The conquest of cool business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1997 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved Published 1997 Paperback edition 1998 Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 ISBN: 0-226-25991-9 (cloth) ISBN: 0-226-26012-7 (paperback) ISBN: 978-0-226-92463-2 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frank, Thomas C The Conquest of cool: business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism / Thomas Frank p cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-226-25991-9 (alk paper) Marketing — United States — History — 20th century Advertising — United States — History — 20th century Advertising and youth — United States — History — 20th century Nineteen sixties Consumer behavior — United States — History — 20th century United States — Social conditions — 1960–1980 United States — Social conditions — 1980– I Title HF5415.1.F72 1997 381.3′0973′0904—dc21 97-17556 CIP This book is printed on acid-free paper thomas frank the conquest of cool BUSINESS CULTURE, COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE RISE OF HIP CONSUMERISM the university of chicago press chicago and london PRAISE FOR the conquest of cool “An invaluable argument for anyone who has ever scoffed at hand-me-down counterculture from the ’60s A spirited and exhaustive analysis of the era’s advertising Conquest not only puts a cork in graying ex-hippies who like to recall their VW-bus trips as transgressive, but further serves to inoculate audiences to the hip capitalism that’s everywhere—including these pages—today.” —Brad Wieners, Wired Magazine “Seeking the origins of the countercultural critique, Frank finds them not on the campus or in the commune but in the business management books and ad agency creative departments of the 1950s Indeed, by Frank’s own account, the book’s title is a bit of a misnomer Business didn’t conquer the counterculture It invented it.” —Debra Goldman, Los Angeles Times Book Review “Tom Frank is perhaps the most unfashionable man ever to appear in Details He’s not only old-fashioned, he’s anti-fashion, with a place in his heart for that ultimate social faux pas, leftist politics.” —Roger Trilling, Details “Frank is a leading Gen-X cynic His favorite target: how corporate America forces conformity on the masses.” —Newsweek, “100 Americans for the Next Century” “[Thomas Frank is] perhaps the most provocative young cultural critic of the moment After reading Frank, in fact, you’ll have a hard time using words like ‘revolution’ or ‘rebel’ ever again, at least without quotation marks.” —Gerald Marzorati, New York Times Book Review “Frank makes an ironclad case not only that the advertising industry cunningly turned the countercultural rhetoric of revolution into a rallying cry to buy more stuff, but that the process itself actually predated any actual counterculture to exploit.” —Geoff Pevere, Toronto Globe and Mail “This is a powerful and important argument Unlike many practitioners of cultural studies, whose celebrations of consumer sovereignty merely mimic advertising mythology, Frank acknowledges the centrality of corporate strategies in shaping our dominant values The Conquest of Cool helps us understand why, throughout the last third of the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly confused gentility with conformity, irony with protest, and an extended middle finger with a populist manifesto Frank deftly shows the myriad ways that advertising has redefined radicalism by conflating it with in-your-face consumerism His voice is an exciting addition to the soporific public discourse of the late twentieth century.” —T J Jackson Lears, In These Times “In accessible, muscular prose, Frank traces agencies’ revolt against inflated ’50s jargon and creation of aggressively hip spots that simultaneously mocked consumer culture’s empty promises and sold consumption-asrebellion This book is frequently brilliant, an indispensable survival guide for any modern consumer.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “A wide-ranging, and often hilarious, overview of ads that attempted to adopt the language, pose or style of the youth and counterculture movements.” —Michiko Kakutani, International Herald Tribune “A lucid history of how long-haired, bell-bottomed admen replaced ruleladen repetition and simple selling propositions with clever, unpredictable approaches.” —Abe Peck, Chicago Tribune “Frank argues persuasively that the ‘counterculture’ has been co-opted by business forces, who use putatively countercultural ideas and images to sell their products and accelerate consumption.” —Scott Stossel, Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement “Frank’s study of 1960s advertising is first-rate.” —Philip Gold, Washington Times “The marriage of counterculture and capitalism is hardly a new subject, but Frank does provide a refreshingly unsentimental look at it The Conquest of Cool is blessedly free of academic throat-clearing and professional jargon There isn’t a dull page in the book.” —Alexander Star, Slate “An indispensable book that is so retro it’s the closest thing our culture has seen lately to hip With The Conquest of Cool, Frank—brilliant, excoriating and wickedly funny—assumes the mantle of the preeminent cultural critic of his generation Not bad, considering he’s only what? Thirty-something.” —Tom Grimes, Houston Chronicle Books “A refreshingly spirited book After reading The Conquest of Cool, it’s hard not to conclude that the folks who brought you Mr Clean and the Marlboro Man helped bring the Cultural Revolution too.” —Brain Murray, Weekly Standard “Brilliant, polemically charged By eschewing the bogus populism of business elites to focus on their moral and symbolic power, Frank makes an important contribution to the cultural history of the 1960s He also provides a needed (if not altogether original) corrective to ‘cultural studies’ mavens who see ‘subversion’ in every market-researched épater of the bourgeoisie.” —Eugene McCarraher, Commonweal “An important, highly readable and provocative examination of 1960s advertising trends, that reveals more about how mass marketing shaped North American society than any other book in recent memory.” —Ron Foley MacDonald, Daily News “Thomas Frank argues convincingly in The Conquest of Cool, the advertising community was a willing, even eager co-conspirator in the eruption of hip consumerism The bohemian cultural style started as the native language of the alienated and became the dominant force in mass society This book explains how that happened, and why.” —Stuart Levitan, ISTHMUS “Chicago’s favorite wonky killjoy is Tom Frank, the curmudgeonly editor of The Baffler He’s great in his self-appointed role as cultural iconoclast.” —Chicago Magazine, “Best Chicago” “Thomas Frank’s The Conquest of Cool is a forceful and convincing demonstration of the cunning of commercialism Advertisers knew what was hip before hippie entrepreneurs, and this story, told here with verve and lucidity, is well worth the attention of all serious readers.” —Todd Gitlin, author of The Twilight of Common Dreams “Thomas Frank has written a history of advertising in the last half of the twentieth century so accurate and insightful that it can even illuminate events for the people who participated in them The Conquest of Cool is the remarkable debut of a cultural critic whose work can look forward to reading for many years to come.” —Earl Shorris, author of A Nation of Salesmen For Wendy This is an old story in art, of course, genius vs the organization But the [car] customizers don’t think of corporate bureaucracy quite the way your conventional artist does, whether he be William Gropper or Larry Rivers, namely, as a lot of small-minded Babbitts, venal enemies of culture, etc They just think of the big companies as part of the vast mass of adult America, sclerotic from years of just being too old, whose rules and ideas weigh down upon Youth like a vast, bloated sac —TOM WOLFE, “THE KANDY-KOLORED TANGERINE-FLAKE STREAMLINE BABY,” 1963 We’re young too And we’re on your side We know it’s a tough race And we want you to win —ADVERTISEMENT FOR LOVE COSMETICS, WELLS, RICH, GREENE AGENCY, 1969 contents Acknowledgments one A Cultural Perpetual Motion Machine: Management Theory and Consumer Revolution in the 1960s two Buttoned Down: High Modernism on Madison Avenue three Advertising as Cultural Criticism: Bill Bernbach versus the Mass Society four Three Rebels: Advertising Narratives of the Sixties five “How Do We Break These Conformists of Their Conformity?”: Creativity Conquers All six Think Young: Youth Culture and Creativity seven The Varieties of Hip: Advertisements of the 1960s eight Carnival and Cola: Hip versus Square in the Cola Wars nine Fashion and Flexibility ten Hip and Obsolescence eleven Hip as Official Capitalist Style Appendix Notes Index Photos ... thomas frank the conquest of cool BUSINESS CULTURE, COUNTERCULTURE, AND THE RISE OF HIP CONSUMERISM the university of chicago press chicago and london PRAISE FOR the conquest of cool “An invaluable... replayings of the 1968 Chicago riot footage—we understand ? ?the sixties” almost instinctively as the decade of the big change, the birthplace of our own culture, the homeland of hip, an era of which the. .. Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frank, Thomas C The Conquest of cool: business culture, counterculture, and the rise of hip consumerism / Thomas Frank p cm Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-226-25991-9