queries

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Mar 12 11:43:43 PST 2001


"C. G. Estabrook" wrote:
>
> A point Naomi Klein has generalized and argued at length. A Guardian (UK)
> writer summarized it as follows: `...advertising today is not merely about
> selling products; it is about selling a brand, a dream, a message.

I labored vainly thgrough a long teaching career to get students not to claim that such & such was special about "today in this modern day of ours" unless they had enough historical knowledge to _know_ "how it used to be." At the bookstore where I worked in 1948 the owner's aunt was all excited about a book which explained at length that one didn't sell the steak, one sold the sizzle. I would guess that if one looked hard enough one would find Klein's point being made by someone in the 1890s.

And I know that such remarks were the trivia of coffee break chatter at least by the 1950s. It was Coca-Cola in the early 1930s that fixed red as Santa's color (before that he had often been in green). Coke has always sold atmosphere rather than product.

Carrol



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