"Better Living"

Advertising, Media, and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership, 1935-1955

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by William L. Bird, Jr.

Northwestern University Press

Due/Published January 1999, 192 pages, cloth

ISBN 0810115859

"Making imaginative use of archival and visual evidence, William L. Bird deftly shows how big business recaptured the cultural ground lost during the Great Depression and the New Deal by learning how to use advertising and public relations more ambitiously than ever before. "Better Living" is an intelligent new synthesis of business and cultural history, with iportant implications for the entire second half of the twentieth century."--T. J. Jackson Lears

That having been said . . . How did big business learn to be both entertaining and persuasive when taliking to the public? How did they communicate their claims of "new," "better," and "more" in industry and life? Bird begins by looking at the changes in business-government relations during the New Deal before examining the importance of industrial films and their role in public and employee relations; the use of dramatic radio productions in corporate public relations; and the overall interplay between mass radio and print advertising, radio program sponsorship and scriptwriting, sponsored motion pictures and television entertainment, as well as exhibitions and industrial fairs. What role did these various media play in shaping ideas about American business, political, and cultural institutions for following decades? Bird tells us.

Series: Media Topographies