In January 1973, an article called “The day they banned advertising” appeared in Marketing. Written by John Straiton, then president and creative head of Ogilvy & Mather Toronto, it envisioned a society in which advertising was no longer allowed. It was an Orwellian world, to be sure. With no ads, brands ceased to have any meaning and all packaging took on a uniform grey colour. Product innovation stopped cold and media-from newspapers to the Mary Tyler Moore Show-were out of business. “The world without advertising is Russia,” Straiton concluded.
Straiton’s universe was make-believe, of course, but to readers of Marketing at the time, there was a smidgen of truth to it. In the 1970s, the ad industry found itself under fire. Advertising, which for decades was seen as a driver of economic progress in the 20th century-a way for people to learn about new goods that would improve their lives-was now characterized as something evil that used deceptive tactics to sell shoddy products and scam consumers. There was too much advertising, and it was driving people nuts.
At the heart of this was a movement called consumerism. Its most well-known proponent, Ralph Nader, successfully took on the U.S. automobile industry (namely GM) over the sorry safety standards of cars. Nader’s actions in the mid-1960s led to automobile safety legislation in the U.S. and caused governments to rethink their laissez-faire attitudes. From then on, governments would step in to protect consumers from big business.
In Canada, the star of consumerism was Ron Basford, federal minister of consumer and corporate affairs from 1968 to 1992 under Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals. Basford threatened not only to ban cigarette and liquor advertising, stop all advertising to children and curb contests used by marketers, he also wanted to clamp down on what he described as “advertising overkill.” In a speech to the American Marketing Association in September 1970 in Boston, he enraged Canadian agencies by demanding they reduce the amount of ads they ran, or else face legislation. “Consumers are up in arms about advertising and packaging and are vaguely disturbed about the emphasis on keeping up with the Joneses,” he said. “Advertising is too important [for the government] to ignore.”
Consumerism was seen “as the government coming to the rescue, if you will, of consumers who had been getting the wool pulled over their eyes for years by marketers,” recalls Colin Muncie, editor of Marketing from 1972 to 1992. “The government was coming out on the consumers’ side, and that scared a lot of people in the business because [in the 1950s and 1960s] there wasn’t much regulation.”
Basford wasn’t the only one in government to scrutinize advertising. In 1971, members of the Institute of Canadian Advertising appeared before the Ontario Human Rights Commission to counter claims of racial discrimination because of a lack of black, Indian and Asian actors in TV and print ads. And in 1979, the Liberal government struck an 11-woman committee to monitor “sexist” radio and TV ads. “The media continues to reflect attitudes and a bias which are throwbacks to an era that has all but vanished,” Jeanne Sauv, the minister of communications, noted at the time.
It didn’t help, perhaps, that the industry didn’t feel the need to be more progressive. Among the reasons cited by the ICA for not hiring minorities was that there were many “who are very poor, minorities who are obese, or freckle-faced or red-haired or bald.”
In the end, there would be some interference by government. Cigarette makers took their ads off TV to avoid a total government ban, and Quebec would halt all ads aimed at kids. But overall, marketing continued to evolve on its own and thrived during the golden age of television advertising.
The 1970s was the decade in which TV became the top ad medium. In 1969, advertisers in Canada spent $139.5 million in newspapers, magazines and farm publications compared to $134.8 million on television. By 1975, TV had leaped ahead to $261.2 million versus $239.7 million for print, and the top 25 advertisers allocated 60% of their ad budgets to TV.
The switch came as no surprise. People were addicted to television, and marketers merely followed them. In 1976, the average Canadian spent 22.5 hours per week in front of the tube, with just two major networks fighting for those eyes (CBC and CTV). In February of that year the top 10 programs each drew at least 2.4 million Canadian viewers, with the most popular show, All in the Family on CBC, attracting 3.5 million.
Then there were the big sporting spectacles like the 1972 Summit Series, the 1976 Canada Cup and the Montreal Olympics. Tilden Rent-A-Car became the first marketer to sign a sponsorship deal for the Summer Games in 1974, providing $335,000 in goods and services, including car rentals. By the time the Olympics rolled around, promotions were in full swing. Schenley Distilleries in Montreal launched a $25,000 ad campaign to promote a commemorative Olympic Whisky, RCA timed the launch of its ColorTrak TV and remote control system to coincide with the Games, while Dare cookies gave Canadians the chance to win one of seven “Olympic” Ford Pintos.
And while Canada’s record at the Montreal Games was disappointing (it failed to get a Gold), the same could not be said for the quality of the ads at that time. Some of the most memorable spots ever shown in Canada were from the 1970s, including: the “Only in Canada, eh? Pity” campaign launched in 1971 by J. Walter Thompson Montreal for Red Rose tea; Caramilk’s “Mona Lisa” commercial by DDB Toronto (1974); The “There are six million of us and we have to talk to each other” spot for Labatt 50 by BCP Publicit (1975), both criticized and lauded for its overtones of Quebec nationalism; the federal government’s seatbelt awareness campaign “What’s holding you back?” (which showed a pumpkin flying out of a car and smashing into a telephone pole) by Richmond Advertising Associates (1975); and the Captain High Liner “Ever been to sea, Billy?” ad by Ogilvy & Mather Toronto (1978). There was also what Muncie calls the campaign of the decade: the much-copied 1974 “Wear a Moustache” campaign for the Ontario Milk Marketing Board by Ogilvy & Mather Toronto.
As Muncie points out, TV ads were changing from the hard sell to storytelling. “Television used to be about repeating something so many times you just couldn’t forget the name. But these ads were very subtle sells.”
And while the largest agencies of the day included MacLaren, JWT and Vickers & Benson, smaller shops were also making a name for themselves. Among the most admired was Goodis Goldberg Soren, which created the “You’re a somebody” ads for Speedy Muffler and “Harvey’s makes your hamburger a beautiful thing” positioning for Harvey’s. “That was the first agency I ever heard described as a ‘hot shop,’ ” Muncie says.
It wasn’t just the agency’s work that got attention. It was also the commentary of Jerry Goodis, who bemoaned the standards of Canadian advertising. Among his favourite targets: the Man from Glad and an oft-running toothpaste commercial in which a little girl shouts “Look ma, no cavities.” “He started giving these speeches and getting a lot of ink because he was an ad guy criticizing the ad industry,” Muncie says. “He was undoubtedly the best known ad man in Canada.”
