting images from tea advertisements) that work can be shown when it’s being done by people other than the consumer. Extracts from Song of Ceylon (1934), Empire Marketing Board. Baskets of tea, coffee, and sugar on conveyor. Crossing map from Britain down Africa. VO goes on to list rubber and mineral resources, and "the captive markets, the suppression of the uprising, the essential economic links, the international marketing policy, the multinational corporation, the British Empire". Commentary says advertising images are bound up with Britain’s economic past. Collages of images from advertising and the imperial past. Commentary talks about the colonies providing "raw materials, cheap labour, and … a market…", and about how those markets were expanded to the benefit of the capitalist economy. Tea advertisements. Rum advertisement with black waiter serving white bathers. Lux advertisements from 1920s (?) featuring black stereotypes which are no longer acceptable, thanks to changes in social conditions. Throat lozenge advertisement incorporating image of mushroom cloud; picture of a British soldier ("the cleanest fighter in the world") used for 1910s Sunlight Soap. "The relation of the audience to the dominant ideas of any period" determines what advertising can show. Shine Sir (1916), Kiwi Polish Co. Young boys working at hotel boot cleaning can be shown because of patriotism and the wartime labour shortage; the effort of work contributes to the war effort.