Advertising during the Great Depression

This article is mostly about how internet advertising dollars might shift during an economic downturn. Along the way, the author makes some good points about advertising during the Great Depression (during which many advertising agencies prospered).

There was quite a number of examples of successful brands during the Great Depression, including Chevrolet cars, Camel cigarettes and Procter & Gamble (that gave birth to the phenomenon of soap opera during those hard times). And all of them relied heavily on advertising because they realized that they needed advertising to create and maintain brand loyalty. They simply pretended there was nothing particularly wrong with the economy and consumers still had money to spend - and this proved to be the right approach for them.

We should also keep in mind that advertising is one of the measures to demonstrate to consumers that the company is healthy. . . .

And this explains why those companies that survived the Great Depression and even grew during the recession period were not those that were wise about their budgets and cut on advertising as much as they could - instead those were the companies that continued to push their brands to consumers, thus making those consumers choose their brands over competitors (under-advertised) when making a decision what to spend their limited money on.