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Hard Sell

Advertising, Affluence and Transatlantic Relations, c. 1951–69

Sean Nixon author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Manchester University Press

Published:25th Feb '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Hard Sell cover

Focusing on advertising’s relationship to the mass market housewife, this study shows how advertising promoted new standards of material comfort in the selling of a range of everyday consumer goods and, in the process, generalised a cross-class image of the ‘modern housewife’ across the new medium of television. Nixon shows how the practices through which advertising understood and represented the ‘modern housewife’ and domestic consumption were influenced by American advertising and commercial culture. In doing so, he challenges the way critics and historians have often understood Anglo-American relations, and shows how American influences across a range of areas of advertising practice were not only a source of inspiration, but were also adapted and reworked to speak more effectively to the British consumer.

Now available in paperback, Hard sell offers a major new analysis of the techniques of advertising in the decades of post-war affluence and advertising’s relationship to the social changes associated with growing prosperity.

‘Nixon’s Hard Sell is a valuable addition to the field of advertising history that brings a much-needed transatlantic analysis to the fore.’
Stephanie American, H-Diplo, October 2016

ISBN: 9781784991050

Dimensions: 234mm x 156mm x 12mm

Weight: 331g

240 pages