Networks of Creative Persuasion conference

This conference will explore the networks of creative and intellectual labor in American advertising and marketing, broadly defined, from the colonial period through the twentieth century. It aims to understand the variety of creators and producers who contributed to persuasion in American commerce and their connections to advertising agencies. We ask: In what ways did these hidden networks of persuasion shape American business and culture?

The registration fee includes breakfast, lunch, and an after conference reception.

While much scholarship focuses on advertisements as artifacts, the people who contributed the intellectual and creative labor to produce such artifacts have often remained invisible. Many of these practitioners circulated among the overlapping fields of advertising, marketing, merchandising, promotion, and public relations even while building careers in creative fields such as art, literature, film, or music. Some also shifted their professional activities from these fields to marketing and advertising firms – and vice versa. Presenters and their papers include:

● Greta Keiper-Blake “From Household Knowledge to Advertising Strategy: Helen Lansdowne Resor and the Role of Women’s Labor at J. Walter Thompson”

● Monica Penick “Hidden Wires: How the Electric Industry Convinced Mid-Century America to "Live Better…Electrically”

● Lisa Jacobson “Manufacturing the All-American Neutral: The Network of Persuaders Behind Vodka's Cold War Rise”

● Debra Michals “Setting the Revolution: Feminist Entrepreneurs and the Marketing of the Movement in the 1960s and 1970s”

● Amy Sopcak-Joseph “Before the Advertising Agency: Louis Godey and the Making of Commercial Networks”

● Anca I. Lasc “Nostalgia and Fashion Design History in the Pre-WWI America”

● Emily M. Orr “Made You Look: Designing Modern Window Display in New York City”

● Sue Collins, “Jacob Mogelever: Social Capital & Star Testimonies”

● Peter Kovacs “Silva Thins vs, Virginia Slims: The Role of Inter-Organizational Networks in the Success or Failure of New Brand Launches”

● Penelope Dean “The Failed Persuaders: How Xerox (Didn't Benefit) You”

● Edward Timke “Creative Networks of Disability Representation in Commercial Spaces: Rick Guidotti and Positive Exposure”