Advertising/PR

Living so far away from my Grandma, I get the privilege to call her often and discuss how our lives are going. I tell her that I'm stressed to pieces, and she tells me that the retirement life is amazing. It's a balance. For this interview, we put our stress and paradise away to talk about her experiences with Advertising/PR. 

If you recall, Grandma came from a fairly low-income household with not a lot of resources. This meant Grandma wasn't able to travel often to see various billboards and she wasn't able to see many advertisements in magazines or newspapers. 

Whenever Grandma would travel to see her grandparents, she saw Burma Shave advertisements that read, "Treat your man..." and a mile later, there'd be another sign that read, "...To a good shave!" Grandma believes that everyone always looked for the Burma Shave advertisements when they were on the road; a testament to how popular they were.

http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/search?q=burma+shave

In her community, Grandma saw some advertisements for RC Cola and Orange Crush painted on the side of buildings. She described giant brick buildings that look professional from the front, but had a large advertisement painted on the side, with graffiti plastered on top of it. Grandma shares that she saw a large McDonald's sign promoting hamburgers for $0.10.

丨"Lexi, listen to me when I tell you the cheeseburgers you get at McDonald's now are way better than back then."

Grandma tells me that her and her siblings would always look out for Flowers Department Store ads and admire the dress selection they had, wishing they could own all of them. They would also look out for Woolworth's advertisements on glass windows, displaying their homemade cola and wide selection of goods. She tells me that Woolworth was an extremely popular department store that relied on advertisements for their business.

https://wooliesbuildings.wordpress.com/2018/07/21/basingstoke-store-107/

When Grandma was growing up, she vividly remembers Vietnam propaganda. Her family didn't have any strong opinions about the Vietnam War, so the propaganda didn't necessarily influence her one way or another. Grandma recalls various riots with Huey Long and the Black Panthers in Los Angeles in 1970, along with student protests at college campuses across the United States.

丨"I saw Flower Power, the protests, kids tearing up their draft cards, women burning bras, all of it."

https://chineseposters.net/posters/e15-838.php

Growing up, Grandma had to share her room with her younger sister. Together, they had a compilation of posters showing what all girls their age wanted to see... trendy celebrities and cute singers. Bobby Rydell, Bobby Vinton, Bobby Sherman were some of their favorites. She got some of the posters from Seventeen Magazine, where she also found "hippie" portraits.

Grandma didn't travel too often so she was unable to see airborne advertisements or "ads from the sky," but she did receive Montgomery Ward catalogs, in which her family used as toilet paper. I didn't bother to ask if she had a lot of Montgomery Ward items in her household. 

When asking her if newspaper and magazine ads have changed over the years, her reaction was immediate. She instantly shared that ads back then were incredibly simple, but now they don't get to the point quick enough. Grandma believes there were more advertisements in the papers than there are now. Grandma thinks that the advertisements in general are worse now than before because they're more degrading to women, which I can't disagree with.

丨"You have to understand... the ads back then geared more towards children with froot loop commercials, not nasty and mean politician commercials for them to look up to."

Grandma doesn't like advertisements now, she believes there's way too many of them. The advertisements are racier, more controversial, and cover way too many subjects than before, she argues. She often feels like she can't escape ads because they're so frequent and take over every part of her life. 

丨"I was watching Survivor the other night, and you know what? You know, I only got to see thirty minutes of the actual show...the rest of the time was commercials."

Hearing Grandma's stories helps me understand her upbringing and how that has shaped her as a person. I'm excited for our next interview.