Written in the Skies: Advertising, Technology, and Modernity in Britain since 1885

Taylor, James

doi:10.1017/jbr.2016.72

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…The Merchandise Marks Act 1887 had banned false Royal Warrants and stopped foreign manufacturers from falsely claiming that their goods were British made, whilst the Sale of Goods Act 1893 upheld advertising as a contract between consumer and manufacturer that must be regulated to ensure consumer protection (Fletcher, 2017, p. 20). Furthermore, JHRM the Advertisements Regulation Act 1907 banned "indecent advertising" and controlled the extent of outdoor advertisements and their potential disfigurement of the countryside (Taylor, 2016). Nonetheless, no robust rules on what defined false or misleading claims in advertisements were put into place until much later in the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act.…”

Section: Spanish Influenza and Public Health (Mis)communication In Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commercialising public health during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic in Britain

Hagan

2021

JHRM

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Purpose This paper aims to use the advertisements of three major brands – Chymol, Formamint and Lifebuoy Soap – to examine how advertisers responded to the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic in Great Britain influenza pandemic. It looks particularly at the ways in which marketing strategies changed and how these strategies were enacted in the lexical and semiotic choices (e.g. language, image, colour, typography, texture, materiality, composition and layout) of advertisements. Design/methodology/approach A total of 120 advertisements for the three brands were collected from the British Newspaper Archive and analysed using the theory and analytical tools of multimodal critical discourse analysis. The general themes and semiotic structures of the advertisements were identified, with the aim of deconstructing the meaning potentials of verbal and visual resources used to convey ideas about the pandemic, and how they work to shape public understanding of the products and make them appear as effective and credible. Findings Each brand rapidly changed their marketing strategy in response to the influenza pandemic, using such techniques as testimonials, hyperbole, scaremongering and pseudoscientific claims to persuade consumers that their products offered protection. Whilst these strategies may appear manipulative, they also had the function of fostering reassurance and sympathy amongst the general public in a moment of turmoil, indicating the important role of brands in building consumer trust and promoting a sense of authority in early twentieth-century Britain. Originality/value Exploring the way in which advertisers responded to the 1918‐1919 influenza pandemic reminds us of the challenges of distinguishing legitimate and illegitimate medical advice in a fast-moving pandemic and highlights the need to cast a critical eye to the public health information, particularly when it comes from unofficial sources with vested interests.

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Section: Spanish Influenza and Public Health (Mis)communication In Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commercialising public health during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic in Britain

Hagan

2021

JHRM

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“…London Sky-Signs Prohibition Act of 1891, 54 & 55 Vict., c. 78. On the longer history of sky advertising, see Taylor 2016. 87.…”

Section: The Hoarding's Competitorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ways of Seeing Advertising: Law and the Making of Visual Commercial Culture

Rosenberg¹

2021

Law Soc. Inq.

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This article examines the role of law in shaping visual commercial culture by telling the story of the hoarding—the outdoor advertising surface for posters—in the formative decades of mass advertising in Britain, from roughly 1840 to 1914. The hoarding emerged in this period as a distinct property and a focal point of contestation over ways of seeing. Its meaning as a visual environment hinged on questions, which are still resonant today, about the interaction between economic and aesthetic categories: advertising and art, capital and beauty, commerce and culture. Historical actors—among them the organized billposting trade, the National Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Advertising, a civil society organization that took up the cause of protecting public spaces from advertising, governmental and local lawmakers, and citizens—enlisted private and public legal means to respond to these questions. This analysis draws on an expansive interdisciplinary archive to trace them. As it shows, legal means were engaged in cultural demarcation or what Thomas Gieryn has aptly termed boundary work. In establishing cultural boundaries, law defined the terms on which advertising became an integral element of daily visual experience, at once omnipresent and derided. The legal history of advertising thus offers deep insights for visual legal studies.

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Entering British Airspace: Aviation and Film

McCluskey

2020

Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain

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Written in the Skies: Advertising, Technology, and Modernity in Britain since 1885

Cited by 7 publications

References 29 publications

Commercialising public health during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic in Britain

Commercialising public health during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic in Britain

Ways of Seeing Advertising: Law and the Making of Visual Commercial Culture

Entering British Airspace: Aviation and Film

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