The Big Project
Jan 26, 2009
Click here to download the PDF of the AEF report.
Perhaps no AEF project is as ambitious as the plan for creating the definitive online exhibition to depict how race and ethnicity have shaped the development of advertising over the course of the 20th century.
"Arguably, advertising reinforced many social prejudices," explains Paula Alex, CEO of the AEF. "Yet at later times, advertising also helped depict a more inclusive nation. With this project, the AEF is positioned to make a significant contribution to scholarship and to the public. We believe that the AEF can reach many more scholars, students, the media and others by producing an exhibition that will not be limited to any single group, but will examine-as a whole-this complicated visual landscape of the American experience."
Over the past 30 years, scholars have been studying the development of "mass markets" and the ways in which businesses tried to sell to them. Few have examined the ways in which racial and ethnic stereotypes were employed to reach a "mass audience" presumed to be exclusively white.
One reason there has been little study in this area is the difficulty of visual research. Most of the relevant advertisements and images (especially from before 1960) are housed in museum and university collections. A researcher must visit each institution to view its collections, and most libraries do not have the resources to make this material available online.
Enter the AEF, which will cull these images from key sources and post them on www.aef.com, accompanied by distinctive research and interpretive framing. Access to the collection will be free.
The exhibition will include 3,000 images, audio and visual material organized in historical eras with detailed textual information about each image, its social context, its importance to the branding of a particular product and its pervasiveness in the American visual landscape. Product names such as Aunt Jemima, Eskimo Pie, Dutch Cleanser, Quaker Oats, Frito Bandito and Jewish rye bread will be presented and analyzed. The online archives will be larger, containing 6,500 to 7,000 images, audio and visual material which will be searchable by date, topic, category, advertiser, product, ethnic group and keyword.
So far, $100,000 has been contributed by Colgate-Palmolive, the Interpublic Group, Kellogg and the NBA, and the AEF is actively seeking sponsors to reach its budget goal of $250,000.
Initially, the project staff will survey collections at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History Archives Center. In addition, images will be culled from Duke University's John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History, The New York Public Library, especially the Prints and Photographs Division, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Once the initial project is complete, the AEF will add additional images as they become available.
The plan is to include advertising produced by and for minority communities. For example, advertising created for Goya Foods Company, Latina magazine, and the John H. Johnson magazines Ebony and Jet will help counterbalance stereotypes. Advertising produced by minority-owned agencies such as Caroline Jones, Burrell Communications Group and UniWorld Group will also be incorporated.
Other components are:
• An annotated bibliography of relevant sources, portions of interviews, articles, and other background information about the development of particular images/icons/symbols and campaigns.
• Development of a curriculum for use in classrooms. A major goal of this project is to impact students who will grow up to be opinion leaders, business people, media and advertising professionals.
• Development of a best practices guide for the industry.
"The online exhibition and archives will be the first of its kind anywhere on the worldwide web," Alex says. "The AEF is committed to presenting the complicated, sometimes disturbing, sometimes inspiring history of how Americans have struggled with the complexities of racial and ethnic heterogeneity using advertising as the primary evidentiary source.
For more AEF coverage:
A New AEF for New Times
The Advertising Educational Foundation COmes of Age
Professors Swap Classroom for the Agency World
AEF Speakers Program Links Theory and Reality
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The Big Project
