Scanlon Mediators in The International Marketplace - U.S. Advertising in Latin America in The Early Twentieth Century

Mediators in the International Marketplace: U.S.
Advertising in Latin America in the

Early Twentieth Century
Author(s): Jennifer Scanlon
Source: The Business History Review , Autumn, 2003, Vol. 77, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003), pp.
387-415
Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30041184
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Jennifer Scanlon
Mediators in the International Marketplace:

U.S. Advertising in Latin America in the
Early Twentieth Century
In the early twentieth century, companies relied on advertis-

ing to inform international audiences about their products
and services, just as they do today. The J. Walter Thompson
Company, a New York-based advertising agency, entered the
global stage early, and by 1928 Thompson advertisements had
appeared in twenty-six languages in over forty countries.
Reaching international audiences and expanding their tastes
required an understanding of local cultures and the ways in
which they conducted their businesses, and advertisers often
had to act as mediators for their clients. The J. Walter Thomp-
son Company's efforts in Argentina provide an excellent case
study of how both "local" and "global" messages of consump-
tion were understood-and often misinterpreted-when they
were transmitted to other countries from the United States.
meansT he domestic Historians

complete. history of advertising in the United
and other scholars Statestoisreveal
continue by no
the complex approaches and motives of manufacturers, advertisers,
and consumers as they have woven a tradition of consumerism that
has, in many ways, come to define American existence. As Charles
McGovern puts it in his analysis of consumption during the Great De-
pression and the New Deal, "American people fitfully but firmly came
to equate the consumer with the citizen, a consumer standard of living
with democracy, and the full participation in such an economy of
spending and accumulation with being an American."1 Few Americans
JENNIFER SCANLON is associate professor and director of women's studies at Bowdoin

College.
1 Charles McGovern, "Consumption and Citizenship in the United States, 1900-1940," in
Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern, and Matthias Judt, eds., Getting and Spending: Euro-
pean and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C., 1998),
37. This collection, dedicated to the memory of advertising historian Roland Marchand,
draws together many significant explorations of consumer culture in this time period.
Business History Review 77 (Autumn 2003): 387-415. c 2003 by The President

and Fellows of Harvard College.

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Jennifer Scanlon / 388
in the 1930s, however, would have defined the consumer citizen in glo-
bal terms. Definitions of the good life, and its consumer base, appeared
to have a local rather than a global application. In fact, notions of the
good life contributed to feelings of American cultural, as well as fi-
nancial, superiority on the world stage.2 Behind the scenes, however,
American advertising had already made inroads into the construction
of a global network of consumer culture, laying the foundation for
the "giant menu of choices" globalization purports to promise today.3
The purpose of this essay is to explore the roots of the globalization
process in advertising by examining the international expansion of
one advertising agency, the J. Walter Thompson Company, in the early
twentieth century.4
Coca-Cola chair Roberto C. Goizueta is not far off the mark when
he argues that "people around the world are today connected to each
2 By no means had Americans overcome deep ethnic, racial, and regional differences in
their own self-definitions as consumers, but they had spoken of their purported homogeneity
in referring to themselves. On the internal divisions and definitions, see Daniel Horowitz,
The Morality of Spending: Attitudes Toward the Consumer Society in America, 1875-1940
(Baltimore, 1985); Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Inter-
pretive History ofBlacks in American Films (New York, 1989); Marily Kern-Foxworth, Aunt
Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
(Westport, Conn., 1994); Elizabeth S. Bird, ed., Dressing in Feathers: The Construction of
the American Indian in American Popular Culture (Boulder, Colo., 1996); Jennifer Scanlon,
ed., The Gender and Consumer Culture Reader (New York, 2000); Susan J. Matt, Keeping
Up With the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930 (Philadelphia,
2003). On the ways in which consumption defined the consumer as decidedly American, see
Charles McGovern, who states that consumption was "the distinct heritage and privilege of
living in the United States. Consumption was in effect the national folkways," "Consumption
and Citizenship," p. 48.
3 Richard J. Barnet and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the
New World Order (New York, 1994), 22. On the ways in which the state is implicated in
the increasing consumer culture, see Matthew Frye Jacobsen, Barbarian Virtues: The United
States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad (New York, 2000); George Lipsitz,
"Consumer Spending as State Project: Yesterday's Solutions and Today's Problems," in
Strasser et al., Getting and Spending, 127-47. For histories of advertising in the United
States, see Richard Wightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, The Culture of Consumption:
Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980 (New York, 1983); Stephen R. Fox, The
Mirror Makers: A History ofAmericanAdvertising and Its Creators (NewYork, 1984); Roland
Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity (Berkeley, Calif.,
1985); James D. Norris, Advertising and the Transformation of American Society, 1865-
1920 (New York, 1990); T. J. Jackson Lears, Fables ofAbundance: A Cultural History of
Advertising in America (New York, 1994); Jennifer Scanlon, Inarticulate Longings: The
Ladies'Home Journal, Gender, and the Promises of Consumer Culture (New York, 1995).
4 See also Jeff Merron, writing earlier in these pages, "Putting Foreign Consumers on the
Map: J. Walter Thompson's Struggle With General Motors' International Advertising Ac-
count in the 1920s," Business History Review 73 (Autumn 1999): 465-502. Merron explored
the ways in which J. Walter Thompson used quantitative research methods to secure its
international development and to attract clients beyond General Motors. I complement
Merron's work by situating this development further in the context of globalization. Together
these two articles provide a fairly comprehensive examination of the work that allowed
J. Walter Thompson, through its international endeavors, to become what Merron calls "the
undisputed leader in agency billings" for roughly fifty years (p. 501).

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Mediators in the International Marketplace / 389
other by brand name consumer products as much as by anything else."5

Today's "imperial corporations," the empires of globalization, gain ac-
cess to and promote a network of products, communication, technology,
and finance.6 Manufacturers like Coca-Cola seek global advertisers,
companies that can readily produce images that resonate in the world
marketplace. Regardless of enormously disparate demographic realities,
increasingly homogeneous advertisements span the globe. Coca-Cola,
which accounts for nearly half of global soft-drink sales, produces glo-
bal ads that differ only in language from country to country. Global
marketing relies on an increasingly homogeneous response to increas-
ingly uniform advertising appeals, images, and packaging. Every one of
the top advertising agencies in the United States and Britain has a de-
partment that specializes in understanding and targeting consumers
abroad. Charles and Maurice Saatchi started their advertising agency in
an office in London's Soho in 1970; by 1992 they earned half their reve-
nue from campaigns that spanned five countries or more.7 "The world
has now come so close together," argues Coke's director of global mar-
keting, that "we can cut costs and achieve more by doing one promotion
globally."s Arguably, we have arrived at Marshall McLuhan's mid-
1960s' prediction that the world would become a global village.9
Proponents and detractors alike agree that globalization marks the
turn of this century, but is it, as some argue, a post-cold war phenome-
non? Globalization undoubtedly increased as the dualism imposed by the
two reigning superpowers deteriorated and then collapsed. As Robert
Schaeffer puts it, "The introduction of new technologies at the end of
the cold war broke down the decades-long restrictions on economic be-
havior and political thought and made possible the adoption of a new
set of economic and political relations, what we call globalization, around
the world."'lo Many scholars, however, Schaeffer included, argue that
the change has not been abrupt, that the globalization of the market-
place has been advancing for decades, if not centuries. In an August
2000 New York Times article, Alexander Stille claimed that the global-
ization of today is "a sequel of sorts."" The late nineteenth and early
5 Roberto C. Goizueta, "Globalization: A Soft Drink Perspective," Executive Speeches,

September 1989, 2, quoted in Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, 169.
6 Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, 14.
7 Ibid., 170.
8 Ibid., 169.
9 Marshall McLuhan, The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in
the Twenty-first Century (New York, 1989).
10 Robert K. Schaeffer, Understanding Globalization: The Social Consequences ofPoliti-
cal, Economic, and Environmental Change (Lanham, Md., 2003), 9.
11 Alexander Stille, "Globalization Now, A Sequel of Sorts," New York Times, 11 Aug.
2001.

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twentieth centuries witnessed a globalization marked by foreign in-

vestments and economic integration, technological breakthroughs,
intercontinental trade, and tremendous migration of citizens from one
country to another. The backlash against this earlier globalization, ac-
cording to economists Kevin O'Rourke, Jeffrey Williamson, and Harold
James, resulted in the barriers to trade and immigration that at least in
part contributed to the Great Depression.'2
This article revisits that earlier phase of globalization and adds to
an already significant body of scholarly work on the period. Geoffrey
Jones and Mira Wilkins, for example, have both explored the scope and
dimensions of the expansion of international business in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. Jones argues that, after 1880, "the
industrialized economies of Western Europe and North America ex-
changed manufactured goods for the raw materials and foodstuffs
produced in the Third World and Southern Hemisphere economies,"
thereby launching a global trade network that would not be matched
again until the 1980s.13 The main player in this extended venture was,
not surprisingly, the United Kingdom. As the first industrialized na-
tion, influential legally and culturally as well as economically, Britain
promoted favorable investment relations for itself internationally and
provided a model that the United States would follow.'4
For the United States, at least initially, the trade that marked this
era of expansion overseas would be both global and fairly local. The
United States invested most heavily in its neighbors, Mexico and Can-
ada, leaving much of the investment in Central and South America, not
to mention other regions of the world, to Britain. A British journalist
dubbed Argentina, Chile, and Peru "commercial annexes of Great
Britain" at the turn of the century, but he also noted, "As Disraeli said,
there is room in Asia for both Russia and England, so we may say that
there is room in South America for both John Bull and Uncle Sam."'5
Increased production in the United States, as well as turn-of-the-century
fears of overproduction, led to political support for marketing goods
abroad. Textile manufacturer Charles Lovering's declaration, "I am an
12 See Kevin H. O'Rourke and Jeffrey W. Williamson, Globalization and History (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1999); Harold James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great De-
pression (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).
13 See Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business
Abroadfrom the Colonial Era to 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), and The Maturing ofMulti-
national Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970 (Cambridge, Mass.,
1974); Geoffrey Jones, The Evolution of International Business: An Introduction (London,
1996); quote from Jones, p. 36.
14 According to Jones (pp. 29-30), the United Kingdom accounted for almost 50 percent
of the world's foreign direct investment in 1914; the United States accounted for an addi-
tional 14 percent.
15 Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 191.

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exporter, I want the world," may have appeared more affected than
accurate to his peers, but as Matthew Frye Jacobsen explains, the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a growing consen-
sus about the need to develop external markets to keep the American
economy healthy.16 Jacobsen traces a fascinating connection between
religious and economic missionary work, citing the words of Josiah
Strong: "What is the process of civilizing but the creating of more and
higher wants?"17 Attempts to civilize or colonize through consumerism
found support in government officeholders and bodies as well. Secre-
tary of state "Jingo" Jim Blaine specifically made reference to South
America in his late-nineteenth-century argument for the globalization
of trade:
While the great powers of Europe are steadily enlarging their colo-
nial domination in Asia and Africa, it is the especial province of this
country to improve and expand its trade with the nations of America.
... What we want..,. are the markets of these neighbors of ours that
lie to the south of us. We want the $400,000,000 annually which
to-day go to England, France, Germany and other countries. With
these markets secured new life would be given to our manufactories,
the product of the Western farmer would be in demand, the reasons
for and the inducements to strikers, with all their attendant evils,
would cease.'8
To the degree that these moves to develop and further multi-

national business ventures drew attention in the United States, they were
couched in terms that presented them as being just as uplifting to for-
eign peoples as they were advantageous to business at home. The
phrase "teaching the arts and habits of civilization," an axiom of Ameri-
can cultural, economic, and religious expansionism, included among its
most significant "habits" participation in the consumer marketplace.'9
The business of globalization, in this earlier manifestation, emerged not
simply from business interests but also from well-established notions
of American superiority on the social, economic, cultural, and political
stage. In an era defined by fears of "foreigners," or "others," within
and outside the United States, global business sought justification, and
American nationalism and exceptionalism supplied it. The result was
that U.S. exports of manufactured items, such as chemicals, electric appli-
ances, machinery, automobiles, and food, grew, enabling the United States
to emerge as a more important and far-reaching player in the worldwide
16 Charles Lovering, quoted in Jacobsen, Barbarian Virtues, 15.

17 Jacobsen, 17.
18 Ibid., 41.
19 Ibid., 51.

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economy. The impact of the First World War on British and European
trade would push the United States to the lead, with its foreign direct
investments almost doubling in the 1920s.20
The process was by no means one sided, however. In his recently
published work on early globalization in Mexico, Yankee Don't Go
Home!, Julio Moreno argues that the combined efforts of the Mexican
and U.S. governments, business leaders, and the Mexican citizenry
ushered in a modern state in which industrial capitalism came to define
democracy. Mexican nationalism served not simply to reject "Yankee
capitalism" but also to embrace and challenge it. This new consumer
democracy, which Moreno identifies as emerging in the aftermath of
the 1910 revolution in Mexico, has parallels in other nations in the
region as well. Moreno demonstrates that the process happened most
effectively in business situations when companies with home offices
in the United States made an effort to understand the differences in
cultures they encountered abroad.21 Advertising agencies like J. Walter
Thompson facilitated the process of cultural communication.
The Role of Advertising in Globalization
Although many contemporary analyses of globalization privilege

Starbucks over General Motors, Prada leather bags over Armour sirloin
cuts, scholars of this earlier era have paid more attention to the effects
of globalization on manufacturing and agriculture. Advertising's role
in communicating, translating, and furthering the trend, however, has
not been adequately explored. Like its more contemporary counter-
part, advertising in this earlier period became a means of communicat-
ing product availability, global desires, and the sense of a burgeoning
global consumer community. If the global customer is, aside from the
laboratory rat, "the most studied mammal on earth," early advertisers
set the stage for the contemporary explosion in multinational market-
ing research.22 Advertisers crafted as well as responded to the possibili-
ties of manufacturing, sales, and production of consumer goods on a
global scale.
By 1926, some thirty advertising executives served on corporate
boards of directors in the United States; manufacturers both acknowl-
edged and respected their own dependence on effective message makers.
An article in the trade journal Printer's Ink described the unique role
20 Jones, The Evolution of International Business, 99, 36.

21 Julio Moreno, Yankee Don't Go Home! Mexican Nationalism, American Business Cul-
ture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920-1950 (Chapel Hill, 2003).
22 Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, 174.

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advertisers played in the economy: "Positioned at the crucial juncture

in the network of electronic communications, they claimed preeminent
status both as faithful representatives of a sovereign public and as elite
benefactors who promoted prosperity and civilization by 'molding the
public mind."'23 Advertisers allegedly served both masters: they were
the creative brains behind the capitalist machine as well as servants of
the consuming public. In the domestic arena, advertising agents cre-
ated a "strategic niche for themselves as crucial mediators in the vast
national marketplace."24 They readily pursued this role on a global
scale as well. In doing so, they bolstered globalization and boasted of
the extraordinary position in which they found themselves. One agency,
Barton, Durstine and Osborn, argued that advertising literally caused
the world to shift: "Archimedes asked for a lever long enough and
strong enough to move the world. We have a suspicion that if he lived
today he would apply for work in an agency."25
Advertisers in general played a key role in the earlier phase of glo-
balization, but this article concerns itself with the work of one agency,
the New York-based J. Walter Thompson Company. J. Walter Thompson
entered the global stage in the early twentieth century and, with incred-
ible insight and reach, helped facilitate the earth-spanning activities
that mark globalization: investment, production, communication, tech-
nology, and cultural change. This examination of the company's efforts
in Latin America, particularly in Argentina, explores the effectiveness
of its work, as well as the unique and beleaguered role advertisers
played in this earlier manifestation of an international marketplace and
a global consumer identity and culture.
The James Walter Thompson Company, or J. Walter Thompson, as
it is popularly known, opened its doors in New York in December of
1864. The Chicago office, the advertising agency's second, opened al-
most thirty years later, in 1891. Interest in international advertising op-
portunities emerged quickly. Shortly after the Spanish-American War,
a Spanish department was organized in the New York office to prepare
advertisements for placement in Latin America and the Philippines.
The company opened a small London office in 1899, followed by a fully
staffed London operation in 1919. In an atmosphere of expanding for-
eign trade, J. Walter Thompson's subsequent international buildup was
rapid: by 1923, the company had set up direct representation in six
European countries "to insure minimum rates from the publications
23 Printer's Ink (4 Nov. 1926): 196, quoted in Marchand, Advertising the American
Dream, 31.
24 Ibid., 32.
25 "Here is the Lever, Archimedes," n.d. Box 144, Bruce Barton Papers, Wisconsin State
Historical Society, quoted in Marchand, 31.

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and copy that was not only right in appeal but correct in native idiom as
well."26 American trade had grown in those areas, and the company
published its Thompson Blue Book of Advertising in order to encourage
manufacturers to consider either exporting new or established products
or opening manufacturing facilities directly in foreign locations.27 As
one early-twentieth-century advertiser put it succinctly, "All over the
world, people can be educated, and are daily being educated, to want
more and more of the things which their ancestors never even dreamed
of possessing."28
In 1927, the growth of J. Walter Thompson's international organi-
zation was given tremendous impetus when the General Motors Corpo-
ration signed on as a global client. The advertising agency agreed to
open offices wherever GM established a plant; in return it was assured
exclusive representation of General Motors vehicles in those locations.
This mutually beneficial relationship ensured the growth of both auto-
mobile manufacturing and advertising in the 1920s and 1930s, en-
abling American symbols of consumption in everyday life to be carried
to areas further and further removed from New York or Chicago. A 1927
company newsletter claimed that, thanks to the efforts of the two
companies, "the four corners of the earth can tell a Chevrolet from a
Ford."29 In 1927 alone, J. Walter Thompson opened six new European
offices, and American managers moved overseas to organize and ex-
pand operations.30 As the company history relates, "The next four years
saw a continuing expansion of Thompson's overseas coverage. Offices
were opened in South Africa, India, Canada, Australia, Japan, and South
America."31 The company's relationship, first with General Motors and
then with other global manufacturers and service providers, proved
fruitful: J. Walter Thompson experienced rapid growth and encoun-
tered only one small downturn during the Depression; during World
War II, the agency underwent a larger downturn, forcing it to close the
doors on all its European offices. Toward the end of the war, however,
the company again expanded by opening new offices in Latin America,
India, and South Africa, and after the war four of the European offices
26 ,J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3, Information Center, J. Walter Thompson

Company Archives, Duke University Library.
27 ,"J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 2.
28 A. L. Reinitz, "RESEARCH: The Approach to Export Advertising," Export Advertiser
(Nov. 1929): 30.
29 Newsletter, 1 Nov. 1927, quoted in Jeffrey Merron, "American Culture Goes Abroad:
J. Walter Thompson and the General Motors Export Account, 1927-1933" (Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1991), 19. See also Merron, "Putting Foreign Con-
sumers on the Map."
30 "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3.
31 Ibid. By 1928, the company had offices in London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp, Madrid,
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Alexandria, and Port Elizabeth.

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Only 9 agencies in the United States

have a total business eual to that of
J. Walter Thompson Company's
Foreign Offices
This international organization makes available to clients,

wherever located, the most recent developments in adver-
tising technique and experience in all parts of the world.
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A 1935 J. Walter Thompson advertisement solicits business for the agency by demonstrating
its global reach. Reproduced by the John W. Hartman Center, Duke University, with permis-
sion of the J. Walter Thompson Company.
reopened.32 These statistics are remarkable in their testimony: despite

the Great Depression and significant threats to globalization from in-
creased tariffs and other trade barriers, decreases in immigration, war,
and general business unrest, global advertising had claimed a lasting
place in the world economy.
32 "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3-4.

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The J. Walter Thompson headquarters in New York provided pro-

motional material about its international operations, revealing the
pride with which headquarters witnessed the company's growth over
the years. The South African office, for example, started out as a "four-
man show" in Port Elizabeth in 1928, with one account. Its global ef-
forts were not hampered by subsequent downturns in the international
economy. By 1951, J. Walter Thompson was the top advertising agency
in South Africa, with four offices and nearly one hundred employees.33
When J. Walter Thompson claimed in 1948 that the company office
in Johannesburg, South Africa, was the only one in which "gold blows
in through the windows," savvy readers understood that the reference
was not simply to the gold dust from nearby mines.34
In 1928, company president Stanley Resor wrote an introduction to
a foreign issue of the company's news bulletin. As he described it, the
foreign offices ran under the supervision of American managers but
were staffed largely with native personnel. Each office handled its own
copy work, and advertising prepared in the international offices had, by
1928, appeared in twenty-six languages in publications circulated in
over forty countries.35 The international report for 1928 indicated that
the foreign offices handled twenty-nine accounts, thirteen on their own,
with minimal support from the United States. The volume of business
for 1928 was expected to double that for 1927 and achieve more than
thirty times the output of 1921. By 1930, the company listed thirty-four
branch offices, located in Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, India,
Australia, and South America.36
This brief business history explores the rapidity with which a na-
tional organization like J. Walter Thompson could internationalize op-
erations. Advertisers and manufacturers alike took some risks and reaped
enormous profits, and their mutually beneficial relationship propelled
the United States to dominance in the world market. Although export
sales were only about 12 percent of domestic sales in 1929, they were
significant economically and symbolically, as they suggested both future
directions for business and the preeminent role the United States
would come to play. One research report put it this way:
Remember that the reason American business has met with such
unprecedented success in export is primarily due to the ability of
33 "How Well Do You Know Your JWT'ers?" 2 Apr. 1951, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
34 "How Well Do You Know Your JWT'ers?" 18 Oct. 1948, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
35 Stanley Resor, "Introduction," News Bulletin, no. 135 (July 1928): 1-2, J. Walter Thomp-
son Company Archives.
36 "A Few Facts About Our Work Abroad," News Bulletin, no. 136 (Nov. 1928): 16-19,
J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

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these American advertisers to see through so-called international

obstacles. American methods of merchandising have been used; scien-
tific market research (a purely American science), American aggres-
siveness, and American advertising methods sensibly adapted in
language and illustration to the customs of each people, have all played
an important role in the absorbing business of successful export.37
Lucrative Markets in Latin America for General Motors

and J. Walter Thompson
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay provided lucrative markets for Gen-

eral Motors and hence for J. Walter Thompson. By 1928, these three
countries accounted for 87 percent of total sales of American automo-
biles in South America, and automobile sales factored significantly in
the U.S. economy. By the end of the 192os, automobiles accounted for
20 percent of U.S. steel production, 80 percent of the country's rubber
production, and 75 percent of its plate-glass production.38 Automobile
sales depended on getting the word out, and J. Walter Thompson was
eager to claim its part in the process: "It may be said," one employee
later reflected, "that the J. Walter Thompson Company, with its inter-
national organization, has done more to stimulate the production and
consumption of goods and services throughout the world than any
other company."39 There is, in fact, a great deal of truth to this argument,
as the United States exported almost as many manufactured goods in
1910 as it had produced altogether in 1850.40 Global advertising proved
a powerful tool for marketing those goods, and the link was increas-
ingly strengthened through the active work of J. Walter Thompson.41
The relationship with General Motors provided the incentive for
opening offices in Latin America. At first it was difficult for the agency
to see a role for itself in the region beyond servicing GM. "The question
of our future relationship with the General Motors Company is so inter-
laced with the policy of our own international development, that I am
unable to formulate recommendations for the one, without expressing
my view about the other," stated Henry Flower, head of the Latin
37 Reinitz, "RESEARCH: The Approach to Export Advertising," 30.

38 David Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric, 1890-1920 (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1985), 178.
40 Ibid., 1.
41 Clement Watson expanded on this idea: "The development of American advertising
methods abroad is going hand in hand with that of American export," wrote one employee.
"The two are closely linked together in organization, in method, and in achievement, and
American advertising practice is beginning to exert its influence abroad as markedly in its
sphere as are American sales and merchandising in theirs." Clement H. Watson, "Markets
are People-Not Places: A Few Thoughts on Export," News Bulletin, no. 135 (July 1928): 21.

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America initiative, in a report to the company president.42 Even during

the most stark periods of the Depression, according to one historian,
J. Walter Thompson's international offices survived because of the "se-
curity the GM account afforded."43 However, the agency and potential
clients gradually came to see J. Walter Thompson as more than a sub-
sidiary of General Motors. As Flower argued, manufacturers interested
in international work had to make choices: they could put their stock in
local advertising agencies, which had little experience with large-scale
operations; use small New York-based companies that sent canned ad-
vertisements abroad; or establish relationships with J. Walter Thomp-
son. In an era of tremendous expansion, the third alternative proved
desirable to many exporters and local manufacturers. Reaching inter-
national audiences and expanding their tastes and purchasing practices
required what Flower called "the most intensive sort of cultivation."44
J. Walter Thompson was eager to provide it.
Advertisers' Understanding of the

Latin American Market
In developing its relationship with General Motors and other man-

ufacturers on the world scene, J. Walter Thompson emphasized the
agency's basic service: "creative imagination growing out of facts."45
The company provided some of the first, and most imitated, marketing
research designed for overseas clients. Although this research may
seem rudimentary by today's standards, it marked the standard for the
period. The New York office had opened the industry's first market-
research department in 1916, and by 1919 its planning and statistical
investigation departments provided further specialization. The London
office, a key player on the international scene, used market research ex-
tensively during the 1920s, setting it apart from all other British-based
agencies.46
Historian Jeff Merron explored J. Walter Thompson's global mar-
keting for General Motors, arguing that, in the end, the research "served
only to confirm simple notions about cultural differences."'47 Appropri-
ating the language of science, however, the company moved away from
the psychological analysis then current in favor of new demographic
42 Henry C. Flower, letter to Stanley Resor, quoted in Merron, 10.

43 Merron, "American Culture Goes Abroad," 11.
44 Representatives' meeting minutes, 8 Oct. 1929, 2-3, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
45 "J. Walter Thompson International," 4.
46 Douglas C. West, "From T-Square to T-Plan: The London Office of the J. Walter Thomp-
son Advertising Agency, 1919-70," Business History 29 (Apr. 1987): 204.
47 Merron, "Putting Foreign Consumers on the Map," 501.

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approaches, further justifying advertising's interventions.48 In Latin

America, its research staff measured automobile registrations, literacy,
advertising expenditures, imports and exports, and purchasing power.
In Argentina they determined zones of trading and measured socio-
economic differences within the zones. One of the most promising de-
mographics they uncovered in Latin America would have been literacy.
By the end of the 192os, Argentina and Uruguay had high literacy rates:
62.1 percent and 60.2 percent, respectively. Literacy, however, was less
widespread in Brazil, where the rate was only 25.5 percent.49 The com-
pany measured the people and their cash flows, and in so doing it legit-
imated and secured the advertising industry's integral role in global
business expansion.
However, again according to Merron, the market-research compo-
nent of J. Walter Thompson's work provided the company with cachet
in the international marketplace but was less instrumental in the for-
mation of advertising campaigns. It seems appropriate to argue, based
on Merron's findings and the research carried out for this paper, that
the process of globalization and the discourse of global participation
proved as influential in the development of international advertising as
did hard, market-based research. The ongoing dialogue, which involved
looking abroad, envisioning consumers as well as a role for the agency
on the world stage, merits discussion. Company records and individ-
ual recollections reveal the ways in which advertisers, as part of the
process of globalization, relied on the idea of progress and the ethos of
the industrialized world's model citizen as they recruited consumers
from all corners of the earth. Not surprisingly, Stanley Resor would,
years later, reflect on the overseas expansion in the most beneficent
terms:
The need for understanding starts in our individual lives, in our

homes, in our work. From there it spreads from community and
nation. But however urgent the demand at home-we cannot limit it
to our own shores.
We must understand the message of hundreds of millions of
people in underdeveloped countries, who are crying out their needs.
To help provide the necessary understanding both as individuals
and as a company, our position is unique. Let us hope that at next year's
end, we can truthfully say that we have made some contribution.50
48 Peggy J. Kreshel, "The 'Culture' of J. Walter Thompson, 1915-1925," Public Relations

Review 16 (Fall 1990): 80-93.
49 J. W. Thompson International notebooks, 1928-1931, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
50 Howard Henderson, "A Short History of the J. Walter Thompson Company," 22 June
1960, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

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The company had long encouraged its employees to view their

work as socially progressive, but it is not difficult to read Resor's quota-
tion in the light of two convictions about Latin America that dominated
the American mind at the time: first, that the region was populated
largely by savages; and second, that these lands marked the expanding
American frontier as much as they did a separate region of the world.51
This cultural outlook helped naturalize American business interests
abroad. Advertising's role, in addition to making money and providing
responsible and professional service, was to assist U.S. manufacturers
and global consumers in creating the links that would benefit both. In
the international arena, such relationships between business and con-
sumers could, arguably, hold even greater import by furthering more
harmonic alliances among nations. In an article titled "Will the Auto-
mobile Break Down International Boundaries?" a J. Walter Thompson
employee quoted Henry Ford at length: "Our Civil War could not be
repeated. If Europe had cheap and easy transportation, the present
artificial barriers between countries would quickly vanish because they
would be an intolerable nuisance."52 Others spoke directly about the
enormous, long-term, life-changing benefits of consumerism. In a state-
ment to J. Walter Thompson employees, Harry Tipper, general sales
manager of the GM Export Company, considered "the future" as one in
which global links would be more solidly cemented. His remarks pre-
sciently suggest how the discourse of global consumerism can, with its
overuse of the signifier "their," increasingly mirror the theme of devel-
opment, in which the most important consequence is "the effect that
will be produced upon the future due to the changing habits of these
peoples, their improving economic status, and their acceptance of
modern facilities."53
Advertisers clearly sought to influence the public in the global mar-
ketplace; at the same time, they felt pulled, culturally, into their new
environments. Company records reveal an interesting process: employees
who had spent some time in the foreign offices in Latin America began
to feel a need to correct the North American employees, whose under-
standing of these countries appeared more limited than their own. Per-
haps they developed a sense of affiliation with the people among whom
they lived; perhaps they felt defensive about the condescension they felt
emanating from their New York counterparts. "Someone from the New
51 Jacobsen, Barbarian Virtues, 38.

52 "Will the Automobile Break Down International Boundaries?" News Bulletin, no. 129
(Apr. 1927): 14, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
53 Harry Tipper, quoted in News Bulletin, no. 133 (Mar. 1928): 7, J. Walter Thompson
Company Archives.

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York office once told me that the foreign offices to many of you were
nothing but romantic pins here and there on a map," argued one expa-
triate at a New York representatives meeting in 1931.54 Another enter-
tained questions at a staff meeting in 1934 and replied stiffly to a query
put by one participant, "No. I don't think there ever were any cannibals
in Patagonia."55 Finally, another of the key members of the Buenos
Aires staff argued that the success of their office was "almost entirely
dependent on our success in dealing with the people there." As a result,
when he made his presentation in New York, he emphasized the rich
culture of Argentina by playing music and displaying photos. "I am not
going to waste our precious time in telling you about the geography.
You can get this for yourself if you want to, by referring to the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica."56 The company proudly stressed its familiarity
with other cultures when publicizing its services to the outside reader as
well. One publication stressed that the offices abroad had close ties to
the home office and the J. Walter Thompson philosophy; at the same
time, these branches had become "not just American companies
abroad, but English, Brazilian, Indian, Mexican, Australian companies
as well, not only because they are incorporated in those countries, but
because of their attitudes and their people."57
Regardless of their lofty ideals and somewhat ambiguous status as
the ambassadors of global capitalism, J. Walter Thompson employees
in Latin America demonstrated an ignorance about their new locations
that belied the openness they professed about life and people outside
the United States. In "What Does South America Offer the American
Advertiser?" William Ricketts reveals some of the basic prejudices.
"One of the great limitations of the Brazilian market," he writes, "is that
the majority of the people are very poor, ignorant, and lazy. The popu-
lation is mainly of Portuguese, Negro, and Indian extraction." Ricketts
concludes, in a sincere but naive fashion, that despite the fact that sla-
very existed in Brazil as late as 1888, "there does not seem to be any
marked prejudice against the Negro."58 Another discussion of Brazil, at
a company meeting, projected an equally complex and prejudiced
stance: "The obstacles to its future development are the climate, the
mixture of negro blood and what is known as the 'sierra.' The sierra is
54 Representatives' meeting minutes, 2 June 1931, J. Walter Thompson Company

Archives.
55 Arthur Farlow, staff meeting minutes, 21 Feb. 1934, 5, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
56 Russell Pierce, staff meeting minutes, 14 July 1931, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.
57 "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952.
58 William B. Ricketts, "What Does South America Offer the American Advertiser?" News
Bulletin, no. 135 (July 1928): 35, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

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a geographic boundary made by a plateau over which items must be

carried.""59 The southern states of Brazil, according to this speaker, of-
fered fewer obstacles, principally because of their large German popu-
lations. The speaker offered, and then answered, his own question:
given the limitations, why go to Latin America at all? To put the reply
simply, domestic manufacturers could not offer people in these coun-
tries all that they needed. When many, if not most, people suffered
financially, but increasing numbers of people had some disposable
income, advertisers stood to earn tremendous profits.
These ambassadors of advertising clearly engaged in what advertis-
ing historian Roland Marchand, citing sociologist Erving Goffman,
called "benign deception."6o They could pledge loyalty to two constitu-
encies by presenting themselves locally as experts on international
business, while recognizing and sometimes admitting their own igno-
rance in the face of cultural difference. As a result, American adver-
tisers abroad lived, arguably, with an insider-outsider status.61 This
postmodern identity enabled them to further American interests while
maintaining an identity as worldly, progressive, and humanitarian,
rather than simply entrepreneurial or, worse, colonial.
Regardless of their ambivalent and arguably naive feelings about
the countries they made their temporary homes, these advertisers envi-
sioned themselves as much global renegades as first-world purveyors of
consumer culture. The New York office made an interesting choice
when it sent Russell Pierce to head the Buenos Aires branch and ini-
tiate work on Pond's soap and General Motors. Before he left for Argen-
tina, Pierce served as assistant to the president of the University of Chi-
cago, in charge of public relations. He eventually became president of
the J. Walter Thompson subsidiary in Argentina. Later, during World
War II, he used that insider knowledge, working under Nelson Rocke-
feller in the Office of Inter-American Affairs in a public relations job
designed to keep Latin American nations in league with the United
States.62 The company later noted that many senior executives had
made their mark on the international advertising scene by going abroad
"to pioneer in this virgin territory-insofar as advertising according to
59 Minutes of representatives' meeting, Aug. 1929, 14, J. Walter Thompson Company

Archives.
60 Erving Goffman, cited in Marchand, 48.
61 This concept follows on that of Goffman. Anthropologist Lorraine Kenny uses the con-
cept of "insider-other" to describe those who are, arguably, both part of and not part of a par-
ticular culture; see Lorraine Delia Kenny, Daughters ofSuburbia: Growing Up White, Middle
Class, and Female (New Brunswick, N.J., 2000). Interestingly, Buenos Aires office chief
Russell Pierce titled the autobiographical account of his life in Argentina "Gringo Gaucho,"
calling on both his insider and other status. See next note for full citation.
62 Russell Pierce, Gringo Gaucho: An Advertising Odyssey (Ashland, Ore., 1991), 91.

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American standards was concerned."63 Pierce later reminisced that

when he embarked on his twenty-one-day sea voyage to Buenos Aires
to work on the GM account, he had never owned a car, never worked on
one, never even changed a tire.64
Henry Flower, founder of the Buenos Aires office, provides another
interesting profile. He attended Harvard for two years, then partici-
pated in World War I. When he returned from the war, he made it clear
that he was not to become the banker's son-diplomat his family had
hoped for. He spent the next two years traveling around the world,
writing, living off friends, and working, whenever his friends offered an
introduction to another city, in order "to insure my departure."65 He
eventually returned to the United States and to the family business,
which he left in 1928 to join J. Walter Thompson. Like Russell Pierce,
Flower saw himself as an adventurer, a renegade, a company man, as
long as the company furthered his plans to travel the globe. Paradoxi-
cally, both of these men saw themselves as existing on the fringes of
U.S. society, rather than at the core of the American culture they
furthered.
Perhaps the promised autonomy of international advertising work
appealed to these men. The offices started out with clear links to, and
dependencies on, the New York headquarters. Quickly, however, the
local branches took on their own identity, culturally and financially.
"The true value of our international service," according to Flower, "lies
in the ability of each branch office to analyze its own market problem
and to judge the types of advertising campaign suited to its solutions."66
The plan was that each foreign office would become self-sufficient
within one year and repay the initial company investment in the second
year. In keeping with their own desires for autonomous employment,
they rightly saw that the more closely tied in they were with the local
culture, while retaining U.S. policies and technologies, the greater suc-
cess they would experience. "In each of the overseas offices," company
publicity stated, "the great majority of the staff are natives of the coun-
try. As a result, the advertising produced by them speaks the language
of the land, the idiom of the local market, and is conditioned by the
local customs and traditions."67

64 Pierce, Gringo Gaucho, 91. Regardless of his ignorance about his new home or his
product, Pierce was enormously successful in Argentina. His Buenos Aires office staff grew
from sixteen to thirty-four in two years, and billing almost doubled.
65 "How Well Do You Know Your JWT'ers?" Thumbnail Sketch no. 22, J. Walter Thomp-
son Company News, 2 June 1947, p. 6.
66 Henry Flower at representatives' meeting, Oct. 1929, 3, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.

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Argentina: A Case Study
The J. Walter Thompson Company's Argentina initiative presents

an interesting paradigm of this dual endeavor to provide global and
local advertising devised to project U.S. business practices and simul-
taneously to respect local culture. J. Walter Thompson was not the first
agency to set up shop in Buenos Aires, nor was General Motors the first
automobile manufacturer to engage in production in Argentina. Ford
had established direct sales service in Argentina in 1916 and used the
N. W. Ayer & Son, the world's largest agency, for most of the next de-
cade.68 American business interests in Argentina grew so quickly in the
decade from 1910 to 1920 that National City Bank, eyeing an opportu-
nity to extend banking to the global sector, opened a branch in Buenos
Aires in 1914. A study conducted by that branch in 1915 revealed that at
least one thousand North American manufacturers had offices or sold
goods in Argentina.69 American involvement grew again through the
192OS. In 1926, three American meatpackers, Swift, Armour, and Wilson,
slaughtered almost 70 percent of the cattle that went to market in Ar-
gentina.70 But agriculture and manufacturing ventures in Argentina
found business allies and followers in related industries: public utili-
ties, banking, transportation, retailing, construction, accounting, and,
important to this discussion, advertising.7'
The J. Walter Thompson Buenos Aires office, which opened in Janu-
ary of 1929, had eighteen people on staff by August of that same year. Its
clients included General Motors, of course, but additionally Pond's, Frigid-
aire, and International Telephone and Telegraph. It also acquired the Na-
tional City Bank account, illustrating the complex and interwoven identi-
ties and relationships that formed this earlier phase of globalization. The
list also included Noel and Company, a local firm owned by the former
mayor of Buenos Aires and a hoped-for bridge to the local business com-
munity. By 1934 the branch had also acquired Firestone Tires, Pan Ameri-
can Oil (a subsidiary of Standard Oil), Swift and Company, Kodak, Royal
Baking Powder, a British mustard company, and a few additional local
companies. As was the case in Sao Paolo, the company was able to open its
Buenos Aires office because it had accounts with General Motors and Na-
tional City Bank. With these two clients alone, the office rapidly became
self-sufficient, no longer needing the subsidy the New York office initially
provided. In fact, as Buenos Aires office founder Henry Flower argued, due
to their immediate success both offices expected not only to become self-
68 Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 97.

69 Wilkins, The Maturing ofMultinational Enterprise, 22.
70 Ibid., 94.
71 Ibid., 129.

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sufficient but also to be able to repay the initial U.S. investment within two
years.72 Flower became such a believer in the global approach that he sug-
gested at a New York meeting in 1930 that, from then on, the company
should accept only international accounts.73
In part because they saw themselves as already cognizant of cul-
tural differences, and in part because they were uninformed about
larger international issues, advertisers in Argentina were largely unpre-
pared for the obstacles they faced in that setting. As a large, urban city
that looked to, and affiliated itself with, Europe as much as Latin Amer-
ica, Buenos Aires and its significant middle class, the largest in the re-
gion, offered advertisers and manufacturers the greatest promise. The
country actively recruited foreign investors, and the economy remained
strong in the 1920s, although not as strong as it had been during the
country's "Golden Age," which lasted from 1880 to 1910. Although a
majority of residents of Buenos Aires considered themselves European,
unlike many Europeans they expressed interest in, rather than disdain
for, American vehicles.74
At the same time, Argentina offered serious hurdles. For one, the
advertisers who arrived from New York exhibited little understanding
of the history or implications of colonialism in the country or region.
The British had built the railroads and most of the country's infrastruc-
ture in order to facilitate the removal of resources from the interior to
the port and then overseas. As a result, many of the roads were of poor
quality.75 British investment in the region continued unabated in the
first decades of the twentieth century; in fact, Argentina received more
direct investment from Britain between 1904 and 1913 than it had dur-
ing the entire previous century. The Americans were clearly second in
terms of understanding either the local economies and customs or the
new economies and customs that resulted from the Argentine-British
relationship.76 A second problem was corruption, which provided a
business context whose rules were largely unfamiliar to the North
Americans. Finally, the political situation in Argentina, also largely un-
familiar to advertisers and manufacturers from the United States,
proved most confounding. Not recognizing the long history of union
organizing that provided Argentina with the bustling middle class
and vocal working class the advertisers and manufacturers themselves
72 Representatives' meeting minutes, Aug. 1929, 15.

73 Representatives' meeting minutes, Oct. 1929, 4, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
74 Mira Wilkins and Frank Ernest Hill, American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Conti-
nents (Detroit, 1964), 92, 95; David Rock, Argentina, 1516-1987: From Spanish Coloniza-
tion to Alfonsin (Berkeley, Calif., 1985), 175, 191.
75 For a map of the growth of railroads in Argentina between 1870 and 1910, see Rock,
Argentina, 170.
76 Ibid., 168.

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hoped to capitalize on, they were wary of becoming the targets as well
as the beneficiaries of the country's intricate politics and complicated
social structure.77
Arthur Farlow, co-manager of the Buenos Aires office as early as
1929, gave a lecture on Argentina in the New York office in 1934. "A
couple of months ago Ripley was down there on his way through on a
trip," Farlow began, "and dug out a lot of material for his 'Believe it or
not' series. This will have some of that flavor." He went on to explore
the culture, "what little of it there is," he noted parenthetically. "It is
backward," Farlow argued, "probably for one outstanding reason. Ar-
gentina has never been a country that has been colonized."'' Appar-
ently no one in attendance knew to correct Farlow on Argentina's three
centuries of formal colonization by the Spanish or its less formal, but
no less real, colonization by Britain. The relationship with Britain was
concrete enough to warrant an 18o6 headline in the London Times, an-
nouncing that Argentina had become part of the British Empire.79 In
1914, Argentina represented to percent of Britain's total investment
abroad. The British desire to gain colonial fortunes through exports
contributed to the separation between the interior and the coast, result-
ing in poverty for many citizens in the interior. In John King's analysis,
the history of British-Argentine relations is one that united cerebral
England and corporeal Argentina, linking the "intellect" of Britain and
the "body" of Argentina. This perspective facilitated the kind of impe-
rial relations that U.S. advertisers, regardless of their sense of history,
could enter into and benefit from.so
Argentina is "probably the most unionized country in the world,"
Henry Flower explained to the company representatives in New York at
a 1929 meeting.81 Although the relationship between Argentina and
Britain had resulted in an economic expansion that at best dispensed
rewards unevenly among the social classes, the country boasted a
strong sense of agency among its workers. Flower and his peers demon-
strated their unease when workers launched a strike against General
Motors. GM's refusal to dismiss a group of men who had remained
loyal to the company through a previous walkout brought on a six-month
77 On the relationship between Argentina and Britain, see Alistair Hennessy, "Argentines,
Anglo-Argentines, and Others," in Alistair Hennessy and John King, eds., The Land That
England Lost: Argentina and Britain, A Special Relationship (London, 1992), 9-48.
78 "Meeting in the Lecture Hall," 21 Feb. 1934, staff meetings, 1933-34, 1, J. Walter Thomp-
son Company Archives.
79 John King and Alistair Hennessy, "Introduction," The Land That England Lost, 3.
80 John King, "The Influence of British Culture in Argentina," in The Land That England
Lost, 167.
81 Henry Flower to representatives' meeting, 20 Aug. 1929, 10, J. Walter Thompson Com-
pany Archives.

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strike as well as a boycott, during which acid was thrown on all GM

automobiles. "I mention this," stated Flower, "simply to indicate the
brand of labor unrest which exists and which must hinder the sound
development of all business."82 Flower, the renegade advertising man,

understood labor unrest not as a call to continued democratization, as
many thousands of Argentineans saw it, but primarily as a hindrance to
sound business practices.
During Argentina's Golden Age, between 1880 and 1910, Buenos
Aires was hailed as the "Paris of South America."83 The city's two major
newspapers gained international recognition, and its economic expan-
sion was unprecedented. At the same time, however, that expansion
was tempered by unevenness, as greater benefits were channeled to the
wealthy and few gains were made by the poor, leading to labor unrest.
The postwar period, which offered great promise for U.S. manufacturers
and advertisers, proved increasingly problematic for Argentina's econ-
omy. Britain's hardships during the war caused the country to cash in
its foreign assets, and Argentina was ill prepared to take up the slack.
The United States, which moved further into the country's economy,
initiated new and equally problematic trade dynamics. "The United
States took a remarkably long time to break into Argentina," writes
Alistair Hennessy, "but by the 1920s the challenge could not be ig-
nored."s84 Argentina moved from first-world to third-world status in a
few short years. The J. Walter Thompson employees in Buenos Aires,
however, in communicating the message of consumer participation and
consumer identity, seemed largely unaware of these global develop-
ments. They made an offhand note of witnessing through their down-
town office windows the 193o coup that ushered in an era of fascism in
Argentina, but they found little else to remark on, even during the
Great Depression.85
If the strike and the coup provided disquieting moments, anti-
American sentiment, seemingly rampant and emanating from regional
complaints and viewpoints unfamiliar to these global travelers, proved
more baffling. One discussion of the GM strike was tied in with discus-
sions of such sentiment, which Flower attributed to misinformation,
arguing that it could be corrected by intensifying American control of
82 Flower to representatives' meeting, 10.

83 Daniel K. Lewis, The History ofArgentina (Westport, Conn., 2001), 70.
84 Hennessy, "Argentines, Anglo-Argentines and Others," 34.
85 Trade emerged as a significant factor in the relationship between the United States and
Argentina as early as 1889, when the first Pan American conference demonstrated the United
States' desire to extend its trade in the Western Hemisphere. From the start, however, trade
favored the United States, as tariffs as well as issues like sanitary meat conditions, widely
perceived as a red herring, prevented much importation of Argentine goods into the United
States. See Clarence H. Harding, Argentina and the United States (Boston, 1941).

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information: "The moment we have any trouble with Mexico, you hear
more about it in the Argentine than we do here in the U.S. I think our
State Department has been a little too indifferent. They never take the
trouble to see that the proper interpretation is given.""6 In articulating
the themes of U.S. control over information and truth-telling, Flower
revealed himself to be more closely connected with Argentine fears of
U.S. imperialism than he would have liked or even imagined. In a com-
pany report on anti-American sentiment, titled, interestingly enough,
"Analysis of a Sufficient Extensive Time Period to Determine How Long
It Takes a Feeling To Die Out," the Thompson Company examined sev-
eral instances of the complicated relationship between Argentina and
the United States. In 1925, two American employees of Standard Oil,
and their Argentine driver, were murdered. Standard Oil responded to
the crime by posting a reward of several thousand dollars for capture
of the murderers, "dead or alive." As Argentina's penal code punished
such offers as incitements to murder, the company's action was met
with indignation and protest. "It was said that Americans, despising the
country and its institutions, thought they were living in the Far West
and that they could take the law into their own hands, considering
Argentina as a conquered country, etc.," stated the report.87
Argentina's relationship with the United States, and hence U.S.
business representatives, was further strained by the U.S. invasion of
Nicaragua. When President Hoover arrived in Buenos Aires, he was
met, "in spite of the efforts of the Argentine government to give the il-
lustrious guest a nice welcome," with a huge placard reading "Viva San-
dino."88 In fact, U.S. imperialism was widely discussed in Argentina,
where caricatures of Uncle Sam provided images of ugly North-South
relations in the press and popular media. Rather than embodying the
venerable old gentleman of U.S. lore, this sinister Sam exuded only
colonial characteristics:
[Uncle Sam] is shown having the features of a sordid money-lender

and in the attitude of grasping with long nails everything within his
reach, sometimes maps of whole countries. That same type of
money-lender occasionally offers a small bag of gold in exchange for
extensive territories, industries, or any sort of value infinitely higher
to those he offers. Sometimes he wears a false smile while cannons
and bayonets are seen falling from his pockets where he has them
hidden. The attitude of this money-lender is always voracious, more
or less disguised by hypocrisy. Occasionally America loses its human
86 Flower to representatives' meeting, 20 Aug. 1929, 10.

87 "Analysis of Sufficient Extensive Time Period to Determine How Long It Takes a Feel-
ing to Die Out," 1930, 92, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
88 Ibid., 96.

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representation in order to appear as a gigantic monkey or an octo-

pus whose claws or tentacles are extended over the map of South
America grasping everything possible."89
U.S. intervention in the area of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea

caused widespread fears about U.S. designs for the region. The Pan
American Conferences, launched to establish more equitable relations
among the Americas, held as principles legal equality and political in-
dependence, but Argentineans saw how poorly those principles trans-
lated into actual relationships of trade or national sovereignty.90
One Thompson survey of Argentina's press revealed that the U.S.
government had few allies in the media. The report described the "ten-
dencies" of the newspapers, arguing that most were at least "somewhat
hostile" to the United States. The report indicated that U.S. notions of
race and ethnicity were partly to blame for Argentine resistance to U.S.
culture. The local population resented being looked upon by the United
States as nonwhite. "This is very humiliating for the local population,"
the report continued, "specially since Americans call themselves 'white
men,' forgetting that Argentines are equally white and perfectly capable
of work, industry or any profession." The report dug deeper, revealing
both the layers of racism Americans carried with them overseas and the
internal Argentine struggles over self-definition as it related to race: "It
must be remembered that the Argentine population is chiefly of pure
white blood and that only a very small minority of indians and half-
breeds are left. There are no negroes."91 Unexamined ideals of white-
ness and reflexive acceptance of U.S. foreign policy encouraged the
globalization of advertising to occur based on a narrow, domestic out-
look instead of on a more open, inquiring attitude regarding inter-
national realities.
Advertising's Cultural and Linguistic Challenges
The J. Walter Thompson offices in South America not only grap-

pled with external issues; they also struggled to define their product,
the global advertisement. They needed ads that would readily relate to
the lives, experiences, and needs of the clientele abroad, yet they felt
drawn to the images and approaches that emerged from the offices in
89 Ibid., 55.
90 On the Pan American Conferences, see Lewis, The History ofArgentina, 27. It was not
until the Seventh Pan American Conference, held in Montevideo in 1933, that the United
States signed the Convention on Rights and Duties of States, Article 8, which stated that "no
state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another."
91 "Analysis," 98.

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the United States and then in London. In the case of J. Walter Thomp-
son, many of the copywriters in the home offices had years of experience
and dozens of success stories. Yet how would they interpret cultures
not their own? How would they entice consumers to consume when the
local politics, culture, and attitudes about the United States were con-
fusing, if not threatening? One question loomed: who should write the
advertising copy, and should it be translated from English to Spanish?
The company outlined the task in 1906: a translator had to be "more
than a man who equitably changes the word currency of one language
into the word currency of another." The effective translator's own cur-
rency was his ability to dismantle one source of cultural communica-
tion and recreate it according to the character of his new audience.92
Advertising Abroad, a trade journal, offered its readers a debate
about whether copy could be successfully imported from the United
States or whether local advertising of global products required local
writing. Jose Fajardo offered the first argument: "The first requirement
of any advertising copywriter, as with a retail salesman, is to know
thoroughly the life and habits of the people he is selling to .... How can
it belong with the readers unless it be prepared by a person who is
one of them-who understands their way of thinking?"93 Fajardo's
examples concern the depiction of women in advertising. In an inter-
esting note, he warned of imposing "liberated" U.S. images on less lib-
erated consumers and cultures:
Feminism and female czars may be introduced into the Spanish

home in the far distant future but, right now, if you send them
advertisements illustrated with golfers and dictatorial looking wives
they will attract wide curiosity, but they will not form the right
premise in their minds for the conclusion you want. People will
either think that they are surely not meant for them and fail to read
them, or they will disagree with you at the psychological moment
and refuse to follow your lead.94
Fajardo raised class issues as well, pointing out that ads showing
housewives "radiating pleasure" while operating an electric vacuum
cleaner or opening a refrigerator door would not work in Spain, for ex-
ample, where anyone able to afford these appliances would also hire
someone to use them.95 There are a thousand details, argued Fajardo,
of "racial psychology" that it is impossible to understand "except by
92 Henderson, "A Short History of the J. Walter Thompson Company," 2.

93 Jose Fajardo and Andrew Billings, "Must Export Copy Go Native?" Export Advertiser
(Nov. 1929): 6, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.
94 Ibid., 22.
95 Ibid., 22.

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rubbing elbows with the people themselves, through living with them
many years, and mastering their language."96 Ironically, Fajardo ar-
gued that "foreign" women, many of whom might presumably be less
sophisticated than their American contemporaries, would be unlikely
to buy the "happy housewife" scenario American advertisers have been
loath to abandon to this day. Fajardo's analysis suggests the compli-
cated nature of class and gender relations among the middle class in
Argentina; definitions of womanhood, intricately linked to definitions
of class, failed to mirror U.S. ideals about domestic chores.
At the core of Fajardo's argument was his disdain for Americans
and their failure to appreciate cultures outside their own. "All great
empires at their highest peaks have suffered from an intoxication of
wealth and power. This present period happens to be America's turn for
the same phenomenon."'97 Fajardo's analysis of white privilege and the
blindness that accompanies it provides a compelling argument for
business people to understand that it is in their interest to be able to
prepare "native" copy.98
Andrew Billings countered Fajardo's claims by reminding readers
of the great attraction and success of things American. Foreign copy, he
pointed out, has a great appeal to consumers. Advertisers quickly
adopted French terminology in cosmetics advertising, and the same
proved true of American signifiers. An American "flavor," then, "may
often help, rather than hinder the sale of goods in foreign lands ...
[H]esitate a bit before eradicating all the Americanism from your copy
appeal, for there, perhaps, may lie its strongest single element."99 Bill-
ings ultimately argued in favor of a hybrid agency, much like the actual
Thompson agencies abroad, which specialized in a comprehensive ap-
proach: supplying researchers who understood local needs and psy-
chology, planners to shape individual campaigns, and, again, "special-
ized translators who are able to put this into the proper vernacular."100
In fact, for all the discussion of "native" input into advertising
geared to foreign audiences, an examination of the realities of the
Buenos Aires office reveals that the pull from New York proved irresist-
ible. A Pond's research report conducted in 1935 concluded with only
one recommendation, "namely that we should use in the Argentine
the same copy you are now using in the U.S. The illustration and the
96 Ibid., 22.
97 Ibid., 24.
98 This analysis also supports Jeff Merron's argument that, in the end, simple under-
standings of class and gender, rather than more complex understandings of regional or cul-
tural norms, dictated advertising content.
99 Fajardo and Billings, "Must Export Copy Go Native?" 7.
100 Ibid., 26.

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text translated and adapted to our needs, would be new and interest
aroussing [sic]."'101 The process here is reminiscent of that described
by Roland Marchand in his analysis of customer research conducted by
General Motors in the United States. In an attempt to connect with cus-
tomers and prove that GM could "be big and still human," the company
carried out extensive customer surveys.'02 Marchand's examination of
the company records, however, reveals that the goal was "to contrive
the impression" that GM customers "were individually as well as collec-
tively important." There is little evidence to suggest that customer sug-
gestions became incorporated into company policy. Likewise, there are
few indications that American advertisers found ways to integrate
themselves or their work into the Latin American context. In a note
on Indian advertising, a Thompson employee noted that "there are
350,000o,ooo000 people in India and Burma, but, like the fish in the sea,
you have to reckon their value as customers in terms of the ones you
can catch."'103 By attempting to catch prospective buyers who would be
most apt to make the cultural translation of U.S. advertisements to
the local context, a category in which one could count the European-
defined Argentine middle class, the advertising industry helped define
the global consumer as one at least interested in, if not enamored of,
American cultural images and ideals.
Similar issues arose in connection with the composition of staff. "In
each of the overseas offices," the company argued, "the great majority
of the staff are natives of the country. As a result, the advertising pro-
duced by them speaks the language of the land, the idiom of the local
market, and is conditioned by local customs and traditions."'104 The
idea that the majority of personnel would be "native," however, pro-
vided a simple formula that masked considerations of ethnicity and
social class. Henry Flower spoke at a New York meeting about how he
handled the problem of difference as it arose in Buenos Aires. The
agency hired a copywriter from Chile, whose first language was, of
course, Spanish. Nevertheless, since idiomatic differences existed be-
tween Argentineans and Chileans, all copy this writer produced had to
be supervised by a native Argentinean.'05 Initiating this degree of over-
sight demonstrated a commitment to local sensitivities. At the same
time, the Buenos Aires office provides an interesting profile of what
was considered "native." The employees were described as a cross-
101 Pond's Research Report, 1935, J. Walter Thompson Company Archives.

102 Roland Marchand, "Customer Research as Public Relations: General Motors in the
1930s," in Getting and Spending, 103, 107.
103 "Notes on Indian Advertising," 1938, J. Walter Thompson Archives.
105 Flower, representatives' meeting, 20 Aug. 1929.

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section of the Argentine middle class, but the staff more closely repre-
sented smaller segments of that social class: one of the male employees
came from an elite political family, a second was Austrian, three others
were Argentine, and, four were Anglo-Argentines. Anita Tibaldi, the
first woman and first Argentinean on staff, functioned both as execu-
tive secretary and as cultural translator for the Americans. Another
woman, a copywriter named Countess Franca Paganini de Castano, was
an Italian noblewoman married to an Argentinean. The other female
copywriter, Maria Victoria Candida, joined the Thompson agency after
fleeing her native Paraguay following the war between Paraguay and
Bolivia. She had been a nurse, the only woman in the Paraguayan
armed services.106 This diverse group of individuals bridged the gap be-
tween the U.S. and the Argentine middle class, but they themselves
could hardly be called a cross-section of that social sector. They too
functioned with insider-outsider status in their own city and country.
More often than not, advertisements coming from the Buenos
Aires office mirrored in significant ways those produced in the U.S. of-
fices or the London branch.'07 Jose Fajardo argued that more than 50
percent of ad copy in Spanish-language newspapers, magazines, and
booklets received direct translation and made no sense. Russell Pierce
provides several examples of this in his memoir of life in the Buenos
Aires office. When they translated the "roaring twenties," for example,
into el siglo veinte que gritaba, they arrived at "the twentieth century
that cried out." Cultural translations of ideas could prove equally inef-
fective. When Thompson's Buenos Aires office used an Aztec theme for
a chocolate bar and invited consumers to "Enjoy the royal bar of the
Aztec kings," there was no response. Argentineans would have felt no
cultural connection to Aztec history.1o8
Globalization and the Homogeneous Consumer
Among the questions that arose when advertising in other coun-

tries was the following: are people fundamentally similar or fundamen-
tally different? It comes as little surprise that advertisers would feel
106 The Countess Paganini de Castano became instrumental on two campaigns: Modess
and Scott toilet tissue. Her toilet-tissue campaign exposed perhaps her upper-class or cul-
tural sensibilities, as 50 percent of the intended publications initially refused the ads, consid-
ering them in poor taste. The countess then took on the Modess campaign, deciding, as she
had done with the Scott ads, to translate more or less literally the copy developed in New
York. In this case, her "Diseases You Don't Talk About" campaign proved successful, and in
the end only one publication refused the advertising. See Pierce, Gringo Gaucho, 262.
107 On the London Office of J. Walter Thompson, and its relationship with General Motors,
see West, "From T-Square to T-Plan."
108 Pierce, Gringo Gaucho, 124, 129.

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that people had more in common than they had differences-more in

common, that is, with themselves. Thompson employees did differenti-
ate among people, both consciously and not.109 "Of course the people
themselves are different," Farlow wrote about Argentineans. "They're
different in minor ways, of course, because after all they are purely
white people, but they have different desires, different needs, because
they live differently."'0o In an article cleverly titled "Markets are
People-Not Places," Clement Watson argued that "people are funda-
mentally alike the world over. Except for a few fanatics, all peoples seek
protection, seek betterment of living conditions, seek added comfort,
seek greater enjoyment of life.""' In keeping with such an argument,
he continued by stating that people "in any stage of civilization" can
be taught to use products: "A toilet soap doesn't care whether the
complexion it cleanses is white or black, brown or yellow.""2 The com-
pany's own research, however, revealed strong attachments to cultural
traditions that Argentineans were unlikely to abandon and Americans
were apparently not ready either to adopt or to appreciate. One obvious
example is the company's examination of yerba matte, a hot drink
taken communally and a prominent aspect of the daily culture of many,
if not most, Argentineans. Company researcher Bill Ricketts described
matte in the following way:
An interesting product used there is herva [sic] matte, a tea which at

least 20,000,000 people in South America drink. It counteracts the
heavy meat diet, is a mild laxative, a good diuretic, stimulates and
has the peculiar property of satisfying hunger without destroying
the appetite and should therefore be a good product for reduction. It
has never been tried seriously in this country but is being used to
some extent in Europe. The natives drink it out of a little gourd.
They put the tea in, pour water into the gourd and suck it out
through a silver tube. As the regular way of entertaining, they pass
these things around when anybody comes to call. It's undoubtedly a
most unsanitary thing but it's the custom.113
Ricketts's limited appreciation of the cultural significance of yerba

matte, and the differences it reveals about people and their values, is
made almost comical by his suggestion of turning the drink into a
weight-reduction product for the American market.
109 Watson, "Markets Are People," 6.

110 Farlow, staff meeting minutes, 2 Feb. 1934, 1.
111 Watson, "Markets Are People," 6.
112 Ibid.
113 Bill Ricketts, representatives' meeting, 27 June 1928: 4, J. Walter Thompson Company
Archives.

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Conclusion
Many industries flourished on the global scene between 1880 and

192o. In fact, the growth of international business in this period would
not be matched again until the next wave of globalization in the 1980s.
The parallels between the two eras suggest questions about their ap-
proaches and policies. In the earlier phase, the product, such as the
automobile, appears to be the issue. Ford and General Motors both saw
tremendous international growth in the 192os and undoubtedly ush-
ered automobile culture into new regions. But, by the end of the 192oS,
GM would surpass Ford in global sales, largely because GM was able to
communicate effectively with foreign consumers. Advertising, then,
and its creators, featured prominently in the nexus of globalization that
defines this earlier era. Woodrow Wilson may have believed that the
United States ascended to world power "by the sheer genius of this
people, not because we chose to go into the politics of the world," but
the communication efforts of advertisers, organized, deliberate, and
political as they were, belie notions of accidental U.S. ascension on the
world stage. U.S. advertising agencies carved out a niche in the interna-
tional marketplace early on. By the end of the 197os, U.S. advertising
agencies, according to Geoffrey Jones, operated in all but six noncom-
munist countries in the world.114
In its early and successful global advertising efforts, the J. Walter
Thompson Company argued that advertising "cannot be restricted by
political boundaries or national compartments.""'5 They nurtured, de-
veloped, and, helped define this global network. For the most part,
though, advertisers in Thompson offices abroad drew on what they al-
ready knew as they confronted the new; they found comfort in tried-
and-true, American, approaches. They ensured the global promotion of
products that bridged their own culture with the ones they grew to
understand better, employing cultural and linguistic approaches that
most closely mirrored the strategies of their American counterparts at
home while simultaneously seeking to understand their clients through
demographic and other "scientific" analyses. Proud of their accom-
plishments, engaged in work that allowed them to serve as experts and
cultural mediators, their history offers a window on the development of
globalization in the early twentieth century. Like many intercultural ex-
periments, the international expansion of advertising reveals as much
about U.S. advertisers as it does about the many consumers abroad
whose nickels paved this trade route and constructed a platform for
cultural exchange.
114 Jones, The Evolution of International Business, 173.

115 Henderson, "A Short History of the J. Walter Thompson Company," 3.

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Scanlon Mediators in The International Marketplace - U.S. Advertising in Latin America in The Early Twentieth Century

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Scanlon Mediators in The International Marketplace - U.S. Advertising in Latin America in The Early Twentieth Century

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Mediators in the International Marketplace: U.S.

Advertising in Latin America in the

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Mediators in the International Marketplace:

In the early twentieth century, companies relied on advertis-

meansT he domestic Historians

JENNIFER SCANLON is associate professor and director of women's studies at Bowdoin

Business History Review 77 (Autumn 2003): 387-415. c 2003 by The President

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other by brand name consumer products as much as by anything else."5

5 Roberto C. Goizueta, "Globalization: A Soft Drink Perspective," Executive Speeches,

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twentieth centuries witnessed a globalization marked by foreign in-

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To the degree that these moves to develop and further multi-

16 Charles Lovering, quoted in Jacobsen, Barbarian Virtues, 15.

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The Role of Advertising in Globalization

Although many contemporary analyses of globalization privilege

20 Jones, The Evolution of International Business, 99, 36.

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advertisers played in the economy: "Positioned at the crucial juncture

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26 ,J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3, Information Center, J. Walter Thompson

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Only 9 agencies in the United States

This international organization makes available to clients,

o' .oiR iiliiiiiiiR iii= gF; <S.J)Pt@ iiiidliliiiiiiilii .

reopened.32 These statistics are remarkable in their testimony: despite

32 "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3-4.

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The J. Walter Thompson headquarters in New York provided pro-

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these American advertisers to see through so-called international

Lucrative Markets in Latin America for General Motors

Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay provided lucrative markets for Gen-

37 Reinitz, "RESEARCH: The Approach to Export Advertising," 30.

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America initiative, in a report to the company president.42 Even during

Advertisers' Understanding of the

In developing its relationship with General Motors and other man-

42 Henry C. Flower, letter to Stanley Resor, quoted in Merron, 10.

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approaches, further justifying advertising's interventions.48 In Latin

The need for understanding starts in our individual lives, in our

48 Peggy J. Kreshel, "The 'Culture' of J. Walter Thompson, 1915-1925," Public Relations

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The company had long encouraged its employees to view their

51 Jacobsen, Barbarian Virtues, 38.

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54 Representatives' meeting minutes, 2 June 1931, J. Walter Thompson Company

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a geographic boundary made by a plateau over which items must be

59 Minutes of representatives' meeting, Aug. 1929, 14, J. Walter Thompson Company

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American standards was concerned."63 Pierce later reminisced that

63 "J. Walter Thompson International," 1952, 3.

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Argentina: A Case Study

The J. Walter Thompson Company's Argentina initiative presents

68 Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise, 97.