Bernard Shaw and Modern Advertising

by Christopher Wixson

  Paralleling concerns expressed early on in his career over the ways in which commercialism was dangerously infusing theatrical practice, Shaw here recounts his discovery upon becoming a drama critic of a seamier underside to this relationship between trade and literature, what he calls “a secret alliance between the two forces” perpetrated by “unashamed and inveterate cadgers” in which publicity was obtained through an ersatz spoils system. Writers would leverage their media access to obtain perks (hotel rooms, meals, theater tickets, shop discounts, honoraria, etc.); in return, vendors, manufacturers, and producers received “puffs” (sly product placement and endorsement) in published journalism of various genres. For his part, Shaw claims he “could not bring [himself] to practice it or to regard it otherwise than as corrupt and personally dishonorable.” By the end of the 1920s, he felt that this relationship has become legitimated: “Now that the art of selling has so much more importance than the routine of production, it is a matter of course for commercial firms to employ the best available artistic and literary talent to advertise their wares and services.” Nothing wrong there, until the struggle for promotional supremacy devolves to a competition to bias the authorities rather than the consumer. He uses the analogy of a legal dispute between Harrods and Selfridges, for which each attempts to employ the most eloquent and persuasive attorney as opposed to each striving to curry favor with the judge and jury. Applied to theater, Shaw imagines a scenario in which he suggests to critics that, “in the event of their notices of [his] play being sufficiently flattering to be usefully quoted as advertisements,” they would each receive £500 from the playwright for the copyright. For him, anyone who writes “in a judicial capacity” (which includes “all authors whose work is of sufficient weight and depth to have a formative effect on the public mind”) is honor bound to remain aloof from the marketplace:To propose such a transaction to Mr. H. G. Wells is like offering the Archbishop of Canterbury a handsome cheque for dropping a recommendation of somebody’s soap or shoes into his next sermon. For such an author to accept payment from a commercial enterprise for using his influence to induce the public to buy its wares would be to sin against the Holy Ghost. 31

  Despite their respective stances, Bennett , Wells , and Shaw, as Jackson Lears observes,were in fundamental sympathy with modernizing tendencies: the hegemony of technical expertise and bureaucratic organization, the mass production and marketing of consumer goods (though Shaw and Wells might have entered a few Fabian quibbles about ownership of the means of production or inequalities of distribution). 32

  All three had ambivalent views on commodity culture, well aware that it was often fraudulent, “desultory and possibly detrimental to society’s progress; yet [at the same time potentially] a means of achieving social change and autonomy.” 33 Among many of that generation, there existed too a progressive faith in advertisement, that it could be more than merely the “spark plug of the total industrial machine” that subjected citizens to Private Enterprise. 34 In 1914, for instance, Wells’s and Shaw’s fellow Fabian Sidney Webb argued for “the bringing of [advertising] under Democratic public control” and refashioned into an agent of the commonweal, animated by altruism, wholly engaged in public service rather than serving the ruthless appetite of capitalism. 35 Fulfilling its quid pro quo with Harrods , Shaw’s refusal letter self-sculpts the author in similar terms, as having prophet rather than profit motives.

  As Archibald Henderson put it,To those who understand Shaw, the popular conception of him as merely a super-clever journalist who could always make “the front page” is offensive and disgusting [because] he had the profoundest respect and jealousy for the sanctity of the written word, and regarded his function as writer as a high public responsibility [anathema to selling] his name, to [bartering] his influence for trade or commerce or propaganda. 36

  Ironically enough, though, Shaw’s differentiation of artistic language and commercial copy in his Harrods response echoes the rationalizations of many stakeholders in the health industry; pharmaceutical companies, doctors, and proprietary medicine manufacturers also draped their marketplace maneuvers with the ideology of public interest and consumer protection in the early years of the twentieth century when their advertising techniques had come under heavy fire. The position was also one Shaw had surely seen before. In Ireland, throughout the second half of the nineteenth century,“advertising papers,” gratis and paid for, both took advertisements and advertised themselves as vehicles for commercial messages. … Advertising was vital to Irish newspapers long before the Free State and its champions … claimed that it was spur to economic renewal. … Advertisers, like philanthropic investors in home industries, claimed that their motivations went beyond mere money grubbing and, indeed, served a decidedly higher purpose in sponsoring the development of the nation. 37

  Ultimately, Harrods printed all three responses, “by permission and without comment” from the authors, in the March 3rd issue of the Observer to coincide with the annual British Industries Fair. The London Times printed only Wells’s and Bennett’s letters, refusing Shaw’s because of the reference to the Holy Ghost. The letters also ran as a series of full-page New York Times ads in March of 1929, with Bennett’s ad as the first on the 13th followed by Wells’s on the 14th and Shaw’s the last on the 15th. 38 The series made a considerable impression, not so much for the fact that noted authors contributed copy (which had been done before) but more for the unusual form the copy took (e.g. letters refusing to provide copy). For example, a contemporary Advertiser’s Weekly cartoon by W. A. Mann envisions all three authors as school children (see Fig. 4.1). Wells and Bennett cling to the black skirts of the very Victorian-looking “Mother Public Opinion,” the latter entranced by the coin held up by Sir Woodman Burbidge , managing director of Harrods . Standing behind him, Shaw puckishly prepares to pour a pitcher of water into Woodman’s top hat. The caption reads, “Uncle Woodman finds Arnold, Herbert, and Bernard untippable, but Mother Public Opinion thinks he’s such a kind gentleman, nevertheless.” 39

  Fig. 4.1Cartoon, Advertiser’s Weekly (March 15, 1929), p. 441

  One of the unique footnotes to this series was the amount of paratextual apparatus it generated that blurred the lines between commerce and journalism since excerpts from the letters were printed again and again in feature pieces on the campaign that appeared in periodicals of various kinds. Trade journals from both sides of the Atlantic were quick to air their own perspectives while also making space in their pages for those of numerous professionals. On March 21, Printers’ Ink , a New York-based weekly and the industry’s leading trade publication, noted that “many publishers, advertising men, and, it is presumed, members of the general public, wondered and talked about the recent full-page advertisements of Harrods, London department store, in the New York Times .” 40 Appearing in the same issue of the New York Times that ran Shaw’s ad, an op-ed entitled “Ingenious Advertising” conveyed the saga of how the “suspiciously long letters of refusal … were seized upon by Harrods as making a really effective form of advertising”:To be able to print pictures of eminent authors rejecting the proffered gold was almost better than to have secured their acceptance. It certainly is a clever idea which works as well backward as forward, and turns out a success whether its fundamental proposal is quietly complied with or indignantly spurned. 41

  The piece went on to recognize the invaluable publicity also generated for the authors but praised especially the “inescapable” Shaw who “in this lofty pose [of separating art and commerce] easily surpassed both Bennett and Wells ”: “It has been said that it is impossible to place [Shaw] in a position, no matter how apparently awkward, out of which he is not able to extract a glorious self-advertisement.” A reference made near the editorial’s conclusion to the National University of Dublin’s recent overwhelming vote against bestowing an honorary degree on Shaw reiterates the particular fear raised by one speaker at the hearing that Shaw would “refuse the honor or make it a subject for self-a
dvertisement.” 42 In both cases, the author suggested, “whether he got it or lost it all would be fish that came to his net.” While it would seem that the writers’ resistance was completely neutered with the store’s choice to print, American publishing magnate Henry Robinson Luce observed cheekily that the series “gave Harrods a most excellent advertisement and furnished the three consecrated prophets with much incidental publicity.” 43 Again, Shaw’s letter was deemed the most proficient at doing so; Printers’ Ink pointed out that Shaw, “that perennial bad boy of Europe,” proved the most adept, managing to sink a barb into both Harrods (for making the offer) and Wells (as the only author’s name Shaw used), so that the playwright “again had the last word in their perennial debates.” 44 In any case, responses affirmed the cleverness of, as Advertiser’s Weekly put it, “so emphatic an endorsement of the three writers’ refusals to accept the invitation” and proffered “general praise for Messrs. Harrods’ stage-management.” 45

  In trade periodicals, the campaign also became a context within which the desirability of “celebrated men of letters [being] employed to write advertisements” 46 could be discussed, and many “commentators [were] quick to realize and to point out a distinction between copywriting as such and the ‘copywriting’ of the celebrity.” 47 Printed Salesmanship, a monthly Chicago-based trade journal “for those who sell, produce, and use printing for sales purposes,” published a feature piece on the campaign in May of 1929, entitled “Harrods of London Score the Biggest Scoop in Advertising History .” F. McVoy , its author, quoted the majority of Shaw’s letter and all of Wells’s and Bennett’s , indicating it “a very debatable point whether great authors would be able to write advertisements that would actually sell goods.” 48 Rather than create copy, McVoy suggests, literary writers ought merely to endorse products. A copywriter who wrote to the London-based Advertiser’s Weekly in response to the Harrods campaign made the same case that “literary men” have not yet had sufficient training to write copy since “an advertisement to be effective must interest by matter and not by manner.” As such, he recommends they “dig deep into sales problems, and learn the angle of the appeal before their copy can serve.” 49 Taking a slightly different tack, George Rowell , in his famous Printers’ Ink column “The Little Schoolmaster’s Classroom,” reproduced excerpts from all three letters and lauded Harrods for its inventiveness yet felt that the three authors “deserve sympathy”:But for the sad accident that they were born in the British Isles they might quite easily lend their pens to the cause of advertising at a great many dollars per word and not even be forced to the trouble of writing their own testimonials. … [Plus,] a number of well-known American writers have quite legitimately lent their pens to commerce with no loss of prestige or apparent diminution of fame. Can it be that the three eminent Englishmen are perhaps taking themselves and their calling a bit too seriously? 50

  Stoking the debate, Advertiser’s Weekly, self-styled the “organ of British advertising,” invited a variety of prominent writers (including Storm Jameson and J. B. Priestley), public figures, and advertising professionals to share their views, finding only one—an Anglican reverend—who supported the writing of advertisements by established authors. Many contributors echo points made by Wells and Shaw concerning conflicted loyalties and the challenges posed by the commercial arrangement to honesty and intellectual freedom. C. Burnley-Jones , an advertising executive, conceded that Wells , Bennett , and Shaw “are provocative personalities who appeal to the public apart from their writings[, giving] them special value as possible copywriters.” 51 To him, Shaw was “the greatest master of personal publicity now living,” although “the only way to get [him] to write a good piece of copy for Harrods would be to set him writing on Selfridges.” In the end, though, Burnley-Jones affirms Shaw’s reasoning:If Mr. Shaw descended from the height on which he saw the vision of man and superman to hand out huckstering patter in the market place – even at such a splendid stall as Harrods – he would certainly forfeit his authority as a prophet of our time, and I, for one, would feel that something sacred was smashed.

  Other correspondents made the claim that authors were unskilled in the practice of copywriting: “the psychology and viewpoint of such men are not suited for the commercial business of advertising which I interpret as only another definition of printed salesmanship.” 52 As such, the authors’ participation was deemed unfair to professional copywriters: “Any piece of craftsmanship should succeed or fail by its own intrinsic merits without being bolstered up by a reputation won in other fields.” 53 H. Stuart Menzies , longtime copywriter for the Fortnum and Mason catalogue, playfully queried, “What great firm of publishers will now be enterprising enough to write a number of distinguished advertising men, such as myself, asking us to write best sellers to the public?” 54 With the advent of personality testimonial, copywriters found themselves facing total effacement behind product and celebrity. As Lears puts it, in response, “yearnings for autonomy surfaced in the trade press as early as the 1920s, when copywriters demanded the right to sign their ads – and agency executives indignantly refused, observing that the ad was meant to represent the client’s ‘personality ,’ not the copywriter’s.” 55

  Even Shaw, despite allegedly having worked himself as a copywriter early in his career, exhorted the “commercial houses [to continue to] engage skilled but nameless scribes … to write their advertisements.” 56 The conversation around the campaign thus provided an opportunity for industry scribes to surrender their anonymity, define their craft separately from the authors’, and affirm themselves publicly as artisans within the business of commerce. In 1911, a Printers’ Ink piece by James C. Moffett addressed the issue of signed advertisements, citing a trend in both British and American journals, magazines, and reviews of including signatures from and even biographical blurbs about their copywriters. Moffett draws a contrast between literary authors and copywriters, indicating that, in the past, using the names of contributors such as “Dickens or Thackeray … was done because of its advertising value to the magazines [in that they] attracted attention to their publications.” Even though “no editor [can] be made to understand how [disclosing the name] of an unknown writer would increase the circulation,” the piece nonetheless advocates an “increase in the numbers of signed advertisements [because it] may do much to strengthen the confidence of the public in advertising.” 57 Just as the industry explores how personalizing copy can help authenticate its appeal, copywriters, like the High Modernists, seized upon the turn towards personality marketing to contrive a distinct professional identity.

  On the other hand, some proclaimed much overlap between the two professions, with again Shaw creeping into the discussion. A 1920 anthology entitled The Literature of Business excerpts a speech given in 1916 by John B. Obdycke that eventually formed the basis two years later for a book entitled Advertising and Selling Practice:Ours is a tabloid time [in which] the similarity between the English of Literature and the English of Advertising and Selling is startlingly true. … The spirit of an age was never more highly reflected in its expression than at present. Wilde, Bennett , Galsworthy, Shaw, Chesterton , O. Henry – who are these but advertisers and sellers? … All of these writers are so electrifying that one cannot tell for the life of him whether he would rather write advertising as Shaw writes literature, or literature as Shaw writes advertising! 58

  E. McKenna , in a 1920 Printers’ Ink essay goes even further, claiming, “the advertiser may usefully take a leaf from the playwrights notebook” and citing Shaw as the only model. Conspicuously appropriating the concept of a “drama of ideas” in his title (“The Dramatization of Advertising Ideas”), he introduces his central thesis with an example:It is perhaps not generally known that George Bernard Shaw earned his first money by writing patent medicine advertisements. These compositions are probably not to be found now, but if they could be, it is possible that it could be shown that young Mr. Shaw dramatized his appeal and did it successfully. 5
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  McKenna goes on to argue that, like playwrights, “the organization of ideas and their shaping toward a climax … is the essential business of” the copywriter. 60 Nevertheless, the distinction remains that, although “modern copywriting engages in the same work of the modernist author,” it does so “without asserting authorship of any kind,” 61 and Advertiser’s Weekly was rightly skeptical Harrods would have been successful in convincing Wells , Shaw, and Bennett to participate had the store “exercised the superhuman self-denial of publishing their ‘copy’ as anonymously as that of their own copywriters.” 62 Neither Harrods nor the authors would be much interested in such self-effacement that effectively nullifies the publicity value for both.

  Another oddity of the campaign was pointed out by Printers’ Ink : “Why was a typically British store using large space in New York City?” 63 In response to a “flood of American cables asking whether Harrods is opening a New York shop,” Charles Wildes maintained there was no intention to do so but that the “New York campaign was planned in the hope that American excitement over so unusual a testimonial campaign would reverberate [in Britain] and also appeal to American tourists.” 64 The campaign did indeed catch the attention of American agencies, used to viewing British advertising as perpetually lagging behind, and they were particularly struck by the creation of a new promotional subgenre. According to Wildes , Harrods’ risk in “printing the pictures [and letters] of these eminent authors who rejected the gold which had been offered them” created “not testimonial copy but something which looked like it.” As such, the invention of this “new type of near-testimonial, or something, was handed to the advertising men for discussion.” 65 In Time , a few weeks later, Luce noted that the “ingenious” campaign which made “three excellent testimonials out of three refusals to give testimonials [commanded] the instant admiration of U.S. advertising men, to whom British advertising is often a source of amusement.” 66 He went on to state that the ads were “posted on the bulletin board” at the J. Walter Thompson Co., an industry powerhouse since the turn of the century and pioneer in the modern practices of celebrity-based copy and trademark branding.