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Durham E-Theses The Formation of Professional Identity in the British Advertising Industry, 1920-1954 HAUGHTON, PHILIPPA,LUCY How to cite: HAUGHTON, PHILIPPA,LUCY (2015) The Formation of Professional Identity in the British Advertising Industry, 1920-1954, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11196/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 The Formation of Professional Identity in the British Advertising Industry 1920-1954 Philippa Lucy Haughton Thesis submitted towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The Department of History Durham University 2015 Abstract From 1920 to 1954 British advertising practitioners spoke readily about achieving professional status. Studies have examined sociological processes of professionalization within the advertising industry. This thesis instead addresses the question of what professionalism meant in the context of advertising, a modern occupation whose practitioners claimed expertise in persuasion itself. The meaning of professionalism in advertising matters because the formation of professional identity was fundamental to the way that advertising agents understood, marketed, and sought to develop their practice in the years following the First World War. This is important because their practice – the creation of marketing campaigns based on advertisements – was significant in shaping and supporting the economic growth of twentieth-century consumer culture in Britain. The thesis has three main dimensions. First, it examines the advertising industry’s changing professional narrative by considering how practitioners described their occupation, and the ways in which professionalism was experienced and enacted on an everyday basis in the advertising agency. Second, taking the development of advertising institutions and education programmes, it explores the means by which young people and women presented themselves as practitioners. Third it demonstrates the effect of connections with the global advertising industry and imperial markets on the formation of a professional identity in British advertising from 1920 to 1954. Understanding the formation of professional identity of advertising practitioners in particular offers insight into the nature of professional identity in an emerging creative occupation. Moreover, it forms an important part in explaining how advertising practitioners helped advertising not only to be tolerated, but to grow in to be a central and ‘normal’ feature of British consumer society. ii Contents Abstract page ii List of Illustrations iv List of Abbreviations v Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1: The Professional Narrative of Organised Advertising 28 2: The Office and Professional Identity 78 3: Youth in Advertising 119 4: Women in Advertising 135 5: British Professional Identity in the International Context 201 Conclusion 240 Bibliography 250 iii List of Illustrations 1.1 Mather & Crowther 57 1.2 ‘Warning…’ 64 2.1 Samson Clark, 57-61 Mortimer Street 82 2.2 W. S. Crawford, 233 High Hoburn 82 2.3 JWT interior 86 2.4 Sabazia take a weekend off 96 2.5 View from Bill Hink’s office 107 2.6 Best wishes from the Troops Fund 109 2.7 Miscellaneous photographs of service personnel 110 2.8 1938 116 4.1 What is the typical advertising face? 180 iv List of Abbreviations AA Advertising Association AAAA American Association of Advertising Agencies AAC W Associated Advertising Clubs of the World ABAA Association of British Advertising Agents BAA British Association of Advertising BFBPW British Federation for Business and Professional Women EMB Empire Marketing Board HAT History of Advertising Trust archive IIPA Institute of Incorporated Practitioners in Advertising (until 1954) IPA Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (from 1954) IBSM Institute of British Sales Managers ISBA Incorporated Society of British Advertisers JWT J. Walter Thompson NABS National Advertisers’ Benevolent Fund NPA Newspaper and Publishers’ Association PPC Professional Purposes Committee (of the IIPA) SCAPA Society TNA The National Archive TWL The Women’s Library WACL Women’s Advertising Club of London v Copyright © 2015 by Philippa Haughton. ‘The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotations from it should be published without the author’s prior written consent and information from it should be acknowledged.’ vi Acknowledgements First and foremost gratitude is owed to my supervisor Jo Fox for guiding and supporting me through the process of PhD research and writing, while sharing her knowledge, wisdom and experience with such good humour. I am grateful to Philip Williamson for generously stepping in part-way through the project to be a second supervisor, and to Lawrence Black for advice in the initial stages of the research. Thanks is also owed to Howell Harris, Mike Gardner, Ranald Michie and Stefan Schwarzkopf for thoughtful feedback and encouragement at key moments of the research. My thanks are due to staff at the History of Advertising Trust, and the Hartman Centre for Sales, Marketing & Advertising History, Duke, for being so helpful. I am grateful to friends and family for hospitality that has made archival trips possible and especially enjoyable. Particular thanks to Ruth and Tim Daykin, Rebecca Pritchard, Charlotte Walker, and Meg and Martin Wroe. I am grateful to the postgraduate students of Durham History department for creating a lively and stimulating research environment and for laughter and good conversation at the Swan. Thank you also to Brenda Mitchell and colleagues at Hatfield for humour at work. This research was funded in part by a Durham History department scholarship. I am indebted to the History department and the Hatfield Trust for providing additional funds for research trips and conference attendance. Travel to Duke University in 2012 was supported by a travel grant from the Hartman Centre. I am grateful to Hatfield College for providing me with flexible employment. Above all I would like to record my love and gratitude to my parents, Peter and Rosemary Haughton, for supporting and encouraging me through eight and a half years as a Durham student. I could not have written this thesis without the sustaining love and kindness of my husband, Jack Barnard vii Introduction I predict that advertising will very shortly be given its due status and be regarded with the dignity of a profession, so much as accountancy, banking and the bar… It is now an accepted axiom than no business can extend without advertising. The fact has been expressed in a dozen less committal ways, but, reduced to crystals it all means that publicity is in very truth, the motive power of commerce.1 G. W. Kettle, director of Dorland’s Advertising Agency (1923). Writing in 1923, G.W. Kettle predicted a great future for advertising. Presenting it as the keystone of the consumer society emerging from the economic ruin of the First World War, and the force that supported and revitalised business, Kettle argued that advertising deserved a status that matched its power. The central concern of this thesis is not, however, whether the advertising industry in Britain ever achieved this status, but rather how and why practitioners, such as Kettle, sought to present and conduct themselves as advertising professionals. The definition of a profession and professional people is of immediate concern. Scholarship on the professions emerged as sociologists grappled with the question of how order is maintained within the modern social structure. Harold Perkin argues that all professionals, whatever their occupation, are ‘selected by merit and trained in expertise’.2 However, given that different occupations prioritise different traits in employees, it is difficult to be any more specific about professional ‘criteria’. As a result, such ‘criteria’ carry only limited analytical weight.3 It is important, therefore, to consider professional values in relation to the particular occupation that is articulating them, especially since Perkin observes that professionals ‘lived by persuasion and propaganda, by claiming that their particular service is indispensable to the client or employer and to society and the state’.4 Rather than seeking a concrete definition, Everett Hughes regards ‘profession’ as a symbolic label for a desired status; he suggests that it is more helpful to ask ‘when do 1 ‘Twenty one years of Advertising’, Advertising World, January 1923, p. 34. 2 Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society (1989), p. 2. 3 For instance, while in law emphasis may be on the nature of professional-client relationships and sense of public service, accountancy may privilege ‘organised control over competence and integrity’: Geoffrey Millerson, The Qualifying Associations: a study in professionalization (1964), p. 3. 4 Perkin, Professional Society, p. 6. 1 people begin to apply

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