Chapter 6
ADVERTISING COUNCIL
The Advertising Council, 25 West 45th Street, New York 36, N. Y. (with offices at 203 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago; 1200 18th Street, N. W., Washington; 425 Bush Street, San Francisco) serves as a public relations operation to promote selected projects supported by the Council on Foreign Relations and its interlocking affiliates.
The Advertising Council was created in 1942 (then called War Advertising Council) as a tax-exempt, non-governmental agency to promote wartime programs of government: rationing, salvage, the selling of war bonds, and so on.
The Advertising Council's specific job was to effect close cooperation between governmental agencies and business firms using the media of mass communication. A governmental agency would bring a particular project (rationing, for example) to the Advertising Council, for help in "selling" the project to the public. The Council would enlist the aid of some advertising agency. The agency (giving its services for nothing, as a contribution to the war effort) would prepare signs, newspaper mats, advertising layouts, broadcasting kits and what not. The Advertising Council might then enlist the free services of a public relations firm to get this material into newspapers and magazines; get it inserted in the regular ads of business firms; get it broadcast, free, as public-service spot announcements by radio networks; get it inserted into regular commercials on radio broadcasts; get slogans and art work stamped on the envelopes and business forms of corporations.
The Advertising Council rendered a valuable service to advertisers, broadcasting organizations, and publishers. Everyone wanted to support projects that would help the war effort. The Advertising Council did the important job of screening–of presenting projects which were legitimate and urgent.
Even the advertising agencies and public relations firms, which contributed free services, profited from the arrangement. They earned experience and prestige as agencies which had prepared nationally successful campaigns.
The Advertising Council continued after the war to perform this same service–selecting, for free promotion, projects that are "importantly in the public interest." Indeed, the service is more valued in peace time than in war by many advertisers and broadcasting officials who are badgered to support countless causes and campaigns, most of which sound good but some of which may be objectionable. Investigating to screen the good from the bad is a major job. The Advertising Council does this job. The Council is respected by industry, by the public, and by government. It is safe to promote a project which the Advertising Council claims to be "importantly in the public interest."
Thus, officials of the Advertising Council have become czars in a most important field. They arbitrarily decide what is, and what is not, in the public interest. When the Advertising Council "accepts" a project, the most proficient experts in the world–leading Madison Avenue people–go to work, without charge, to create (and saturate the media of mass communication with) the skillful propaganda that "sells" the project to the public.