A Sign is a Fine Investment - ACE136.5

Caption: "When is work not shown in advertising?" Commentary talks about a separation of images of work and home, with the family being the most important target for marketing. Advertisements for breakfast cereals showing family units. Photograph of man riding horse-drawn harvester "which would not be found in a cereal ad" though it could be used for other products. Fantasy is required to sell a product to its producer, and family life fills that purpose. Cereal, car and other advertisements. Families are portrayed as classless consumers, and "history appears as a long succession of families just like our own". Seventeenth century paintings of families, painting of George V, Queen Mary and children, photograph of current Royal Family, breakfasting family. The family "has its own past" which relates to work and to "another side of history". (1926), WaveBill Baxter’s Dilemmarley Oats, in which window cleaner sees a better porridge than the one he gets at home. An image of "worker as consumer" has particular importance in the year of the General Strike, "a period of violent class conflict". Mrs Keeble in 1959 "Daz" advertisement (Proctor & Gamble), displays same patronising attitude towards working classes. Advertisement for Hungarian wine using image of Hungarian peasant. Worker-less car advertisements. Nature’s Charms (1933), Austin Motor Co., intercut with film of workers leaving car factory, and with images from current advertising which pick up on the same rural and family-centred themes at a time when industrial production is in decline. Caption points out that in 1933, 19.9% of the British population was unemployed.