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.

About the Author
Sean Nixon is Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Essex

Reviews

'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

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Book Information
ISBN 9781784991050
Author Sean Nixon
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint Manchester University Press
Publisher Manchester University Press
Weight(grams) 331g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 12mm