Hard Sell: Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 195169
(Hardback)
Available Formats
Publishing Details
Hard Sell: Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 195169
By (Author) Sean Nixon
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press
30th May 2013
United Kingdom
Classifications
Tertiary Education
302.2345
Physical Properties
Hardback
240
Width 156mm, Height 234mm
Description
'This is an impressive piece of sustained research that brings much to the field. It offers real depth in rethinking the post-war boom and there can be little doubt that this will have a real impact across modern British history, consumer history and cultural studies.' Jeremy Black, Professor of History, University of Exeter Focusing on advertising's relationship to the mass market housewife, Hard sell shows how advertising promoted new standards of material comfort in the selling of a range of everyday consumer goods and, in the process, generalised a cross-class image of the 'modern housewife' across the new medium of television. Nixon shows how the practices through which advertising understood and represented the 'modern housewife' and domestic consumption were influenced by American advertising and commercial culture. In doing so, he challenges the way critics and historians have often understood Anglo-American relations, and shows how American influences across a range of areas of advertising practice were not only a source of inspiration, but were also adapted and reworked to speak more effectively to the British consumer. Hard sell offers a major new analysis of the techniques of advertising in the decades of post-war affluence and advertising's relationship to the social changes associated with growing prosperity. -- .
Reviews
This is an impressive piece of sustained research that brings much to the field. It offers real depth in rethinking the post-war boom and there can be little doubt that this will have a real impact across modern British history, consumer history and cultural studies.
Nixons Hard Sell is a valuable addition to the field of advertising history that brings a much-needed transatlantic analysis to the fore.
Stephanie American, H-Diplo, October 2016
Author Bio
Sean Nixon is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex
