Created by Madison Avenue?

February 18, 2008 5:55 PM

What are some pop cultural artifacts and bits of 'common knowledge' that originated in ad campaigns that most people may not know about?

I was listening to NPR today and as part of a story about Chaquita, it was casually mentioned that the idea that you don't refrigerate bananas originated in a United Fruit Company ad campaign, because they did want people to keep the bananas around any longer than necessary. This got me thinking about other things that 'everybody knows' that most people don't know started in Madison Avenue.

The diamond engagement ring was created by deBeers. Santa Claus was (kind of) created by Coca Cola. Valentine's Day is an invention of Hallmark.

What others can you think of? The more obscure the better.

posted by empath to society & culture (28 comments total)

I've heard that the idea of bathing more than once a week or so evolved in the '50's due to soap ads, but I don't have a specific cite.
posted by daisyace at 5:57 PM on February 18

Secretary's Day, Boss's Day, Grandparent's Day all created by the greeting card companies.
posted by JujuB at 5:57 PM on February 18

Rudolph the red nosed reindeer was created by Wards Department Store.
posted by greta simone at 5:58 PM on February 18

Women shaving their arm pits and legs. In most other countries it is okay to be hairy and stink, but not in America. How about circumcision?
posted by 45moore45 at 6:12 PM on February 18

"Lather, rinse, repeat." (Not from the advertising, but the "directions" on the shampoo bottle.)
posted by evilcolonel at 6:16 PM on February 18

Just FYI, Valentine's Day cards were popular in the 1840's, while Hallmark wasn't founded until 1910.
posted by smackfu at 6:18 PM on February 18

This is doesn't fit exactly but it's easy to overlook: broadcasting was really just a tool to sell radios. I.e. in the 1920's beginning with the presidential election results.
posted by jeremias at 6:26 PM on February 18

From Freakonomics:

Listerine was invented in the 19th century as a powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in a distilled form, as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn't a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for "chronic halitosis", the faux medical term that the Listerine advertising group created in 1921 to describe bad breath. By naming and thus creating a medical condition for which consumers now felt they needed a cure, Listerine created a market for their mouthwash. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered a catastrophe, but Listerine's ad campaign changed that. As the advertising scholar James B. Twitchell writes, "Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis." Listerine's new ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate's rotten breath. "Can I be happy with him in spite of that?" one maiden asked herself. In just seven years, the company's revenues rose from $115,000 to more than $8 million.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:37 PM on February 18

This one's a bit archaic, but...

When surveys revealed that women were less likely to smoke Lucky Strikes because they came in a green and red box that clashed with their evening wear, Bernays actually started a campaign for the color green: organizing a Green Ball thrown at the Waldorf Astoria and ostensibly thrown by the chairwoman of the Women’s Infirmary of New York, with all proceeds going to charity.

Once the ball was in order, he persuaded glove and jewelry and silk and purse companies that they should manufacture accessories to match the green dresses debutantes at the ball would be wearing. He recruited president of the Onondaga Silk Company to host a Green Fashions Fall luncheon for New York fashion editors. Under the auspices of the silk company, he organized the Color Fashion Bureau to advise interior decorators, home-furnishing buyers and merchandise managers of this new trend. Before long, the New York Sun and the Post were predicting "a Green Winter."

(via)
posted by Rhaomi at 6:47 PM on February 18 [1 favorite]

Everyone I know eats fourthmeal after breakfast, lunch, and dinner; I just found out that the concept of "fourthmeal" was actually dreamed up by a savvy ad exec from the Taco Bell Corporation.
posted by jayder at 6:50 PM on February 18 [1 favorite]

I watched a documentary that said that the actual, proper dose for Alka-Seltzer used to be one tablet. They switched the advertising to say that you needed two tablets when sales were lagging so they could sell twice as many.
posted by christinetheslp at 7:09 PM on February 18

"Don't mess with Texas" was an anti-littering, public service campaign. I heard that a bunch of people turned into a mantra, but I don't believe it because I don't think people would be dumb enough to repeat something like that.
posted by CarlRossi at 7:09 PM on February 18

Rock Steady is the closest to what I was looking for. More like that, please. I live for that kind of trivia.
posted by empath at 8:05 PM on February 18

No cite, but I recall my HS home ec teacher mention that during the late 60's some farming association started encouraging housewives that lighter coloured vegetables were better, in order to sell iceberg lettuce (or was it the other way around; polling housewives and then creating the iceberg lettuce?).

In reality, lighter coloured vegetables tend to be less nutritious and flavourful than their darker counterparts.

Hmm, selling "symmetry" of fruits and vegetables to consumers has lead to really bland produce (compared to, say, heirloom fruits and vegetables. Ever eaten a fresh, ripe, and ugly heirloom tomato lately?). I guess part of the blandness is also due to shipping (picking the produce before they're ripe so they transport better and stay un-spoiled on the shelves longer.

Then again, ad campaigns lampooning genetically modified foods. (oooh, Frankenfoods are baaaad!!!) Sure, there are lots of potentially disasterous things companies can do (and do do and will do) to foodstuffs, but there are also lots of practical and non-hazardous GMods that bring a lot of benefits (such as produce that withstand drought or high alklalinity soils; formerly "arid" regions could then sustain modified food crops so those regions would no longer have to rely on foreign aid, or staple crops with higher yields and higher nutritional value - ie., vitamin B and/or iron boosted rice, &c.).
posted by porpoise at 8:07 PM on February 18

Everyone I know eats fourthmeal after breakfast, lunch, and dinner; I just found out that the concept of "fourthmeal" was actually dreamed up by a savvy ad exec from the Taco Bell Corporation.

WTF is a fourthmeal?

(That was somewhat rhetorical. I understand it; I just don't get it.)
posted by liquado at 8:16 PM on February 18

How about circumcision?

Huh? Circumcision wasn't invented by an ad campaign. It's thousands of years old.
posted by grumblebee at 8:24 PM on February 18

"Fourthmeal" is because Taco Bell is open late and where people go to eat when they are out late. Fourth meal.
posted by gjc at 8:25 PM on February 18

The term "athlete's foot" to describe a fungal infection of the foot was coined by an ad copywriter named Arthur Kudner in 1923 for a campaign for Absorbine, Jr.

Likewise, the shorthand "B.O." to describe body odor was coined for a campaign for Lifebuoy soap. To add emphasis to the stench (this was in the days of radio, so they couldn't visualize stink), the syllables B.O. sounded as if spoken by a foghorn.
posted by Oriole Adams at 10:10 PM on February 18

I've always had a hard time believing nobody cared about bad breath before Listerine's ad campaign. They surely did turn it into a successful ad campaign, though, by leveraging social embarrassment to a new level. I mean, there had to be something to exploit in the first place, right? Or the very first ads would have failed.

By the way, the original Chiquita Banana jingle is something they now disavow.

Would a canonical example be the need, never vanquished, for just one more blade on a safety razor?

I've heard that the idea of bathing more than once a week or so evolved in the '50's due to soap ads

Absolute rubbish. Sounds like the frequent urban legend about the Middle Ages, actually, but even that is utterly false. Certainly the development of indoor plumbing and built-in water heaters had much to do with making bathing more convenient, but people have always liked to get clean.
posted by dhartung at 11:00 PM on February 18

Hmm, I wonder if it was washing hair more than about once a week that became common in the '50's due to ads? Or maybe the article dhartung links debunks that, too - I'll get a chance to read it after work. Anyone else hear anything like these disputed rumors, and have a cite?
posted by daisyace at 4:10 AM on February 19

Just FYI, Valentine's Day cards were popular in the 1840's, while Hallmark wasn't founded until 1910.

Yeah, the myth is that "Hallmark invented Valentine's day." I'm reading Pepys' diary and he's kind of sweating Valentine's day in 1660.
posted by mattbucher at 7:58 AM on February 19 [1 favorite]

Hmm, I wonder if it was washing hair more than about once a week that became common in the '50's due to ads?

I collect late 1960s-era teen magazines (16, Tiger Beat, etc) and I noticed that in many of the "beauty columns" they provide tips on how to keep your hair looking fresh until shampoo day - because, as the articles state, you don't want to wash your hair more than once per week.
posted by Oriole Adams at 11:26 AM on February 19

Hm. I don't refrigerate bananas because I don't like cold fruit. That's about the only reason.

A great many "standard" recipes go back to product promotions. The first that comes to mind is green bean casserole with canned dried onions and canned cream of mushroom soup. Invented by Campbell's in 1955, destined to be the soggy bane of American pot lucks for the next century.

The Pillsbury Bake-Off takes place every year with the express purpose of inventing recipes that use Pillsbury products, with the side effect of promoting every product used in the winning recipes. One of the 1966 contest winners is responsible for the popularity of the Bundt cake shape that you often see now (the round one with the hole in the middle).
posted by zennie at 1:50 PM on February 19

"Circumcision wasn't invented by an ad campaign. "

An ad campaign for Yahweh!
posted by klangklangston at 2:26 PM on February 19

How about Lysol ads that told women they would lose their husbands and spend their evenings alone unless they... from a past MeFi post
posted by marsha56 at 2:39 PM on February 19

Cough medicine - there's little evidence that it works.
posted by euphotic at 12:05 AM on February 20

Sorry, here is the correct link for the article on cough medicine.
posted by euphotic at 12:07 AM on February 20

jayder: Taco Bell may have recently created (or, more likely, had someone else create) an ad campaign around the concept of 'fourth meal', but the concept itself is not new. At Oberlin College, one of the dining halls used to reopen at about 10pm, serving largely breakfast-type foods until 12 or 1; this was known as 'fourth meal'. I was there 2000--2002, but I was under the impression it was not a new thing there. (I think it is an old thing, though: I recall having heard that the relevant dining hall had been shuttered, though Obies of more recent vintage may care to contradict.)
posted by FlyingMonkey at 10:10 PM on February 29