Edward Bernays is considered to be the father of public relations. He is famously known for his propaganda campaigns he created to entrance the average consumer in the United States. His first notable contribution to consumer society in America was his ad campaign aimed at the tobacco industry. Bernays found a way for smoking to appeal to every American. He created this idea that by women smoking, they were revolting against the societal norm that smoking is taboo. This revolutionized the smoking industry and profits began to soar. Bernays was a master at the presentation of products or a concept surrounding a product. He was able to anticipate what the average consumer would want versus what they need. The consumer in America drastically changed under the helm of Bernays.
Bernays was hired to create a new campaign that re-invented the way people viewed Betty Crocker cake Mix. Bernays used psychoanalysis to create the perfect advertisement around this product. The purpose of Bernays propaganda was to capitalize on people’s unconscious desires through mass produced goods. The commercial starts out with what sounds like a housewife scolding her son for touching the fresh cake she just made. The boy then says he cannot resist because the cake is so fluffy and delicious. The narrator for the commercial then starts to talk about the quality ingredients in the cake mix, finally referring to the addition of two eggs to make the perfect cake. By adding your eggs, the cake is sure to taste fresher and rise higher then dried egg whites like other cake mixes. The black and white commercial does a good job of portraying the cake at different angles. It even uses a ruler to show how high the cake rose after it was cooked. Visual representation in this commercial is important because there is no color. So you have to appeal to your audience in some way.
The sign in this add is the Betty Crocker cake mix which is a consumer product made to be effortless for the average American housewife in the 50’s. The signifier in this ad could be the ease presented to the house wives by this pre-made cake mix. Another sign could be the “just add eggs” slogan Betty Crocker used in this advertisement. The signifier or meaning behind the just add eggs could be that by her adding eggs, she is still doing her duty to make her family food and that the entire cake is not just processed food. The egg could also figuratively represent the housewife giving her “egg” to the family. Finally, I think important to pay attention to in this commercial is the setting which is in the home, and the characters. We only see a little boy and have the voice of the mother narrated. This product is meant to appeal to a certain audience, and that is the housewife in 1950’s America.
This add is effective in its display of the product. More people found this product to be appealing because the average house wife who may have had new responsibilities due to the war may not have been able to spend time making a full meal for the family. With the addition of adding your own eggs she could find some solace in the fact that she cooked part of it on her own. She did not abandon her family by relying on processed baked good products.
I think it is important to note that this commercial aired during the 50’s. This is what appealed to the average citizen during this time. A commercial like this would still be popular today, but I believe for different reasons. Now, I think the average American would take the gender out of the commercial, and would see it as a convenience food just like all the other fast foods we have in America.
