The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) by Steven Watts
Authors: Steven Watts
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society gradually took shape in the early twentieth century, one activity emerged above all others to bind together notions of business profit, leisure activity, prosperity, and personal happiness. Adver-tising—a long-standing endeavor in American business, dating back to the early republic—was transformed into a kind of commercial religion in the booming new consumer economy. It offered social redemption through the partaking of material goods. Like other business enterprises, the Ford Motor Company embraced this gospel and won converts by means of an inspiring advertising vision of prosperity, abundance, and self-fulfillment. These qualities were built into the Model T as surely as its vanadium-steel axles, planetary transmission, and recalcitrant cranking mechanism.
Modern advertising, as historians have pointed out in recent years, shifted significantly around the beginning of the twentieth century. Traditional advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and flyers had employed a practical palette of durability, quality, and usefulness to paint attractive portraits of commercial goods. By the early 1900s, however, advertisers had begun using brighter cultural colors to portray commercial goods as conveyors of emotional happiness, personal desire, and private satisfactions. Advertising increasingly appeared as a kind of commercial therapy that promised varieties of self-fulfillment: fantasies of play and fun, possibilities of romance, excursions into progress and modernity, pathways to increased social status. The Ford Motor Company's efforts on behalf of the Model T reflected this transition in advertising from meeting practical needs to fulfilling desires. 25
The Ford advertising operation had accelerated in 1907, as the Model N was going out to the public, when the company hired LeRoy Pelletier as its first advertising manager.
Motor World
described this colorful figure as “a brilliant, plausible, rapid-fire conversationalist” and “a clever writer” who, “in the art of ‘putting them over,’ has few peers. Even the great Barnum himself would have found him a valuable assistant.” Before coming to Ford, Pelletier had served as an advance man for a circus, a correspondent for the New York
Times
in the Klondike, the owner of a real-estate firm, and the developer of an air-cooled automobile. He affected a theatrical appearance, with a great bushy head of hair and long, flowing black ties, and impressed all who encountered him with his enormous energy and winsome style. Specializing in light, glowing, imaginative copy, he put together the major ad campaign for the unveiling of the Model N in New York City. This dynamic adman formulated the first great advertising slogan for the company— “Watch the Fords Go By”—and emblazoned it in unforgettable style on a giant, first-of-its-kind sign set atop the Detroit Opera House. Made in the shape of the Model N, it featured turning wheels, burning headlights, and the new slogan in blinking lights below the giant automobile. By early 1908, however, Pelletier had left the company to pursue other business oppor-tunities. 26
As the Model T prepared to go on the market, Ford advertising efforts escalated. With Pelletier's departure, ad policy was shaped by several individuals, including H. B. Harper, Robert Walsh, and sales manager Norval Hawkins. The company started a monthly in-house publication in April 1908, the
Ford Times,
and used it to inspire promotional efforts among the growing network of Ford dealers and salesmen. Articles entitled “Does Advertising Pay?,” “Living Advertising,” and “Suggestions for Advertising” spurred dealers to greater publicity campaigns and promised to supply them with “good-selling advertising copy and electrotypes or cut-outs of the cars.” Ford also launched its own national publicity campaign in 1909 with a flurry of ads in trade journals, newspapers, magazines, and special pamphlets. 27
Ford advertising employed
Modern advertising, as historians have pointed out in recent years, shifted significantly around the beginning of the twentieth century. Traditional advertisements in newspapers, magazines, and flyers had employed a practical palette of durability, quality, and usefulness to paint attractive portraits of commercial goods. By the early 1900s, however, advertisers had begun using brighter cultural colors to portray commercial goods as conveyors of emotional happiness, personal desire, and private satisfactions. Advertising increasingly appeared as a kind of commercial therapy that promised varieties of self-fulfillment: fantasies of play and fun, possibilities of romance, excursions into progress and modernity, pathways to increased social status. The Ford Motor Company's efforts on behalf of the Model T reflected this transition in advertising from meeting practical needs to fulfilling desires. 25
The Ford advertising operation had accelerated in 1907, as the Model N was going out to the public, when the company hired LeRoy Pelletier as its first advertising manager.
Motor World
described this colorful figure as “a brilliant, plausible, rapid-fire conversationalist” and “a clever writer” who, “in the art of ‘putting them over,’ has few peers. Even the great Barnum himself would have found him a valuable assistant.” Before coming to Ford, Pelletier had served as an advance man for a circus, a correspondent for the New York
Times
in the Klondike, the owner of a real-estate firm, and the developer of an air-cooled automobile. He affected a theatrical appearance, with a great bushy head of hair and long, flowing black ties, and impressed all who encountered him with his enormous energy and winsome style. Specializing in light, glowing, imaginative copy, he put together the major ad campaign for the unveiling of the Model N in New York City. This dynamic adman formulated the first great advertising slogan for the company— “Watch the Fords Go By”—and emblazoned it in unforgettable style on a giant, first-of-its-kind sign set atop the Detroit Opera House. Made in the shape of the Model N, it featured turning wheels, burning headlights, and the new slogan in blinking lights below the giant automobile. By early 1908, however, Pelletier had left the company to pursue other business oppor-tunities. 26
As the Model T prepared to go on the market, Ford advertising efforts escalated. With Pelletier's departure, ad policy was shaped by several individuals, including H. B. Harper, Robert Walsh, and sales manager Norval Hawkins. The company started a monthly in-house publication in April 1908, the
Ford Times,
and used it to inspire promotional efforts among the growing network of Ford dealers and salesmen. Articles entitled “Does Advertising Pay?,” “Living Advertising,” and “Suggestions for Advertising” spurred dealers to greater publicity campaigns and promised to supply them with “good-selling advertising copy and electrotypes or cut-outs of the cars.” Ford also launched its own national publicity campaign in 1909 with a flurry of ads in trade journals, newspapers, magazines, and special pamphlets. 27
Ford advertising employed
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