Bernard Shaw and Modern Advertising

by Christopher Wixson

  76.McEwan, “Commodities,” 77.

  77.Shaw, “The Revolutionist’s Handbook,” 758.

  © The Author(s) 2018

  Christopher WixsonBernard Shaw and Modern AdvertisingBernard Shaw and His Contemporarieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78628-5_3

  3. “The Shadow of Disrepute”: G.B.S. and Testimonial Marketing

  Christopher Wixson1

  (1)Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, USA

  Christopher Wixson

  Email: cmwixson@eiu.edu

  A 1910 piece that appeared the week before the premiere of Misalliance in The Editor and Publisher boldly announced that “theatrical managers … have discovered that the stage of a theatre is too pitifully limited and impotent to present ‘questions of the day’ in a play lasting two and a half hours. Of course, the public discovered this before the managers, and thinking people who seek truth, and are unblinded by the spectacular, saw it long ago.” 1 Shaw in this article is singled out as the“cleverest” of the socio-economico-politico dramatists [that] in the last decade … [have] suddenly assumed the authority of philosophers and statesman with little or no training in the intellectual processes of philosophy and statesmanship [and] have turned out batches of plays dealing with “questions of the day.”

  Referencing the playwright’s struggles against the censor and his advocacy of the theater as an essential institution of societal critique, the piece claims that “the public of England and America does not take Mr. Shaw seriously” and offers the following rationale:There are about eighty-five theatres in New York. Perhaps ten of them are given over, at present, to plays that “preach” a “sermon.” A high total average attendance nightly at those ten theatres would be about 12,000.

  Every evening in New York 3,000,000 people read sermons in the newspapers. Indeed, there is a vast deal of nonsense in the talk of the theatre contingent.

  Of course, Shaw had already for decades been preaching across media, never limiting himself to a single generic platform and endeavoring to reach as wide an audience as possible. He balanced a steady program of public speaking and pamphlet writing with forays into print periodicals via letters to editors, becoming a critic and a playwright , ensuring his continued presence in the review section. 2 Shaw’s self-marketing campaign ingeniously refused to be confined to a single medium.

  Initially relegated only to back covers or classified sections, commercial advertising also eventually insinuated itself beyond its designated spaces within print publications. At first,advertisements were placed on the outside of newspapers and periodicals, segregated from editorial matter, and most newspapers would not admit advertising with bold “display” type or illustrations. … By the 1890s, however, the presses were opening up their editorial pages to illustrated advertisements [so that] the editorial and advertising content of the illustrated periodical now formed an interlocking whole [and] it was impossible to draw a line between editorial matter and ads. … Culture and commerce mingled intimately in the structure of the magazine. 3

  In illustrated magazines starting in the 1840s, “advertisements had been incorporated among their articles and images,” and, a half century later, “advertisers were increasingly successful in their attempts to insert their material into the journalistic sections of the magazine, either as editorial plugs, advertisements disguised as editorial features, or overt advertisements.” 4 Particularly after the dailies followed suit, the result, as Gerry Beegan writes, was a print media in the 1890s that “created, traced, and maintained a culture of the mass-produced commodity” in which “both commercial and editorial material reinforced each other, each of them reflecting and shaping the reader’s concerns” and “mobilizing mass consumption.” 5

  What Shaw surely saw in that culture was another public stage, in which ideas are commodities and editorial writing mixes with product marketing, affording the creation of connective tissue between, say, a testimonial appearance in an advert and a letter to the editor or a critical review. These forums bleed into one another as opportunities to reach and shape readers, each one a context for the advancement of ideas, the promotion of a sensibility, the work of the Life Force. The elasticity of the periodical page enables Shaw to look at every section as a chance to promote, and he takes advantage of porous borders between sections to diversify outlets for G.B.S. and build what Jonathan Goldman calls “self-fashioned iconicity.” 6

  As Michael Holroyd writes, Shaw realized early on that public interest often dwelled within other periodical sections besides those specifically dedicated to the discussion of current events and the performing arts; thus, he, for instance, “spread his political views through the sports pages as he would the music and art columns,” and one way of understanding his participation in commercial marketing campaigns is as another attempt to reach a different segment of readership. 7 While we may struggle with the notion of a professed socialist signing on with consumer commodity culture, we can recall other examples that seem just as puzzling, such as how “his long affair with boxing [would] worry some of his admirers [who wondered why] this ascetic, humanitarian, anti-vivisectionist champion of the vegetable world [would] involve himself in brute pugilism.” In that case, as Holroyd writes, “he saw at once the great publicity in pugilism and used it to draw attention to himself, not just personally, but as a vehicle for his developing ideas [as newspapers] were indispensable as creators of public opinion.” 8 In that context, his eventual application of the kind of viral G.B.S. marketing he had already performed in periodicals and newspapers to specific product advertisements makes sense. When Shaw was interviewed in 1908 by a French journalist, the question of his promotional activity arose:“Why,” asked the Frenchman severely, “do you carry on such a campaign of self-advertisement? Is it necessary for you to declare yourself superior in many ways to Shakespeare and to proclaim yourself the most remarkable man of your epoch; This sort of thing might easily be explained while you were a young, unknown man desirous of notoriety; but now that you are renowned throughout Europe, do you not think that it is high time to throw overboard that G.B.S. whom you have endowed with a quasi-legendary personality?”

  To which, the playwright responded,“What? Stop advertising myself?” cried Shaw. “No! I must advertise more than ever. Look at Pears’ Soap. If there is one business house that is solid it is the house of Pears. Do they cease for that reason to cover walls with their posters? If I should give up advertising myself I should ruin my business.” 9

  His analogy is revealing, and, just as patent medicine had provided a broad stylistic framework for his development of G.B.S., the continued honing of the testimonial technique in commercial advertising would prove anything but a misalliance with his own rhetorical prowess.

  The style of mid-nineteenth-century ads was dominated by what one executive characterized as “copy that threw the book at the reader”:There was the hit-’em-over-the-head school which consisted of hardworking advertisements that yelled, shouted, screamed, and hollered. They said everything kind about the product it was possible to say and they started out with headlines that read “Science proves …” … The thesis was that you dragged them in with your sideshow-barker treatment in the headline and then gave them the hard sell once you got them inside the tent, and this was the body copy. The text was just loaded with copy points. 10

  The conceit undoubtedly contributed to commercial advertising’s “reputation for deceit and fraud which undermined credibility”:At least by the 1850s, … advertising by the print trade … and by vendors of patent medicines was associated in the minds of middle-class readers with fraudulent and false claims. Practitioners frequently presented medications of doubtful efficacy for dubious purposes in language which combined ambiguity, innuendo, or even sensationalism, testing the credulity of the public and attracting to advertising generally an attitude which regarded the practice as dishonorable, this at a time when respectability was becoming a widespread aspiration in society. 11

&
nbsp; While newspapers sought ways to deter such advertisements casting shade on their periodicals, manufacturerschose to distance themselves and their products from the excesses of such advertising [and tackle] the problem of overcoming public skepticism of hostility to their products [by adopting] a minimalist approach [that] announced the products coupled with the name of the supplier and sometimes a message of no more than two or three words, [opting for] a more restrained approach … which assisted the gradual penetration by the advertisers of staple products into the pages of respectable newspapers and magazines. 12

  The advent of “new journalism” in the late 1880s made ripples in the copy world as well, that further made space for the testimonial:The long descriptive passages, verbatim reports of speeches, and detailed political analysis that had been the norm in the established press were now being replaced by short, varied paragraphs of gossip and opinion [cast in] a lighter, more conversational tone, with an overall emphasis on personality and human interest [geared towards] a broad middle-class audience. 13

  In the 1870s, technological innovation in lithography made it possible for “advertisers [to dispense] with the presentation of products illustrating a message directly related to them and [to substitute] instead an arresting picture or design … to which the brand name could be attached”; this moment marks a turn in which “associational images began to take precedence over informational content on utility, price, and quality.” 14 In a 1919 piece in Advertising & Selling , Felix Orman goes to Shaw as a way to illustrate the contrast between advertising styles:I don’t know whether you like the plays of Bernard Shaw. I do. They are full of pith and point. They are remarkable advertisements of ideas. Perhaps you have seen or read “Man and Superman .” Here the Shavian wit struck a high note. John Tanner, the opinionated and very controversial and iconoclastic hero of the play, has been submerging the charming Ann under an ocean of words. He feels that she has been duly impressed, converted to his theories. Then Ann, with the airy condescension of a pretty woman addressing a spoiled child, bids John just to go on talking. 15

  In juxtaposition to the play, Orman evokes a second “fictional incident” from a “standard puppy-love story … wherein an enraptured youth exclaims in an impassioned voice to the haughty object of his adoration, ‘Oh, just let me look at you!’” In the analogy, the “Eastern standardized” technique “keeps on talking,” emphasizing substantive copy text, while the “Minnesota-style” consists mainly of large color images for the reader to “look at.” As to which is more effective, he concedes that understanding one’s audience is key, that “there are a lot of people who like words, regardless of what they mean or whether they agree with them,” just as “there are also a good many people who like to look at something pretty, even though its meaning and quality are much inferior to the surface attraction.” Nonetheless, he ultimately affirms the primacy of words, the style embodied by Shaw’s plays, deeming the “pretty pictures” of so-called flash advertising an “ephemeral” form.

  Testimonial endorsement often successfully synthesized both approaches, anchoring the layout with a photograph or drawing of the “personality ” in tandem with his or her words, together appealing “to the viewer on the basis of emotion, aspiration, and fantasy.” 16 For much of the nineteenth century, commercial promotion, largely on behalf of patent medicine, refashioned an old concept into a marketing technique:The term “testimonial” was used as early as the sixteenth century as a personal introduction, reference, or commendation, often in the context of the search for employment. … Over time, such personal testimonials shifted from the private realms of correspondence between two parties to small-scale, often local advertisements. In mass-circulated testimonial advertising, the commendation is transferred from an individual to a firm or corporation, or even more abstractly, to the consumer goods and services. 17

  In practice, the testimonial was employed as a way to legitimize products and services via statements from professionals, researchers, and ordinary citizens with firsthand experience. As such,testimonial advertisements [inserted] into the negotiation between buyer and seller the words of a third party, presented as disinterested in the commercial transaction but in some way knowledgeable about the product at hand and willing to share that knowledge. … Though the writer or speaker of the testimony is not involved in the actual commercial exchange, his or her words are packaged and publicized by the producer, retailer, or service provider as part of a marketing campaign. 18

  The success of the testimonial proceeds largely from its timing within the larger process of industrialization and the onset of thealienating forces of modernity – brought about by a host of factors including rapid urbanization; mass immigration; the rationalization of manufacturing processes and the deskilling of labor; the expansion of corporate entities and the increase in white collar, middle management; and the swift movement of goods, people, and ideas across national and international borders – [so] the person-to-person communication that testimonial advertising invited was understandably appealing. 19

  Rapidly, as William M. Freeman observed in 1957, “the testimonial [became] the heart of modern advertising.” 20

  In Britain and Ireland, advertising often traded upon names drawn from royalty and the aristocracy with claims of their patronage, while patent medicine manufacturers sought medical and scientific professionals to legitimate their wares. In the second half of the nineteenth century, famous personalities from mass culture increasingly became prominent endorsers. This shift, according to Jonathan Goldman , from “state- or society-authorised hierarchies of achievement” to “figures from cultures of mass entertainment” is accomplished through new technologies of mass reproduction, which enable instant recognition and a sense of simultaneous ubiquity and inimitability. Due to the mechanical reproduction of photographs, print images, and text, a celebrity can be everywhere at once, repeatedly, and recognised widely, if not literally universally. 21

  Against a backdrop of “growing fears of lost individuality and fractured community,” personality testimonials urged readers “to equate consumption with a coherent sustainable identity and membership within an established, recognizable community.” 22 If such appeals encouraged the consumer to join a community via “emulation” and furthered the mechanisms of individual and collective identity formation, Shaw realized that his participation in this process would not only keep “G.B.S. ” in the public eye but move readers towards what he believed was a healthier and more ethical state of being and facilitate the creation of a community of consumers animated by a shared vision.

  In a 1911 Printers’ Ink series on the testimonial, James W. Egbert itemized the qualities of successful endorsements:The source of a good testimonial must be a person whose judgment is respected.

  The source of a testimonial must know something about the goods; and not only must he know, but people must know that he knows.

  A good testimonial is not a paid advertisement.

  A testimonial may be either an advertisement for the writer of it, or the goods. It is seldom both.

  The valuable testimonial is known to be hard to get. The best testimonials give facts in detail backed up with figures and dates. 23

  Tenet number 4 is strange, considering that one component of the technique’s attractiveness derives from its mutual benefit for advertiser and endorser alike; whether or not financial compensation is involved, the latter experiences expansion and enhancement of their renown and the reach of their name even as the former benefits from their notoriety and product affirmation. In essence, testimonials, as Shaw well understood, “both derive from and confer the prestige and authority of those who testify to the worthiness of a brand-name product, service, or experience.” 24

  Doubtless an inspiration for Shaw’s distinctive mode of brand marketing was his keen observation when he got to London of the nexus between commerce and theater. In their study Theatre and Fashion: Oscar Wilde to the Suffragettes, Joel H. Kaplan and Sheila Stowell
chart “the commercial interplay of stage and stalls [in which] playhouses became second showrooms, with London’s leading ladies serving as living mannequins,” that marks a “convergence in the early 1890s of an aggressive fashion press, innovative merchandising by a new breed of independent dress makers, and the transformation of a select group of West End theatres into an essential part of the London season.” 25 A Printers’ Ink retrospective, appearing in 1938, pointed out that, in America, “in the early eighties, a change took place in theater programs. Single sheer playbills became pamphlets that carried advertising. Theater managers even in those days were advertising minded to a high degree – were, in fact, proportionately the most active advertisers in any given community.” 26 Within this network,the theater relied upon the press for publicity, and the press depended on the theater for content and advertising. … Theaters placed advertisements in magazines, which in turn publicized their stars, while these same stars appeared in the advertisements in the magazines. … The success of the star system was built on the public visibility of actors and actresses in the press, and so they were not only fixtures on the stage, but appeared in the editorial pages and advertising sections of magazines. The theater, as well as being one of the major leaders in visual advertising, also lent its stars to the selling of mass-produced goods; the promotion of products by professional beauties and actresses became an important tool for advertisers from the 1880s onwards. 27