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"Logemann, Jan L"
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Engineered to sell : European emigrés and the making of consumer capitalism
The mid-twentieth-century marketing world influenced nearly every aspect of American culture—music, literature, politics, economics, consumerism, race relations, gender, and more. In Engineered to Sell, Jan L. Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research, and commercial design who transformed capitalism from the 1930s through the 1960s. He argues that the history of marketing consumer goods is not a story of American exceptionalism. Instead, the careers of immigrants point to the limits of the \"Americanization\" paradigm. Logemann explains the rise of a dynamic world of goods and examines how and why consumer engineering was shaped by transatlantic exchanges. From Austrian psychologists and little-known social scientists to the illustrious Bauhaus artists, the emigrés at the center of this story illustrate the vibrant cultural and commercial connections between metropolitan centers: Vienna and New York; Paris and Chicago; Berlin and San Francisco. By focusing on the transnational lives of emigré consumer researchers, marketers, and designers, Engineered to Sell details the processes of cultural translation and adaptation that mark both the midcentury transformation of American marketing and the subsequent European shift to \"American\" consumer capitalism.
eBook
Engineered to sell : European emigrâes and the making of consumer capitalism
Forever immortalized in the television series Mad Men, the mid-twentieth century marketing world influenced nearly every aspect of American culture-- music, literature, politics, economics, consumerism, race relations, gender, and more. Jan Logemann traces the transnational careers of consumer engineers in advertising, market research and commercial design who transformed capitalism, from the 1930s through the 1960s. He argues that the history of marketing consumer goods is not a story of American exceptionalism. Instead, the careers of immigrants point to the limits of the \"Americanization\" paradigm. First, Logemann explains the rise of a dynamic world of goods by emphasizing changes in marketing approaches increasingly tailored to consumers. Second, he looks at how and why consumer engineering was shaped by transatlantic exchanges. From Austrian psychologists and little-known social scientists to the illustrious Bauhaus artists, the migr s at the center of this story illustrate the vibrant cultural and commercial connections between metropolitan centers: Vienna and New York; Paris and Chicago; Berlin and San Francisco. These mid-century consumer engineers crossed national and disciplinary boundaries not only within arts and academia but also between governments, corporate actors, and social reform movements. By focusing on the transnational lives of migr consumer researchers, marketers, and designers, Engineered to Sell details the processes of cultural translation and adaptation that mark both the mid-century transformation of American marketing and the subsequent European shift to \"American\" consumer capitalism.
Book
Consumer Engineering: Challenges and Legacies
By the 1970s, advertising and marketing efforts to engineer continuous growth in material consumption, in particular, became the focus of attacks on the postwar brand of consumer capitalism advanced by social theorists, public intellectuals and by a growing consumer movement on both sides of the Atlantic. Ironically, this transnational revolt against postwar marketing also drew on intellectual foundations laid by members of the same cohort of émigrés who had championed the rise of consumer engineering. In exile, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and other protagonists of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research were closely connected to the group around Lazarsfeld and their work in media and consumer research since the 1930s. More than merely an intellectual critique of consumer engineering, the 1960s and early 1970s witnessed the rise of a sustained transatlantic consumer movement. As the era of technocratic “high modernity” came to a close by the 1970s, so did the careers of many of the émigrés highlighted in this study.
Book Chapter
The “Return” to Europe: Emigrés as Cultural Translators and the Transformation of Postwar European Marketing
“Americanization” in marketing did not simply entail out-right imports, but rather a careful and selective adaptation of specific elements. Such transnational corporate learning processes negotiating differences between American and European consumption and marketing cultures, opened new career opportunities for the émigré consumer engineers. This chapter traces their “return” to Europe after the war as well as their impact on the transformation of Western European consumer marketing between the late 1940s and the early 1960s. The focus will be on West Germany, which had a special role in this transatlantic exchange. The returning émigrés did not simply act as cheerleaders of American consumer modernity, however. Through their cultural translations they were able to engage skeptical colleagues and consumers in Europe and, in some instances, to “Europeanize” modern marketing practice.
Book Chapter
Corporate America and the International Style: The Transnational Network of Knoll Associates between Europe and the United States
The chapter uses the furniture company Knoll International as a case study for the reciprocal transnational design transfers in mid-century consumer marketing between the United States and Europe. Knoll’s approach was different from the mass-market design work of industrial designers such as Raymond Loewy and Walter Landor with regard to the consumer segments they targeted. Market research and consumer surveys do not feature prominently with Knoll’s designs, where the artist’s vision rather than anticipated consumer reactions set the tone. Yet, with corporate and institutional clients making up a sizeable share of its sales, Knoll, too, incorporated professional research and a thorough understanding of client needs into its design jobs, as the emergence of its “planning unit” headed by Florence Knoll shows. Knoll’s case also shines a light on the return of commercial modernism back to Europe after World War II. Here, Knoll acted as an American company, promoting “American” or “international” design forms with obvious “European” roots.The history of Knoll, finally, provides a powerful example of immigrant entrepreneurship.
Book Chapter
The Commercialization of Social Engineering? Adapting Radical Design Reform to American Mass Marketing
This chapter traces both the inevitable conflicts between radical design visions and corporate America and the surprising degree to which interwar European reform traditions in design informed American “consumer engineering.” Beginning with Ferdinand Kramer’s career between Frankfurt and New York, I enquire more generally about the transatlantic commercial impact of the Bauhaus school and of European design modernists organized by CIAM. Bauhaus émigrés established themselves in prominent positions in American design education, including Walter Gropius at the Harvard School of Design and Josef Albers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. The most comprehensive of these educational ventures was the “American Bauhaus” established by Lazlo Moholy-Nagy in Chicago. Its history illustrates the conflicts as well as the potential in this meeting of reform visions and economic demands. The reformers’ ideal of providing democratic access to well-designed standardized goods held surprising appeal to “consumer engineers.” In fact, their careers point to the lively connection between mid-century “social engineering” and midcentury marketing.
Book Chapter