LizzieMaine
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advertising has always created unrealistic images that represent some sort of just-about-believable-but-always-out-of-reach ideal.
that's not unique to the 50s. look at Leyendecker's advertising imagery from the teens and 20s, or virtually any fashion illustration from the 30s.
Add to the imagery, though, the angle of psychological marketing and motivational research promoted by the German psychoanalyst Dr. Ernest Dichter and his disciples -- which became a trend in the early to mid fifties, marketing designed to play on specific insecurities that went beyond simply "look at the pretty picture." Vance Packard wrote about this in "The Hidden Persuaders" in 1957, and made Madison Avenue very very very angry. The methods used then broke sharply from the simple "reason why" advertising of the prewar era, and the relatively-primitive early marketing methods of Edward Bernays, and continue to be used, with greater refinement, to the present day.
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