A Brief Introduction

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A Brief Introduction

To the blog, our sources and the 50s, 60s and 70s!

Welcome to Ads Now & Then

My original idea for this blog was to discuss and analyze Coca-Cola's branding and advertising. This topic combined three passions of mine:
  1. Graphic Design
  2. Advertising
  3. Collecting Coca-Cola merchandise

Instead of limiting myself to one brand, I've decided to open it up to any brands that I find in my resources! I have a small collection of old Life magazines—small as in four—from the 50s, 60s and 70s on-hand for sources and I have knowledge on both design and advertising to help me analyze each ad. This knowledge will allow me to take different views and analysis on each advertisement we discuss.

I found our sources at a second hand bookstore in my city. I picked the four Life magazines we'll be looking at because the stories in them were interesting. Paging through them, I noticed the various ads and began to analyze how different the advertising scene is now. These are our four sources in case you want to look at them yourself!
Left to right: "Elizabeth II: An Official Coronation Portrait" from April 27, 1953; "The U.S. Mail Mess" from November 28, 1969; "Fifty Years Ago Women Got the Vote" from September 4, 1970; "The Genius and His Magic Camera: Dr. Edwin Land of Polaroid Demonstrates His New Invention" from October 27, 1972

 Every other week we will look at a new brand and I will compare and contrast and old ad and a current ad. Be sure to follow the Facebook page and Instagram from Ads Now & Then for other uploads throughout the each week!

A Look into History

Before getting into analyzing ads, we need to know a little bit about the times the ads were displayed in. Since we are familiar with the 2000s, instead of giving you a brief introduction to our current period, here's a brief introduction to the 50s, 60s and 70s! Each time period is linked to my research source.

The 50s

  • A triple boom
    • A booming economy
      • Government spending had the gross national product doubling
    • The 1946 start of the “baby boom”
      • WWII ended, people saw a future and had children in the confidence of that future they saw
    • A suburb boom
      • More kids means a bigger house, hence the suburb boom
  • Civil Rights movements
    • African Americans’ fight against racism became mainstream for American life
    • Brown v. Board of Education in 1954
    • Rosa Parks arrested in 1955
  • The Cold War

The 60s

  • JFK runs for President
    • The New Deal
  • JFK shot in 1964
    • Lyndon B. Johnson declares the US will become a “Great Society” within/because of his Presidency
    • War on Poverty, “a hand up, not a handout”
  • Vietnam War
    • Three mindsets here
      • Protests in the street
      • People avoiding the draft by fleeing to Canada
      • Or the “silent majority”
  • Continuation of the African Americans’ Civil Rights movement
    • Continued fight against segregation
    • Lunch counter scene in 1960
    • Civil Rights Act of 1964
    • Voting Rights Act of 1965
  • Student Activists
    • Antiwar demonstrations
  • The Feminie Mystique
    • Equal Pay Act of 1963
  • Rise of the Hippies (aka. Summer of Love)
    • Woodstock, 1969
  • Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations
  • 1969, raiding of the Stonewall Inn—leading to the Stonewall Riots
  • We land on the moon!

The 70s

  • Fight for equality by women, African Americans, Native Americans and the LGBTQIA+ community
  • Continued protest of the Vietnam War
  • “New Right” pushed
    • traditional family roles
    • political conservatism
    • resistance of “government meddling”
      • high taxes
      • environmental regulations
      • speed limits (and more)
  • Nixon’s presidency
    • Abolishing much of the Johnson’s War on Poverty efforts
    • Resisted mandatory school desegregation plans
    • Proposal of a Family Assistance Plan and Comprehensive Health Insurance Plan
  • Environmental Movement!
    • First Earth Day in 1970
    • National Environmental Policy Act of 1970
    • Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act of 1972
    • Oil crisis
  • Continued fight for women’s rights
    • Equal Rights Amendment of 1972
    • Never ratified (conservative activists fear of it undermining traditional gender roles)
  • Watergate
    • Resignation of Nixon in 1974 

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