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2000 Newsletter Archive
Annual Meeting Roundtable Presentations
Art Ponder
Archivist and Systems Analyst
DaimlerChrysler Corp.
My name is Art Ponder and I work as an archivist and
systems analyst at the DaimlerChrysler Corporate Historical Collection, in
Detroit, Michigan.
The Corporate Historical Collection assists the Corporation
in many areas including marketing. In addition, we work closely with the
advertising agencies supplying materials, providing research and reviewing
advertising.
I was asked to speak about our interaction with our
research and development departments. We do receive requests from various
departments for information and photographs. In most instances, we do not know
if the information will be used for R&D.
In 1998, we worked with several agencies on Jeep
advertising and promotions including Camp Jeep. The advertising agencies want
older or ”retro” materials to emphasize the Jeep heritage. The military history
and early Jeep photographs are often used as –bridges” to current models. With
Jeep advertising, the Jeep account representatives will often contact us
directly, as we have become familiar with each other. In other cases, someone
from Marketing will contact us and request our assistance.
Another major campaign we worked on in 1998 was for the
introduction of the Chrysler 300M. How many of you have heard the nickname –The
Beautiful Brute”? Does anyone remember the slogan –America's Most Powerful
Car”? Has anyone driven a Chrysler 300C? One of the challenges for this campaign
was to inform potential buyers of the Chrysler 300 image, a powerful,
performance automobile. The C300, the first of the 300 series, utilized the 331
cubic inch hemi engine, which had helped to account for Chrysler's success in
racing. According to one retiree, who worked with marketing, the goal of the 300
series was to attract a new generation of buyers for Chrysler cars. According
to Robert C. Ackerson, in his book Chrysler 300: America's most powerful car,
Chief Engineer Bob Roger was receiving letters from Chrysler fans asking for a
high performance car, prior to the 1955 models. The 300 was a performance car.
Each succeeding year the engines got larger and more powerful. The last
Chrysler 300-letter series car appeared in 1965 and the last of the original
300s were built in 1971. A revival of the 300 occurred in 1979, on the downsized
Cordoba platform.
Since the last of the original 300s was built in 1971, many
potential buyers may be unaware of the 300' history. The agencies we worked with
had to familiarize themselves with the 300s and how they had been marketed in
the past. There were actually two campaigns: one for the U.S. market and
another for the International market, each with a different focus. The U.S.
campaign looked for information to explore the performance aspect of the 300M,
while the international campaign focused on the 300M as a driving machine. The
300M was also a slight departure from the 300 image À this car used front wheel
drive and was a four door sedan. The earlier 300 letter series cars were two
door hardtops or convertibles but the two-door automobile has lost its appeal in
recent years.
The agencies especially wanted film or video clips for
television commercials. The video gets our attention and the time trial on the
beach recalls the days of auto racing, which enhances the performance image.
Other ads capitalize on nostalgia, which may bring back memories from our past
To summarize, we have supported and continue to support
various activities within the Corporation. We interact with advertising
agencies, both directly and indirectly, as well as our Marketing Department. We
provide research, information and photographs, which may or may not be used, for
R&D purposes. Our advertising agencies and Marketing Departments perform the
research to determine how they will market a product. The Corporate Historical
Collection provides basic product information, photographs and other materials
for their use.
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NOSTALGIA IN ADVERTISING: THE MILLENNIUM AND MIDDLE AGE
COLLIDE
Ellen Gartrell
Archivist
Duke University
As the 1990s have progressed, and especially as 1999 draws
to a close, many of us archivists already may have had our fill of –millennium
fever.” I'd be surprised if any one among us has not been asked to look back
into our collections to find out what The Corporation was doing 100 years ago.
The purposes for these fin-de-siecle historical requests may include creation of
an anniversary publication or display, or very likely, something to do with
marketing or advertising.
I will speak about what I have learned about nostalgia in
advertising, drawing on eleven years of experience at Duke University's John W.
Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History and a variety of
printed sources I think the first query that came to me that specifically got me
thinking about nostalgia in advertising was about two years ago, when a
journalist wanted to know whether the nostalgia campaigns and the pre-millennium
fever that appear in some advertising today had had a parallel as the 19th
century gave way to the 20th. A quick literature search did not yield an answer,
so I spent an interesting hour flipping through the ads in several prominent
general interest magazines of the late 1890s and especially 1899-1900. It was
hardly a scientific sample, but I saw not a single ad from the turn of the 20th
century that made explicit reference to the dawning of a new era. Nor was there
any evidence of harking back to –the good old days.”
Some advertising of the late 19th century did use
historical references, employing images of ancient Egypt or Rome or events in
American history. The use of such images, though, was more to provide a
familiar frame of reference to an educated reader than to evoke what we would
call nostalgic feelings in a prospective purchaser.
A number of factors influenced the relative lack of
historical themes in late 19th century ads. The advertising industry itself was
in its infancy, its techniques only beginning to take shape. Research on what
would move consumers to buy, for example, was still several decades in the
future. Perhaps more important, the late 19th century was a time of dramatic
technological developments, and people generally were looking forward, not back.
A common advertising icon of the late 1880s-1890s was the Brooklyn Bridge, a
tremendous engineering feat of its time. The bridge appeared on trade cards to
advertise a remarkable range of products having no connection to bridges or
engineering or New York. Purveyors of soap and confections and other commodities
only desired to associate their goods with progress, technology, and the future.
But today, as we prepare to enter another new century, we
are, in the words of one writer, –awash in nostalgia.” This trend appears to
have begun in the 1980s, when marketing campaigns began to employ 1960s music.
The trend accelerated rapidly in the 1990s. Commentators tend to agree on
several factors that help account for it:
- It is the end of both another century and a millennium;
- Though times are prosperous, the pace of change is
stressful, even frightening to many;
- The baby boomers are aging, entering a phase of life
when looking back is natural;
- The boomers are a huge demographic bulge, at the peak of
their earning power
- Young people have glommed on to old styles and images,
creating a market for "retro chic"
Researchers long have recognized that a –fin de siecle
effect” tends to promote nostalgia, defined as –an emotional state in which an
individual yearns for an idealized or sanitized version of an earlier time
period.” A new century seems to have a powerful effect on people's sense of the
meaning of the past and the future. It can provoke excitement and also anxiety.
In the view of many observers, the awesomeness of the millennial change is
heightened by the stresses of our fast-paced modern life. Researchers cite the
information glut, technology, and the depersonalization of modern business
enterprises, as factors.
And the boomers. Some of the huge population born between
1945 and 1960 already have empty nests and have amassed considerable disposable
income. Some perhaps feel that more of life's joys lie in their past than in the
future. Technologies have impinged on boomer lives and disrupted careers and
expectations, with mixed results. There is a widespread perception that boomers
are insecure--in need of comfort foods on the one hand and sporty, youthful cars
on the other…and that they are searching for substance, authenticity, and value
for money. Insofar as these notions are true, boomers are a huge natural
audience for retromarketing.
But what about the younger generations, dubbed X and Y, who
didn't grow up with
Quisp or Thunderbirds? Some researchers suggest that the
1990s lack a distinctiveness of their own, prompting borrowing of earlier trends
and fads by youth, who create a campy –retro chic” image all their own. Their
images of a time they never lived through are shaped by TV reruns--those
caricatures of the 'real 1950s” that they see on –Nick at Night.”
What has been the nature of the nostalgia boom in
advertising and what effect has it had on archives?
In the course of preparing this paper, I identified over
100 products or brands that have used one form or another of retromarketing in
the 1990s. I am sure this list is far from complete, but it does include a
large number of familiar names: Old Navy stores, Planter's Peanuts, Borden's,
and Ford are a few. Marketers are attempting to capitalize on the research that
shows that middle aged consumers –need some warm fuzzies from our past.”
Marketing targeted at this group is influenced by research that shows that 55%
of Americans believe that the past was a better time than today, whereas in
1974, 54% reported that there was –no time better than the present.” Most of
the 55% who had fond memories of the past were reminiscing about the 1950s and
60s.
Not surprisingly, therefore, a great deal of today's retro
advertising incorporates that mid-century period, when baby boomers were young
and idealistic, times were prosperous: when we drank our Cokes from green
contour bottles and drove VW Beetles. As one marketing executive said,
–Anything that brings me back to 1967 is gonna give me a good feeling. That's
the year I got my driver's license, I was thinking about girls....” In 1997
Quaker Oats staged a contest to find a new child--a new Mikey--to promote Life
cereal. Why? Because –the minute you mention the [1960s] Mikey campaign in
focus groups, you get word-for-word reenactments of the commercials and
identification of the brand.” Similarly, with Volkswagen, when the –familiar
bubble shape . . . makes people smile as it skitters by, the New Beetle offers a
pull that is purely emotional.”
Advertisers are tugging at our heartstrings to get us to
loosen our purse strings--a well-understood technique in advertising.
Ford and its advertising agency J. Walter Thompson Company
have made extensive use of the JWT Archives at Duke for several
nostalgia-related projects. The thirtieth anniversary of the Mustang in 1995
prompted a flurry of interest; some TV commercials showed original Mustang
models morphing into new ones. JWT also created an elaborate Mustang web site
for Ford, drawing heavily on the print ad archives at Duke. Such a web site
leverages the brand equity. As one auto analyst wrote about tapping a brand's
legend, –It's not just how many you sell, it's how many people think about you.”
Absence of archives has created examples of headaches for marketers--retro or
otherwise. The fellows who bought the rights to the defunct Canadian Lola
drink, for example, found that the formula had been lost, so they had to
recreate it.
In sum, nostalgia is one fairly prominent theme in
advertising of the 1990s. Does it work? It depends whom you ask. The success
of retro-cable venture TV Land, and the continuing employment of real or fake
historical icons in commercials, print ads, and billboards suggests that
something is working. Marketers express a variety of concerns, though. Some
scoffers criticize the advertising industry for losing its creative drive and
relying on –derivative behavior.” A fairly frequent concern is that nostalgia
ads most often target a limited, albeit large, population segment by focusing on
baby boomers. Is it a turnoff for the young, who might see it as stale or
boring--or by not understanding the references at all, lose interest? One
response to that has been to use old or faked old images in kitschy ways when
targeting younger audiences. Even lacking specific historical knowledge or
personal experience, they will enjoy the effect.
Does nostalgia oversimplify history, skimming over the
negatives in the effort to persuade consumers to buy? It does, of course--in
ads and other applications. Some writers note that nostalgia harks back to
periods of racism or sexism that will alienate some viewers. Research is not yet
conclusive on the overall sales results of nostalgic-themed advertising.
A number of commentators have tried to predict the future
of nostalgia-based advertising. Sociologist Seymour Levantman expects the trend
to grow as long as the boomers still make up a large demographic segment of the
population. Others expect nostalgia to be used ever more creatively, to reach a
broader range of consumers. –Expect to see more decades colliding,” says one
writer, who suggests that ads will be influenced by the restless individuality
of the young and the example set by the cut-and-paste creations of hip hop
artists. We'll all have to wait a few years to see what happens.
*For a complete version of this presentation, please
contact Ellen Gartrell at Duke University
ellen.gartrell@duke.edu.
* For more information about the Hartman Center and its
resources, please see the Center's website at
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/hartman/]
to top of 2000
Challenges in the Archives
By Peter N. Stearns
Provost, George Mason University and Professor of History
As a partial outsider À a researcher who has used business
archives here and in Europe with great profit to my historical work À the
opportunities but also the responsibilities in maintaining business archives
strike me as extremely important.
The issue of organizational memory looms large, admitting
that at one level the needs are obvious. Organizations must have
well-structured, accurate and accessible records of past policies, to guide
future decisions and to contribute to a sense of identity and cohesion. Needs
here have increased in recent decades not only because of the heightened pace of
change, but also because of the growing rates of executive arrival and
departure. As recently as the 1960s, far more top offices in organizations were
filled by promotions from within than is now the case. The twin overs À turnover
and takeover À make it far harder for current managers to know what a company
was about even in the quite recent past. The result can be unnecessary errors À
mistakes once made are simply repeated, because the precedent is unavailable;
needless duplication, with constructive policies that might still apply simply
forgotten; and a great deal of reinventing the wheel. One reason for the
recurrent managerial faddism of contemporary organizations involves the simple
neglect of earlier procedures which, perhaps under another, less flashy name,
are mainly being revived amid the drums and trumpets of the latest guru.
Organizational records, and the good sense to use them actively, assure against
a number of errors and delusions.
But archives and their keepers must also remain in touch
with larger disciplinary issues. Here I mean more than the latest techniques of
cataloguing and digitalizing, significant as these may be. I also mean contact
with responsible, critical scholarship in organizational history.
Organizations often, quite understandably, seek to draw
from the records of their past a congratulatory self-portrait. Archives are
combed for previous successes, as a basis for advertising or the kind of slick
company history that can be handed out at shareholder meetings or used for
fundraising. Well and good: kept within bounds, this is an appropriate as well
as inevitable use of archives. (The impulse, in fairness, is also encouraged by
a legal and public opinion climate too often ready to assume that past mistakes,
once admitted, require ongoing opprobrium, which reinforces timidity in probing
the full organizational record.)
Current enthusiasms for selective nostalgia now add to the
desire to mine archives both selectively and superficially. It's obvious that,
with an ageing baby boom generation and amid a number of anxieties about the
present that are surprising given peace and prosperity, the impulse to reinvent
the '50s or the '70s runs strong. I stress reinvent: nobody (or almost nobody;
I'm not sure about Pat Buchanan) wants to revive McCarthyism or the blatant
racism of the '50s, but rather its imagined family values. We want elements of
the past, sugarcoated at that. And again, no problem up to a point. The mood
allows businesses to seek past advertising symbols from their archives, to play
on myths or memories of warmer childhoods, tighter families, bigger cars.
What's happening here involves uncertainties resulting from
the end of the Cold War À a change that has yielded fewer tensions but also less
clear targets for national identity À along with worries about the pace of
technological change and the question of which controls what, man or machine.
Add to this the pervasive (and disputable, by the way) sense of moral or
character decline, and the desire to paint a brighter picture of the past can
become almost overwhelming.
The result is a welcome spur to interest in archives of
various sorts, but some obvious dangers as well. Whether for organizational
self-promotion or nostalgia, highly selective uses of archives to create a past
without warts or problems is extremely deluding and dangerous. Past problems and
failures are at least as illuminating as achievements and a rosy glow. Here is
where the link between archivists and other kinds of historians concerned with
the organizational past becomes vital. Collectively, we must encourage
organizational leaders to face the past as honestly and rigorously as (we hope)
they intend to face the future À indeed, the two faces are intimately linked.
The desire of the archivist for the whole record, and of the historian for
interaction with the whole record, are essential counterweights to excessive
selectivity. Together, we must seek to promote a more frequent, analytical and
sophisticated use of a vital source of organizational planning and evaluation.
to top of 2000
From the Chair
Katie Dishman, Archivist/Research Librarian, Chicago
Mercantile Exchange
Greetings,
First, I'd like to say thanks to Cheryl Chouiniere, Eleanor
Fye, and Steve Hausfeld for all their efforts to produce SAA's Business Section
Newsletter. It's always a great resource for learning about past and future
meetings, the activities at other corporate archives, and the personal archival
experiences for edification. We are anticipating putting an electronic version
of our newsletter out later this year. You can read more about the Business
Archives Section's web page from Eleanor elsewhere in this newsletter.
Business Section Roundtables
I'd like to thank those who attended the last section
roundtable, held at the Pittsburgh Hilton and Towers, and hope that you found it
enlightening. The three speakers, Ellen Gartrell from the John W. Hartman Center
for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University; Art Ponder of the
DaimlerChrysler Archives; and Dr. Peter Stearns, Dean of the College of
Humanities and Social Sciences from Carnegie Mellon University, discussed the
increased use of archival imagery in advertising, particularly in light of the
upcoming century/millennium. After the interesting presentations, we attended
church. We probably would have been thrown out, but fortunately, it had been
converted into a brew pub, and renamed the Church Brew Works. Many thanks to the
organizations that contributed money to hold the event: IBM, Biltmore Company,
Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Kraft Foods, and the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Although it seems a long way away, August will be here
before we know it. Vice chair Craig St. Clair is planning a good session for
this year's meeting in Denver. As in the past, we will have a Business Section
event with a topical presentation followed by a social at a bar/restaurant.
This will be held on Wednesday, August 30. More information will be in the
summer newsletter.
Finally, as we enter into this new century and millennium, I
fervently hope more corporations realize the need to preserve the past and will
implement archival programs.
If you would like to contact me or submit something to the
co-editors for inclusion in the newsletter, see the Leadership List in this
issue. Thanks.
Member Updates
Peter J. Bahra has joined American
International Group,
Inc. as Records Administrator in the Office of the President. He comes to AIG
from the
Cincinnati Museum Center in Cincinnati, OH, where he was Photograph Curator for
over
ten years. He has a Masters of Arts in Historic Administration from Eastern Illinois
University.
Susan Box, Corporate Archivist
for American International
Group, Inc in New York City, was recently guest lecturer for Dr. David Gracy's
Archives
Management class at the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School of Library
and Information
Science. It was the first time a practicing business archivist had lectured the
three hour
class attended by 50 graduate students. In addition, she was a guest at the Student
Chapter Meeting of the Society of
American Archivists where a lively
discussion took place
about working in the corporate environment.
In August William Casari began a new position as Forbes
Archivist at Forbes Magazine in New York City. His duties at Forbes Magazine
will include working directly with the Forbes family and the archival
collections of the company as part of the Curatorial Department. Casari
previously worked as a project archivist at American International Group in New
York City.
Thomas P. Heard has joined American International Group,
Inc. as Archivist in the AIGArchives Department. His primary responsibilities
will be for the audio/visual collections. He comes to AIG from the National
Canal Museum in Easton, PA, where he was Collections Manager for five years.
Heard previously worked for the National Park Service and Boston Public Library.
He has a Masters of Arts in History from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and
attended the Modern Archives Institute in Washington, DC.
Leslie Wagner has been hired as Archivist for Methodist
Hospitals of Dallas (MHD) in Texas. Wagner originally worked as secretary for
Methodist Hospitals, however was promoted after submitting a proposal for the
establishment of a formal archival program. Her responsibilities include the
accession and processing of records, initiation of an oral history program, and
oversight of the compilation of a written history in preparation for MHD's 75th
anniversary in 2002. A new member of SAA and the Business Archives Section,
Wagner has an MA in History from the University of Texas at Arlington in Texas.
She has also recently completed and been awarded archival certification from the
same institution.
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